Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson cautioned on Friday that MAGA has a plan for midterm elections and it's time for Democrats to be "ruthless."
In his Substack, he issued the blunt warning that although MAGA has the money backed by its ecosystem of tech and media — that's about it.
"Let me tell you a secret about the MAGA movement that isn’t a secret at all, because they keep saying it out loud: they know they can’t win a fair fight in November," Wilson wrote.
Republicans have been watching the special elections and watching the polling results roll in — and the signs are there, Wilson argued.
"Midterms with a raving, senile, deeply unpopular president presiding over an economy held together with tariff ductAI stock market handwavium and duct tape, and the Iran forever war are a recipe for an electoral slaughterhouse, and every Republican operative with a pulse knows it," Wilson wrote.
"I used to be one of them," he explained. "I know how that room smells when the numbers go south, and all the culture war garbage in the world won’t fix it. It smells like fear, and fear in that party has exactly one output: cheat harder."
He suggested that Democrats have 90 days to focus on winning the midterms against Republicans.
"So they’re not going to run a midterm campaign," Wilson wrote. "They’re going to run a midterm operation. There’s a difference, and if Democrats don’t internalize that difference in the next ninety days, they will get rolled by people who have been planning this since the day the 2024 confetti hit the floor."
Wilson suggested that Democrats should focus on winning big — so big that MAGA can't cheat its way back into power.
"A political war is coming this fall," he added. "Not a metaphor, not hype, an actual contest over whether elections in this country still decide who holds power. The other side has already mobilized. They have the Court, the money, the federal agencies, and the machines."