Money talks, but what does it say?
In Arizona, Democrats have intervened on behalf of Kari Lake, a candidate for governor who has fanned lies about the 2020 election and demanded the imprisonment of the Democratic front-runner. In Pennsylvania, Democrats ran ads boosting Doug Mastriano, a Christian theocrat who participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection before running for governor.
The Dems are infusing their money into the coffers of the most extreme, most outrageous and least qualified Republican candidates in the hope they will win their primaries and become the GOP candidate in the general election. By boosting the worst of the right, the left is scheming to win because its opposition is worse. Brilliant scheme or how we end up with a Congress of Darth Cheeto lovers?
To say that the Democratic strategy of putting a thumb on the scale for these charlatans and conspiracy theorists, in this political climate, has alarmed prominent liberals would be an understatement. The MSNBC host Chris Hayes called it “insane.” Barack Obama’s former chief strategist David Axelrod, who once helped orchestrate similar manipulation, recently wrote that in the Trump era, “I fear the tactic.”
Mind you, if it became known that the Republicans were sending donations to the Dem candidates they believed could be most easily beaten, it might be viewed by some as unethical, even (dare I say it?) evil. But that’s only because it serves nefarious purposes, whereas the Dems stand for dignity, morality and proper pronoun usage.
While Dem strategists are certain the party’s ebbing fortunes are due to poor messaging rather than their goal of reimagining society based on race, gender and immutability of tattoos, others are unwilling to place their faith in the hands of crafty bumper stickers and seek instead to increase their odds by helping the worst of the others prevail.
But there’s a vast middle ground between giddily encouraging Republicans to nominate weak but unfit candidates and upholding a code of silence about the battles unfolding within the G.O.P. I don’t believe Democrats can remain fully neutral during Republican primaries; they will invariably have to respond to the serial outrages pouring out of MAGA candidates. But they should hone a strategy that does more than simply elevate certain Republicans over the rest of the party simply because Democratic strategists believe voters will find them uniquely dangerous or threatening. That strategy obscures and diminishes the truth staring all of us in the face: that the Republican Party as a whole has radicalized against democracy and can’t be trusted with power.
What could possibly go wrong?
But there are obvious problems with that approach. It would be absurd to ask any political party to resign itself to the toughest possible competition, and even if Democrats could agree to sit the Republican primaries out, remaining studiously neutral or at least refusing to spend money on affecting their outcomes, Republicans would certainly never return the favor.
So do it to them before they do it to you, even if they aren’t and haven’t done it to you, but since they’re evil, of course they would do it to you so do it to them first? Is that a problem?
The better course would be to find a balance between these two approaches: adopting a coherent overall strategy by attesting honestly to the state of the Republican field as a whole, rather than singling out a few bad apples and spending millions of dollars to boost them.
***
All the Democrats have to do is tell the truth. Republican candidates run the gamut from people who participated in the violent insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, to ones who supported it from afar to underdogs who will stand idly by and let Mr. Trump take another run at ending the American experiment in self-government.
There is a curious blindness within the Democratic Party where its adherents fail to see any possibility that as bad as the other side is, and it can be very bad, the majority of Americans, including working people and minorities, really don’t care for its “truth.” And if it can’t run any positive offering, then the only move left is negative, to run against the worst of the Trumpy crazies the Republicans have to offer, and so they send the money the left donates to their party to the worst of their adversary.
Is this good strategy? Will this work? Is there a good possibility that these Dem-funded right wing nutjobs will beat the Dems in the general election and get to call themselves representative and senator? Is this Dem scheme brilliant or moronic?
If voters elect right wing nutjobs over their Democratic adversaries, what is the message to the party and the nation?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply.
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I’m curious why David Axelrod didn’t mention how the Hillary Clinton campaign similarly elevated Donald Trump… It would seem the perfect example, it must have slipped his mind…
It’s a stupid idea, but Dems have nothing left to run on.
While Americans are worrying if they’ll have enough money to pay for gas to get to work, Dems are obsessing over Covid, Ukraine and January 6th.
Knowing they’re in trouble, the best they think they can do is point to the crazies and go “yeah we blew it but look at those guys!”
And when the nutjobs are elected to office the Dems will blame racism, sexism and whatever phobias they see as the day’s problems instead of the giant “Fuck you” the votes really mean.
Not good strategy. Will not work. Some of the right wing nut jobs will get elected (not all, not most, but some will). This Dem scheme is moronic. I’m a Democrat, but I want a strong, vibrant Republican Party. I want elections to be contested and hard to win. This forces the political parties to select better candidates, and come up with better ideas. This forces cooperation, civility and respect. It also helps put the brakes on left wing crazies from running us all over the cliff. Same thing for a Republican. The Republicans should want a strong, healthy and vibrant Democratic Party. For the same reasons. A functioning Democratic party brings a certain push to new ideas, growth, and can act as the catalyst for progressive change in a good way when the party is healthy. I think this is how the framers envisioned things. Right now its out of kilter, but I’m optimistic things will get better. But this scheme? Well, its just stupid. Its a symptom of what is wrong. It is cynical.
.
Money talks,
And horses can fly.
You can’t take it with you,
When you die.
This is some funny stuff. So Democrats are doubling down on their tactic of putting their thumb on the scale for populist right candidates even after what happened in 2016. The history blindness with these folks is off the charts.
It’s obvious that Meridith is a troll making fun of Democrats. But it’s not ludicrous that the NYT article itself could be as well — hand-wringing over one bad tactic with bromides and smug admonitions to instead pursue the same strategy of empty, self-righteous whataboutism that makes them so hated by independents and progressives. I don’t even know that anybody has to campaign anymore. They can just keep their mouth shut and let the other side talk.
I really hope Meridith is a troll but unfortunately I’ve met some people that think like her. The scary thing is that they get to vote and breed.
And I _really_ hate the term “Latinx.” Meridth doesn’t get to define me.
I’ve no doubt that Meredith is satire, but well done satire that mirrors a great many NYT readers.
I must admit, I got Poe’d.
Good Poe will do that.
I’m trying to ignore politics and focus on what’s important, but I can’t look away from this train wreck. What a fantastic show! Did they learn from Trump? Of course they did. The Trump presidency was very successful at dividing and distracting the sheeple. They will now double down on this tactic by elevating random Trumptards, with money donated by Democrats, while simultaneously doubling down on the policies that almost everyone hates, on both sides. The Democrats will try to ram wokeness, medical martial law and war down our throats, while shoveling trillions of taxpayer dollars out the door to their rich friends; the Republicans will gag us with war and abortion bans, and tax cuts for their rich friends. Voters will hold their noses and vote for the party that they think has screwed them over less recently. Those of us who have called government a scam for decades will stand back with smug looks on our faces.
This seems like an awful idea. People tend to vote against the President, especially if things aren’t going well for his administration, in midterm elections, and the type of moderate, independent voter who is open to either party is less likely to vote in midterms than their more devoutly partisan and more motivated registered voters on either side. If someone and some party they disapprove of is already currently in power (like the Democrats this year or the Republicans four years ago), they’re not going to be particularly motivated to get up and vote purely *against* a candidate simply because “that guy is crazy.”
At a more practical level, Pennsylvania had Rick Santorum as a Senator for three terms just a decade ago, so it’s quite a gambit to pump Mastriano, who has similar social, religious, and political positions, on the theory that it will grease the skids for a Democrat to remain in the PA governor’s mansion in a down year for Democrats.
In this case, the money is telling us what Democrats think of their own candidates.
In all fairness the tactic got them Biden in the white house. There is a 0% chance that happens without Trump.
On a different note, i miss the gate keepers. In a world not that long ago crazy People on the fringes yelled their brand of crazy in the void. And the gate keepers at news organizations decided that a crazy person yelling in the void was not news and the crazy died in the void. Now people amplify the crazy and because the crazy person was part of a group.. the whole group is crazy wether they agree or not. Good way to stoke that division.
I note that you chose to amplify the crazy and assign it to a whole group.
Maybe you’re right or maybe you’re not, but without your giving some clue what you’re talking about, who knows?
The sad part is the last line you quoted. (I can’t read the original NYT article behind the paywall).
If the Democrats really believe that Republicans run the gamut from Insurrectionists to encouraging the end of self-government (Fascism?), there’s not much room for rational discussion…
Words (on both sides) are spun and taken out of context to create the worse possible interpretation.
Very few people want to discuss the issues or even agree to disagree… So, words become ‘violence’ and judicial decisions are a personal attack.
The saddest part is that for this to work for the Republicans they would have to back moderate Dems they actually wouldn’t necessarily mind seeing in office. It’s the extreme left crazies that are currently getting elected by the dems.
This connects two of your themes:
1. that the progressive wing of the Democratic Party relies on the extremism of Trump and his ilk to be so awful that people are willing to back them even though they could never win on their own against a less awful candidate.
2. that the progressive wing may not be as bad as the Trump wing, but they are more than willing to game the system to achieve their ends and fail to grasp that when they game it, it’s no different than when the other side games it.
There is a big chance this could backfire badly, to everyone’s detriment. But the worst aspect of this is that both right and left are doing everything in their power to prevent the return to normalcy that the majority wants.