A couple weeks ago I wrote a post noting that Trump had tried to steal the election in numerous ways, but that they had all (mostly) failed. Gerrymandering has not been enough to win the House for Republicans; the SAVE act couldn’t pass the Senate; the Supreme Court blocked Trump’s efforts to muck with mail-in voting. Trump has no steal-the-election button on his desk; he has to use particular tactics to try to cheat, and those tactics often fail.
I also said, though, that Trump would keep trying, and that his efforts damage democracy even if they don’t swing the election. Unfortunately, both of those points have been depressingly illustrated this week by a federal raid on Minnesota Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar’s home.
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Fascists do racist authoritarian targeting of the opposition
Trump hates Omar because she is an outspoken Black, Muslim, Somali-American naturalized citizen. He has attacked her repeatedly and viciously over the last decade; earlier this year he said she “should be in jail” and, with his usual explicit racism, that she “should be sent back to Somalia.” Now, 22 days before the election, federal immigration agents raided her home, reportedly because her father misfiled immigration paperwork when Omar was a child.
Election analysts and former federal prosecutors pointed out that the raid violates DOJ norms against high-profile raids in the 60 days before an election if the matter is not urgent or time sensitive. It is hard to see how misfiled paperwork from when Omar was a child is suddenly an urgent issue for the federal government. Given Trump’s constant attacks on Omar, and his smug reaction to the raid, (“I think she’s a terrible person. I think she’s a terrible congresswoman. I don’t think she loves our country at all, but I don’t take a position,” he burbled) it seems quite clear either Trump himself or some Trump toady who knew the boss would be pleased ordered the raid in an effort to poison her district against her and her state against Democrats.
Democrats have said as much; House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries denounced the
continued corrupt weaponization of the federal government against [the president’s] adversaries “rogue abuse of power.” The head of the House Progressive Caucus, Pramila Jayapal, called it “a disgusting abuse of power from an out of control president.”
Ideally, you would hope that Republicans would also balk at the federal government raiding the homes of Representatives on thin pretexts before an election, if only because they do not want it to happen to them when Democrats are in charge.
But such hopes are, inevitably, in vain. Speaker of the House and evil squirming douche nozzle Mike Johnson lieed shamelessly in claiming that the raid was a normal part of federal functioning. “Maybe the timing’s unfortunate for her or others, but this is the legal system, and it operates independently of the political system,” he smarmed.
In Minnesota, some Republicans dodged and weaved rather than take a stand against the obvious authoritarian election interference; Gubernatorial candidate Lisa Demuth mumbled, “We obviously have no more information than that. And so we’ll watch to see what takes place … and what is found there.”
Trump’s schemes often backfire
Demuth’s unwillingness to commit reflects a pretty obvious political calculus. Donald Trump is extremely unpopular; fiftyplusone has him bobbing around in the mid-30s and he’s a stunning 27 points underwater. Republican candidates do not want to be closely associated with Trump in blueish Minnesota. And now Trump has inserted himself in Omar’s election, enraging voters in her district and quite possibly throughout the state. Demuth is trying to tamp down the damage, but the best case result for Trump is that it doesn’t move the needle at all. The worst case is that he’s made an already bad year in MN for the GOP significantly worse.
This is a familiar dynamic for Trump. Remember that in 2020 Trump’s election denial and attacks on the Georgia state party are widely believed to have helped Democrats win two Senate seats in Georgia in a run-off election, giving Biden control of the Senate. Trump’s grotesque gerrymandering in his second termseems to have created a backlash among Black voters, who are going to the polls in elevated numbers. That could well effect statewide races in places like North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, and South Carolina.
Flagrant abuse of power and cheating energizes your opponents and can dishearten your allies ——especially if you are telling them that elections are fake or rigged. This is one reason that most presidents and politicians do not engage in the kind of desperate, scattershot, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink-with-little-or-no-pretext kind of cheating that we’ve seen from Trump. The chances of success are low; the chances that you will actually harm your own party are high. Better to stick to those once every ten years gerrymanders and a list of the usual disenfranchisement tools. These are recognized safe racist methods that the GOP has been using for decades and which they trust to give them an edge without cutting their own knees out from under them.
Trump stabbing himself in the knees is satisfying to some degree. Unfortunately, when you slash around wildly with your stubby fat fingers, you are likely to do a lot of damage even when you don’t hit your target. Trump’s election denial lost him the Senate in 2021—but it also led to a violent insurrection in which people died. The raid on Omar’s house will probably benefit her reelection efforts. But it harmed her and her family and it sets a dangerous precedent, especially within the GOP which is getting itself comfortable with criminalizing the opposition in real time.
This is why it’s important to recognize that Trump does not in fact have a secret infallible election cheat code. Attributing to him a nebulous unstoppable plan can distract from the the actual, concrete, fallible ways he is attempting (clumsily) to manipulate elections. And worse, it can lead us to believe that the only danger we face is that Trump will steal the election. Stealing elections is in fact very difficult. Harming democracy, though, is something Trump does every day.
It's insane that the media and Democratic elites can't freak out about blatantly racist attacks on Omar, especially this one that's combining that with an insane abuse of power, the same way they freaked out about Biden being old during a dumb debate (a debate during which, among many horrible things, Trump falsely accused Democrats of murdering infants). Being unfit to do the job because you're an authoritarian fascist who is abusing their power and trying to undermine democracy should rise to at least the same level as being unable to do the job because you're too old.