Cue Up the Lee Greenwood
Joe Biden has already received more votes than any other presidential candidate in the history of the country, but we have an electoral system that was designed to empower white voters in slave states more than two centuries ago, so no one has officially won at the time I’m typing this.
Trump’s plan was always clear. He’s been spreading disinformation about mail-in voting for months and got his followers spooked about the process. Predictably, a higher number of Democrats mailed in their ballots and the early count favored the President. As Jonathan Swan reported at Axios last week, Trump’s plan was to declare victory at that point in the process and spread doubt about the eventual results.
Last month, Senator Bernie Sanders appeared on The Tonight Show and expressed concern about this very scenario:
It could well be that at 10 o’clock on election night, Trump is winning in Michigan, he’s winning in Pennsylvania, he’s winning in Wisconsin, and he gets on the television and he says, ‘Thank you, Americans, for reelecting me. It’s all over. Have a good day.’ But then, the next day, and the day following, all of those mail-in ballots start getting counted, and it turns out that Biden has won those states, at which point Trump says, ‘See? I told you the whole thing was fraudulent. I told you those mail-in ballots were crooked. And we’re not going to leave office.’ So that is a worry that I and a lot of people have.
Sanders prediction ended up being almost exactly right. Trump’s team is moving forward with a number of farcical legal challenges and pointless recounts, but the messaging is obviously all over the place. In Georgia Trumpers were chanting, “STOP THE COUNT!” and in Arizona they were chanting, “COUNT THOSE VOTES!” They actually chanted “FOX NEWS SUCKS!” outside Maricopa County Elections Department because the right-wing network prematurely called Arizona for Biden. What a time to be alive.
If Biden does win, it doesn’t feel like Trump has GOP reinforcements coming to save him. His ludicrous claims of an early victory have been criticized by Mitch McConnell, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, and a number of other prominent Republicans. Trump’s given these people everything they wanted, and vice versa, but going to bat for him is not worth the political liability. At the present moment, it seems like they will continue to control the Senate and they even picked up some seats in the House. Trump might have been held accountable via the ballot box, but his enablers certainly were not.
Which brings us to the Democrats. More than 230,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 on Trump’s watch, he’s an historically unpopular president, and there was a record turnout at the polls. Despite all this, the party couldn’t flip the Senate and even lost House seats in blue states. Remember all that stuff about how a Bernie nomination would have spelled disaster for down-ballot candidates? That happened anyway. If performance mattered, Pelosi, Schumer, Tom Perez, and a number of other people would certainly be ousted from their positions, but we know this group is not big on self-reflection.
Some of the numbers are staggering. Jaime Harrison raised $109 million and lost by 11 points. Amy McGrath raises $90 million and lost by 20 points. Sara Gideon (who never trailed in a single poll!) raised $70 million and lost by 9 points. MJ Hegar raised $24 million and lost by 10 points.
The Democrats framed themselves as the party of civility and bipartisanship, in contrast to Trump’s embarrassing bluster. Biden told rich donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he got elected, the party publicly embraced Bush-era war criminals, and John Kasich got more airtime at the Democratic National Convention than AOC did. Prominent Iraq War ghouls like Max Boot and David Frum rebranded themselves as “Never Trump Republicans” courageously choosing country over party. A group of Republicans (hilariously) calling themselves The Lincoln Project raised over $67 million trying to bring conservative voters over to Biden.
What do these people have to show for their efforts? Less than nothing actually. More Republicans voted for Trump in 2020 than did in 2016. Despite their large media presence, and the Biden campaign’s constant attempts to reach out to them, “Never Trump Republicans” barely exist. The reality is that GOP voters like Trump’s rhetoric and his policies. They’ve backed him through everything, including a deadly pandemic. When Trump joked that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose a single voter back in 2016, liberals laughed. It’s certainly not funny anymore.
If we end up with a centrist president and large swaths of our political system still controlled by Republicans, we are effectively just back to where we started before this whole mess. It was hard to ever envision a neoliberal like Biden pulling an FDR and immediately pushing New Deal-type policies, but whatever slim chance there was of robust legislative action will certainly take a hit if Republicans maintain the Senate. “A source familiar with the Biden transition points out to me that Biden and GOP Senate would mean the transition will have to re-evaluate the names it has in mind for Senate confirmed positions,” tweeted CNBC reporter Eamon Javers yesterday. “May have to send more moderate figures who can get through. Wall Street will like that.”
These are precisely the conditions that led to Trump in the first place. There’s been speculation that Trump might end up in jail if he’s booted from The White House, but it’s easier to envision him being the Republican candidate in 2024. (The Obama administration wouldn’t even prosecute Bush officials for torture, does anyone think Biden is going to go after Trump if he becomes president?) Trumpism has certainly engulfed the party and getting it back in the bottle seems impossible.
At this exact moment, it’s also difficult to imagine a Republican with a better shot. Look at Texas. As NBC’s Sahil Kapur pointed out on Twitter, Biden got more Texas votes in 2020 than Trump did in 2016. He grew Clinton’s vote total from 3.88 million to 5.22 million. However, Trump raised his from 4.69 million to 5.87 million. Trump grew turnout from both angles. There’s an enthusiasm gap if it’s any other Republican. Can you imagine someone like Mitt Romney or Marco Rubio packing stadiums full of chanting sycophants? I can’t. If he loses, Trump will be able to spend the next few years claiming Biden’s victory was fraudulent and that the throne is rightfully his. It goes without saying that his supporters will buy this. Who could stop him? During the 2016 primary, Republicans worried that Trump was going to reduce the party to a political afterthought. Now they’re tethered to him.
By the time you read this, many of these observations may be moot. With no clear winner yet, it’s too early to talk about how the presidential race impacts our beat at Mondoweiss, but (as always) the onus will be on activists and organizers to deliver real change. We remain committed to highlighting those voices.
The Squad Expands, McCollum Gets Reelected
There weren’t a lot of surprises in the House races we’ve covered, but I revisited them in a post on the site this week. Here’s some highlights….
Betty McCollum Wins: McCollum is the first member of the House to introduce legislation for Palestinian human rights and recently sponsored a bill to cut off U.S. funding for any potential annexation in Palestine. In September, she accepted the Champion of Palestinian Rights Award at a American Muslims for Palestine event. “So I want to be clear, as we speak to today, we need change at home and we also need to transform U.S. foreign policy to promote our values, not to promote violence,” she told participants. “Repression, economic stagnation. Apartheid is a system that the Palestinian people endure as they struggle every day under Israel’s military occupation. An oppression that is sadly supported by U.S. taxpayer’s dollars, our dollars. I believe that the Palestinian people deserve dignity, respect, justice, and freedom. [They also deserve] a future in which their fate is decided by the Palestinians themselves.”
The Squad Wins: As expected, every member of The Squad was easily reelected. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley will all be returning to the House..
Mike Siegel Loses: Progressive challenger Mike Siegel lost his race with GOP incumbent Rep. Michael McCaul. “Internal polling from Siegel’s campaign had found the two candidates heading into the final stretch of the race statistically tied,” writes Aida Chavez at The Intercept. “To fend off Siegel’s challenge, McCaul launched a million-dollar-plus TV and digital ad buy early last month, leading with an attack against his Democratic opponent. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a Super PAC dedicated to electing Republicans to the House, also threw in more than $144,000 into the race, according to Open Secrets.”
Siegel was endorsed by Jewish Voice for Peace Action.
Cori Bush Wins: In Missouri’s 1st district, Cori Bush easily prevailed. During the primary against incumbent Lacy Clay, Bush was smeared for her connection to Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour and her apparent support for BDS. “In our current geopolitical economy, money talks far louder than speech alone,” the foreign policy portion of Bush’s website formerly read. “This is why nonviolent actions like the BDS movement are so important – and why the effort to mischaracterize and demonize the BDS movement by its opponents is so urgent.”
Marie Newman Wins: Marie Newman won in Illinois’ 3rd district. She beat the hawkish Dan Lipinski in the primary, a huge blow for pro-Israel groups like AIPAC. “I oppose the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Israeli blockade of Gaza,” Newman wrote in a policy paper. “I also oppose the presence of Israeli settlements and housing on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem which violate international law and undermine the prospect for a just peace.”
Jamaal Bowman Wins: Jamaal Bowman made it official in New York’s 16th district. In the primary, Bowman ousted Eliot Engel, one AIPAC’s favorite Democrats and an opponent of Obama’s Iran Deal. This means there will now be a battle over who becomes chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Bowman supports conditioning aid to Israel, an end to U.S. support for the war on Yemen, and cuts to Pentagon spending. “As Netanyahu calls for expanding settlements and annexing the West Bank, we should seriously consider placing conditions on the billions of dollars of military aid our government provides him in order to make sure that the rights and dignity of both the Israeli and Palestinian people are respected,” he told Jacobin last year. “I just don’t understand why American taxpayers are subsidizing the detention of Palestinian children while Democrats are criticizing child detention at the Mexican border. The principles of the Leahy Law should be upheld.”
Did Palestine or Israel end up factoring into a local election where you live? Feel free to drop me a line at Michael@mondoweiss.net and tell me about.
Stay safe out there,
Michael
