For as long as Republicans threatened a midterm election “red wave,” I clung to a sliver of optimism that no American could watch the MAGA attack on the United States Capitol — and the GOP effort to excuse it — and still go to the polls and vote Republican.
Surely the GOP-heist of the Supreme Court, which led to laws that force women to carry their rapist’s baby to term, would inspire women to come out in droves to ensure that Democrats could blue-balance state and federal efforts to strip women of the right to control their own bodies.
I chose that optimism over the polls and put my faith in Americans doing the right thing.
Boy, was I wrong.
While the red wave was downgraded to a trickle, some of the election results are shocking.
Georgia voters watched senate candidate Herschel Walker get caught lying about everything from graduating from college to having a “military career.” Walker courted the Evangelical vote with staunch anti-abortion policy promises but was credibly accused by two women of facilitating their abortions. Walker’s ex-wife said he held a gun to her head and threatened to “blow her brains out,” and his own campaign staff referred to him as a “pathological liar.” Knowing all of this, the men and women of Georgia still voted for Walker in almost equal numbers to that of his squeaky-clean Democratic opponent, Rev. Raphael Warnock, leading to a run-off election next month.
National embarrassment, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), quickly won her red Georgia district, despite her claims that: Jews used a space laser to start a California wildfire, Nancy Pelosi’s “gazpacho” police are spying on members of Congress, and “Democrats are the party of pedophiles.”
Political novice J.D. Vance — who supports a nationwide abortion ban, referred to rape as “inconvenient,” and suggested women stay in violent marriages – beat well-respected Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan for Ohio’s open senate seat.
Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis — who masterminded the bigoted “Don’t Say Gay” law, pushed a series of voter restriction measures, and reportedly “cooked the books” to hide Florida’s COVID-19 deaths — sailed to a second term, with a 19-point victory.
And Texas voters flocked to give Republican incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott another term, even after he praised the Uvalde law enforcement team that waited an hour to enter a school classroom as 19 children were slaughtered. Despite Abbott’s post-Uvalde refusal to limit access to the assault-style weapon that led to the worst school massacre in Texas’s history, Abbott won Uvalde County by a whopping 30 points.
How are these people winning elections? Like many fellow Democrats, my initial reaction is to blame the Democrats for their weak messaging and lack of aggressive response to Republican attacks and misinformation. And as a former state and federal prosecutor, I have been critical of Democrats’ failure to support measures that are tough on crime, despite it being a top concern for Americans. Given the amount of visible crime by top-echelon Republicans, and their endless attack on law enforcement, Democrats could become the “law and order” party if only they found the spine and collective will to do so. It is viable to condemn unjustified police violence and simultaneously acknowledge that if we do not have personal safety, we have nothing.
That said, Democrats are not to blame for the success of candidates like Herschel Walker. I used to believe that people who voted for awful candidates were blind to their bad qualities — but many of this week’s slate of winning candidates were so openly horrific that it is impossible to believe anything other than those who voted for them accepted, perhaps even embraced, their awfulness.
For all the legitimate criticism that may be heaped on Democrats, at some point we must place the greatest share of blame where it belongs — on the Republicans who saw the horrors of former president Donald Trump and asked for more by lifting an army of Trump minions to power.
Liberal pundits are saying Tuesday was a good day for Democrats.
It wasn’t.
Likely losing the House and possibly the Senate is devastating, especially when decades of Republican gerrymandering make it impossible to stop the metastatic spread of an extremist GOP takeover. And the Supreme Court is set to hear a case next month that could allow Republican state legislatures to designate presidential electoral votes to a Republican presidential candidate even if more people voted for the Democrat.
Beyond the teeth gnashing and finger pointing of the last few months and the inevitable election post-mortems of the next few, the only sound I hear now is the whimper of American Democracy dying.
Michael J. Stern was a federal prosecutor for more than 24 years with the Department of Justice in Detroit and Los Angeles, prosecuting high-profile crimes, including conspiracy cases related to international drug trafficking and organized crime. He has since worked on the indigent defense panel for the federal courts. Follow him on Twitter @MichaelJStern1.