The Lady of the Lake
There were a huge amount of important results in the recent Midterm election. Democrats holding onto control of the Senate is high on the list, along with almost holding the House. Ensuring that someone as incompetent as Herschel Walker doesn’t get into the Senate may be as critical – though it’s not officially a result yet (though seems likely). Defeating Mehmet Oz, who has no business being a U.S. Senator based solely on being a TV snake oil salesman, was important, too. And it was important to defeat virulent racist and insurrectionist Doug Mastriano.
But near at the very top of my personal list – maybe a close second only to Democrats holding the Senate and almost the House – was to see Kari Lake get defeated in her run for governor of Arizona.
Kari Lake seriously concerned me, even more than Ron DeSantis does. She’s an attractive candidate, who knows how to handle being on camera and speaks very well. And is a delusional, fascist demagogue – who was being positioned as the new face of the Republican Party. Someone who was possibly seen as a Republican nominee as Vice President in 2024 – just a heartbeat from becoming President.
And calling her a delusional, fascist demagogue is a polite, surface description.
In fact, I’m going to turn the platform over to MSNBC reporter Vaughn Hillyard who appeared on Morning Joe yesterday. Hillyard, who is from Arizona and covered the race there for the past year, was down in Mar-a-Largo to cover Trump’s announcement that night and therefore part of the show’s discussion about what Trump might saw about his anticipated run again for the White House. But at one point, he interrupted the conversation by asking, “Can I say something about Kari Lake, you guys? Would that be okay?” And then a year of being diplomatic found an outlet to finally vent, and he unloaded on her for almost the next five minutes (minus some brief time for Joe Scarborough to ask a question).
“In the final week of her campaign,” Hillyard eventually noted, “who did she campaign alongside? She campaigned alongside Steve Bannon, she campaigned alongside one of the chief promoters of 'Pizzagate,' she campaigned alongside an individual who promoted the notion of a war on white people, she campaigned alongside state Sen. Wendy Rogers, who just earlier this year was here in Florida speaking at a white nationalist conference, somebody who frequently spews antisemitism. This is an individual who just last week called her Democratic opponent a pervert, this is an individual who suggested there should be perp walks for elections officials, criminal charges for individuals who oversaw Covid response in Arizona” – and Hillyard was just getting warmed up.
Here's the video, he starts around the 50-second mark.
That’s Kari Lake – but only in brief. And she was being positioned to be a heartbeat from the presidency in the near future.
Yes, I know that Ron DeSantis is moving towards running for president and could get the GOP nomination and win. And he’s even more deeply fascist than Lake. But Lake is plenty fascist enough on her own – and truly delusional or as deep a pandering liar as Trump. And perhaps an even more appealing candidate than DeSantis because, on the surface, she appears more benign.
So, I was on edge the whole campaign and utterly overjoyed by her loss. I wrote on social media that “All those people who printed up millions of ‘Trump-Lake 2024’ bumper stickers and t-shirts now have boxloads of them sitting in the warehouse.”
A couple of friends mentioned that they weren’t as sure that she still won’t be a vice presidential candidate with Trump, should he get the nomination. I said I thought it was deeply unlikely -- because she's a loser now, and that’s the very worst thing in the world to Trump. She can deny all she wants that she lost (like Trump does...), but in his eyes she lost. Never mind the twisted reality that he lost, too. Self-denial is a powerful drug. But it's non-transferable. She lost, she's a loser, she's out. While I suppose there’s a sliver of a thread that Trump is crazy enough to want her as his running mate because she’s pretty, I'm as close to certain she’s out because she’s a loser as I could be.
This doesn’t mean she’s done with politics. She could run for the Senate or the House. But for now, she’s lost. She’s not going to be governor of Arizona. She’s not the new face of the Republican Party. And she’s not going to get any less delusional. And if she does run again, it will be tied to her delusion, conspiracy theories, election denial and losing the governorship. That’s a high hurdle to get past. Not impossible, but it will always be tied to her, whatever she does.
And for now, she lost. She will not be governor. She will not be the GOP’s new face. She will not be the 2024 VP nominee. She will not be a heartbeat from the next presidency.
O joy!!
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