Republicans Vowed Election Day Chaos And Terrorism. Where Did It Go?
The answer might surprise you.
by Justin Rosario
Last week, I went into the midterm elections cautiously optimistic. Despite the press ordering the public to believe a red wave of historic proportions was upon us, I just didn’t see it.
Special elections had shifted to the left (a bad sign for Republicans). Voter turnout was up (a very bad sign). Early voting for Democrats had vastly exceeded 2018 (an astonishingly bad sign). Younger voters, women, and Black voters were swarming the polls (that’s just apocalyptic). My fellow Banter writers, Ben and Bob, weren’t convinced of a red wave, either and we were right. The 2022 midterms are shaping up to be the worst humiliation for the party out of power in 30 years.
But election night was only supposed to be half of the story. While I was hopeful, I was extremely uneasy about what Republicans had planned. Intimidation at the polls. Domestic terrorism. Election rigging. Lawsuits to overturn close races. The GOP was very open about their plans and extremely smug about how easy it would be to pull it off. After all, they almost staged a successful coup on January 6th, 2021 and the country moved on from that, right?
So what happened? Where did all the thugs go? They’ve been planning this for literally two years and…nothing.
Was it really (not) that bad?
When Republicans use extremist language, media outlets usually refer to it as “bluster” — a cheap defense mechanism that allows them to look the other way. The GOP has been screaming at the top of its lungs that it longs to embrace fascism, white nationalism, violence, suppress the rights of everyone they hate, burn democracy to the ground, etc. By brushing it all off as “heated rhetoric,” commentators can feign shock when Republicans do precisely what they always said they were going to do. Or did you think Chuck Todd was really surprised when Roe was struck down?
Republicans have been bellowing about their “army” of terrorists (let’s call them what they are) for quite some time. This from NBC News in 2020:
Republicans are recruiting an estimated 50,000 volunteers to act as "poll watchers" in November, part of a multimillion-dollar effort to police who votes and how.
That effort, coordinated by the Republican National Committee and President Donald Trump's re-election campaign, includes a $20 million fund for legal battles as well as the GOP's first national poll-patrol operation in nearly 40 years.
Here’s Reuters just last month:
Andrea Raffle, the Republican National Committee's director for election integrity in Pennsylvania, told participants on the call they had already filled 6,000 poll watcher positions in the state this year, compared with 1,000 in 2020. Raffle referred a request for comment to the RNC's national office.
…
The RNC has been pouring resources into recruiting observers and workers since being freed from the restrictions of a court-ordered consent decree in 2018. It expects to have trained over 52,000 poll watchers and workers between November last year and the coming election; it said comparative numbers for past elections were unavailable.
During the primaries in the spring, numerous reports of Republican poll watchers harassing both voters and workers popped up. They crossed a number of lines and no concrete action was taken, suggesting this was a warm-up act for the midterms.
In the days leading up to election day, masked and armed “poll watchers” staked out polling places and drop boxes with the explicit intent of scaring people away. A judge finally stepped in but no one went to jail for voter intimidation. No one was even arrested.
But as we got closer, and on the day itself, reports petered out. There were isolated incidents of harassment and a minimum amount of disruption. The grand coordinated effort to police the polls and sway elections through terrorism and mass confusion simply did not materialize. You know how bad it wasn’t? Glenn Greenwald is trying very hard to rewrite history:
This is like saying a Cat 5 hurricane shifted course at the last minute so all of the preparation for massive destruction and loss of life was a waste of time and resources.
It should be noted that Greenwald, like most of the alt-left, is extremely angry that the red wave fizzled and is, as I write this, pushing Republican election conspiracy talking points.
What about the lawsuits?
What about the lawsuits? John Eastman, who really should be in jail, was caught on tape explaining to his foot soldiers that their job was to document (read as: fabricate) as many discrepancies as they could to lay the groundwork for challenging election results in court.
This is happening and it isn’t clear how well it’s going. Republicans have filed over 60 lawsuits to restrict which ballots will be counted and to get as many as possible thrown out. This was all done before the midterms and many of the cases are ongoing.
What is surprising is the lack of post-election lawsuits. Considering how many races came down to just thousands of votes, I fully expected Republicans to launch a flurry of lawsuits with the intent of reversing their losses. So far, that hasn’t happened and the longer it doesn’t, the harder it will be to start the process. Losing candidates have been accepting their losses, gracefully or otherwise.
It’s a sad statement that Republicans not screaming 24/7 that they were cheated seems odd and suspicious, but there it is. Without that perception of electoral hank-panky embedded in the minds of the public, it will be very hard to have courts overturn the results of elections days or weeks after a winner has been declared. While corrupt Republican judges might be willing to do it, the public won’t accept it. Perception is everything.
Even if they do not affect the midterms, the pre-election cases are still important in the long run. If Republicans can narrow the electorate by eliminating classes of voters as well as methods of voting, that only works to their benefit. Republicans are quite aware of how and why they lost this election:
Early voting bad!
Mail-in voting bad!
Unmarried women bad!
Young voters bad!
Screw it. Voting bad!
They are not even really saying the elections were fraudulent, just that too many people who don't vote Republican had too many ways to vote. It is surprising, though, that Republicans are not trying to directly overturn elections based on imaginary voter fraud. That was something they were openly discussing as a viable strategy and they just…didn’t. Perhaps after the Supreme Court gives Republican legislatures the “constitutional” right to do that?
So what happened?
We forget in the shadow of 1/6, that the 2020 election went very smoothly. Despite the right promising mayhem and chaos (again), there were very few disruptions and certainly nothing on a large scale. Even the MAGA mob that showed up to prevent the ballots from being counted in Arizona lacked any real direction or coordination. If they had been half as motivated as the attackers on January 6th, they would have broken in easily and set the ballots on fire. But January 6th was a planned and coordinated attack. Nothing of the sort occurred around the election itself.
Afterward the election, I suggested that Fox News had so thoroughly convinced their audience that Republican victory was inevitable, no one bothered to show up to terrorize voters or disrupt the count. I think, perhaps, that is exactly what happened again, except much worse.
In 2020, right-wing media screeched that Trump was going to win but the press wasn’t quite as sure, sticking to their favorite game: It’s a horserace! But in 2022, the overwhelming media narrative, right and center (and even a good chunk of the left), was pushing one narrative and one narrative only: The Red Wave. Republicans weren’t going to just win, they were going to win big!
Just like in 2020, why cheat if victory is assured? I wish I could pretend, even for a second, it was a moral choice but don't kid yourself. This was a choice based on self-preservation.
What about next time?
Look, I get it, every election is the most important election of our lives. Every election is the one where roving gangs of Proud Boys will show up and attack minority voters. Fascism is just around the corner so don’t let your guard down. It’s an exhausting way to live.
But that’s the price we pay for the world we want for ourselves and our children. I want to be able to retire someday and not wonder if my Social Security and Medicare will be taken away by greedy billionaires who hate the other 99.99% of us. I want to go to my grave knowing that my autistic son won’t be thrown in jail because that’s easier (and cheaper) than helping him live a life of dignity as an adult. I want my girls to live their lives on their own terms, not as handmaidens in a theocratic dystopia.
Republicans have made it excruciatingly clear what their vision for America is. Our prosperity, our safety, and our very lives are forfeit under Republican rule and we know that because they won't stop telling us so.
In two years, the right will once again be telling us as loudly as they can about how they plan to terrorize voters at the polls. Sooner or later, either Fox will stop telling its audience that Republican victory is guaranteed or its audience will stop believing Fox and carry out their plans. One way or the other, we should always take Republicans at their word when they say they’re going to engage in terrorism.
The Democrats won last week but Republicans will never stop trying to burn America to the ground. So take a week or two off, enjoy the holidays, and then get ready to keep fighting. There are less than two years to the next Republican coup attempt.
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Trump Supporters Are Lost Without Daddy
The MAGA brand isn’t what it once was, so the sycophants are turning on their benefactor.
by Ben Cohen
UPDATE: As expected, Trump announced his bid for the Presidency in 2024 last night. Interestingly, most major news outlets are not running the story as a headline.
Dave Chappelle once called MAGA cheerleader Candace Owens “the most articulate idiot I’ve ever seen in my fucking life.”
Being forceful, confident, and dumb has worked well for Owens, who has found great success in far right circles as a minority willing to spread white ethno-nationalistic talking points. Her devotion to Trump has paid off incredibly well — Owens has her own mini-media empire, makes a lot of money at speaking events, and even got married at Trump’s winery in Virginia.
Owens doesn’t know much about, well, anything, but she’s happy to spread every right wing conspiracy theory out there for clicks. In one extraordinary interaction with Joe Rogan, a smirking Owens declared she doesn’t believe humans should care for the environment because climate change isn’t real. When Rogan pressed her on the issue citing overwhelming scientific consensus that it was, Owens replied confidently, “I just don’t think so”.
Case closed.
The MAGA movement is packed full of lowlife grifters like Owens. From the shameless con artists like George Papadopoulos and Steve Bannon to carnival barkers like Milo Yiannopoulos and Tucker Carlson, the Trump movement has created a cottage industry for fifth rate intellectuals. They descended on the Trump White House like flies in 2016, recognizing it was a new era where anyone who made enough noise could get a position in the administration, a new TV show, or a book deal.
Unfortunately for many of them, it also meant jail time. But the MAGA cult has generally been good for the pockets of unseemly carpetbaggers, and many of them probably see a stint in prison as a badge of honor. Even post Jan. 6th, there has still been a lot of money to be made saddling up to Trump, and Republicans were still lining up for the MAGA seal of approval when running for office.
Up until last week that is.
No more daddy
The 2022 midterms were an unmitigated disaster for the Republican Party — specifically Trump endorsed candidates….
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