Trumpism Without Trump

 

     Political scientists, pollsters and pundits will go crazy over the next several years trying to determine what went "wrong" with the 2022 midterms. But perhaps they're looking at it all wrong. Maybe things didn't go "wrong", as they insist on framing it. Rather, perhaps they should be looking at it in terms of what went right.

      Political bias, namely right wing bias, keep insisting that something went wrong last Tuesday night. Understandably, they were disappointed with the stunning overall outcome because their right wing echo chamber kept insisting since Biden was first sworn in that this would happen. Because, on a slightly deeper level, lazy thinking took over and they took easy solace in the meaningless fact that over the last four decades, save for one occasion, a new president always loses at least one chamber of Congress in the first midterm.

     And, just like Tuesday night's results, trying to divine what happens in virtually every new president's first midterm is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. Yet, a casual but perspicacious observer may come to suspect, and put some factual oomph behind it, that perhaps things had turned out the way they should.

     Of course, an election with about 180,000,000 voters voting in thousands of elections from the country to the federal level is a vast, complicated equation that perhaps no one person could explicate regardless of how comprehensive is the data to which they may have access. Voters vote on one issue or several. Some vote party, some vote for a candidate and their positions. Some vote for and others vote against.

     Ergo, regardless of your political stripe, whether you're Republican, Democratic, Libertarian, Green Party or Independent, you will have various reasons for voting the way you do. On the menu of issues coloring the ballots were legitimate issues such as inflation and the economy, jobs, climate change, etc. But what Republicans by and large deliberately omit was Trump was on that metaphorical menu.

     After all, given his bullying. blustering, bull-in-a-china-shop insistence on him being the center of attention at all times, considering that many of the key Republicans running for various offices in these latest midterms were handpicked by him, how could Trump not factor into the calculus of people casting a ballot?

    His influence is outsized even after he got kicked off Twitter, Facebook and Youtube and God knows where else. When he posts something on Truth Social to his withered readership, the MSM breathlessly report on his latest brain seizure regardless of its general non-newsworthiness. The mainstream media give him relevance that isn't stolen but stubbornly conferred.

     And while Republicans like Bill Cassidy of Louisiana keep hollering that the GOP isn't a cult and when other Republicans say that Trump couldn't have colored the midterms simply because he wasn't on the ballot  are being despicably disingenuous. When they feel the need to use the "C" word in a denunciatory manner, when no one else is, and when they brazenly insist that Trump did not influence anyone's ballot, they're really saying they have a problem.

     And the problem is that, while they like Trumpism they just don't like very much the guy for whom it was named. This is why Ron DeSantis is racking up bribes left and right from right wing mega donors and why those same mega donors are racking up unearned favors. They're not riotously flinging tens of millions at DeSantis' jackboots just to keep him in the Governor's mansion in Tallahassee. 

     Of course, what many pundits and pollsters, especially right wingers, didn't, couldn't, factor into their deeply-flawed equations was something that Nicolle Wallace brought up on her show tonight (see the video above) in which she posted that among the complicated calculus voters factored into their election day decision-making was January 6th.

     You see where I'm going with this, right?

     This is the part of the calculus that resulted in an election breaking good not bad.

     Right wing insurrection does not work as a campaign issue or strategy. Several of the right wing candidates running for office this year, like Mark Finchem in Arizona, had attended the rallies and taken part in the riots. As it turns out, trying to overthrow the government isn't very popular with voters. And when one runs for public office on an anti-government platform, as Finchem had, there's a not a lot of daylight left between that candidate and the specter of a Fifth Column.

     

     These are a couple of greatly misinformed tweets put out by Frank Luntz the day before Election Day. Apparently, Frank was aggrieved by the fact that some Democrats ran on abortion being stripped from tens of millions of women and the baleful specter of Donald Trump. And abortion was actually higher up on the list of voter priorities that Luntz tried to make us believe, if the surging voter registration rates among female voters and abortion being enshrined or protected on every ballot this year in which it appeared was any indication, just wasn't or shouldn't have been that important, after all.

     Many people, those in sufficient, numbers, voted to save democracy, which was why all the major races in a red state like Arizona swung or are about to swing exclusively for Democrats. That's why Mark Kelly won, why Fontes won, why Katie Hobbs will win. Because they stood on the right side of issues that voters care about and got ill at the thought of installing chunks of Trump in city, county, state and federal government.

     Therefore, Republicans who are smart enough to read the bones know that Trump is not the answer. He's 76, will be 78 by 2024 and his mental health and legal situation is worsening by the day. So, understandably, the long knives are getting slipped out in slow motion. Or they're looking for other right wing heroes.

     That's why I mentioned Ron DeSantis earlier. Up until last Tuesday's midterms, DeSantis was your classic bridesmaid candidate. "Ye-e-eah, he's OK but I really like that cutie at Mar a Lago." In poll after poll, DeSantis always finished a very distant second to Trump.

     Until now.

     In a right wing poll taken after Election Day, specifically Nov. 12 and 13th, they asked 1099 voters, among other things, who they'd vote for in the 2024 presidential election.

     DeSantis won by 11 points, 43% to Trump's 32%. Keep in mind, this was a poll commissioned by the Texas GOP, which is about as right wing as you can get. Up until one week ago, those results would've been unthinkable.

     So, Republican elected leaders and their voters are ready to move on from Trump. But it's not because they're sick of his policies. They love the policies. They just can't stand the man that comes with them. And that's because Trump is to them the thing he fears being most in all the world- A loser. 

     Otherwise, if psychopaths like Mastriano and Lake and Karamo emerged victorious, it would have paved the way for Trump's triumphant return to the White House and another four year shit show.

     And tens of millions of us couldn't have it. So, yes, Trump was on the ballot while not officially being on it just like Mr. Godot casts such a heavy pall on the play without actually making an appearance.

     So, when Trump makes his prime time announcement tomorrow to run in 2024, it'll land with a dull thump like a medicine ball with half the stuffing missing.