Tuesday was a bad night for two kinds of candidates who at first blush had nothing in common with one another.
Alex Vindman was supposed to have one of the most valuable résumés in Democratic politics. He’s not just a decorated officer, but he came to national prominence for testifying against Donald Trump in the first impeachment. In the years since, he’s been a regular figure in the progressive media circuit and has become something of a certified hero of “The Resistance.” The DNC hand-picked him and provided a national fundraising machine in support, which helped him raise sixteen times as much money as his primary opponent, Angie Nixon. On Tuesday night’s Florida, he lost to the DSA Senate candidate by twelve points.
On the other side of the aisle, the era’s other most valuable credential was failing at the same time. Incumbent Rep. Cory Mills lost his Florida primary despite Trump’s endorsement, as did Catalina Lauf, who was running for Byron Donalds’s open seat. Megan Degenfelder also got the once-valuable Trump nod, but lost her run for governor of Wyoming. Trump saw some of this coming, as he had already left Mills off his final Florida endorsement list just before the election results that saw all of them lose.
For roughly the last decade, one party has rewarded the politicians who most bravely fought Trump, while the other rewarded those who got his blessing. Voters in both parties revealed on Tuesday that arrangement has largely run its course.
The details of the Vindman loss are almost too absurd to believe. Not only did he exponentially outraise his opponent, but he still lost 56 to 44. Even more embarrassing? He finished election night with roughly eight million dollars still in his account per reports, which he mostly banked for a general election he never reached. The race was such a foregone conclusion that nobody bothered to poll it. Miami-based Axios reporter Marc Caputo, who lives in a household of registered Democrats, revealed on Morning Joe that he never received so much as a text from the campaign, calling it perhaps the worst statewide effort he has ever seen in Florida.
So Vindman ran a terrible campaign, which might be true, but it also misses the point. All that money rested on a tired assumption: that Alex Vindman himself was the product that would turn out the vote. His testimony, the uniform, and the confrontation with Trump and the (then) MSNBC celebrity that came with it. His campaign never bothered to make an argument because everyone involved believed the résumé would make it for them. Voters were left less than impressed.
Vindman’s defeat was not an outlier after a bad summer for an entire class of “The Resistance Candidates™.”
Rep. Dan Goldman served as lead counsel for the first impeachment, ran with the endorsement of Governor Kathy Hochul, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and a raft of unions behind him. He lost his June primary 64 to 36 to the Mamdani-endorsed Brad Lander. And one of America's most recognizable anti-Trump personalities, George Conway, launched his campaign on the anniversary of January 6, spent $ 5.7 million, and collected roughly 6,200 votes. That adds up to more than $ 900 per vote and a shocking fifth-place finish given his punditry fame.
Nate Silver called it a rough stretch for “Heroes of the Resistance 1.0,” and he was being kind. The Resistance spent years turning opposition to Trump into a political identity and lucrative fundraising machine. But voters now see it as a line on a dated résumé.
But a more surprising development from Tuesday worked in parallel, but on the right. Mills had the thing Republican candidates spent ten years begging, groveling, and reinventing themselves for: Trump’s endorsement. He lost anyway. Yes, Trump technically abandoned his endorsement just before the voters did, which tells you more than the loss does. A certified MAGA endorsement used to come with rallies, MAGA Inc money, friendly coverage across the MAGA media world, and a president personally invested in proving his judgment infallible. Now, as Dave Weigel put it on CNN, some endorsements arrive with “not a lot of air cover,” a post and a name on a list.
When a candidate looks like a loser, his or her name comes off Trump’s endorsement list, which is precisely what happened to Mills this month. The morning after he lost, Trump posted that he had told his friend to get out of the race, but he wouldn’t listen, and endorsed the man who beat him. Even Trump appears to be seeing the declining value of a Trump endorsement. Weird.
This triad of losses in one night could become a pattern that sends shivers down the spines of current RNC leadership. Newsweek called it the most concentrated set of endorsement defeats of the cycle, and the broader political media reaction reveals even more. Conservative activist Terry Schilling insisted that Trump never should have endorsed Mills, that Gov Ron DeSantis wouldn’t defend him, and Luna and Haridopolos worked openly against him on CNN. Republicans are now saying on television that Trump got it wrong, which is the kind of apostasy that would have ended a career a few years ago, but now gets you booked in prime time!
It’s not all Sturm und Drang for the MAGA set, as Rep. Byron Donalds won his gubernatorial primary comfortably, with Trump’s support. But his political currency doesn’t have to become entirely worthless to stop buying what it used to, as has also happened with the resistance set. Goldman had an Israel problem, Conway ran a vanity campaign, Vindman’s operation was a catastrophe, and none of it explains away all the others. Neither the endorsement nor the résumé is completely worthless, it’s just that neither is sufficient on its own anymore.
Senator Jon Ossoff is the one man who seems to be the outlier in this entire argument. He spent his weekend playing straight from the resistance playbook by calling the president a draft-dodging crook, and mocking his relationship with “sylphlike” aide Natalie Harp. The White House called him out in public, giving his insults not just more news coverage, but also revealing which subjects are most sensitive. Maybe my report of the Resistance’s death is greatly exaggerated.
There is a clear distinction between Ossoff’s campaign style and the resistance losers above (apologies, but it’s an accurate descriptor!) Voters are no longer impressed with politicians just because they fought Trump seven years ago. But it doesn’t mean they’re also done rewarding politicians who are fighting him now. In other words, “resistance,” as a noun, is fading. But as an active verb? It’s doing quite well, thank you. Whereas Vindman’s campaign value prop was that he resisted Trump in his first term, Ossoff is doing it now, and in the same bare-knuckled manner that Trump scraps.
Democrats used to be able to just show voters the scars from their brutal fights with Trump and get nods of approval and votes. Republicans would simply show voters their endorsement or a photo at a MAGA rally. Both of which were sort of like showing off medals from a great political battle that started in 2016.
On Tuesday, voters in both parties looked at the medals and asked the most dangerous question in politics. What have you done lately?