For the Love of God, Stop Saying Elections Are “Rigged”
California’s Senate primaries hint at a growing, unwelcome trend in progressive politics.
Senator Diane Feinstein’s death was as unfortunate as it was expected. Following a nearly two-month bout with shingles, the 90-year-old senator from California — whose growing health concerns and alarming memory issues were an open secret on Capitol Hill for years— passed away last October due to complications from the disease. This season, California’s primaries saw candidates vying both to fill out the remainder of Feinstein’s final term, and to cinch the seat for the next six years.
On Super Tuesday, Burbank congressman Adam Schiff won that primary — kind of. California’s ballot this year had two choices: one for filling out the remainder of the term, and another for serving the six years thereafter. California also, notably, uses a Jungle primary system, so the top two vote-getters regardless of party proceed to the general election. Steve Garvey, a former Padres first baseman and the leading Republican nominee for Senate, won the primary for Feinstein’s unexpired term, beating Schiff by about 200,000 votes, but the full term vote saw Schiff ahead by 20,000, and in deep blue California — a state Biden won by nearly 5,000,000 votes in 2020 — Schiff is more than likely to clench the Senate seat come November.
More interesting than November’s party-line face-off, however, was the infighting among Tuesday’s Democratic party candidates. Battling two progressive challengers — representatives Katie Porter of Orange County and Barbara Lee of Oakland — Schiff, who rose to political stardom as the leader manager on Trump’s first impeachment, more than doubled Porter’s votes (and tripled Lee’s). Schiff’s spending advantage was notable: Politico reported that by late February, Schiff’s supporters had spent almost $44.8 million in ads, while Porter’s had shelled out only $18.6 million. Porter blamed money for her loss, even going so far as to claim that “an onslaught of billionaires spending millions to rig” the election were the source of progressive disappointments in Tuesday’s primaries.
This is not the first time a notable progressive has blamed spending on an unsuccessful primary: Nina Turner, an Ohio state senator and surrogate to Bernie Sanders’ campaigns in both 2016 and 2020, attacked the "evil money" that funded Shontel Brown’s 2022 bid for Ohio’s 11th district. Some (maybe questionably) attacked Turner’s comments as anti-semitic; but more astounding was the fact that, despite an influx of ‘billionaire money,’ Turner actually out-raised Brown by $2.5 million. Couple that with Brown’s national-level recognition and 11th-district experience, and Turner seemingly had no one but herself to blame.
In elections, while there’s often a strong correlation between money and winning, money alone isn’t usually enough to make or break a campaign. Clinton out-raised Trump two-to-one; look how that turned out. Money is often just an indicator of who people expect to win: why, in the end, would you want to back a losing horse?
Even if money was a strong factor in deciding elections, however, claims of “rigging” among prominent Democrats seem both pragmatically stupid and politically naive. On the one hand, progressive candidate’s attacks on large donors and “dark money” campaigns undercut otherwise valid attacks on Republican candidates, many of whom have fallen off the deep-end of outright election denialism. It’s hard for Democrats to make a convincing case on Republican threats to democracy when they themselves seem open to questioning the results. It also — and perhaps more troublingly — betrays a flaw in the mindset of many progressives, who see their problem not with voters, but with big-money interests and the Democratic ‘establishment.’ In reality, progressive policies are just not as popular as many make them out to be: while issues like universal healthcare might poll well, the way these questions are asked can often lead to massive swings between perceived and actual support. In competitive races, progressives struggle not because ‘Jewish money’ rigs elections, but because people simply don’t want to vote for them.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/results/2024/03/05/california-senate-primary/
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