Will Sommer writes:

The polls had been predicting doom for his party for weeks, if not months. But as the first election results began rolling in on Tuesday afternoon, pro-Trump pundit Benny Johnson couldn’t help feeling good. Republicans had captured the governorship of Guam by 1,020 votes. Johnson, the right’s most prominent memester, told his fellow kids that control of the island—far closer to Papua New Guinea than to the continental United States—was a massively good omen for Republicans’ midterm hopes.

“An island that knows a lot about blue waves just went Republican!” he said.

The optimism didn’t last. Six hours after the big Guam win, as Democrats piled up electoral victories, Johnson was grimly intoning about the changing racial makeup of Texas. By Wednesday morning, with Democrats looking at a massive House sweep and a minimum of 54 Senate seats, he could no longer pretend Guam was significant at all.

“What happened last night was a meteor strike and an unmitigated disaster,” he said.

By Wednesday evening, having obsessively posted and livestreamed about the election for twenty-four hours, he professed emotional indifference to it all. “Notice how you don’t see any videos of Republicans bursting into tears, weeping and hysterical on social media after the loss?” he declared. “That’s because we have more to live for than party politics.”

Johnson wasn’t alone on his emotional rollercoaster. After seeing their party badly blow the midterms, conservative personalities are currently struggling to process the defeat. Delusion has become disbelief. Disbelief has become despair. And despair has become disgruntlement. Along the way, they are turning on one another. [Continue reading…]