Kari Lake is barking at the moon

| 9:00 pm EST November 19, 2022
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Kari Lake came close to winning the race for Governor of Arizona, and if she had, it would have been devastating for the people in the state. But, partly because so many of you around the nation put in the work by donating or volunteering for Democratic candidate Katie Hobbs, Lake lost.

All along, Lake vowed that if she was declared the loser of the election, she would just insist it was “rigged” and declare herself the winner instead. Sure enough, that’s what she’s now dong – and just as I predicted, it’s getting her absolutely nowhere.

That’s because, strange as it seems that we even have to discuss such a concept these days, losing an election and then declaring yourself the winner doesn’t somehow make you the winner. It doesn’t do anything for you.

There are a few reasons Republican candidates do this kind of thing these days. One is ego; they don’t want to have to admit to themselves that they lost. Another is that there is a fair amount of money to be fundraised from gullible right wing rubes just by pretending to be contesting the result.

But there’s yet another angle that doesn’t get talked about much. When someone like Kari Lake spends the entire election threatening to yell “rigged” if she loses, she’s trying to get folks on our side will say “Oh no, even if we beat her it’ll still be a mess and we’re doomed either way!” This kind of talk only ever ends up suppressing the Democratic vote, because people are less likely to go the extra mile to win an election if they’re being told that the result will suck for their side no matter what.

But at some point during the 2022 election cycle, our side just collectively decided to stop taking these types seriously. Once we stopped cowering to Kari Lake and other election deniers, they could no longer suppress the vote just by scaring our side into paralysis. And sure enough, election-denying Republican candidates were the biggest losers of the midterms.

So yeah, Kari Lake is still insisting she won the race for Governor of Arizona. But she’s not magically going to become Governor of Arizona because of it. Katie Hobbs is Governor-elect and will take office on the date she’s supposed to, and Lake will just be barking at the moon while no one listens. We took her power away not only by defeating her in the election, but also by loudly laughing in her face when she threatened to somehow magically make herself the winner if she lost.