Why Rachel Maddow's Presidential Election Conspiracy Theory Is Wrong

By Dustin Rowles | TV | August 2, 2024 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | August 2, 2024 |

We live in a time where conspiracy theories have never been more prevalent, and there’s a certain irony to that. The nation’s belief in conspiracy is rooted in the idea that there is some mastermind orchestrating events behind the scenes, but if there’s anything the last decade has proven, it’s that our masterminds are idiots.

Look no further than Elon Musk, one of the richest men in the world, considered by many to be brilliant. That “brilliant” man has not only tanked a social media company — and the $44 billion he overpaid for it — but he’s given into conspiracy theories himself. How could someone that “smart” be so incredibly dumb? Likewise, just look at the guy behind the QAnon bullshit: He basically dropped some random numbers and letters, the MAGA hivemind would try to make sense of it, and he would take credit for whatever meaning they ascribed to his nonsense. That guy is not a bright person. He’s a weirdo who tried to parlay his bullshit into a Congressional seat and came in last (out of 7) in the Republican primary. He is not a mastermind of anything.

Republicans likewise often like to argue that Joe Biden is an old, feeble, senile man but also a great mastermind behind … whatever conspiracy they’ve decided on that particular day. Democrats do it, too. We often argue that Donald Trump has some big, coherent plan, when the man is a blowhard idiot who says whatever he wants but whose cult is so devoted that they’ll try and make sense of what he’s saying. When he decided to make Kamala Harris’s race an issue the other day, for instance, that wasn’t a plan he’s been waiting to execute. He’s just a racist old man who says racist things, and journalists like to make sense of it as though it were a genuine campaign strategy. It’s not. It’s the ravings of a blathering racist who doesn’t like to be questioned by Black women.

Journalists are not brilliant masterminds, either. Not even our favorite ones. Journalists also mess up all of the time, and when they do, the American public often likes to argue that the screw-ups are part of a bigger plan instead of mistakes. “There are no mistakes,” we often like to argue in the context of brilliantly written television shows and political campaigns, and it’s just not true. There are a lot of mistakes, and sometimes, there are lucky guesses that we ascribe prescience to.

Some may remember that I used to write obsessively about Mad Men. I had a weekly feature over on Uproxx called “Reading Too Much into Mad Men,” where I’d try to piece together clues, references, and “Easter Eggs” to make predictions about where the show was heading. I did that for years (some may recall the Sharon Tate theory — that was me!). I spun this incredible, believable theory about how the show would end, and it made so much sense in the context of all of the clues that the show had provided over the years that I was convinced I would be right. A lot of people who read the piece thought it made perfect sense. I went into that finale cocky about my prediction. Meanwhile, my wonderful, hilarious colleague over on Uproxx, Brian Grubb, joked a few weeks before the Mad Men finale that he thought it’d be funny if they ended it on that “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” campaign.

He was right, and I was wrong. I’d never been so professionally disappointed (but also very happy for Brian).

But that’s what we do. We try to make sense of the clues, when sometimes those clues are just a costume designer’s decision to put a character in the same shirt once worn by Sharon Tate.

That brings me to Rachel Maddow. I love Rachel Maddow. Rachel Maddow is brilliant. And Rachel Maddow also likes to try and make sense of politics, but in doing so, Maddow often ascribes logic where there is none. And when it comes to Donald Trump, there’s rarely any logic.

To wit: Rachel Maddow recently popularized this theory that I have been seeing a lot on the Internet lately suggesting that Donald Trump and his campaign are masterminding a strategy to win the White House without winning the most votes. When Rachel Maddow hears Donald Trump say, “I don’t need your votes, I have all the votes I need,” she thinks, “Donald Trump has concocted a brilliant, foolproof plan to cheat his way into the White House.” What she should be hearing is a narcissistic man so full of himself that he believes that millions and millions of people will vote for him rather than for Kamala Harris.

This is a tweet from Donald Trump’s campaign manager yesterday to all the Republicans who are furious with the way that the campaign has gone in the last two weeks. Does this seem like a tweet from a brilliant mastermind?

Interestingly, Maddow also lumps Trump’s statement to a Christian group that they just need to go out and vote this one last time for him to the same theory — but if he’s already fixed the election, then why would he so desperately need the votes of Christians?

In either case, Maddow’s working theory is that MAGA has put into place 70 county election officials across all the swing states, who she believes will throw the election into disarray by not certifying their election results. This is all based on a statement made by a Democratic elections lawyer, Marc Elias. Here’s her theory in full. It’s alarming.

But let’s push a little on that theory. These 70 election officials elected, supported by MAGA voters, are undoubtedly in MAGA counties where the vote count is already going to favor Donald Trump. Any county that elects a MAGA election official is going to elect Donald Trump, so refusal to certify the election results in that county is actually going to create a vote deficit for Donald Trump. That’s a strategy that’s going to backfire.

Likewise, people are freaking out because the Republican in Maricopa County, Arizona, who certified the results in 2020 was defeated this week by a Trump-endorsed candidate in a three-way GOP primary. But that doesn’t mean the Trump-endorsed candidate is going to win the election in November — he still has to face the Democrat, who ran unopposed in the primary in a county where Biden won in 2020. Is Maricopa County likely to elect a MAGA election official who won in a three-way race over a Democrat who ran unopposed?

But even putting that aside, there are safeguards in place when county officials refuse to certify elections. Namely, in most cases, the Secretaries of State can force certification in those counties. This is where the Democrats are in a great position. The Secretaries of State in Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin are all Democrats. The Secretary of State in Pennsylvania is a Republican appointed by Democrat Josh Shapiro, and Shapiro is not going to appoint an election denier. The Secretary of State in Georgia is also a Republican, but he’s the same Republican, Brad Raffensperger, who refused to cheat on Trump’s behalf in the 2020 election. There may be a smattering of election deniers in rural, swing-state counties, but Democrats have been very good about ensuring state elections are not operated by election deniers in swing states.

So, could these 70 election officials in deep-red Trump counties cause some headaches? Absolutely. But they’re not going to single-handedly throw the election into the House of Representatives. That’s just not going to happen. If that is Trump’s plan, he’s an idiot. But it’s not his plan. His plan is to win in the Electoral College, which is why he’s getting so much more impetuous, unhinged, and weird as Kamala Harris begins to take the lead in the polls. He’s scared of losing, and people who have foolproof plans in place to overturn elections are not scared of losing.