It only works* for the GOP thanks to factors the Dems can't easily replicate (ie Senate malapportionment, the rural/urban divide, aggressive gerrymandering).
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*Also the GOP got crushed in the last election we had and the "25% of the population loves you" formula lost them a Senate seat in Alabama of all places, so.
There is zero question that the Gingrichization of the Republican Party has been incredibly successful for them. Going hard in the paint for gun rights, lower taxes, and fighting brown people has won them control of the house for like 2/3 of elections since 1994.
You can say “oh Gerrymandering” but what enabled Gerrymandering? => Winning elections
What enabled the collapse of the democrats in 2010? Centrist policies that tried to split the baby but nobody on any side really loved.
Sure they won in 2018... but relying on your opponents to be dog shit to win elections is not a winning plan. If Marco Rubio or Hillary was President, Dems would have lost the House and lost seats in the Senate.
Edit: *more seats*
"If they did what I want them to do they'd also win elections."
It's nice to believe but it's not true. Minority rule only works if you've got some mechanism to translate <50% of the votes into a win. Those tools aren't readily available for Dems because of the current asymmetric nature of American politics.
Realistically, we haven’t had a president that has one a raw majority of the voting age population probably ever. Certainly not in any of our lifetimes on this forum. So we are talking about minority rule.
Trump won in part by expanding the Republican coalition a few percentage points into pockets of people that usually don’t vote against an opponent that Could barely inspire her own base much less non-voters.
Trying to pretend the 55% of turnout is a non-mutable fixed population, and the only strategy is to blow out your left flank in an attempt to convince people in the middle to switch is a suckers game. We’ve seen how well that’s worked over the last 25 years, where the democrats can only win when they have a great candidate or democrats or when the Republicans threaten to fuck up Medicare or social security.
Giving up 10% of registered Democrats for 10% of thecurrently non-voting population would be a net gain. Can that be done? I have no idea. The only candidate that has really tried it in a general election is Trump. But I do know the math is a lot more complex than you are suggesting.
