#527 Musings Beyond the Bunker #527 (Tuesday December 6)
Good morning,
GEORGIA ON MY MIND
Today is yet another election day—in Georgia again! It it is my hope that the voters in Georgia repudiate an unfit candidate and grant Reverend Warnock a full term as senator. Herschel Walker’s defeat would be the last in a string of Trumpist candidates to be sent home. Importantly, it would help defeat the notion that celebrity candidates are the wave of the future—regardless of their fitness for office. Witness Mehmet Oz and Kari Lake.
While I don’t often agree with Mitch McConnell, he is right that the Republicans suffered from weak candidate quality. While that weakness he refers to is the unfitness and unpreparedness of people like Oz, Masters, and Warnock, it extends to the lack of governing philosophy or ideas. They were steeped in election denial and conspiracy theories, threatening to throw our democracy into even greater throes of paroxysm.
LESSONS FROM THE ELECTION
Now that the results of recounts from the election last month are in and await today’s vote, there are a few notes worth making:
In most cases, the crazy election deniers, conspiracy theorists, and Trumpists were repudiated. Blake Masters and Kari Lake lost in Arizona. Adam Laxalt was defeated in Nevada. Yet Brad Raffensperger, the hero of 2020, won the Secretary of State race in Georgia.
Many of the election meddlers running for State Secretary of State were repudiated. Candidates for Secretary of State in Arizona, Michigan, New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada, Trump-supported election deniers all, were defeated. Jim Marchant, candidate to control the levers of the election apparatus in Nevada, promised that “When my coalition of secretary of state candidates around the country get [sic] elected, we’re going to fix the whole country, and President Trump is going to be president again in 2024.” Hardly the words one wants to hear from the person most responsible for elections in his state. This was played out across the country, with the “coalition” of which he speaks getting shallacked.
It was heartening to see that most of the election deniers quickly conceded their elections to the candidate who received the most votes (imagine that!). This is a good sign for the future.
A number of moderate Republicans were elected, while the more extreme generally were not.
What does all this suggest? Typically, midterm elections are referendums on the performance of the sitting administration. The debate was widened to offer the choice between the prior administration and the current one. Mr. Trump’s ubiquity on the campaign trail reminded people of the alternative. Meanwhile, the Republicans kept pounding on crime and the economy, blaming the Biden administration, while offering little in the way of alternative policy. Had they presented some coherent plan, things might have turned out differently. But the dirty little secret is that there are no plans to do much in the economy beyond what is already being done (well, other than reducing spending and tax breaks). As for crime, it is by-and-large a local issue, beyond much that the federal government can do. States’ rights conservatives should be happy with that. They should be unhappy, however, with the recent statistics on gun deaths, which, contrary to their claims, are more prevalent on a per capital basis in those states where Republicans are in charge and there are more liberal gun laws.
Meanwhile, the Democratic message of preserving democracy and steering clear of Trump seemed to carry the day, along with one crucial added factor—a gift from the Supreme Court. Voters around the country were motivated by the politicization of the Supreme Court in its overreach. Beyond that, we also witnessed a couple of oddly reasoned decisions by a Florida federal district court judges appointed by Mr. Trump. That said, a Republican panel of the Appellate Court ultimate overturned the judge’s creative jurisprudence. With Biden in power and the Senate still in Democratic control for another two years, we hopefully will se more responsible judicial appointments to the federal bench.
The Dobbs decision, overturning Roe v. Wade, was a big part of this election. People apparently didn’t like that the Supreme Court, in a stroke of overreach, took away rights that seemed unalienable (to use the Founders’ phrasing) over the past decades. Add to this the lack of nuance in addressing the Second Amendment and fear that the Court is not yet done rolling back prior cases in the service of an extreme ideology. With Moore v. Harper and other cases coming up, there is no telling where this Court could go. This election was less about the current administration as any midterm election in recent memory. It was a referendum on Trump and the Court. The decision of the majority of America seems clear.
IN HIS OWN WORDS
Meanwhile, our former president isn’t through with his dragging us and our country through the mud, as he continues to embrace racists, defy subpoenas, incite violence, and perpetrate lies. As if the January 6th Committee and the revelations of his attempts to subvert the last election (much of it recounted by former members of his administration) weren’t proof enough of his authoritarian intent, he is ramping up his his indifference to legal norms.
Last week Mr. Trump actually called for suspension of the Constitution in his quest to reverse the 2020 election, based upon unfounded theories of fraud. Here are the words from his post on Truth Social, his preferred social network:
"Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution."
Many Republicans rejected this notion. Others would not come out and say that Mr. Trump was well beyond the pale, and few would not state they wouldn’t support him for president, notwithstanding their own oaths to preserve and protect the Constitution. He remains the front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2024, in a primary system designed to nominate the winner of mere pluralities in the early primaries.
THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY
“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.” –Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, Writings
“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth” –Albert Einstein, Letter to Jost Winteler (1901), quoted in The Private Lives of Albert Einstein by Roger Highfield and Paul Carter (1993)
Have a great day,
Glenn
From the archives: