In 1590 the French proverb, “Comme on faict son lict, on le treuve,” was first coined. It translates roughly to “As one makes one’s bed, so one finds it.”
Over time, the phrase has evolved to “You’ve made your bed, now lie in it,” and is commonly used as a retort to people who complain about problems that they have brought upon themselves. While Democrats have enjoyed a moment of blissful schadenfreude over the fact that Republicans now have to deal with George Santos, the GOP congressman-elect from New York recently exposed as a fabulist who has lied about every relevant detail in his CV—it’s the Democrats who need to reflect on how they were beaten in a blue state by a sentient piece of cardboard.
Yes, Santos is a fraud. He lied about everything from his religion (first claiming to be the descendant of a Holocaust survivor, while now claiming to be Jew-ish), to his college education (he doesn’t have one), his employment history (he didn’t work for Citigroup or Goldman Sachs, but he knows people who worked with them), and his real estate portfolio (he does not own 13 properties, in fact he doesn’t own a single one).
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But as the circular firing squad on social media wanders aimlessly in search of a scapegoat, it’s past time we as a society come to the uneasy realization that we made our bed, and now we have to lie in it. George Santos is a cultural product of our time—one of political and media mediocrity, where everybody is to blame, which not only fostered an environment where a fraud like him could win a seat in the United States House of Representatives, but facilitated it.
On the Democratic side, it was malpractice all around. Santos did not fall from the sky; he ran (and lost) against Long Island Rep. Tom Suozzi for the same congressional seat two years ago. One would assume the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), whose chair was from New York, had a thick binder of opposition research on Santos from the 2020 race that it could dust off this time around. But if that opposition research existed, it wasn’t successfully placed.
Congressional Democrats had the most at stake in the Santos election and the party’s failure to do basic research on a candidate running in a seat as important as NY-3 is mind boggling. Making the situation worse, Santos is from Nassau County, which also doubles as the New York State Democratic Party chairman’s backyard. And then there’s the Robert Zimmerman campaign—which lost to Santos in the 2022 general election, which claims it knew Santos was a fraud, but couldn’t get the press to write about it. Huh? Even if that is true, they could have run television ads and taken their case directly to the public.
Sadly, none of this is surprising coming from a party with no bench or coherent message, and which spent much of the election cycle trying to convince voters that the uptick in violent crime they were seeing was a figment of their imagination. And while Dems held onto control of the Senate, we shouldn’t talk ourselves into believing it’s because of our tactical political ingenuity or the popularity of our candidates. Rather, in large part, it’s because the candidates the other team put up were so vile.
On the Republican side, the fact that Santos succeeded in becoming the party’s nominee is sadly par for the course these days. This is, after all, a party that punishes those who uphold the constitution while rewarding conspiracy theorists and serial liars with endorsements and millions of dollars in campaign funds. While some Republicans have called for an investigation into Santos (in arguably the most promising sign to date that Trump no longer has a stranglehold on the party), GOP leadership has responded with a silence that’s deafening, a tacit acknowledgement that this is who they are.
And then there’s the media. While Democrats should have been more effective in pushing opposition research, in theory the press should have been able to uncover it themselves: it’s called reporting. The press’s job is to inform the public of information about would-be elected officials. In an election, that means acting as unbiased referees between campaigns, including vetting candidates' backgrounds, fact-checking their statements and calling foul.
Back in April, The Daily Beast published a deep dive on a Ponzi scheme run by Santos’ previous employer, stating that “one fact about Devolder-Santos has eluded scrutiny.” It turns out there were many more facts that eluded scrutiny. Long Island’s local newspaper, Newsday, had four congressional races to cover; two of them helped flip control of the House. And yet, none of their reporters uncovered this basic information. And while NThe New York Times ultimately broke the story, they did it on Dec. 19, six weeks after the election.
The political news media dropped the ball by missing all the flashing red warning lights whirring around Santos’ campaign. Republicans, of course, failed to vet another ridiculous candidate—although, to be fair, a cypher like Santos won’t even rank among the absolute worst GOP members of Congress.
But Democrats, who lost the House by losing seats to Republicans in the New York City suburbs need to confront their failures: the lack of effective oppositional research, the mangling of political messaging, and the inability to convince the public that their candidate was a better bet for their interests in Washington than… George Santos.
You can’t solve a problem until you’ve admitted it is one.
