The Midterms Were A Disaster

A few key problems we have to fix to stay free.

The midterms were not the red wave they should have been. I certainly try to see the positive in everything, and we chalked up some solid wins. But given what we expected (and what should have been), the midterms were a disaster. We can make them count for a lot more, though, if we learn lessons from this defeat and act quickly to pivot for 2024.  

To begin with, let’s just briefly note what this election was not about. It was not about Donald Trump. The Uniparty immediately attempted to use the midterms to topple Trump as the party leader. This narrative was prevalent on both Fox News and MSNBC on election night and proliferated the mainstream media the next day. But anyone blaming the lackluster midterm on Trump or asserting this was a Trump/DeSantis referendum has lost the political plot or is displaying an anti-Trump agenda.

To the extent the failure rests with party leadership, look to McCarthy and McConnell, who did not want a MAGA red wave and worked against it. Anyone on the ground in the run-up to the midterms could tell you that the Republican Party’s election apparatus was not necessarily supporting MAGA candidates with gusto. For instance, Republican leadership pulled financing from Don Bolduc in New Hampshire and from Blake Masters in Arizona while sending $9 million to Lisa Murkowski in Alaska—a seat that was not even in jeopardy. The reality is there is an ongoing civil war within the party, and there remains a significant faction of our national leadership that would like to block America First candidates and blunt the MAGA movement’s influence.  

Although the sins of the Uniparty Republican leadership could fill many columns, more relevant is the blame that falls upon us, the grassroots. We should have leapt into action after the 2020 election to make changes at the state level. With a few exceptions, that simply did not happen. It is this task that should have our focus.

State Laws

DeSantis has been an exceptional governor in Florida, but, instead of falling prey to the narrative that the Florida red wave was due to an overwhelming response to DeSantis’s excellent policies, we should be talking about the bill DeSantis and the Florida legislature enacted in 2021 that tightened up voting laws. The bill’s highlights included an essential ban on ballot harvesting, limiting and securing drop-boxes, and limiting and securing mail-in voting.

That bill should be analyzed for its best strengths and unforeseen weaknesses, and we should draft model legislation to roll out to all the red-state legislatures. The grassroots have power to influence state legislatures. Armed with the right model legislation, the grassroots can take tangible action to try to save our republic.

Mail-in ballots are obviously the death knell of a fair election, and they need to be banned. This is uniformly accepted by the Right. But ballot harvesting made a measurable impact in these midterms, too. Ballot harvesting—the process of gathering and submitting completed mail-in or absentee ballots—is often overlooked in the national conversation about voting integrity, and it requires immediate attention. 

A Twitter thread by John Hayward provided insightful analysis into the Left’s election machine and how they use ballot harvesting to gain an easy leg up. In the weeks before an election, the Left activates an organized network to harvest ballots from “indifferent voters” who simply vote the Democrats’ party ticket. “What’s the point of talking about ‘momentum,’ late-breaking events, or even how candidates perform at debates when a huge chunk of the vote is banked by mail before the debates even happen?” Hayward asks. Of course, we know many of these indifferent voters would not prioritize getting to the polls on election day. Ballot harvesting is an exceptionally effective way of padding the vote by capitalizing on people who otherwise do not care.

It is imperative that we ban ballot harvesting in every red state where Republicans control the government. But in those states where we do not have the political power to ban ballot harvesting, we must start ballot harvesting, too.  If we don’t engage in the game, we will inevitably lose.  

Machine Fraud

In the days after the 2020 election, you could be banned from social media and kicked off network television for suggesting security concerns in the machines. After two years of relentless activism by those convinced of the scam, discussing machine fraud is finally hitting the mainstream.

On November 8th, we all heard about the machine malfunctions in Maricopa County, but machines were also failing in Mercer County, Georgia; Chesterfield County, Virginia; Harris County, Texas, and many others. As these debacles mounted, outrage spread widely. Tucker Carlson even brought it up directly when he appeared on Fox News’s election-night coverage. He flatly stated that Americans no longer can have faith in election results.

Now is the time to use the momentum from our midterm loss to fuel a movement to end machine voting. The reality is the machines are not secure, and Americans do not have faith in the outcome of the elections. Paper ballots worked for generations. We can surely make them work again.

GenZ

Finally, we have a problem with a segment of our electorate. GenZ is radically progressive and politically active, and no wonder. They were raised by the government. When your child spends 8 hours a day in the care of some third party, and then a few more hours completing homework assignments from that same entity, they are being formed by that third party. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Add in the corrupting influence of social media apps that serve up depravity and progressive values by algorithm and you have GenZ.

Alex Newman has analogized your child in public school to your child in a burning building. Would you petition the school board while the building burned or rush in and get your child out? His conclusion after studying the public school system for years is that you must get your children out. But once you have your own children safely away, you still have to try to put out that fire. The midterms made clear that we must win the fight to reform education or lose our country at the end of the day.   

Conclusion

The midterms were not an electoral triumph for the right, and what we saw with the election process was even more alarming. Using the midterms as an excuse to pit Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis against each other could be a deadly distraction on the part of our party. After 2020, a lot of people wanted to prove the fraud in the 2020 election. That in itself was an admirable goal, but it was wrong to pursue it single-mindedly. The years fly by quickly, and the timeframe in which to fix the system for future elections is comparatively very short. These midterms will either be a foreshadowing of our dismal future or the impetus that spurs us to start changing the downward trajectory of the nation. Direct your attention and energy accordingly.