Who stole elections?
Trumpian Republicans can't seem to get this phrase out of their heads: "stolen elections."
And no wonder. For more than two years, President Trump has ranted, baselessly, about election fraud.
He predicted voter fraud for his expected 2016 loss. He trotted the words out again and used them when he unexpectedly won with electoral votes and needed an excuse for why he didn't win the popular vote.
Now, as the true ramifications of the mid-term elections' surging Blue Wave grow - it is the biggest wave since Watergate - the president is crying wolf again, tweeting that people in the Sunshine State voted, walked around the block, changed their shirt and voted again.
Maybe he's right. Not so much about fraud, but about "stolen elections."
What he's missing is the fact that he's the elections thief in this midterm that jettisoned at least 39 GOP representatives and candidates, giving Democrats solid control of the House of Representatives. So far, the GOP has a net gain of one in the Senate. Several political races still are being tallied.
Instead of following the suggestions of GOP leadership, Trump did it his way.
Instead of stumping for GOP candidates by praising their votes on tax cuts and their part in a good economy, he selfishly told crowds those subjects were "boring." He opted instead for hyping fear of an exaggerated migrant caravan, eliciting chants from his shrinking base to thrill his own ego.
Instead of unifying the country, Trump stoked tribalism, and some of those tribes found their own ways to unify and send a now-record number of women and minorities into office - along with a lot of other firsts: the first Muslim congresswoman, the first openly gay man elected governor, the first Somali-American congresswoman, the youngest ever elected congresswoman, the first Native American congresswoman, the first lesbian Native American congresswoman and New Hampshire's first openly gay member of Congress.
Who's the election genius?
While election results were still incomplete, Trump even mocked the Republican incumbents and candidates who didn't "embrace" him.
The president bragged: "I retired some," and he singled out Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican senator who, like our retiring Sen. Bob Corker, had been critical of the president and who chose not to run against a Trumpite primary challenger.
But Trump's retiring of Flake backfired. The Trumpite, Martha McSally, eventually lost to Democrat Krysten Sinema. Thus, Trump "retired" an incumbent Republican and helped elect a Democrat.
Then there was the Nevada Senate race that Trump meddled in, calling the would-be primary challenger of Sen. Dean Heller and persuading him not to primary Heller, whom Trump would endorse. But Heller lost to former Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen, who gave up her House seat to challenge Heller. It gets better: That House seat Rosen left open? Well, Trump pushed the guy who would have primaried Heller, Danny Tarkanian, to seek that open seat. But Tarkanian lost, too, to another Democratic woman named Susie Lee. So in Nevada, Trump engineered two Democratic wins.
In South Carolina, Trump decided Mark Sanford wasn't Trumpian enough and endorsed Katie Arrington who primaried Sanford and won. But that, too, cost the GOP a seat in Congress when Arrington lost to Democrat Joe Cunningham.
In Kansas, Trump went all in for Kris Kobach, his special White House adviser on fake voter fraud. But Kobach lost big to Democrat Laura Kelly. And down-ticket in Kansas, incumbent Rep. Kevin Yoder lost to one of the "firsts" Democratic women, Sharice Davids.
As of Friday morning, there were no longer any Republican Congress members in New England. Likewise, one of the few GOP chunks in California - the Orange County districts and bastions of Reagan politics - had turned decidedly blue.
Who knows what a recount and plethora of lawsuits in a hotly contested Senate race in Florida and the bruising count in the tight governor's race in Georgia will bring. In the Peach State, Trump said the former Democratic minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives - a Yale Law School grad and the first African-American woman to be nominated by a major party for a governorship - wasn't qualified to serve. Voters clearly weren't so sure. Stacey Abrams conceded defeat Friday, but she came within about 17,800 votes to force a Dec. 4 runoff against Secretary of State Brian Kemp.
The President and haunting projections
On the morning after the elections, Trump's mocking included a taunt of Utah's GOP incumbent Rep. Mia Love, whom he said "gave me no love."
When all the votes were counted and she finally did lose her seat Friday to Democratic Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams, Trump likely wished she'd won any way she could - with or without him. Instead, he got another Democratic House member who will now be a part of a new House majority that can renew the closed House probe of the Trump/Russia congressional investigation and look under every rock of President Trump's life and work - from family business dealings to tax returns.
Way to go, Mr. Pres. Every single one of those flips mattered. Even the near misses mattered.
We thank you. As you have bragged over and over: Only you could "fix it."