If you asked me to list all the things I’m thankful for, we’d be here until next Christmas—and I’d probably still be arguing with myself about the order. But I can tell you that my robust health, my handsome, supportive husband, and the fact that zero percent of the humans I brought into this world grew up to be woke are hovering around the tippy top. According to The Hill, I should also be feeling enormously grateful for the size of the smackdown my party suffered in the midterms.
Here’s the logic: Can you imagine the chaos if Democrats had barely eked out a win? Right-wing conspiracy theorists might have started asking questions. Demanding audits. Comparing vote totals to historical turnout. Wondering how a party captured the hearts—and the ballots—of nearly every single newly minted suffragist. But, you see, since the progressive landslide was so sweeping, there’s no sense in even questioning it! The bigger the victory, the smaller the possibility of fraud. That’s how math works now. Try to keep up.
“They left no doubt,” The Hill’s gaslight-y headline declared. The article then proceeded to detail all the many silver linings that can be found in the election results “if you’re a small-c conservative dedicated to the health of the republic.” (And here I thought I was one of those.)
“I’m not talking only about the ending of certain slimy Republican candidates’ careers — think Vivek Ramaswamy and Ken Paxton,” the author wrote without a whiff of humility. “I’m talking about the size and scope of the Democratic victories, particularly in the Senate races, which were thorough and decisive across the board. The silver lining is not merely that serious Democratic contenders thumped Republican joke candidates in states such as South Carolina and Texas, but the margins by which they won — victories so complete as to forestall another round of civic trust-eroding ‘stolen election’ conspiracy theories.
And thank goodness for those margins, because both sides were clearly itching to allege all manner of fraud and treachery for any closely contested race. They spent the weeks leading up to the elections laying the groundwork for such messaging campaigns.”
Oh, well, thank goodness. Look at me, wallowing in my party’s humiliating defeat, when all this time I should’ve been celebrating that our joke candidates were publicly pantsed by their vastly superior progressive opponents. And what a relief to learn that both sides were equally eager to cry fraud! Because if there’s one thing Democrats are famous for, it’s graciously accepting election results they don’t like and moving straight to bridge-building. But now, courtesy of the unprecedented magnitude of this glorious blue deluge, we can all join hands, sing Kumbaya, and agree that the election was 100% legitimate.
Any questions? Oh, sorry. Those are only allowed in close races.
For anyone still wondering how on earth the left managed to pull off this spectacular electoral feat—because we all just agreed it was obviously Too Big to Have Been Rigged™—CNN’s Van Jones has graciously come forward to explain exactly how the magic happened.
The story goes that while Republicans were busy trying to warn constituents that communism and radical Islam were racing each other to take over America, a massive, highly coordinated digital operation was quietly carpet-bombing social media with a relentless barrage of Democratic messaging. According to Jones, a group called the American Accountability Network (which sounds more like a channel you’d watch the high school mathalon competition on than something you’d establish to manufacture enthusiasm for one side of the ballot, but I’m not a political consultant) was generating hundreds of millions of social-media “hits” every single day.
Hundreds of millions.
This industrious group ostensibly picked a single talking point—I’m guessing they considered “Free Ink Cartridges for All” and “Universal Basic DoorDash” before ultimately landing on affordability—and hammered it into every corner of the internet until you couldn’t even peruse cute cat videos without being reminded that Republicans were making your groceries expensive.
The best part, to hear Jones tell it, is that despite the size and the scope and the sheer ubiquity of this political PR masterclass, Democrats managed to keep the whole thing [*checks notes*] completely under the radar. “Republicans never figured out what we were doing,” he gloated.
“Tens of thousands of online humans, not bots, coordinated to make the affordability message a winning message online,” Jones went on to explain. “32.5 million people hit on Instagram every day. 88.8 million hit on Twitter, X, every single day. And 185 million Facebook hits every single day. And they never figured it out. The Republicans could not understand it wasn’t bots. It was actual human beings.”
If Jones is to be believed—and I’m genuinely not sure why you’d announce your very discreet, hugely successful secret agenda to the world—I’ll concede that I’d rather lose to actual human beings than a gang of Roombas with a Canva subscription. But is that supposed to answer every conceivable question about the operation? Okay, not bots. Great. Who organized the humans? How did they communicate? Signal? Discord? A secret Facebook group called Democracy Dies Unless You Share This? How many people are we talking about here? Hundreds? Millions? Were they volunteers? Paid influencers? Did they get scripts? Talking points? A daily assignment and a little gold star for every Republican they pissed off? What were they instructed to post? Were voters seeing independent opinions or thousands of identical messages? Who paid for what? Were there matching t-shirts and snacks involved?
Turns out, the super-stealth American Accountability Network is a D.C. 501(c)(4) that claims “thousands” of core advocates. (Jones boasted “tens of thousands,” but let’s not get bogged down in pesky arithmetic.) The tax-exempt nonprofit has a website, an ActBlue donation button, and a partner roster that reads like the DNC’s holiday card list. Its latest 990 shows about $280K in revenue, and four officers who are each listed at clocking in around five hours a week. That’s a lot of “industrial-scale narrative manufacturing” for a budget that wouldn’t cover Mark Zuckerberg’s dry cleaning.
Curiously, the network’s own website identifies MeidasTouch as one of its members. You know, the aggressively progressive media outfit that received a strategic investment this year from George Soros’s investment firm—a little tidbit that makes its political messaging about as reassuring as health advice from Bill Gates. Funny how every time we hear about a triumphant grassroots uprising, there’s an extension cord running to a billionaire’s office.
To be clear, organizing people to repeat your talking points isn’t cheating. It’s campaigning. But we’ve got an election result that millions of Americans are struggling to wrap their brains around. We’ve got questions about turnout, registration, voting machines, and margins that belong in the Guinness Book of Statistically Impossible Electoral Miracles. We’ve got a growing chorus of voters demanding audits, accountability, and answers. And I can’t speak for the entire GOP, but “we had a really solid group chat” isn’t really cutting it for me.
It’s genuinely comical. Democrats are out there claiming their revolutionary new way to win elections is to get a bunch of people saying the same thing. I mean, why didn’t MAGA ever think of that? Maybe now that Jones has given away the playbook, we can give that a whirl in 2028.
POLL REDUX FOR FINICKY PHONES:
Explain the midterm results in two words.
Brilliant organizing.
Insane cheating.
Maybe both?
Republican apathy.
*combo/unsure/other
IMPORTANT P.S. My friend Jennifer Sey—who walked away from a wildly successful career at Levi’s rather than keep her mouth shut about COVID—has a new documentary coming out this Friday. It’s called GENERATION COVID, and it tells the must-hear stories of the children who paid the ultimate price for all that “following the science.” Sign up at SalemNow now so you’re ready to watch it (for free) when it drops. And tell the others. ;)
Do they know, do you think, that we aren’t going to put up with another round of LGBTQ push further into our lives?
Do they know, do you think, that we aren’t going to put up with any sort of Muslim rule as they are seeing in NYC?
Do they know, do you think, how close we actually are to civil war if our republican representatives don’t get off of their asses and actually do something?
jenna2028