As a "Conservative" I really enjoy following the Lincoln Project. A group of former Republicans who don't want to be associated with the Party of Trump. They're quite effective. Some have even become Democrats.
Counterpoint: they are useless grifters who did nothing but suck money away from actual Democrats. The Lincoln Project raised $67 million. 93% of Republicans voted for Trump in 2020, up from 90% in 2016.
across an assortment of threads, I've previously linked to several Lincoln Project vids; even if their only Trump skewering impact was to create a waldo warm-fuzzy... seeing their direct impact on Trump and watching him twitter implode was priceless!
the grifter tag seems to have originated from Glenn Greenwald... that preening self-proclaimed progressive (who isn't). Of course that's been propagated many times over by anti-anti-Trump types. And yes, they've raised a shyte-load of money - and spent a ton mostly on Presidential focused ad buys (although, as I read, they did take significant plays into Senate runs across 5 States). And then there's the 'speculation' over
Lincoln Media and where that may go - even though several of the LP members walked away from the
Republican Trump Party, if they, overall, retain their underlying conservative bent, they may end up as a major future irritant to Democrats.
as for the influence of the Lincoln Project, the following opinion piece (from Max Boot) may just be a smattering of factual data with a twist of self-promotion:
Never Trumpers played a critical role in beating him. The numbers prove it.But both the Lincoln Project and Republican Voters Against Trump (RVAT), the other major Never Trump organization, shared with me preliminary data to show that their work actually played a critical role in Biden’s victory. Their numbers are in line with publicly available exit polls showing that nationally 7 percent of 2016 Trump voters and 8 percent of Republican or Republican-leaning voters backed Biden. The share of independent and moderate voters supporting the Democratic nominee also increased from 42 percent of independents and 52 percent of moderates in 2016 to 54 percent of independents and 64 percent of moderates in 2020. Currently, Biden is leading in the popular vote by 3.4 percentage points.
The Lincoln Project contends that 85 percent of the counties it targeted in 10 states moved away from Trump — and that doesn’t even include Arizona, where ballots are still being counted and endorsements from Republicans such as Cindy McCain undoubtedly contributed to Biden’s lead. The Lincoln Project concludes that, across the top battleground states, Biden flipped an average of 6.8 percent of voters who cast a Trump ballot in 2016. Nationally, it believes, 5 percent of voters who voted for a Republican congressional candidate voted for Biden.
In the battleground states, Lincoln Project asserts that 7 percent of 2016 Trump voters switched to Biden in Pennsylvania, 6 percent in Michigan, 7 percent in Wisconsin and 6 percent in Georgia. The swings among independent voters, moderate voters and college-educated White voters away from Trump were even bigger in some cases. Given the narrowness of the outcome in these battleground states (Biden’s biggest margin so far is a 2.6-point win in Michigan), those numbers, if accurate, suggest that Republican and Republican-leaning voters helped deliver the election to Biden.
today's Lincoln Project vid: