Jan.11

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

Losers of the 2022 Election Cycle

Yesterday, we ran down the 10 biggest winners of the 2022 election cycle. Today, it's the biggest losers. As with yesterday's list, consider this one to have the gold medal winner in first place, followed by a nine-way tie for the silver:

1. Donald Trump: The emperor quite clearly has no clothes (which, in this case, is a frightening thought). Many Republican voters haven't figured it out yet, but most Republican politicians now have, thanks in no small part to November's results.
   
   Trump had a very, very bad year. He started out as the all-but-certain 2024 GOP presidential nominee. Now he is the fight of his life with Ron DeSantis and probably others. His super power was endorsing candidates and then watching them coast to victory. Now his super power is endorsing candidates and watching them go down to defeat, sometimes by large margins (see: Dixon, Tudor). Not as good. The only good thing for him in 2022 is that he wasn't indicted. That could change in 2023 and probably will. His position is greatly diminished compared to a year ago.
   
   
2. Ted Cruz: It has flown under the radar, primarily because Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is nowhere near as significant as Donald Trump, but the Senator arguably had a worse election cycle than the former president did.
   
   To start, Trump's political fortunes went into severe decline, but, despite the Texan's delusional fantasies, nobody turned to Cruz as the next man up. Ron DeSantis is in line ahead of him, and so too are several others, including Nikki Haley, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX), Mike Pompeo, and Mike Pence. Heck, at the books right now, Tucker Carlson is getting better odds than Cruz. And Ye (Kanye West) is getting the exact same odds. "I am about as viable a presidential candidate as Ye" is not a line you want on your résumé.
   
   Meanwhile, as poorly as Donald Trump did with his endorsements, Cruz did worse. He backed 24 House candidates (and one senator) as part of his "Cruz 25 for 22 Victory Fund," and just nine of the 24 (and the senator) won. In addition, his Truth and Courage PAC gave big money to three candidates, and only one of those was elected. Once the general election was over, Cruz licked his wounds, and then hit the campaign trail to rally voters on behalf of Herschel Walker. Oops. If everything Trump touches turns into lead, then everything Cruz touches turns into uranium. The man is radioactive, is what we're saying.
   
   
3. Kevin McCarthy: Even though we are only publishing this now, we drew up the list in mid-December. And so, we did not need the benefit of last week's dog and pony show to know that McCarthy has become the poster boy for "be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it." The now-Speaker has achieved the object of his fondest desires, but his majority is paper-thin and built on a foundation of nutters. Newt Gingrich, John Kasich and Paul Ryan were all brought down under similar circumstances, and they: (1) had greater political skill than McCarthy, (2) had a larger majority than McCarthy, and (3) had a far-right fringe that was less radical than the MAGA 20. Can he possibly make it through the entire 2-year term?
   
   
4. The Supreme Court: Consider this fact: Exit polls in Michigan showed that the most important issue in this election, for nearly half the electorate there, was abortion. By contrast, inflation was the most important issue for about a quarter of the electorate. Other swing-state exit polls produced similar results, though it was in Michigan where the numbers were most striking.
   
   Put another way, the Supreme Court made its most consequential decision in years (and perhaps decades) in Dobbs, and was promptly kicked in the teeth. That ruling almost singlehandedly tamed the looming red wave, while also causing voters in six different states to vote in favor of abortion rights (or else against abortion restrictions). If Samuel Alito thought he had resolved this question for all time, he was as wrong as Roger Taney after he finished putting the final touches on the Dred Scott decision.
   
   So, the voters pushed back against the Court's conservative majority on this issue, and will undoubtedly continue to do so in 2024 and 2026. Meanwhile, confidence in the Court is at an all-time low. And, as we have pointed out many times, when Americans don't respect the Court, they find ways to ignore or subvert its rulings. If it keeps acting like an organ of the far-right wing of the Republican Party, SCOTUS will discover that it has about as much influence as, well, Donald Trump.
   
   
5. The Once-Rising Democratic Stars: Stacey Abrams was once seen as the future of the Democratic Party. But in her second run for the governorship of Georgia, she came up short. Much shorter, in fact, than in her first run, despite having 4 years to organize and register voters, and having raised $100 million. She ran against Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) who probably was unbeatable by anyone since even some Democrats like him for standing up to Donald Trump. But now what does Abrams do, assuming she is still interested in elective office? She doesn't appear to be interested in a House seat, although that would probably be the best opportunity for her to rebuild her political career. She could wait until Kemp is term-limited in 2026, but in politics, third time is rarely the charm (ask William Jennings Bryan), and voters might not feel she's ready for the big chair. Typically the people who run for governor hold some other statewide office, or some federal office. Abrams has never held any office higher than state representative (although she was minority leader).
   
   Beto O'Rourke is another case of someone for whom people had high expectations that didn't pan out. He ran for senator in 2018 against Ted Cruz and lost. He ran for president in 2020 and lost. He ran for governor of Texas this year and lost. What does this show? That Democrats can't win statewide in Texas and losing a statewide race in Texas as a Democrat does not make you presidential material. Some people thought he would be the new Bobby Kennedy. He wasn't. Many people aren't Bobby Kennedy. Most people, in fact.
   
   Abrams and O'Rourke are young enough and talented enough that they could still undergo a renaissance. But they do have a problem that they live in states that don't seem interested in electing them to high office. Maybe they should do what Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg did and move to Michigan.
   
   
6. The Celebrity Republicans: Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker had great lives heading into 2022, one of them a popular TV show host and the other a beloved football star. Nonetheless, they both decided that it was worth it to roll the dice in search of power (though one wonders if they fully understand how much power a first-term senator actually has). In any event, they both lost, and will be the butt of jokes for years, while all of their skeletons are now out in the open. Was it worth it?
   
   
7. Alejandro Mayorkas: Why Mayorkas took the job of Secretary of DHS is beyond us. It is a hopeless job. There is no way the border can be secured or even managed until Congress gets on the stick and passes some laws and allocates enough money. One astounding fact: There were 2.4 million encounters between unauthorized migrants and border patrol agents in the 2022 fiscal year. Million! There is a huge problem at the border, but Mayorkas can't fix it. Only Congress can, yet Mayorkas gets the blame. And now, thanks to the House coming under Republican control, there is a decent chance he will be impeached in 2023 (see above), even though one struggled to identify what "high crimes and misdemeanors" he might have committed.
   
   
8. George Santos: Liar, liar, pants on fire. We have recounted his lies at great length. Nothing about his C.V. is true. We are even wondering if his name is actually George Santos. Maybe not, as nothing else he's said about himself is true. The feds are onto his case, because his net worth seems to have zoomed up in 2022 and they want to know where the money came from. For example, did it come from some local billionaire who wanted his very own congressman? If he is indicted, he might try for a plea deal in which he resigns his seat in the House in return for a shorter prison sentence. However, that won't help him in Brazil, where legal authorities have renewed interest in taking a look at the Representative's possibly illegal check-cashing activities. While 2022 was a bad year for Santos, despite his win, 2023 could well be a lot worse.
   
   
9. The NRSC: As the chair of the NRSC this cycle, the job of Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) was to flip the Senate back to the Republican Party. Obviously, he failed in that. And that failure came, at least in part, because of Scott's mismanagement and hubris. There was, for example, the 11-point plan to "Rescue America," which was supposed to set Scott up for a 2024 presidential run. What it did, instead, was allow Democrats to claim that the Republicans want to get rid of Medicaid and Social Security. Further, in search of a reputation as a miracle worker, Scott invested serious resources in a near-unwinnable race in New Hampshire, and in two absolutely unwinnable races in Colorado and Washington. This helped the Democrats not only hold the Senate, but to expand their majority by one, while effectively killing Scott for President 2024. Maybe he'll be back in 2028, but he's so unpopular, and his political instincts are so bad, that we doubt it.
   
   
10. Republican Megadonors: For various reasons, the Democrats do much better with small-dollar donors than Republicans do. The Republicans make up for that by doing much better with billionaires. And the billionaires stepped up this cycle, with Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein's $80,881,015, Kenneth C. Griffin's $71,050,000 and Jeffrey Yass' $49,000,000 leading the way. Nearly all of this money went to U.S. Senate candidates who failed to win their elections, meaning that the megadonors spent something like half a billion dollars on losers. When the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Citizens United, Republicans breathed a sigh of relief, because that decision makes possible these outsized PAC donations. But, as it turns out, C.U. doesn't help nearly as much when a party has a big problem with C.Q.—candidate quality.
    
    
11. New York Democrats: What a train wreck the New York Democratic Party was this cycle. Andrew Cuomo was taken down by scandal, and then his replacement, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY), made unforced error after unforced error. While she won reelection, it was by a way-too-close margin for such a blue state.
    
    And then there was the fiasco with gerrymandering, where the blue team got too greedy, and ultimately cost themselves multiple House seats. Republicans swept Long Island, winning two open Democratic seats in Nassau County and picking up additional seats in the Hudson Valley. This included knocking off Sean Patrick Maloney, who was not only an incumbent, but was the chair of the DCCC, which is charged with winning House races for the Democrats. It is embarrassing, to say the least, when the DCCC chair can't win his own election.

Ok, that's actually 11 losers and not 10. We couldn't decide which of these to excise from the list and, besides, everyone knows that it's better to go to 11, especially when most blokes are only going to 10. (V & Z)