No good deed goes unpunished as Meijer loses primary to Gibbs in Michigan

Representative Peter Meijer voted to impeach The Former Guy because of his role in the attempted self-coup, the final act of the effort to overturn the 2020 election. That was the right thing to do, but Meijer paid for it last night, as WOOD-TV reported Rep. Peter Meijer concedes to John Gibbs in primary.


WOOD-TV only had "Aug. 3, 2022" for the video description, so I'm quoting the description for the equivalent video by 13 On Your Side: John Gibbs defeats Rep. Peter Meijer in primary election. "After a single term in the United States Congress, Peter Meijer has conceded the primary election for Michigan's 3rd Congressional District to challenger John Gibbs." I have two things to say about this result. First, as I wrote in Colbert and Meyers take closer looks at replacing Liz Cheney and Arizona audit last year, "this fight is not over conventional ideas of left and right. Instead, it is about loyalty to Trump, which is odd considering that major American political parties generally move away from losing presidential candidates. Not now — the GOP is sticking closer to Trump than ever." That has become even more true since then. Second, no good deed goes unpunished, especially when it involves standing up to TFG.

WDIV/Click on Detroit looked at many of the major primary contests last night in two segments the station uploaded to its YouTube channel this morning, beginning with Breaking down results from the 2022 Michigan Primary Election.

Michigan held its 2022 primary election on Tuesday, Aug. 2.

Again, the effect TFG has on Republican politics cannot be ignored, both in the contest for the GOP nominee for Governor of Michigan and in the Third Congressional District, where Gibbs beat Meijer. Second, I am not so sure that Rashida Tlaib is as liberal as she's being made out. She's part of "The Squad," which the following image from Voteview shows is not as far left as they are portrayed.

As I originally described in a tweet and reproduced on Pinterest, "The Squad's isolation from the rest of the Democratic Caucus is even more apparent in two dimensions. They're way down and to the right of most of the party. Down is also 'liberal,' but not in the way everyone else is." If Janice Winfrey had gotten the nomination and then into Congress, Voteview very likely would have scored her votes as being to the left of Tlaib's and the rest of "The Squad."

Speaking of Winfrey, long-time readers should not be surprised I take a dim view of her performance as Detroit City Clerk. Here's what I wrote in The party starts as Michigan recount begins as ordered.

That a third of precincts in Detroit may be ineligible for a recount is not good news for anyone having their hopes up that this recount will change the result of the election. If anything, Trump's lead may increase because of it. It also makes me even less enamored of both Janice Winfrey, the Detroit City Clerk, and Cathy M. Garrett, the Wayne County Clerk. Neither one of them appears to be running a tight ship, or otherwise these kinds of irregularities would happen so frequently.

That still seems to be true, six years later. No surprise, I voted for Tlaib.

I'm not surprised that Haley Stevens beat Andy Levin. While I don't live in the 11th Congressional District, my IP address does, so I've been seeing far more ads for Stevens than for Levin, indicating that her campaign and the outside groups supporting her vastly outspent her. It paid off. I'm not sad, as I voted for Levin's primary opponent in 2018, but voted for him in the general election in both 2018 and 2020. I'm not particularly a fan of political dynasties and I'm not shedding a tear over the apparent end of this one.

My last observation on the results is about my neighbor John James handily winning the GOP primary one county over from where he lives, at least for now. I'm not surprised that he won, only by the margin. As I wrote five years ago, "Impressive. The man has a future in politics, even if it won't be in the U.S. Senate."

WDIV/Click on Detroit continued its analysis in Michigan Primary Election 2022: Pollster Richard [Cz]uba weighs in on results.


Not only did TFG go after Meijer, the DCCC did as well, running ads "attacking" Gibbs as too extreme in the hopes that doing so would make him more attractive to the right-wing of the Republican Party so they would vote for him. On the one hand, that's smart politics, as it makes the seat easier for Hillary Scholten to win in November. On the other, it's punishing a holdout for decency and democracy in the GOP by removing him from Congress. Sigh. It worked last night, but I hope it doesn't backfire in November.