Enough Americans cared enough about the obvious MAGA threats to democracy. This is not all that dissimilar from the lesson contained in the “boy who cried wolf” tale. I don’t believe election deniers can continue to use “widespread fraud!” Or “they stole the election!”, and expect that it will be at all persuasive. Sure, people marching in Az demanding that the military intervene, and run the election over, are, well, lost, they’ll likely remain cultists. And in many Congressional races, election deniers won. But, I bet many of those districts were heavily Republican, and where Republican incumbents won, and where a GOP candidate claimed 2020 was stolen, but did not have Trump campaigning by their side, as was the case in some of the “bigger” contests. Look, if the GOP is going to field candidates who whine “they stole it from me!” every time they lose, people will get it: “don’t they say this every time they lose”?
No paywall:
“It’s hard to pin down the precise role that MAGA election denial played in the overall outcome. But
as Nate Cohn points out, a clear pattern is discernible: In races where democracy itself was at stake — say, with election deniers vying for positions of control over elections, or overt supporters of the insurrection running for the House — Democrats overperformed, including with independent voters.
Abortion rights, of course, played a
huge role in many of these races. But Cohn noted that in contests where democracy was “elevated” as an issue, voters “responded to those concerns.”
A similar dynamic was identified by GOP strategist Sarah Longwell of the Republican Accountability PAC, a group of Never Trumpers. Longwell says her focus groups found that independents and swing voters often spoke out against MAGA election-denying candidates despite being upset about the economy.
“The reason was always that the Republican candidate was nuts,” Longwell told me, adding that focus group participants regularly cited election denial as a proof point.”
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Maybe Michael Moore was right. After all, he’s only saying “there are more of us than them”….
Film-maker says the salient lesson from the midterms for Democrats is to stop depressing their own vote with pessimism, fear and conventional thinking
www.theguardian.com
