Here’s where MAGA election deniers failed and prevailed in the midterms: report
In the days before the 2022 midterm elections, anti-MAGA pundits ranging from MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan to “Real Time” host Bill Maher had a dire warning: If enough election deniers and “Stop the Steal” conspiracy theorists prevail on Tuesday, November 8, they will attempt a coup in the 2024 presidential election. Their message was that “democracy is on the ballot"; Maher stressed that authoritarian despots like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan were voted into office and argued that their U.S. counterparts in the MAGA movement, similarly, should not be taken lightly.
The 2022 midterms, however, brought neither a gigantic red wave nor the “blue tsunami” that liberal/progressive activist and filmmaker Michael Moore was hoping for — although Moore was certainly right that the abortion issue did make a difference and benefited Democrats. As of Thursday morning, November 9, it remains to be seen which party will control Congress’ two branches in 2023, but Republicans definitely aren’t going to pick up the 40 or 50 U.S. House seats that they were fantasizing about.
“Stop the Steal” conspiracy theorists suffered a lot of losses on Election Night, including three of the MAGA gubernatorial candidates Hasan warned against: Tudor Dixon in Michigan, Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Tim Michels in Wisconsin. But in her analysis for the Washington Post, published the next morning, reporter Amy Gardner pointed out that “election deniers” enjoyed their share of victories as well. One of them was far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who was reelected.
“Among the more than 150 election deniers projected to have won by midnight: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Rep. Greg Pence (Ind.), the brother of former vice president Mike Pence,” Gardner explains. “But some of the most outspoken election deniers sustained defeat in races that had been seen as winnable for Republicans when the year began, including Doug Mastriano, who lost his bid for Pennsylvania governor. Candidates who have questioned or refused to accept President Biden’s victory — 51 percent of the 569 GOP nominees analyzed by The Washington Post, 291 in total — ran in every region of the country and in nearly every state.”
Gardner continues, “Most of the victorious election deniers campaigned on a range of issues, notably inflation, abortion and crime. Voters who supported them did not necessarily do so because of their stance on 2020. But the candidates’ views on election integrity could have lasting consequences for U.S. democracy.”
The Post reporter notes that “unofficial projections” on Election Night “showed that election deniers will amount to a sizable majority within the House Republican caucus, with enormous sway over the choice of the nation’s next speaker should Republicans claim control of the chamber.”
“Tuesday’s result reflected the tricky political calculus of election denialism within the GOP,” Gardner observes. “It was a virtual requirement for many Republican candidates seeking their party’s nomination, given the importance of a Trump endorsement. Prominent Republicans who defied the former president, notably Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), were defeated by internal party challenges. But it was not clear that claiming the 2020 election was rigged benefited candidates in tight general elections.”
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