Haunted by the Red Wave

The year was 2022. The Democrats’ draconian Covid measures had never been worse, and the mood among Republicans was unmistakably bullish. This was the moment they had been waiting for: the big turn toward freedom and their chance to deliver a resounding mandate against two years of psychotic fear-mongering from hypochondriac Blues all across America. 

Kari Lake was destined to be the next governor of Arizona and Herschel Walker was going to become the new senator from Georgia. Tudor Dixon was going to stage an unlikely defeat of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Blake Masters was going to beat Mark Kelly to inherit John McCain’s Arizona senate seat, and Doug Mastriano was somehow going to sneak into the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion.

Except none of it happened. The only MAGA Republican who carried that miserable night was the curious George Santos. The big GOP winners two years ago this November were the Trump critics Brian Kemp, Chris Sununu, and Ron DeSantis.

Lake, who made it her mission to “drive a stake through the heart of the McCain machine,” lost Arizona by razor-thin margins after she openly taunted the key McCain voting bloc with repeated attacks on the late senator. Eying a 2024 senate seat, she would later attempt to walk back her ferocious attacks, but the damage had been done. In the words of McCain’s daughter Meghan: “NO PEACE, BITCH.” Masters championed many of the key tenets of Trumpism and paid for it dearly at the ballot box, where he lost by nearly 5 points to Kelly. The Washington Post labeled him the “worst candidate” of 2022.

In Georgia, Walker’s candidacy was arguably more humiliating for Republicans. Not just because the fiercely pro-Trump candidate was convincingly beaten at the ballot box, but because it was revealed that the outspoken pro-life candidate allegedly pressured at least two women to get abortions in the past. It was the sort of hypocritical tale that has become all-too-common in the age of Trump. This year, Mark Robinson, a socially conservative firebrand and Republican candidate for governor of North Carolina, is embroiled in his own embarrassing porn site scandal that quieted the MAGA faithful. The whole charade could possibly drag down the Republican ticket and tilt North Carolina for Harris.

Dixon never had a chance to win Michigan, but you wouldn’t have known it from the onslaught of “They can’t stop what’s coming!” posts scrawled on 𝕏 (then Twitter) daily in the lead-up to Election Day. She was torched by 11. 

The MAGA favorite Doug Mastriano, who made no effort to find common ground with independent voters, single-handedly sunk the Republican ticket in Pennsylvania, losing by 14 points and making things inescapably difficult for the Republican senatorial candidate, television’s Dr. Oz, who was dogged by criticism that he just wasn’t MAGA enough. Oz lost to John Fetterman, a more extreme candidate who had suffered brain damage from a stroke on the campaign trail, by less than 5 points. 

The Red Wave had become a nightmare. It’s worth remembering as we head into the final stretch of the 2024 presidential election cycle. The polls have never looked better for Trump. Republicans, for the first time since their walloping in 2022, are bullish again. Could the American electorate really rally behind Harris, a person who was hand-selected to lead the Democratic ticket by the same midwits running our government into the ground from behind the curtains on K and L street in Washington D.C.? If we take Trump at his word, maybe they can. 

Speaking at the Detroit Economic Club on October 12, Trump gave perhaps the most honest assessment of the American electorate this century: “The real threat to democracy is stupid people.” Stupid politicians, stupid voters, stupid pollsters, and stupid pundits—it’s a big whirlpool of stupidity, and we’re all adrift in it. 

Which isn’t to say we should abandon democracy, but it’s worth at least noting that until the votes are cast and counted, nothing is for certain. All the “it’s coming” tweets (and I’ve seen far too many given the ghosts of two Novembers ago) won’t carry Trump across the finish line. The voters will have to do that for him.