🧩 BND Motif Index · M1752
Backed the wrong horse
A party is said to have thrown away a race it could have won by nominating the weaker candidate over the safer one it was warned to pick, and the defeat is laid on whoever did the choosing.
- 7claims filed under it
- 5left shows it came up on
- 7right shows it came up on
- 1claim retold online
⚠️ A story people tell, not a claim that it's true.
A motif is the shape of a story as its tellers tell it, named the way a folklorist names a tale type, so the same story told about other people, by the other side or in another year lands in the same place. Some of the claims below are true, many are false. Arguing against a story is often a story of its own, its answer (Voter fraud is answered by Voter suppression, Lawfare by No one is above the law), and we file it there; where no answer has a motif yet, the arguments against a story sit with its tellings.
🪜 Its family
what it rests on, what rests on it, and the motifs that answer it
🪜 rests on 🧩 Candidate quality
🎙️ Who it came up with
the shows we follow where its claims came up (5 left-leaning, 0 center, 7 right-leaning so far), colored by the show's lean; the bar is how many of its claims each one heard
- 🐘 Clay Travis & Buck Sexton 3 claims
- 🫏 The Bulwark Podcast 2 claims
- 🐘 Bannon's War Room 1 claim
- 🫏 David Pakman Show (podcast) 1 claim
- 🐘 Fox News Rundown 1 claim
- 🐘 Morning Wire 1 claim
- 🫏 Pod Save America 1 claim
- 🫏 The Adam Mockler Show 1 claim
- 🐘 The Jesse Kelly Show 1 claim
- 🐘 The Megyn Kelly Show 1 claim
- 🫏 To the Contrary with Charlie Sykes 1 claim
- 🐘 Verdict with Ted Cruz 1 claim
- left-leaning
- right-leaning
"Came up on" means one of its claims was heard on the show: told, reported or argued against. We don't yet mark which. Show leans are our own grouping of the shows we transcribe.
📰 In the news
the stories its claims were told about, the most told first (matched by our tools, so a link can be wrong)
- 📰 Ken Paxton accuses John Cornyn of hoping he loses Texas Senate race in leaked audio 2026-10-09 to 2026-10-10
🧶 Its claims
what's been told in this shape, in our words, by who told it: newest first in each; a claim's dots are the shows it came up on, in their lean's color (point at them for their names)
Told on the left 1
claims heard on left-leaning shows, and no right-leaning one
- 2026-10-12 “Trump endangered the Republican Party's control of the Senate by choosing Ken Paxton as a candidate.” 2
Told on the right 3
claims heard on right-leaning shows, and no left-leaning one
- 2026-11-03 “Haley Stevens would have been a better candidate for Democrats than Abdul El-Sayed.” 2
- 2026-11-02 “Mike Rogers has a real chance to win the election in Michigan.” 3
- 2026-10-24 “Democrats in Michigan created problems by nominating controversial candidates with less mass appeal.” 1
Told on both sides 2
claims heard on left- and right-leaning shows alike
- 2026-11-02 “Darlene Graham is a terrible candidate who gave a bad debate performance.” 5
- 2026-10-27 “Texas could turn blue if Republicans nominate the wrong candidates.” 2
Retold online 1
claims many people posted in their own words
- 2026-10-11 “The Texas GOP is failing by prioritizing 'owning the libs' and running bad candidates like Paxton over the actual needs of the electorate.”
M1752 · first seen 2026-11-09 · last 2026-11-06 · what this is · how the index works