{"id":15658,"date":"2026-08-21T08:36:50","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T05:36:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/?p=15658"},"modified":"2026-08-21T08:36:50","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T05:36:50","slug":"democratic-voters-reject-anti-trump-resistance-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/democratic-voters-reject-anti-trump-resistance-stars\/","title":{"rendered":"Democratic Voters Reject Anti-Trump Resistance Stars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Alexander Vindman<\/strong>, the former National Security Council staffer who triggered Donald Trump&#8217;s first impeachment in 2019, and <strong>George Conway<\/strong>, the lawyer who recruited <strong>E. Jean Carroll<\/strong> to sue Trump, both ran disastrous campaigns that ended in crushing primary losses, according to <strong>Byron York<\/strong> writing in <em>Washington Examiner<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Conway mounted a expensive vanity campaign for New York&#8217;s 12th Congressional District in Manhattan, the seat left open by retiring Democratic Representative <strong>Jerry Nadler<\/strong>. Despite personally loaning his campaign $2 million and spending $5.7 million total, Conway finished a distant fifth place with just 6.1% of the vote.<\/p>\n<p>The wealthy lawyer&#8217;s campaign centered almost entirely on his personal vendetta against Trump. One advertisement began with Conway addressing the former president directly, boasting about costing him $88 million in the Carroll lawsuit and threatening to put Trump behind bars as his next act.<\/p>\n<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-15658 gallery-columns-2 gallery-size-medium'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP26229708996582-300x200.webp\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-1-15655\" srcset=\"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP26229708996582-300x200.webp 300w, https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP26229708996582-768x512.webp 768w, https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP26229708996582.webp 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<figcaption class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-15655'>\n\t\t\t\tPhoto: washingtonexaminer.com\n\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" src=\"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP26165579254880-300x200.webp\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-1-15656\" srcset=\"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP26165579254880-300x200.webp 300w, https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP26165579254880-768x512.webp 768w, https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP26165579254880.webp 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<figcaption class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-15656'>\n\t\t\t\tPhoto: washingtonexaminer.com\n\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p>Conway apparently believed this message would resonate in a district where <strong>Kamala Harris<\/strong> defeated Trump 81% to 17% in the 2024 presidential election. Yet Democratic voters rejected his approach decisively. The primary was won by New York state Assembly member <strong>Micah C. Lasher<\/strong>, who also pledged to oppose Trump but offered voters something beyond a personal grudge.<\/p>\n<h2>Vindman&#8217;s Florida Failure<\/h2>\n<p>Vindman&#8217;s defeat proved even more spectacular. The retired Army lieutenant colonel, who in 2019 leaked information about Trump&#8217;s phone call with Ukrainian President <strong>Volodymyr Zelensky<\/strong> to a CIA contact, attempted to parlay his impeachment fame into a Florida Senate seat.<\/p>\n<p>As an active-duty officer serving on the National Security Council at the time, Vindman had access to presidential communications. He provided secret information to a friend in the CIA, who then filed a whistleblower complaint against the president. Republicans at the time noted the absurdity of applying whistleblower protections to complaints about the president himself, who as head of the executive branch falls outside such statutory frameworks.<\/p>\n<p>During the impeachment proceedings, Vindman testified both publicly and privately but refused to explain exactly how he initiated the complaint process. A senior Republican aide involved in the investigation stated that all evidence pointed to Vindman as the original source who sparked the entire affair, though he managed to have someone else file the formal complaint on his behalf.<\/p>\n<p>After the impeachment failed and Trump administration pressure mounted, Vindman retired from the military. He subsequently built a lucrative business around his notoriety, writing a memoir titled <em>Here, Right Matters<\/em> and establishing a company with the same name. Financial disclosure forms from this year show Vindman earned approximately $1.5 million from these and other ventures.<\/p>\n<h2>Professional Activism Meets Voter Rejection<\/h2>\n<p>Vindman relocated to Florida and launched his Senate campaign in January with a video prominently featuring news coverage of his impeachment testimony. The announcement showed footage of him swearing an oath before Congress while he narrated his family&#8217;s refugee story and declared his refusal to bow to what he called a wannabe tyrant.<\/p>\n<p>Florida Democratic primary voters were unimpressed. Vindman&#8217;s campaign collapsed despite his national profile and the significant media attention his candidacy attracted from progressive outlets.<\/p>\n<p>The dual failures suggest that even within the Democratic Party, voters are looking for candidates who offer substantive policy platforms rather than those whose entire identity revolves around opposition to Trump. Both Conway and Vindman discovered that Resistance celebrity does not automatically translate into electoral success, even in deep blue districts and states where antipathy toward Trump runs high.<\/p>\n<p>The contrasts between what activists call Resistance 1.0 and Resistance 2.0 may be largely tactical, but these primary results indicate that Democratic voters themselves are seeking representatives who can articulate a positive vision beyond simply being anti-Trump.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:right\"><em>With information from <a href=\"https:\/\/washingtonexaminer.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Washington Examiner<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two prominent anti-Trump figures, Alexander Vindman and George Conway, suffered crushing defeats in Democratic primaries, suggesting left-wing voters are weary of single-issue Resistance candidates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":15657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[12076,12078,10416,2610,12077,2415,209],"nfg_topic":[135],"class_list":["post-15658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-alexander-vindman","tag-anti-trump-resistance","tag-congressional-elections","tag-democratic-primary","tag-george-conway","tag-new-york","tag-united-states","nfg_topic-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15658"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15670,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15658\/revisions\/15670"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15658"},{"taxonomy":"nfg_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsfire.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/nfg_topic?post=15658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}