The Bigot’s Wager

Over the summer and fall, election denial movement figures began promoting a claim that the Chinese Communist Party attempted to rig past elections. This evidence, they argued, would force Donald Trump to declare a national emergency, giving him unprecedented control over elections, including the ability to ban mail ballots and voting machines.

However, these claims have not borne fruit. Instead, the MAGA movement is now resorting to prejudice, including xenophobia, anti-gay slurs, transphobia, and efforts to deport a sitting Congresswoman. This move has been described as "the gutter racism" by an expert on far-right disinformation. While in-person voter suppression may still occur, election denial and suppression efforts have not succeeded in altering the scheduled elections.

The SAVE Act failed to advance in the Senate, and federal attempts to access sensitive voter data have been blocked 27 times nationwide. As the election proceeds as planned, and mail-in ballots remain in use, the MAGA movement is now gambling on the success of "the bigot's wager": that hatred will triumph in place of actual policy positions.

This strategy has been evident in various races, where bigotry has dominated the discourse. For instance, Republicans have suggested that Democrat James Talarico is gay or a mental health patient, while Democrats have been accused of supporting trans girls playing sports. Anti-Muslim bias has also been prominent, with candidates making Islamophobic remarks and even attempting to strip citizenship from Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

The movement's desperation is evident, with John Knefel, a senior writer at Media Matters, describing the last-ditch racism as a sign of the MAGA movement's weakness. The group lacks new, energizing policy options, and their bigotry lacks any coherent translation into a populist message.