Please Follow us on Gab, Minds, Telegram, Rumble, Gab TV, Truth Social, Gettr, Twitter
Counterview to this article can be read here.
[Bronxville, NY] Chicago is the city where I grew up, and its politics has been dominated by machines almost since its founding almost two hundred years ago. The city elected Mayor Richard Daley in 1955, and from then to 1976, and then again from 1989 to 2011, he and his son, respectively, governed the city. The Chicago political machine helped steal the Presidential election of 1960, and provided the model for the steal of the Presidential election of 2020 by similar machines in Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta and Phoenix. These machines operate relying on many useful guidelines, such as: “Don’t Make No Waves,” “We Don’t Want Nobody That Nobody Sent,” and “Don’t Back No Losers!”
Unfortunately for Donald Trump, his choice of candidates in the recent midterm elections stamps him as a loser, especially when compared with Governor DeSantis of the Free State of Florida, who won re-election by 19 percentage points, and carried most other Republican candidates, including over 80% of School Board candidates, to victory with his coat-tails. Democrats will be shut out from statewide office in Florida for the first time since Reconstruction.
In these midterm elections, Trump participated actively in endorsing candidates, but his candidates for the Senate and Governorships lost almost all their races. For the Senate: (1) In Pennsylvania, Trump endorsed Oz over McCormick in the Republican primary. Oz was an interloper from New Jersey and a media personality, while McCormick was home-grown, had served in the Army and in the Trump administration, and was the choice of Senator Ted Cruz. Oz lost by 4 percentage points to a progressive ogre who can barely speak. (2) In New Hampshire, Trump endorsed Bolduc in the Republican primary over the Speaker of the State House, an ally of popular Governor Sununu, who did not need Trump’s endorsement to win big. Bolduc lost by 9 percentage points to a weak incumbent. (3) In Arizona, Trump endorsed Masters in the Republican primary, who went down in defeat to another weak incumbent, and ran behind even Trump’s pick for Governor. (4) In Nevada, Laxalt lost and ran behind Sheriff Lombardo, who defeated an incumbent Democrat for Governor. (5) In Georgia, Trump endorsed Walker, who is in a runoff against a Fake Christian Communist, and had not run with the support of Governor Kemp, who won re-election by 8 percentage points over Fake Governor Stacy Abrams. Here former Congressman Doug Collins probably would have been a better choice. (6) In Wisconsin, incumbent Republican Johnson won re-election, but all other statewide Republican candidates lost. (7) For once, Vance won in Ohio, but ran far behind Governor DeWine. Former State Treasurer Mandel had been endorsed by Senator Cruz and Mark Levin, but Vance beat him in the Republican primary with Trump’s endorsement. (8) Finally, in Alaska Trump’s candidate Tsiubaka lost to Republican incumbent Murkowski, who had voted for Trump’s impeachment. This result was mainly due to the duplicitous system of ranked choice voting, but again Trump’s candidate did not know how to work the voting system.
In the races for Governor, Trump’s endorsed candidates also performed poorly: (1) In Pennsylvania, Mastriano lost big after taking an extreme position on abortion, and harping on the stolen Presidential election of 2020. He did not help Oz. (2) In Michigan, Dixon lost big after also receiving the endorsement of the DeVos family, and running against a statewide pro-abortion referendum that won. (3) In Wisconsin, Michels lost after Trump endorsed him in the Republican primary over Kleefish, who had been Lieutenant Governor with Scott Walker. (4) In Arizona, Kari Lake also harped excessively on the stolen election and mishandled voting procedures, and she lost narrowly, underperforming the statewide Republican voter share by 6 percentage points. In that race, however, Republicans are mounting a credible legal challenge. Meanwhile, several Republican Governors without Trump’s endorsement won decisively: DeSantis, Abbott, Kemp, DeWine and Sununu.
In addition to these Senatorial and Gubernatorial losers, the Republican candidates who underperformed in battleground States and Districts all had Trump’s endorsement. Exit polling disclosed that 32% of voters cast their House votes to oppose President Brandon, but 28% did so to oppose Trump. Trump-endorsed candidates who lost House races included: (1) Bo Hines in North Carolina; (2) John Gibbs in Michigan; (3) Joe Kent in Washington; and (4) Palin lost in Alaska, again due to the ranked choice voting system. A common theme is that Trump endorsed outsiders without political experience or ties to the Republican establishment, candidates like himself, but they consistently lost in swing States and Districts.
Trump also endorsed losing candidates for Secretaries of State: (1) Karamo in Michigan; (2) Marchant in Nevada; and (3) Finchem in Arizona. In addition to these races in midterm elections, Trump also had a poor track record with his Cabinet appointments: (1) Tillerson at State; (2) Sessions and Barr at Justice; (3) Mattis and Esper at Defense; and (4) McMaster and Bolton at National Security. Columnist Josh Hammer reported as follows: “An analysis from The New York Times's Nate Cohn, based on underlying data from The Cook Political Report's primary scoreboard data, concluded that the "Trump effect" at the ballot box this cycle amounted to a five-point penalty compared with other Republicans. Specifically, while Cohn showed that Republicans nationwide ran an average of 5.6% ahead of their 2020 vote margin, what he dubbed so-called "MAGA candidates" ran only 0.7% ahead -- thus, a 4.9% differential.”
Trump’s other endorsements and appointments have also included many losers: (1) He endorsed for re-election in 2020 Mitch McConnell, who would rather remain in the Senate minority, than win the majority but with conservative Republican Senators. Congressman Comer of Kentucky is now leading the investigation of the Biden Crime Family, and he would have been a worthy candidate for Trump to endorse against McConnel in the Republican primary. Primaries are the time to shoot RINO’s. (2) He appointed Jerome Powell to the Federal Reserve, and he has presided over the highest rate of inflation in 40 years, after insisting that inflation was transitory. (3) He appointed Chris Wray to head the FBI, which has been politicized into the enforcement arm of the progressive movement, and masterminded the mostly false-flag operation in the Capitol on January 6, 2021. (4) Finally, he permitted Doctor Fauci to exercise too much power to lock down America, without challenging his pretend-expertise. Governor DeSantis was almost the only Republican to run on his timely opposition to the Wuhan flu lockdowns, and he won in a landslide.
Trump’s policies are popular, but his politicking is deficient; his business plan is successful, but his execution is lacking. The midterms of 2022 represent his third losing elections in a row, after having lost the House in 2018, and the Presidency and Senate in 2020. Trump promised his backers that they would get tired of winning, but instead he has delivered losses in the last three straight elections.
Trump exposed the corruption in our institutions, but he is not the political leader to fix it. He is like a disruptive founder of a startup, who once the company makes its initial breakthrough, must be replaced by the Board of Directors with a more disciplined and professional manager.
I am not an Anglophile, but one good British practice is that when a politician leads a losing campaign, the next day he resigns (before being summarily deposed, or even defenestrated). John Maynard Keynes observed that: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, Sir?” It’s not personal; its business!
Eduardo Vidal is a lawyer and political activist. His family brought him when he was nine years old from Cuba to the USA, but now the rule of law has been eroded in the USA as well, and we are turning into Cuba and the rest of Latin America.
Lost elections should not be confused with rigged elections. The losers are us - all Republicans. And why did we lose? - “The biggest stupidity is to do the same thing over and over again and hope for a different result” (Albert Einstein). : - How many scammers who stole the 2020 elections are in prison? - 0 ! And how many defenders of "Stop the steal" in prisons ? - 700! What has been done to correct the situation ? - NOTHING ! - Banana Republic USA!
I agree- the “rigging” is what did it- although Trump needs better advisors for sure.