The Unstable Idiocy of the 2022 Midterms

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

It needs to be said right here and now that, while last Tuesday's election was a midterm, Donald Trump was most certainly on the ballot. Nobody else in American politics, at least in our lifetimes, has ever cast such an outsized shadow over not just a major political party but American politics itself. Donald Trump casts a baleful shadow over everything that he thinks is his by rights, which is potentially everything on earth. To wit: On at least two occasions, he demanded that the DOJ and the National Archives give him back the documents he illegally stole from the White House and stuffed in his glorified beach house in Palm Beach.

     Consider, also, his countless avatars on the campaign trails. Trump had endorsed upwards of 285 of them and the major candidates, running for House and senate seats, governorships, Secretary of State Attorneys General and other offices, largely lost. Virtually all of those 285 had one thing in common- They were by and large election deniers, which was the sole qualification for getting Trump's nod. He looked at these Republicans through one lens and one lens only- To help spread the Big Lie two years after the last general election.

     So, yes, Trump was on the midterm ballot, ideologically-speaking, just as Joe Biden was unofficially on the ballot to diehard Republican voters. Think of the baby blimp in the UK only casting a pitch-black shadow over the entire US from coast to coast.

     The GOP becomes a lot easier for sane people to understand once you start to look at it through this prism: That it is a cult. Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana went on Chuck Todd's show today and bristled at Todd's use of the word "leader" as regards Trump. "We're not a cult!" he practically yelled. And when you have to say you're not a cult when no one's made any such accusations, then guess what? You're in a cult.

     And yet, Elise Stefanik, the number three House Republican, called Donald Trump just that- "Our leader."

    

     So, this is where the Grand Old Party is now- Pointing fingers at each other, hoarsely screaming, "J'Accuse...!", desperate to glue this midterm debacle on somebody other than themselves, as if the red tsunami they'd confidently and arrogantly predicted was somehow their due or birthright. Trump is, predictably, lashing out at everyone, including his own wife, Melania, Mitch McConnell, the individual candidates for not embracing the Big Lie firmly enough.

     In short, anyone but him.

    But, really, it's not all Trump's fault or MAGA or the Republican Party. There's more than enough blame to be spread more widely.

    Again, the corporate mainstream media, including newly right-winged CNN, all got it wrong. The lazy thinking took over, the herd was led in a rightward direction and anyone challenging the right wing orthodoxy would've either been laughed out of the business or fired outright. It was never a question of if the GOP would take over the legislative branch but when.

    And yet, while the Republican Party is commencing the week or month of Long Knives, no one seems to be taking the Grand Poobahs of the Political Punditocracy to task for their own horrible, snuffling and arrogant predictions of a red wave.

     Unlike 2020, when Democrats didn't flip a single state legislature, Democrats have already flipped one and maybe more than that since Tuesday. Mark Kelly winning reelection to the Senate and Democrats winning all the major races on Arizona means 2020 was not a fluke and the Grand Canyon State is now officially a battleground state that, come January, will have solidly Democratic leadership.

     To listen to the mainstream media tell it, and you would've been a blithering idiot to do so, that never would've been possible. Instead, it was much more comfortable for pundits on what passes for news shows to put chin in hand and confidently predict how many seats the GOP would pick up after the midterms. 10, 20, 50?

     No, not even close, The most accurate and current projections are that the GOP will have 219 seats when all the votes are counted and that's just one seat more than they needed for a majority. That means all we need is another couple of Jeff Fortenberry-eque scandals of GOP congressmen from Democratic states and the House is flipped once again to the Democrats.

    As for the Senate, well, that's not in play any more, except in a very technical, theoretical sense. Catherine Cortez Masto was projected last night to be the winner in Nevada, another battleground state, essentially keeping control of the upper chamber in Democratic hands, rendering Georgia's December 6 runoff election almost redundant.

     So, while it's understandable for voters of all political stripes to wonder aloud what had happened last Tuesday, we shouldn't be exclusively blaming political figures for their usual hidebound, fact-free confidence. The pollsters and pundits on countless news shows universally got it wrong. Again.

     I did not. I had been predicting, especially since the Roe ruling in the Supreme Court, that a red wave was not going to happen and, sure enough, it didn't. It's OK to figuratively read tea leaves for your prognostications. All I will caution is that you not stick to one brand of tea.