Schadenfreude, Victory Laps, and Told-you-so's
The apparent collapse of the Lincoln Project is exactly what we should have expected
Back when Trump was running for the Republican nomination, one thing became very clear about how he was going to conduct himself: he would head straight into the gutter and try to drag everyone else down there to join him. At least, that was how I saw things. And after he won the nomination, I argued that he’d do the same in the general election, that he’d drag Hillary Clinton and her supporters into the gutter and make the race personal and as little about policy as possible.
I was told by a lot of Clinton supporters—more than I can count—that I was wrong, that Clinton was too smart and too seasoned a politician to let that happen. When it did happen—and Trump ended up victorious—I didn’t take any victory laps, I didn’t return to past discussions with told-you-so’s, partly because I wasn’t happy that Trump was President (I wouldn’t have been happy with Clinton, either) and partly because that’s just not my style. But to be perfectly honest, I did experience some schadenfreude, and that’s because a lot of the Clinton supporters—the ones who insisted I was wrong—were obnoxious and condescending with their support of her candidacy and their assumption that she would win the election.
Looking back, I think that the obnoxious attitudes of so many Clinton supporters—particularly on social media—was a fundamental cause for the rise of the correspondingly obnoxious MAGA crowd. One can certainly argue that supporting a grifter like Trump for President is a stupid way to push back against a crowd of self-righteous Clinton supporters, but people don’t always respond rationally, especially when they’re being told they live in “fly-over country,” and that they’re a “basket of deplorables.” Couple that with a guy willing to feed xenophobic, racist, and sexist tropes and you get a successful populist candidacy.
One can, of course, “what-if” this all day long. What if Clinton didn’t follow Trump into the gutter, what if she and her campaign had purposefully run a campaign that always took the high road? Who can say.
But the point I’m making is that my schadenfreude back than was understandable, even if I knew—on a strictly rational level—that Trump winning wasn’t a good thing, that seeing Clinton and many of her supporters get exactly what I thought they deserved wasn’t sufficient to offset the risk of a Trump presidency.
The schadenfreude I’ve been experiencing for the last week or so, with regard to the goings on over at The Lincoln Project is a different story. Even as Trump is being subjected to a much-deserved impeachment trial (to be clear, I don’t think he should be convicted, but he fully deserves the shame of the trial), even as the Biden administration does one awesome thing after or another (or proves to be nothing special, whatsoever, depending on one’s point of view), the PAC founded by a collection of Republican never-Trumpers is in its death throes.
I’m not going to rehash all of the details, in this regard. But for anyone who maybe hasn’t been paying attention to the developments—because frankly, there are a lot of other things going on—the problems began for The Lincoln Project when one of its founders admitted to sending inappropriate DMs on twitter to young men, often offering career help in exchange for sex. Things snowballed from there, as questions returned about the money the PAC had raised, how it was spent and where it had all gone. Then, in the face of another critical story, The Lincoln Project tweeted out the private exchange between a reporter and one of its former employees, causing one of it’s founders—George Conway—to question if it had just broken the law. Glenn Greenwald covers all of that and some other stuff quite effectively. And the story that the Project tried to sink came out anyway, and boy does it make the principals at The Lincoln Project look like shit. The rats started jumping ship, predictably enough, included one of the founders, the guy who most say had been running the show the last several months, Steve Schmidt, who put out one of the most horribly self-serving statements ever made to announce this, where he actually recounted a story about being abused as a child, as if this had anything to do with what has been going on at The Lincoln Project.
None of this is a surprise to me.
I’ve been saying that The Lincoln Project was being run by bad people for quite some time now, that these guys were functionally little different than Trump, with regard to what they would say and do in order to “win.” Of all of the takes on The Lincoln Project out there, I think Andrew Stiles has the best one:
The Lincoln Project, a liberal Super PAC founded by shlubby white dudes who weren't very good at sports growing up but compensated for that as adults by owning people on Twitter, went an abysmal 0-7 in key Senate races this cycle despite spending almost $12 million in support of Democratic candidates.
And note the simply reality on the above statement, one repeated by many other news orgs, from CBS to The Hill: The Lincoln Project failed to impact the races it sought to impact in the election. Yet, twitter is full of Lincoln Project fanboys proclaiming how awesome it was, how it was the primary reason Trump lost and Biden won. No, seriously, here are some tweets that have come out since all of the stories above broke (these are quotes from tweets that I’m not going to link to, because the people saying this stuff have enough problems, already), all directed to Steve Schmidt’s twitter account:
“I will be forever grateful for your role in making Trump a one term president. Thank you!”
“You have accomplished a great service to the American people & I hope you recover very soon. Your a great pariot & am looking forward towards your return, my God Bless you. You have made a tremendous difference in many lives with your view points.”
“I will always support the great work you and your team did to rid us of the orange nightmare. Good luck to you.”
“Steve, fight back with all your heart, knowing you’ve been incredibly important to the future of Democracy. We’re with you!”
“Thanks…for all you have done to help keep trump from being re-elected. The Lincoln Projecr did more to unite dems reps and inds than any force to date. Also thanks for telling your story. It will help many.”
I could keep going. There are literally thousands more, telling Schmidt how awesome he is, how he and The Lincoln Project brought down Trump. It’s mind-boggling how many people actually believe this to be true, but then that’s because so many people on Twitter think what they see there is a direct reflection of what it happening in the real world. Indeed, for many of them, what happens on Twitter and Facebook defines their reality.
As to who Schmidt really is, I think he’s exactly what Stiles said he is, a shlubby white dude who compensates for his shortcomings by trying to own people on Twitter (I think he’s also a grifter, who took a ton of foolish liberals for millions and millions of dollars, all because he owns people on Twitter). These two tweets from Schmidt are sufficient to show his true character, in my opinion:
That first tweet is from an exchange with Jonah Goldberg, who is one of the most anti-Trump conservatives out there. But there’s no need to like Goldberg or accept his arguments to see how awful a person Schmidt seems to be. Track the discussion back and it’s even more clear. The second tweet is from an exchange with Representative Matt Gaetz. One can fairly despise Gaetz—and I know a lot of people do—yet still allow that Schmidt is a bigger asshole here. Right? I mean, for the people who can’t see that, who can’t see how awful this guy is, consider the words of the daughter of the-now-sainted-John-McCain:
And look, my distaste for The Lincoln Project crowd goes back literally decades, and this is true for a lot of other people—on the right—who knew these guys weren’t to be trusted. Amazingly though, I couldn’t convince the people on the left who were all super-enamored with The Lincoln Project, because they seemed to think that being obnoxious little pricks on Twitter was a-okay, as long as the target was Trump or one of his supporters/enablers. Neitzsche’s words just keep coming true, these days:
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
Santayana’s words are also apropos:
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
The accusations Weaver is now facing are not new. As early as the eighties, it was being hinted at, and Karl Rove claims he new about them. One can argue that Rove is being self-serving, but his statement is largely confirmed in this Atlantic piece from 2004. And that’s the real issue here, the real problem, because The Lincoln Project’s founders are a bunch of political insiders whose jobs used to depend on knowing where the bodies were buried. The idea that none of them were aware about these allegations against Weaver until quite recently simply doesn’t hold water, if one is being intellectually honest. Moreover, it was Schmidt who pushed McCain into choosing Palin as a running mate, someone who might fairly be seen as a Trump prototype, whose most vocal supporters became Trump supporters. When things didn’t work out, Schmidt distanced himself from Palin, of course, but there’s no question that he was prepared to support her if she and McCain won.
There are other stories in the past involving some of the other guys at The Lincoln Project where they show their true natures, but all of this was ignored, simply because they were anti-Trump and because they gave good tweet. Now that they’ve all pretty much shown their true natures—again—one would think that their supporters would re-evaluate that support. Some are, I am sure. But many others are refusing to face this reality. In this regard, they’re functionally no different than hardcore Trump supporters, are they? Think I’ll take a few laps, now…
I don't think it was solely Dems who wanted to give $$$ to the 'good' republicans who donated to TLP. They got a lot of GOP NT money, too.