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.
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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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