Tangerine Man 2.0

He expected a triumphant announcement following a “red tsunami” or a “red wave” for those more circumspect. Forty-five would ride the wave of a Republican renaissance and secure his stranglehold as the presumptive Presidential nominee for 2024 (though if he really won the 2020 election, why is he running again?). With rampant inflation, rising crime rates, an unending border crisis, and an unpopular incumbent Democrat President, the Republicans were poised to sweep the House of Representatives and flip the Senate. The pollsters thought so, too (though the industry’s pedigree as political Nostradamuses must be seriously questioned in recent years). With a few notable exceptions, history bodes harshly for the incumbent Executive’s Party regarding midterm elections.

The Democrats bucked the tides of history, giving Joseph R. Biden, Jr. the best midterm results since 2002 when George W. Bush increased GOP representation on Capitol Hill following the national trauma of 9/11. The Article I branch will be split, with Republicans gaining a narrow majority in the House and the Democrats holding onto the Senate (and possibly adding to their majority in a forthcoming runoff in the Peach State). On the State level, the Democratic Party had its best returns in Gubernatorial elections since 1986. 

What went wrong for the GOP? I believe it was a confluence of three significant factors. Firstly, the Dobbs effect supercharged the midterms. In late June, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a bare majority of the Supreme Court nullified the constitutional right to abortion and dispensed with nearly half a century of jurisprudence. The pervasive crusade of the Christian Right (and its home in the Republican Party) to eviscerate Roe v. Wade (and its progeny) finally reached its apotheosis. With the Court’s opinion clearing the way for the States to impose draconian restrictions on women’s fundamental right to bodily autonomy, many red States began a gleeful race to the bottom. Coupled with the extreme statements of many Republican candidates, particularly in swing states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania (e.g., Doug Mastriano, Trump’s hand-picked candidate for governor in Pennsylvania, suggesting that women who have abortions should face murder charges), the Democrats were able to capitalise on their opponents’ stone-age views. As it turns out, in many key races, many voters were uncomfortable handing power to people who yearned for the Republic of Gilead. Moreover, in several States with ballot initiatives on the question of abortion, every single one went in favour of protecting abortion (e.g., California, Michigan), or at a minimum, not in favour of restrictions (e.g., Kentucky). The abortion referenda seemed to have driven many people to the polls who may have stayed home on Election Day. 

The second and third factors are inseparable and conspired against a Republican blowout. The looming shadow of Donald Trump and his fascistic proclivities. 45 holds the singular dishonour of being the only American President who attempted a coup d'état. A man sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution conspired against it and its dearest principles in a desperate and shameful attempt to cling to power. A man so petty, he cajoled federal and state officials into fixing the election in his favour, even begging them just to say there was widespread fraud and he would take care of the rest. Enough honourable men and women resisted the bullhorns of the President, and the system barely held in 2020. Yet 45 poisoned the well of democracy through his rampant and palpably fraudulent falsehoods that the American election was stolen from him.

Thus, the litmus test for Trump Republicans was whether they would parrot his pernicious lies that the election was stolen. Due to the esoteric affair of Republican primaries and the concomitant popularity of Trump amongst primary voters, he successfully endorsed a collection of uniquely unqualified crackpots in State and federal races. These people competed against each other to spout the vilest gibberish in their bid to out-Trump each other. Critically, all of Trump’s picks for Governor and Secretary of State in the battleground swing States of Arizona, Georgia (Trump candidates failed in the primaries), Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin lost. The transparent ploy was to have in place state officials overseeing the election administration and certification that would not hesitate to manipulate vote tabulations or refuse to certify anyone other than Trump. For example, one of the most MAGA of MAGA candidates was Mark Finchem, a former member of the far-right militia group the Oath Keepers and attendee of the January 6 riots on the Capitol (what a resume, hey?), who ran for Secretary of State in Arizona. His core reason for rejecting the idea that Biden won Arizona in 2020 was that he had never met a Biden voter in Arizona. The term-limited Republican Governor of The Grand Canyon State, Doug Ducey, won re-election by fourteen percentage points in 2018. Trump’s pick this time, the charismatic liar and ex-anchor Kari Lake, lost her bid to become Governor by a little more than half a percentage point. Barring Trump’s intervention, a more moderate, traditionalist Republican would have probably won. There are many other examples where Trump torpedoed the GOP’s chances of winning vital races (e.g., Pennsylvania for the U.S. Senate, Arizona for the U.S. Senate, and Nevada for the U.S. Senate). Mercifully, enough voters were not comfortable handing the reins to people who do not believe in democratic elections unless they win, of course. Pause for a second to consider such idiotic sophistry: the election is rigged unless I win. That sort of logic would barely cut it in kindergarten. 

Following the autopsy of the midterms, some powerbrokers on the right seem ready to move on from the Chief Insurrectionist. The New York Post, a Rupert Murdoch paper that has been rather solicitous to 45 in the past, fired a shot with the headline “DeFuture”, alluding to Ron DeSantis’ landslide re-election in Florida. It followed with a jab at Trump with the headline “Trumpty Dumpty”. Following Trump’s announcement that he is running again, it merely had a line on the front page “Florida Man Makes Announcement”. The Wall Street Journal (another Murdoch property) more soberly adjudged that it was time for the Republican Party to move past 45. Of course, no one took “Florida Man” seriously when he announced his candidacy in 2015. Virtually no one foresaw his ascendancy to the Republican nomination, and even fewer saw Mr “Grab them by the pussy” rising to the most powerful political office in the world.

It is too early to write his political obituary. He is in grave peril now from sprawling criminal investigations (both state and federal) and many potentially calamitous civil actions. Many voters who gave him a chance in 2016 and 2020 have (hopefully) seen the clear and present danger he poses to the Republic to cast a “why not?” vote in 2024. Yet come January, the sequacious and spineless Kevin McCarthy will be Speaker of the House, and an army of Trump sycophants are waiting to do his bidding. They will not be declining his phone calls or visits to Mar-a-Lago. He will want vengeance against his political enemies in the form of embarrassing committee investigations and impeachment proceedings against the President and the Attorney General. His presence on the national political scene will loom large for years. We know he is willing to sink the Republican Party (the only politics he cares about is the politics of “I”) and the whole country itself in his craven quest for power and attention. Even if he is defeated, the work will only be half done, as the authoritarian impulses that have infected the American bloodstream will have to be flushed out. 

Tangerine Man may be wounded, but that makes him even more dangerous. The risks of political violence if he is indicted are genuine. Tens of millions of Americans still believe his nonsense about rigged elections. The midterms avoided a catastrophic outcome for the Republic, but the fever has not yet broken.