What Republicans realized decades ago is this is fundamentally true. Every election is the most important election. They just leave off the "...so far" that should be at the end of the statement.

I think before Reagan (or maybe Gingrich) people could reasonably see some elections as less consequential than others. But the Republicans realized that it's all about building. Build a bench of charismatic, intelligent, possibly sociopathic individuals. Get them in local government and then state government and then federal government. Tell your base voters that you're building something that will one day pay off.

Just keep building, just keep building, and one day you have a juggernaut. Especially if your opponents didn't build to match.

Democrats spent the 80s and 90s assuming the status was quo. They spent the last half of the 90s and the 00s living in the fantasy that what people liked about Clinton was the fiscal conservatism without the religion, so they should be more conservative.

Only very recently have progressives started breaking through.

Now we have to build.

Luckily the Republicans have hitched their wagon to a human wrecking ball. That might let Democrats catch up sooner than they otherwise would.