The October surprise is the stunning event that upends an election. The surprise of all time was the financial implosion of 2008, which turned a squeaker between John McCain and Barack Obama into a bout for the ages, making the fatherless waif from the Hawaiian islands our very first nonwhite head of state.
This year, as it went, we had three such surprises. Sept. 18 brought about the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an event stunning but not unexpected. It turned grief into rage on the part of the Democrats when President Trump (not a surprise for any president) replaced her with someone who shared his own views on jurisprudence and not Ginsburg’s.
The Left took this act on his part as a desecration, with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer calling the appointment “illegitimate.” But Trump, on this singular occasion, had actually followed the rules of the game all the way. Despite all the rage, his nominee was a hit with the public, and with the passage of time, would become even more so.
This leads us to surprise No. 2 — the showdown in Georgia, in which the three big elections were tied. The presidential election was not quite tied, but Trump’s narrow loss shocked the whole country. And the voters sent not one but two Senate races into next week’s runoff election.
If “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” as the song goes, he was hardly alone, as the state was immersed from then on in a vast flood of political workers trying to move the state inch by inch in their party’s direction, as Senate control for the next two years was up for grabs.
Complicating the GOP’s fight to hold on to their seats in the Senate were Trump’s attempts to reverse his slim losses in the Electoral College in Georgia and elsewhere, where he pressured state courts and legislators to reverse Biden’s victory. Before this, Trump had put a great stress on the kind of judges he’d pick if he were elected. He was as good as his word in picking conservatives, but imagine his surprise when they were as good as theirs and judged these cases on their merits according to law, not making him their favorites.
And that brings us to surprise No. 3. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whom the Left had dismissed as a pretty face chosen to help keep Trump in office, joined the two other Trump nominees on the Court in killing off Trump’s last-ditch attempt to reverse the result of November’s election. He had assumed, with his favor-based morals, that his promotion of her guaranteed her allegiance. She had assumed she was chosen on merit and implicitly insisted, as she had done explicitly during her confirmation hearings, that her mind was her own. The political world may run on relationships and exchanges of favors, but the legal mind looks at the thing that was done and decides on that basis.
This was the November surprise that Trump hadn’t expected, and it brought all his hopes to an end.
