On Monday, Missouri senator Claire McCaskill predicted that around 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday, after St. Louis County votes came in, pundits on TV were “going to say, ‘That Claire McCaskill, she’s done it again!’” In reality, McCaskill didn’t need to stay up that long. She delivered a brief concession speech at 10:30 p.m. to a sparsely attended election night party. “Obviously we fell short,” McCaskill told the tearful crowd. “We’ve run a lot of elections together, Missouri and me. My record ends at 22-2. Not a bad record.” Though McCaskill was almost tied with Hawley in the final average of polls, she lost the race by 6 points.
One silver lining, according to McCaskill, is that she could now more freely speak her mind about politics. “I know my mouth gets me in trouble a lot, but believe it or not, I really have had to be kind of careful. Not anymore,” she said to cheers.
It was an odd choice of words. McCaskill hadn’t been careful with her words in the closing weeks of the campaign so much as she had been cynical.
She had taken out a radio ad criticizing “crazy Democrats,” and then went on Fox News last week to distance herself from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. She claimed her vote against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was about campaign-finance law and “had nothing to do with the allegations that were made against” him. Nothing. She would not say whether she regretted supporting Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in 2016.
“Stop them at the border,” McCaskill told Fox News’s Bret Baier when asked about the caravan of central American migrants. “I think the president has to use every tool he has at his disposal and I’ll 100 percent back him up on that.”
At a press gaggle on Monday, NBC pundit John Heilemann asked McCaskill what she’d say to Democrats who think she’s “kind of giving cover to the president’s kind of racist agenda on immigration by the things you’ve said about the caravan.” McCaskill replied: “I’m not going to apologize for saying we should secure our border.” She did note she had voted for immigration reform in the past and said she would need to hold a “hearing” with military leaders to figure out if Trump had ordered too many troops to the border as part of a political stunt.
Trump himself said at an election eve rally that McCaskill’s strategy of calling fellow Democrats crazy was a “genius” campaign move. And if it had worked, many people would be calling it that today.
McCaskill did seem to close strongly, portraying herself as an independent who could work with Republicans. Hawley, by contrast, was content to play to the Republican base by relentlessly focusing on the need to confirm conservative judges and hugging the president. Trump’s final campaign rally, in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, with Hawley included special guest speakers Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Jeanine Pirro.
Even if she ducked one question from this reporter, McCaskill was more open to the press than Hawley. She not only went on Fox News, she held three brief press conferences the day before the election. Hawley, on the other hand, canceled a scheduled appearance on Meet the Press after a mildly negative article came out in the Kansas City Star that questioned the role political consultants played during his tenure as attorney general.
If this had been a football game, it looked like Hawley was playing a “prevent defense” and trying to run out the clock. But any good football fan can tell you the prevent defense is often foolish, especially if the game is close and there’s time left on the clock.
But Hawley ended up being right. McCaskill had squandered the political goodwill she had gained in Missouri with her liberal votes and comments over the years. A week of conservative- or Trump-friendly rhetoric couldn’t change that. And all Hawley needed to do was focus on turning out the base and avoiding any costly gaffes.
As much as armchair-quarterbacks may hate to admit it, sometimes the prevent defense works.
