Greg Gianfort beat Rob Quist soundly in the Montana special congressional election. Not even a close contest, in the end. The margin of victory was about six points or over 23,000 votes, despite the fact that Gianfort allegedly assaulted a reporter from the UK Guardian. The candidate took the opportunity to apologize during his Acceptance Speech.
Where is the Democratic wave?
The Montana special election is the latest disappointment for Democrats looking for a wave of wins in special elections to “prove” that President Donald Trump is being repudiated by the voters. A loss in Kansas and a failure to win in Georgia, with a contest going to a runoff, points to a conspicuous lack of a wave insofar as the Democrats are concerned.
Why Gianfort won
The conventional wisdom was that a candidate who physically attacks a reporter the night before an election and is charged with a crime is likely to lose. To be sure, 70 percent of the votes had already been cast in early voting.
At the same time, voters in deep red Montana were not about to be represented in Washington by a cowboy folk singer, nudist, Bernie Sanders supporter who favors high taxes, cutting defense spending, and curtailments on the right to keep and bear arms no matter what the shortcomings of his opponent. The Montana contest was a parallel of the 2016 presidential election. The candidate who won was flawed. The one who lost was worse – much worse.
The meaning of it all
Democrats are already claiming that Quist won a “moral victory” because the Republican candidate had won by 15 points in the 2016 regular election. However, the synonym for moral victory is a loss. Quist is not going to Washington. Gianfort is, at least until he has to deal with the legal consequences of his alleged assault.
The media is also wringing its collective hands about whether it is now “open season” on reporters since Gianforte was apparently not hurt by the alleged assault. Some are already predictably blaming President Donald Trump for creating a “climate” of violence. Trump was thousands of miles away at the NATO summit in Brussels.
Why there is, of course, no excuse for committing violence on a reporter and no one should think that putting someone on the deck is a political winner, the media should engage in a little bit of soul searching and ask themselves, “Why do the hate us.” The answer to that question, if taken to heart, may go a long way toward restoring the media’s tattered credibility going forward.