The 2022 Truth and Consequences Political Awards
Time to take a stroll down memory lane and look at the political winners and losers of 2022
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to subscribe, you can sign up here.
A quick note of housekeeping: there will be no Friday Zoom chat tomorrow. I’ll pick things back up in the new year. As you might have noticed, the publishing schedule for T&C has slowed down this week. I’ll be taking most of next week off to spend time with my family and recharge a bit, so you can probably expect fewer posts than usual until 2023 is upon us. Now, on the winners and losers of the year that was.
The Political GOAT Award: Joe Biden
A host of politicians had an impressive 2022. Ron DeSantis won reelection in Florida and quickly became a potential frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Democrat governors, like Gretchen Whitman and Gavin Newsom, won second terms and established themselves as rising political stars in the Democratic Party. In Georgia, Raphael Warnock ran his fourth statewide Senate campaign in two years … and emerged victorious. John Fetterman survived a stroke to win the PA Senate race handily. Ron Johnson was the only Senate candidate to win an election in a state won by the other party's presidential candidate. Still, one politician stands head and shoulders above the rest — Joe Biden.
His approval ratings are indeed mediocre. Still, the midterm results were shockingly good for Democrats: one additional seat in the Senate well below expected losses in the House and crucial gains at the state level. Much of Biden’s legislative agenda became law – including a massive spending package that will lower prescription drug prices, strengthen Obamacare, and pump close to $370 billion into the fight against climate change. But, perhaps most important, Biden has consolidated Democratic support behind him. Both liberals and moderates – appear content to go into 2024 with the president leading the charge.
What’s the reason for Biden’s success? I chalk it up to a combination of luck, Republican extremism, and Biden being better at politics than many of his critics are willing to acknowledge. Whatever the exact reason, Biden is unlikely to face a serious primary challenge from a member of his party — and he has produced a strong legislative record to run on in two years. The House Republican caucus, which remains in thrall to extremists, conspiracy theorists, and a profoundly unpopular former president, gives him the perfect political foil … and there is no GOP candidate who, at this point, appears to have the political skills or national support to beat him in a general election. There’s no guarantee, of course, that Biden will win, but he has set himself up about as well as possible for his reelection campaign. Considering where he was a year ago — and the state of the economy — that’s a hell of an accomplishment.
The Donald Trump Loser Award: Kari Lake
For more than two years, Donald Trump has infamously refused to acknowledge his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Election denialism has taken hold in the party, so much so that there were genuine fears that Republicans who lost in 2022 would refuse to concede defeat. That didn’t happen. Across the country, 2020 election deniers performed poorly. And, for the most part, accepted their losses and acted magnanimously — with one high-profile exception: Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.
It’s been more than a month since the Associated Press declared her opponent, Katie Hobbs, the winner — and Lake is still not conceding defeat. Earlier this week, an Arizona judge dismissed 8 of the ten counts in a lawsuit that Lake has brought over the election outcome. Lake lauded the setback as a "huge win" and told supporters — in the same indomitable style that helped her lose the Arizona governor’s race, “Christmas came early yesterday, woo! … We're taking these b******* to trial!" Of course, Lake will lose, and she’s just pushing a con on her supporters (or perhaps she is deluded and narcissistic enough to believe her own bullshit). Whatever the case, 2022 was a bad year for election deniers, and my guess is that Lake has done herself no long-term political favors by acting like a sore loser.
The Sideshow Bob Award: Kyrsten Sinema
Earlier this month, I asked: is Kyrsten Sinema the worst politician in America? It’s a subjective question, but let’s just say the evidence against Sinema … is substantial.
In 2018, she was the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in Arizona in 30 years. Since then, the state has become steadily bluer. In 2020, Joe Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Arizona since Bill Clinton in 1996, and Mark Kelly won the open US Senate seat. In last month’s midterms, Kelly secured reelection, and Katie Hobbs was elected governor.
Yet, for reasons that seemingly only make sense to Sinema, she has moved steadily rightward — blocking key Democratic initiatives in the Senate (like voting rights), pushing for lower tax burdens for some of her largest campaign contributors, and treating the Democratic activists who helped her get elected with outright disdain. Not only has her “maverick” turn pissed people off, but it’s put her in the position of having to switch party affiliation to keep her job. If she had just toed the party line, not made waves, and voted like a loyal Democrat, she’d likely be coasting to reelection in 2024 — like Mark Kelly did this past election.
Oof. Based on new poll numbers out today, her hopes at reelection are circling the proverbial drain.
I suppose anything could happen between now and November 2024, but one thing is for sure: her political career, at least within the Democratic Party, ends at the US Senate. She’s not getting a Cabinet position. She won’t be speaking at a Democratic National Convention. She might get an ambassadorship if only the Biden White House can get her out of the Senate (I hear there’s a vacancy in Micronesia). It wouldn’t have been hard to imagine her as a sleeper presidential candidate — a young, attractive, LGBTQ woman with idiosyncratic politics and a salty mouth. None of that is happening now — and Sinema has no one to blame but herself.
The Al Czervik Award: the New York State Democratic Party
There are a couple of strong competitors for this award — the Michigan Republican Party, Herschel Walker, and the Florida Democratic Party all make compelling cases. But the New York State Democratic Party. Not only did the party lose four House seats they missed a chance at a pickup by just one point. Had Democrats prevailed in those races, they would control the House. This came after the Democrat’s aggressive congressional map was thrown out by a judge nominated by the disgraced former Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo. His replacement, Kathy Hochul, ran a lackluster gubernatorial race, won by around 5 points, and likely contributed to the lousy down-ballot performance by her party. Much of that underperformance also came from the state party’s inability to ensure that the best candidates ran in the districts they were most likely to win — which is why we had the sideshow of incumbent members of Congress running against each other and candidates running in districts where they had no strong political following (I’m looking at you, Sean Patrick Maloney). But the coup de grace came this week when the New York Times revealed that one of these flipped seats was won by a guy named George Santos, whose (and I’m not exaggerating here) entire resume is a lie.
A New York Times review of public documents and court filings from the United States and Brazil, as well as various attempts to verify claims that Mr. Santos, 34, made on the campaign trail, calls into question key parts of the résumé that he sold to voters.
Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, the marquee Wall Street firms on Mr. Santos’s campaign biography, told The Times they had no record of his ever working there. Officials at Baruch College, which Mr. Santos has said he graduated from in 2010, could find no record of anyone matching his name and date of birth graduating that year.
There was also little evidence that his animal rescue group, Friends of Pets United, was, as Mr. Santos claimed, a tax-exempt organization: The Internal Revenue Service could locate no record of a registered charity with that name..
Yet, somehow the geniuses at the New York State Democratic Party never figured this out and leaked it to the press. Bang up job guys!
The Talented Mr. Ripley Award: George Santos
This one comes in just under the wire, but not only is practically everything in Santos’s bio made up … it turns out he may have lied about being Jewish AND gay. Also, according to the Times, Santos lent his campaign more than $700,000 during the midterm election … yet as recently as May 2020 declared an income of $55,000 a year. So from where exactly did that 700 grand come? Oh, and did I mention he still faces outstanding criminal charges in Brazil? You almost have to respect the hustle in pulling off a lie this elaborate, and I’m sure Santos will look back at it with some morbid fascination once his undoubtedly short-lived congressional tenure ends.
If there’s any positive news to be drawn from this episode, that a Republican congressional candidate saw a political advantage in pretending to be Jewish and gay suggests that social progress in America is heading in the right direction!
The Billy Squier Rock Me Tonite Award: Blake Masters
For those of you around in the 1980s — and like me, devotees of MTV videos — there were a host of amazingly cheesy, cringe-worthy productions. But few can hold a candle to the video for Billy Squier’s “Rock Me Tonite.”
This clip is so awful that Squier credits it with destroying his music career (that he wrote banal, listless, over-produced rock songs might also have had something to do with its demise).
This award goes to another Arizona politician (what the hell is in the water in Arizona) ... Blake Masters, for this ad, which is two minutes and twenty-two seconds of him waxing poetic about his German-made pistol and “whisper-quiet” silencer as he shoots target practice in the desert. I’m not exaggerating here. The entire ad is him slobbering over a gun — watch it yourself.
This is legitimately the creepiest, most disturbing political ad I’ve ever seen. While I can’t say for certain that it cost Masters a chance to be a US Senator, it might have contributed to this nugget of information:
During the summer, Steven Law, the head of a McConnell-aligned super PAC, told the financier Peter Thiel, who had spent millions supporting Mr. Masters, that Mr. Masters had scored the worst focus group results of any candidate he had ever seen.
Honestly, after watching this video, I’d say the chances that Masters has buried a dead body in the desert are about 50/50 — and it’s possible, even likely, I’m being generous.
The General Zod Award: Mitch McConnell
Remember the scene in Superman 2 when Superman tricks General Zod and his merry band of Kryptonistas into the molecule chamber at his Fortress of Solitude, so they lose all their powers and become ordinary villains? No. Is it just me? You haven’t brain-cataloged every piece of pop culture minutiae from your childhood? Well, here’s a refresher.
So in my convoluted metaphor, who is General Zod? Mitch McConnell, of course, who, over the past year, has badly lost his mojo as Senate Republican Leader.
Over the summer, he got completely outfoxed by Schumer and Manchin on the passage of the CHIPS Act. However, in July, McConnell said he would block the legislation (which had bipartisan support) if Democrats pursued a “partisan reconciliation bill” — like the one Chuck Schumer had been negotiating with Joe Manchin and which can be passed with a simple majority.
This threat raised the ire of Joe Manchin, and yet three days later, he publicly announced that he was pulling out of the talks with Schumer, thus killing the bill. Then Republicans changed their tune on the CHIPS Act and passed it in early August. Four hours later, Manchin announced a deal with Schumer on a reconciliation bill and, in the process, completely outplayed McConnell. Democrats got both the CHIPS bill passed and their massive reconciliation package. Hours later, a pissed-off GOP Senate caucus voted down the PACT Act, which extended health care benefits to sick veterans and previously had bipartisan support. Days later, Republicans reversed themselves and passed the bill but only after several days of bad press and accusations that Republicans had turned their backs on the nation’s veterans.
All that is pretty bad, but then consider that McConnell’s only motivating impulse is to attain political power … which did not work out well this year. With a spate of lousy Republican candidates, the GOP lost a seat and failed to gain a Senate majority. While many in the GOP want to blame Donald Trump for their losses, let’s not forget that, early on, McConnell put his full-throated support behind perhaps the worst Senate candidate this cycle — Herschel Walker. For a guy who is supposed to be a brilliant political tactician, McConnell ends the year looking ineffectual and facing a leadership fight from his own GOP caucus (which he used to control with an iron fist).
The I Can’t Believe I’m Losing To This Guy Award: Kevin McCarthy
This is one of my favorite SNL clips of all time. The set-up is a mock presidential debate between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis in which Bush answer a question with nothing but platitudes (“let’s stay the course,” “a thousand points of light”) and refuses to provide any policy detail. The performance is so bad that the debate moderator has to constantly remind Bush that he has more time to respond. The camera pans to Dukakis (played by Jon Lovitz), who delivers an iconic line (you can watch the whole clip here).
I think of this clip whenever I see Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican Leader and likely the next House Speaker. Here’s a guy who is terrible at politics, bad at public speaking, transparently phony, deeply ineffectual in controlling his caucus, and who came this close to s***ting the bed in the midterm election. Yet, somehow he is more likely than not going to end up as Speaker and third in line for the presidency. As the kids might say, “amazeballs.” Though it does give me hope for America that even the most mediocre among us can rise to the top of the political heap. It gives hope to us all.
The Everybody Hates You Award: Rick Scott
That Democrats hate Rick Scott is hardly surprising, but this year Scott did an excellent job of pissing off Republicans too. As Chairman of the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, he truly screwed the pooch. First, he put out a campaign policy document that floated the idea of cuts to Medicare and Social Security and higher taxes on the middle class. Second, in August, two months before the midterm elections, he got caught vacationing in Italy. Then, weeks later, the New York Times revealed that Scott squandered 95% of the $181.5 million dollars that the committee had raised in aggressive and ultimately ineffectual fundraising efforts. Third, the GOP’s Senate candidates were, how shall we say, not good — and performed badly. And to top it all off, he launched an effort to replace Mitch McConnell as GOP Leader that failed miserably. Bottom line: if someone leaves a bag of flaming poo outside Scott’s Senate door, we shouldn’t assume that it came from a Democrat.
What’s Going On
There’s so much to love in this new extended Q&A with Bob Dylan, but this is my favorite nugget
Ringo Starr told me that he believes being a good musician – and songwriter – makes you good at other things – in his case cooking – because you’re in tune with your senses. What are your thoughts on that idea?
I love Ringo. He’s not a bad singer, and he’s a great musician. If I’d had him as a drummer, I would’ve been the Beatles, too. Maybe. Didn’t know he was a cook, though. That’s encouraging.
I know this will come as a shock to many of you, but it turns out that Fox News hosts don’t actually believe their own bullshit.
Always read Tom Edsall.
This Times mega-read on Russia’s failures in the Ukraine War is simply extraordinary reporting.
A fascinating read on rural Georgians who rejected Donald Trump and the GOP.
Apparently, director James Cameron has proved that Jack couldn’t have survived the Titanic sinking. I call bullshit on that.
Today in Bob Dylan
I know a lot of Dylan fans hate his Christian period, but personally, I think there are some great nuggets there — particularly this cut and this version from the Grammys.
This is a wonderful cover version by John Doe of “Pressing On” from Dylan’s weakest Christian record, “Saved.”
With regard to your comment that "it does give me hope for America that even the most mediocre among us can rise to the top of the political heap. It gives hope to us all," let us recall the immortal words of Senator Roman Hruska regarding Nixon's unsuccessful Supreme Court nominee G. Harrold Carswell:
"Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance? We can't have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos."
Maybe there's room for McCarthy on the Supreme Court?