On Morning Joe, they asked Steve Schmidt about the big takeaway from last night's Democratic victories.
"The big picture was, this was a very good night for the Democratic party across the Midwest, taking back the House of Representatives, the governor's races and the state legislative races," he said.
"And the Trump fog machine can spin this any way it wants. If you have the capacity to make up an invasion of the United States out of whole cloth of a disease-infested horde of immigrants, for sure you have the capacity to say though you lost, you in fact won. So it is a big night for Democrats, no matter what they say.
"To Eddie's point, I want to expand on what he said, the reality is that Paul Ryan was wrong to advise to campaign on the economy. Donald Trump's instincts were validated in big sections of the country. The incitement strategy, the racial demagoguery, it worked.
He laid out all the advantages Republicans have on their side.
"We have to understand we have a billion dollar anger industry in this country. We have a news media functioning as a propaganda arm of a president who controls it. We have an interconnected web of propaganda and misinformation and nonsense where the American people are subjected to a constant torrent of lies. Whether it's a caravan, whether it's illegal voting, whether it's any of the other 6,000 lies that he told over the year.
"The assault on objective truth, we've seen the consequence through the incitement strategy that played out. And when we look ahead, we see the net result of this election is pick-ups for the Democrats -- but also a clarification of the borderlines in the country with regard to the Cold Civil War that Donald Trump is stoking. We saw Democratic pickups in suburban areas in Oklahoma City, Charleston, South Carolina, Staten Island, where Republicans have held those seats for 30 years."
But. But, but, but.
"The rural population of America, though, such as it is, is shrinking, aging and constricting. And so the Republican party may have gotten a low-interest mortgage on their incitement strategy, just like the California party did with its anti-immigrant demagoguery in 1994 and then didn't win another statewide race, with the exception of Arnold Schwarzenegger."
He predicted that over the long run, the offense given to millenials and people of color "will linger like a stench" around the Republican party for years to come.
