Denying Trump’s election versus denying one’s own

Kari Lake aside, the really great news from the midterms is that full-on election denialism has not taken over the Republican Party.  Rather, ambitious Republican politicians knew they had to lie about Trump’s election in order to win their nomination, so they did.  Most of them were not remotely true believers in this Democrats are stealing elections nuttiness.  They were just ambitious cowards who knew what they had to say to have any chance of winning their Republican primary in many cases.  Virtually all of these soft deniers that have lost, e.g., Dr. Oz, Bo Hines, numerous others, have simply conceded their loss as you expect normal politicians to do.  This is normal and this is good.  Yet more evidence that Trump truly is a unique cancer on the GOP.  One that has definitely spread and still represents a significant threat to our democracy, but things are far, far much better than they could have been.  The reality is that most Republican politicians who explicitly or implicitly endorsed the Big Lie are not election deniers at heart.  Just ambitious politicans who used election denialism to get Trumpist support.  That’s not great at all, but sure lots better than the former.

Also, it’s hard not to conclude that in competitive swing state elections, being an election denier is an electoral drag.  That’s a great lesson for politicians to have.  Election denying should not be disincentivized, not incentivized, among ambitious Republicans and that’s a damn good thing. 

 

As Rick Hasen puts it, ““I’ve Been Way More Worried About American Democracy Than I Am Right Now”