Bobby notes a New Republic report on how most of the people Tulsi Gabbard endorsed and campaigned for lost. There’s a Twitter thread from a left-wing organization showing all the people Tucker Carlson promoted on his show who lost. It’s certainly fair to notice this and recall the limits of the power of endorsements and promotion in general, and specifically by Gabbard and Carlson. But it is also asking the wrong question, just as it is misguided to judge Donald Trump’s endorsement record by counting as wins all the safe-seat House Republican incumbents he backed.
Endorsements of general-election candidates are, ultimately, statements about which party should win an election. Of course, particularly when it comes to allocating scarce time on the trail, endorsers try to strike a balance between backing candidates they personally support, backing candidates in close races who need the help, and backing people who might owe them useful favors later. But if you believe in the cause of the party as a whole, you are more likely to back some losers in competitive races because those are the people most in need of a boost. So, it’s not really a black mark against Gabbard, or Nikki Haley, or Ron DeSantis, or Glenn Youngkin, or Trump that they supported people who lost competitive races in a year when Republicans lost competitive races — any more than it is a victory for Trump that he padded his record of endorsements by blessing a bunch of people who won non-competitive races.
The far more important question is whom you support in contested primaries — do you have the influence to help people win their primary, and if so, do your primary endorsees tend to win in the fall? I’ll return to that question regarding Trump another day, but it really says nothing about Gabbard’s October arrival on the campaign trail.