Kentucky’s red results were affected by viral disinformation that will live beyond Trump
Andy Beshear’s gubernatorial victory in 2019 gave hope that, even in beet red Kentucky, there might be room for Democratic inroads. Well, 2020 crushed that hope. Donald Trump won by 27 points, slightly below his 2016 30 point margin. Mitch McConnell beat Amy McGrath by 20, and Andy Barr prevailed over Josh Hicks by six times his margin of victory in 2018. Republicans added 10 seats to their ownership of the legislature. Not one Republican incumbent lost. It was emblematic of the Republican landscape across the country.
Three factors seem at play here: Libertarianism on steroids, pathological partisanship, and a growing reliance on conspiracy mongers as one’s default source of information.
A major issue that drove Republican success across the state was the governor’s restrictions that he imposed to combat COVID-19. At a time when the virus is reaching new levels of cases and hospitalizations, Kentuckians are more resentful of perceived impositions on their freedom than they are with protecting the public health. Consequently voters overwhelmingly awarded Republican office holders who cynically criticized the governor and even joined lawsuits to sabotage the public-spirited bans that he had ordered.
This says everything one needs to know about the state of political culture in the Commonwealth. It is the very antithesis of what the word “commonwealth” signifies – a civic consciousness that is concerned with the public welfare and the greater good beyond one’s personal preferences.
On Election Day, the vast majority of Kentucky voters, rote-like, hit the “Republican” button for whomever happened to be on the descending lines beneath that designation. What is there to consider beyond “Republican?” Nothing one hears or reads on talk radio, Fox News, or social media. Who needs to consider that Mitch McConnell and Andy Barr have been trying to take away your medical care for the past decade? Even as COVID-19 was raging and causing thousands of small businesses to close and costing the jobs of tens of thousands and imperiling the state budget from having the revenue to sustain education, health care providers, police and fire protection, McConnell and Barr opposed legislation which the U.S. House had passed, providing critical aid to unemployed renters, businesses and states. McConnell resisted pleas to bring the Senate back to Washington to take up the legislation. He had a court to pack.
The most alarming development is the growth of conspiracy-mongering among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. A certain level of conspiracy-stoking has infested Republican culture for some decades, reaching back to the John Birch society in the 1950s. What has changed is the advent of the elaborate media sphere that the Radical Right has built since the 1990s. The advent of social media has enabled them to digitize this insidious discourse to poison the minds of their listeners toward institutions and politicians, especially Democrats. Donald Trump’s advent has normalized this conspiracy mania and given it a standing as never before.
The viral ascent of the #BidenCrimeFamily hashtag this past October shows all too well how a despicable libel can quickly rise from the netherworld of conspiracy-mongering to become a major component of Republican campaigning. President Trump and his surrogates increasingly trumpeted the allegedly sordid details of #BidenCrimeFamily# to all their followers. The ignominious irony of all this is that the accusations represent a deflection onto Biden of what is eminently true of Trump and his family.
How do we break the hold of this malevolent enterprise on such a broad portion of society? Some better regulation of social media would seem to be an obvious place to start. Twitter showed the way during recent months, even to the point of inserting a disclaimer above certain tweets from the White House. Much more needs to be done, if we are to root out this disinformation which has so seriously corroded our democracy, dependent as it is on truth to remain functional.
No one has waged a war on the truth as has Donald Trump, who has become the conspiracy monger-in-chief. His days as president may be numbered, but the evil of which he has been such a willing provoker will long outlive his presidential term if we fail to address the disinformation crisis that he has had such a large role in creating.
Robert Emmett Curran is Professor of History Emeritus from Georgetown University. He lives in Richmond.