Remembering — and rejecting — the right-wing doomers

It's been more than a week since the 2024 election. Arizona and California are still inexplicably counting ballots, but the results are clear: Donald Trump and the Republicans crushed.

While many commentators have already shared their wish lists and recommendations, now is also a good time to remember the prognosticators who got their predictions terribly wrong.

This time around, the doomers posed a far bigger threat to Trump’s victory than the NeverTrump crowd.

The main offenders were those in the Democratic machine who actually believed their own exaggerations, along with their followers who bought into the crazy leftist rhetoric. Many truly thought Trump was a fascist who would overturn democracy and that Kamala Harris was the next Barack Obama — as if that were somehow a good thing.

Karine Jean-Pierre admitted that this messaging wasn’t meant to be taken seriously and that people are simply expected to forget it. Yet this hasn’t stopped the drama queens from shedding public tears and creating “coping spaces.” Much of this behavior seems performative, but many on the left genuinely fell for the propaganda. As I argue elsewhere, this needs to change, as it not only distorts and polarizes our politics but also perpetuates mental illness.

Another group, less well known, also harbored serious doubts about Trump’s chances. These were the influencers and fringe pundits who had already lost faith in the democratic process and believed the system was rigged beyond repair.

Some of their despair seemed justified, considering the 2020 and 2022 elections. In 2020, Democrats pushed for universal mail-in ballots, changed voting laws, and influenced the news media to promote Joe Biden, who spent much of his campaign in his basement, into the Oval Office. Many pointed to the 20-million vote gap between Biden and Harris as proof of widespread ballot stuffing and fraud in the last election. However, this gap seems to be narrowing daily and can be explained without invoking mass fraud narratives.

The 2022 election, otherwise known as the red wave that never was, also fueled conservative conspiracy theories after candidates with brain damage and those running their own election efforts won. Some blamed poor candidates, like Dr. Oz and Herschel Walker, but it's fair to say something seems off in states like Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada. That said, the 2022 results didn’t exactly signal impending disaster for the American republic or a totalitarian takeover by the left.

When Trump announced his run for president again this year, these right-wing doomers were primed to forfeit before 2024 even began. This wasn’t mere jadedness from some setbacks in the last two elections; these were false prophets telling patriotic Americans to give up on their country and prepare for the worst. In their view, everyone was a communist infiltrator, a traitor, a grifter, or an utter fool. They were telling people that the push to vote early was all a ruse to help Democrats win, that the “Chinese-run” Dominion machines would erase Republican votes, and that “if anyone thinks the Democrats are desperate now, just think of what they’ll do when the election season really starts happening.”

Beyond this, they were predicting mass riots across the country that would plunge the country into a civil war if Trump were to win.

Even though some of this paranoia had a basis in reality, culminating in two assassination attempts, much of it was just intended to demoralize conservatives and attract paid subscribers (“Follow me if you want the truth about this country …”). This time around, the doomers posed a far bigger threat to Trump’s victory than the NeverTrump crowd.

Fortunately, enough Americans turned out to vote anyway. Despite the warnings, some voted early, some mailed in their ballots, and others voted on Election Day. Trump’s lawyers and campaign organizers worked tirelessly to prevent any undue interference. Everything went smoothly, and as some of us predicted, the fallout has been minimal. Americans are ready to move on and look forward to better days.

One of the first orders of business should be to fix the current election system by requiring voter ID, in-person voting, and paper ballots. The next priority should be to purge the doomers and crackpots from the conservative movement.

Currently, they are the biggest obstacle to the conservative movement’s legitimacy and effectiveness. Although they played a role in removing establishment figures from the old GOP, those dinosaurs are rapidly becoming extinct. It’s time to bring new life and optimism to America.