The Lincoln Project, a disgraced Democratic super PAC best known for enabling a child predator, has become so irrelevant in American politics that the nation's preeminent newspaper assumed it no longer exists. How embarrassing.
New York Times editor Blake Hounshell was forced to add a correction to Thursday's edition of the "On Politics" newsletter, which examined the divergent views of so-called anti-Trump Republicans heading into the 2022 midterm elections.
"Mea culpa, folks," Hounshell wrote on Twitter. He also posted a screenshot of the correction, which read: "A previous version of the newsletter on Thursday misstated the status of the Lincoln Project, the anti-Trump group. The group is active, not defunct."
The Lincoln Project was humiliated by the error, obviously, and responded by lashing out on Twitter. The group accused the Times of "journalistic malpractice" for "referring to one of the leading and most active organizations in the pro-democracy movement as 'defunct.'"
The fact that the error went unnoticed at the Times before publication is indicative of the Lincoln Project's rapidly diminishing relevance. The super PAC's most significant accomplishment of the 2021 election cycle, for example, was orchestrating one of the dumbest and most counterproductive political stunts in recent memory.
In late October 2021, just days before the Virginia gubernatorial election, the Lincoln Project claimed credit for forcing five sad interns to stand in the rain and do neo-Nazi cosplay at a campaign event for Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin. "We're all in for Glenn," the cosplayers shouted while holding unlit tiki torches in front of Youngkin's campaign bus in Charlottesville, Va.
Youngkin went on to score a decisive victory over the Lincoln Project's preferred candidate, Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe. It was merely the most recent example of a Republican winning an election in which the Lincoln Project was actively supporting the Democratic candidate. In 2020, for example, the super PAC spent almost $12 million in support of Democrats in seven key Senate races. Republicans won all seven races—five of them by a margin of at least 8 percentage points.
The Washington Free Beacon formally endorsed the Lincoln Project in the 2022 midterm cycle, citing the disgraced super PAC's proven track record of helping elect Republicans.
The Lincoln Project rose to prominence in 2020 by raising almost $100 million from left-wing billionaires and other dark money organizations. Despite the group's lack of political success, its founders were able to pay off hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of back taxes, mortgages, and other debts.