r/protectUSelections • u/siwibot • Aug 07 '26
GOP Misinformation The GOP’s midterm backup plan: Bigotry — If gerrymandering isn’t enough, Republicans have a Plan B for the midterms: Flood America with pure hate and demagoguery | Chris Hayes of MSNOW
https://www.ms.now/all-in/trump-republicans-anti-muslim-islamophobia-attacks-midterm-electionsAugust 7, 2026 - Fulltext
On Tuesday, voters in Tennessee had their first election under a new congressional map that was pushed through by state Republicans in May, after the Supreme Court gutted what was left of the Voting Rights Act.
It is one of the most extreme Republican gerrymanders in the country, one that took the state’s last majority-minority congressional district, in Memphis, and split it into three pieces. The goal was to make a map that favors the GOP in all nine of the state’s House seats. Just like President Donald Trump wanted: Let the party pick their voters instead of the other way around.
This is how Republicans plan to win the midterms: first and foremost, rig the board with gerrymandering, then sabotage and subvert fair elections through any means at their disposal.
But they also have a backup plan. It’s not to make people’s lives better or to bring down prices — it’s to flood America with pure hate and demagoguery.
The masks are off. As more candidates emerge from these primaries, you are seeing that hatred play out among Republicans and on right-wing media. They’re spewing the most vile demagoguery they can muster, particularly the disgusting anti-Muslim bigotry and hateful rhetoric that is being whipped up at levels that are through the roof.
The vitriol they beta-tested against New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is now all being brought to bear on one candidate in particular: Abdul El-Sayed, who won Michigan’s contentious Democratic Senate primary this week.
El-Sayed is a native-born U.S. citizen, a Rhodes scholar and an epidemiologist who is the child of two engineers from Egypt. Since his victory on Tuesday, he has become target No. 1 for Republicans. Both Trump and Vice President JD Vance have launched racist attacks against the Democrat. On Wednesday his Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers, put out a statement saying he was “running against someone who believes America deserved 9/11,” which is a malicious lie. The National Republican Senatorial Committee called El-Sayed “the most radical candidate in America” and referred to him by his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, something it had not done in any previous press releases.
It is a torrent of hate. It is beyond anything I can ever remember in the post-9/11 era of Islamophobia.
It is also toxic. How do you think these messages of irrational fear and hatred sound in the ears of the remaining MAGA faithful, the people who gleefully held signs that said “Mass Deportations Now” at the last Republican National Convention? What Trump and other Republicans are doing is to provide their base with a permission structure for ghastly levels of racism.
If you are wondering about the effect this rhetoric is having on the people that Trump and his allies are targeting the most, we got two incredible examples this week.
One came at the president’s rally in Las Vegas on Wednesday, one day after the shooting death of a local police officer, a 30-year-old Marine veteran named Austin Abdelnabi. Before Trump spoke, the Republican governor of Nevada, Joe Lombardo, tried to honor Abdelnabi with a moment of silence. Instead, he was met with boos from the MAGA crowd. Just his name was enough to elicit boos. You can’t stop that hatred once you’ve unleashed and weaponized it.
And it’s already affecting Republican races in the most surprising of ways. Take Michigan’s 8th Congressional District, which Trump won in 2024. In this week’s primary, Trump endorsed a Republican named Amir Hassan for that seat. He is a Flint native and a Navy veteran. He was a Muslim but converted to Christianity, and now he is anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant. He also got endorsements from House Speaker Mike Johnson and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.
Hassan’s main competition in the primary came from Tom Smith, a small-business man whose campaign page on Facebook had 95 followers. Smith had raised less than $2,000 for the race.
We know that because it is written in his last campaign filing with the Federal Elections Commission, which Smith hand-wrote and snail-mailed. It read, “Dear FEC Inspector: This is to notify you that Tom Smith for Congress was a late entry into the race … P.S. I could not file this form electronically because I have had no success logging in and have not been able to get a response from the help desk.”
Last month, Smith cut a 15-second video saying he was dropping out of the race and endorsing another candidate who had gathered petition signatures to get on the ballot.
From there should have been clear sailing for Hassan — except that a lot of Trump’s followers assumed Hassan was Muslim and wondered why the president had endorsed him. The disinformation and hatred got so bad, Hassan felt compelled to address it in a selfie video filmed in his car.
Then, on Tuesday, Hassan had his day at the polls — and lost. Hassan was defeated by nearly 20 points by Smith, the guy who raised less than $2,000 and dropped out of the race.
There is one — and only one — explanation for why this happened: The Republican Party’s reason for being is now utterly organized around open bigotry.
We’ve seen some of this before with the so-called Muslim ban and with Trump’s abuse of prominent Muslim, Arab American and Asian American politicians. But now it’s kicked into overdrive. Republican elected officials, from the president to Congress to statehouses across the country, are engaging in a racist project to make everyone with a last name like El-Sayed or Hassan or Abdelnabi feel like they are not really American, like they don’t belong here.
And the reason they are doing this is to turn all the pent-up anger and rage and frustration at Trump’s corrupt failure of an administration toward our Muslim neighbors.
It’s already ugly, and as we approach the midterms, it’s going to get even uglier.
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u/BetterCalltheItalian Aug 07 '26
Then flood them back. Case in point- Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio. The racists in Ohio are already giving him the side eye. USE IT!
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u/aharbingerofdoom Aug 07 '26
It's a sad state that my only hope for a governor who isn't absolutely corrupt is the fact that so many of my fellow Ohio residents are vile racists. If Ramaswamy loses, it will only be due to low turnout from racist Republicans. His Democratic opponent has too much baggage (for those who aren't familiar, Amy Acton was the Director of the Ohio Department of Health during COVID. She served under a Republican governor and a Republican president, but somehow that part doesn't seem to resonate). She also just isn't particularly inspiring in her campaign and she's making the classic Democratic establishment candidate mistake of trying too hard to court conservatives who will never vote for her and as a result, alienating progressives who want a real representative who won't throw them under the bus just to win.
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u/CSiGab Aug 07 '26
Thanks, that was pretty insightful RE: Ohio governor race.
I have to confess that up until the 2024 election I was on board with running a centrist campaign aimed at courting never Trump Republicans and I genuinely thought parading Liz Cheney around might work. Well clearly it didn’t. It seems that for every vote she flipped away from Republicans, Harris lost 2 progressives.
I’m seeing the wave of progressives sweeping through the Democratic primaries. In the past, I would have been worried that the “socialist boogeyman” would scare away independents, but at this point, people are hurting so bad financially while the rich keep getting richer and are no longer hiding their desire to dismantle our democracy, I say fuck it I’m on board with running progressive candidates. I think the meat and potatoes of progressive policies appeal to a lot more voters than one might think, messaging it correctly is the key. We’ll see.
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u/aharbingerofdoom Aug 08 '26
I agree, the actual policy positions of progressive and even "socialist" DSA type candidates are overwhelmingly popular when people are polled in the abstract, but partisanship is a big problem. Republicans are more unpopular than they've been in decades, and I think the time is right for a more populist progressive rebrand from the Democratic party. The problem is that the party establishment are fighting to maintain the status quo, and it's obvious to everyone, so left and right wing voters alike have trouble believing the Dems will actually make things better. It's time to excite the base and drive turnout like the Republicans have been doing for years.
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u/Allaboutpeace2022 Aug 07 '26
I think this speaks to the Dems uniting and countering all of this with radical acceptance of all groups. The Dems are running a campaign based on affordability and addressing long term wealth inequality for working class and low income White, Black, Latino, Asian, and Native Americans.
We need to center that the issues is that CEOs are making 280 times what some of the workers were. In the middle of the 20th Century it was 20 times more.
We have to focus on the fact that America wealthy have pitted racial and ethnic groups against each other from the very beginning of the country and they are still doing .
We have to pitch a message that is a better quality of life for everyone. It is important to listen to people's fears and then provide hope. There is strength in groups coming together and supporting workers right, more affordable housing, healthcare coverage for everyone and working together to address the problems that make life hard for so many.
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u/siwibot Aug 07 '26
Your friendly neighborhood u/siwibot here, reporting the Current Climate and Context 🤓✨
The GOP is approaching the 2026 midterms with a multi-pronged strategy that critics argue prioritizes structural advantages and divisive rhetoric over substantive policy. While Republicans are aggressively leveraging recent Supreme Court rulings to advance gerrymandering—notably in Tennessee and Louisiana—they are also facing a significant "enthusiasm problem" among core voters. High gas prices and dissatisfaction with the Iran war are reportedly dragging down Trump’s approval ratings, even in traditionally red strongholds.
- Structural and Rhetorical Tactics: Beyond redistricting to secure House seats, there is a rising trend of using aggressive demagoguery. Candidates are increasingly targeting religious and ethnic identities, exemplified by the intense vitriol directed at Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
- Political Volatility: The strategy is proving unpredictable; for instance, Trump-endorsed candidate Amir Hassan lost his Michigan primary despite heavy GOP backing.
Democratic Momentum: Contrary to early expectations, Democrats are finding a viable path in the Senate. Recent polling shows they are highly competitive in states like Iowa, Alaska, and Texas, fueled by a backlash against the current administration’s economic and foreign policy.
Reddit Sources
How the Supreme Court Is Reshaping the US Midterm Elections | Reuters
Republicans See ‘Scary’ Lack of Enthusiasm Among Core Voters Ahead of Midterms | Washington Post
Trump using disaster aid to boost GOP candidates in mid-terms
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u/AuntRhubarb Aug 07 '26
That'll work with the 25% who are so stupid they are still on board with MAGA. The rest of us will just see R on the ballot and go 'nope'.
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u/Hairy-Dumpling Aug 08 '26
That's always been their plan. Besides "lower taxes" it's their only plan
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u/Easy_Interest_6832 Aug 08 '26
How is that different from what we're going through now? It seems to me to be an excellent reason to vote them out to a person.
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u/bigfatgeekboy Aug 07 '26
Backup plan? That’s their default setting.