In the midst of the Capitol Hill riots on January 6th, MSNBC contributor Claire McCaskill was asked to comment on Senator Josh Hawley, who defeated her in the 2018 Missouri Senate race, and was then leading efforts to overturn the 2020 Presidential election. McCaskill told anchor Nicolle Wallace of her previous hesitance to attack a former political opponent, a notion she now sees as “quaint,” before accusing Hawley of compromising not only his integrity, but “the national security of this country.”
Since her crushing loss to Hawley in 2018, many of the accusations McCaskill lobbed at her then opponent have proven true, especially Hawley’s raw lust for power. His attempts at economic populism have failed to hide his titanic self-centeredness and clear disdain for democracy, and in McCaskill’s words, Hawley has “more ambition than common sense,” a sentiment with which more and more of the Senator’s constituents and peers are in agreement. Missouri newspapers and members of Congress are now calling for Hawley to resign or be removed; his campaign donors are fleeing or requesting refunds; and the image of Hawley flashing his clenched fist to a crowd of conspiracy-addled protesters has come to define January 6th’s riots.
So how did Claire McCaskill, an incumbent seeking re-election in a wave year, lose to this obvious fraud? And why is she now a fan favorite among MSNBC’s talking heads?
A question of credibility
Since 2016, the ostensible “Fox News for the left” has become home to an increasing number of anti-Trump conservatives and moderate Democrats. Rather than push for a brighter future, the network has helped create what Jeet Heer of The Nation calls an “ancien régime” resistance: The MSNBC pundits pine for a return to the days of Never Trump Republicans collaborating with McCaskill style Democrats. Both of these groups proved to be electoral losers, but that didn’t prevent MSNBC from seeking out their opinions on how to win elections.
In the aftermath of Democrats’ down-ballot losses in 2020, McCaskill credited Republicans with scooping up potential Democratic voters turned off by cultural issues, such as the rights of "transsexuals." She faced swift backlash online (McCaskill later apologized, citing fatigue) including from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who asked, "Why do we listen to people who lost elections as if they are experts in winning elections?"
Ocasio-Cortez went on to note that while McCaskill lost in 2018, a ballot measure to overturn the state's right to work law passed with a two-thirds majority.
During that race, McCaskill strategically held back her most strident opinions about Donald Trump, for fear of alienating voters in a state that supported the 45th President by nearly 20 points. McCaskill also tried to distance herself from progressives like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders during an interview on Fox News, and ran ads denying her association with “crazy Democrats.” Her bet didn’t pay off, and Hawley cruised to victory, despite being outspent more than 3 to 1.
After her defeat, McCaskill continued to aim criticism at the left, expressing bafflement at the newfound celebrity of Ocasio-Cortez, and proclaiming that “free stuff from the government does not play well in the Midwest.”
But as Waleed Shahid of Justice Democrats was quick to point out, that must have been strange news for Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, two candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America who won big in Michigan and Minnesota. McCaskill’s assertion grew even more dubious this past summer as Cori Bush, another far-left candidate, won in McCaskill’s backyard, unseating longtime St. Louis Congressman William Lacy Clay. Two years earlier, the now-deposed longtime rep had a critique of his own for McCaskill after her defeat.
“To me, this was a winnable race,” Clay told McClatchy in 2018. “I’m truly sad that my friend Claire ran the campaign that she did that failed to produce any real enthusiasm or engagement with urban voters.”
Another theory for how to win
Like her Republican colleagues at MSNBC, McCaskill’s political credentials deserve scrutiny beyond her single loss to the Trumpist GOP.
As The Intercept’s Ryan Grim has argued, in many recent races where moderates won in red districts and states, they’ve done so when just about anyone with a “D” next to their name could get elected. Grim, the author of “We’ve Got People,” a chronicle of the Democratic civil wars of the past 30 years, notes that many major moderate victories came amidst mass discontent for Republicans resulting in wave elections. In other instances, centrists won in red places by facing uniquely weak opponents.
For McCaskill, she benefited from both: she was initially elected in the 2006 anti-Bush blue wave and won her second term after spending nearly $2 million on ads meant to help Todd Akin—a fringe candidate and gaffe machine—win the Republican primary. Much of the same could be said of ex-Senator Doug Jones, who won a special election in Alabama in 2017 with the help of both the anti-Trump bump and by facing an opponent who was an accused child molester. In either case, evidence that the candidate’s moderation was the x-factor in flipping a state from red to blue is thin at best.
For the left, the lesson is clear: campaigns focused on stressing conservative Democratic qualities aren’t inherently more likely to win, so it’s time to try different tactics. Many on the left are pointing to Ocasio-Cortez's midwestern "Squad" members as an example.
While the Biden campaign eschewed typical door-to-door canvassing, Omar and Tlaib—who were both effectively re-elected by winning their respective primaries—carried on with fervent grassroots organizing in the general election. Newly elected "Squad” member Jamaal Bowman believes it was this devotion to reaching core Democratic constituents—non-white, urban, and working-class—that pushed Biden over the top in both Minnesota and Michigan.
Breaking the #resistance bubble
On the same day of the Capitol riots, McCaskill was again discussing Hawley’s misdeeds, this time with MSNBC anchor Brian Williams. Williams wrapped up the segment by suggesting Hawley would soon “intimately get to know the men and women of the Lincoln Project,” the Republican anti-Trump PAC.
It was a fascinating, if quickly forgotten moment: In a single MSNBC segment, a losing Democrat opined to a once disgraced anchor, who then gave a wink and a nod to Republican operatives, many of whom helped elect the same Bush-era neoconservatives once skewered nightly on that very network. As Maria Bustillos pointed out at Columbia Journalism Review, MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace, with whom McCaskill also spoke that day, not only served in the Bush administration but worked on the infamous Florida recount in 2000.
One can hardly blame progressives for wondering: why is it that when moderates and Republicans lose to the very worst of the far right, they get TV gigs and more chances to run (Kentucky Senate candidate Amy McGrath previously lost a House race—this year, she raised more than $88 million campaigning to the right of Mitch McConnell), but when the left delivers victories, Democrats are quick to declare their strategy dead on arrival?
It's a fair question—just don’t expect to hear the answer on MSNBC.
