||| FROM HEDRICK SMITH |||


Hedrick Smith

Olga, Washington – The media keeps telling us that 70 percent of Republicans still back the bogus claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. But for this November, keep your eye on the 20 to 30 percent of Republicans who reject the Big Lie. They’re likely to cast the deciding votes in key elections.

What makes these Liz Cheney Republicans so pivotal this fall is that 2022 is not a normal mid-term election. The media has mostly been treating this year’s contest as a rerun of the traditional red vs blue mid-term election where, by all historical norms, the in-party suffers a shellacking and loses control of Congress.

But that’s missing what’s unique about 2022. The personality cult of Donald Trump has transformed this year’s political warfare into an election that puts American democracy on the ballot. The Trump Cult, masquerading under the flag of the Republican Party and touting its MAGA slogans, has mobilized its own slates of candidates in pursuit of its own radical, anti-democratic agenda.

The main line of attack, deploying more than 30 of Trump’s most pugnacious advocates on the ballot for governor, senator, secretary of state or attorney general, is to try to capture major state offices in more than a dozen states, from Alaska, Arizona and Nevada to Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and take control of the election machinery in swing states, including the power to reject and override the popular vote, so they can lock in Trump’s re-election in 2024.

The most crucial test this fall is whether the Trump camp will succeed in converting Big Lie propaganda into practical power, or whether an emerging coalition of Democrats, independents and constitutional Republicans can block enough of the Trump slates to protect the future fairness of American elections and discredit the Big Lie strategy.

The Emerging Coalition Against the Trump Cult

For months, the media has focused on tallying Trump Cult successes in Republican primaries. But heading into the general election, the narrative is changing. Democratic voters are newly energized by the Supreme Court’s  striking down abortion rights, President Biden’s legislative gains in Congress, and the FBI’s seizure of Trump’s hidden cache of national security documents at Mar-a-Lago.

Independent voters, always important in mid-term elections and more numerous than either major party, are leaning against Trump. More than 60% of independents tell pollsters they think Joe Biden won fairly in 2020 and more than 60% hold Trump accountable for the January 6, 2021 attack on Congress. Trump has risked further inflaming their hostility with his recent demand that the 2020 election be nullified and his strong suggestions that he’ll pardon Trump backers convicted for their actions on January 6 if he gets back in the White House in 2024.

Already there’s a serious independent candidate for the U.S. Senate in Utah, Evan McMullin, running to unseat pro-Trump Re;ublican Senator Mike Lee. Democrats are combining with independents to back McMullin rather than run their own candidate. Independent voters also loom large in Alaska, where Trump is out to punish and banish Senator Lisa Murkowski, who voted to convict Trump in his Senate impeachment trial in January 2021. Based on her historic performance, Murkowski should pull well among independents and Democrats in her race against a handpicked Trump rival, Kelly Tshibaka.

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