Three simple truths will set the scene for the November midterms, and they’re hard to fully reconcile: First, Democrats are serious underdogs and can be defeated in a devastating wave like those who wiped them out in 1994 and 2010. Second, Donald Trump, the undisputed leader of the Republican Party, endorsed a series of GOP primaries who were unfit. to hold public office in a democracy. Third, the Democrat wants to help him get dangerous loyalists nominated for the Republican ticket.
In Arizona, Democrats have intervened on behalf of Kari Lake, a candidate for governor who made lies about the 2020 election and demanded the jailing of the Democratic leader. In Pennsylvania, Democrats ran ads promoting Doug Mastriano, a Christian theocratic who joined the January 6 uprising before running for governor.
To say that the Democrat strategy of putting the thumbs up on these quacks and conspiracy theorists, in this political climate, has warned prominent liberals to is an understatement. MSNBC Host Chris Hayes called it “madness.” Barack Obama’s former chief strategist, David Axelrod, who helped orchestrate a similar manipulation, wrote recently that in the Trump era, “I’m afraid of tactics.”
But there’s a broad middle ground between extravagantly encouraging Republicans to nominate weak but unfit candidates and maintaining the rule of silence about ongoing wars in the GOP I don’t believe the party Democrats can be completely neutral in the Republican primaries; they will always have to respond to serial insults from MAGA candidates. But they should hone in on a strategy that doesn’t simply elevate certain Republicans over the rest of the party just because Democratic strategists believe voters will find them dangerous or threatening. unique threat. That strategy obscures and detracts from the truth we’ve all been looking at: that the Republican Party as a whole has been radicalized against democracy and cannot be trusted in power.
There’s no doubt that playing games in the other party’s primaries can sometimes turn a losing race into a winning race. Democrats have maintained a tight grip on the Senate over the first half of the last decade thanks in large part to the GOP’s support of its propensity to nominate extremists. In the classic case, Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, ran for office Advertisement in 2012, this amplified many of the quirks that a far-right underling in the GOP primaries named Todd Akin said, and declared he was “too conservative” for office. The opposite psychology has worked. Favorite Republican voters what they heard. They nominated him, he went on to assert that a woman’s body naturally terminates pregnancy as a result of rape, and Ms. McCaskill won 55% to 39%, while Mr. Obama lost 10. the point.
Will Democrats face a midterm wipeout?
From 2010 to 2014, it was all turned upside down and quite frankly pretty fun, but the extremist mentioned then was Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton’s campaign textbook planning to “raise” what it calls “Pied Piper candidates” like him. And he became president of the United States – a disaster from which the republic may never recover.
Mr. Trump is not on the ballot this cycle, but many of the candidates he has chosen to run in these midterms are just as dangerous as he is. If, in some horrifying glitch, the Democrats’ current plan fails and Ms. Lake and Mr. Mastriano are elected, Democrats could say they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars empowering for two Republicans who overthrew the will of the people. in the 2024 presidential election.
Given the threat that Trump loyalists pose to popular American sovereignty, perhaps Democrats should refuse to intervene on their behalf in the Republican primaries.
But there are obvious problems with that approach. It would be absurd to ask any political party to resign before the stiffest possible competition, and even if Democrats could agree to skip the Republican primaries, still If they appear neutral or at least refuse to spend money to influence their outcome, the Republicans will certainly never reciprocate.
A better way would be to find a balance between these two approaches: adopt a consistent overarching strategy by faithfully corroborating the state of the entire Republican field, rather than picking a single one. some bad apples and spend millions of dollars promoting them.
To some extent, Democratic leaders have understood that Mr. Trump’s stamp on the GOP poses a deadly danger to the country. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, told her in a private meeting last week, “The Republican Party is incapable of managing a democracy.” It’s a strong and honest claim that can, with a relentless message, remind the 81 million voters who voted for Joe Biden why they’ve hit record numbers. Given that the Democrats already have a strong message heading into the midterms, the party doesn’t need to play around with the Republican primaries, and certainly does. there’s no need to revolve around drab topics like the attempted coup last winter to milquetoast, a counterproductive appeal about kitchen problems. (Did you notice that most Americans seem unhappy about the state of the national kitchen table?)
All Democrats have to do is tell the truth. Republican candidates run from those who participated in the violent uprising on January 6, 2021, to its supporters from afar to the underdogs who will stand by and let him. Trump makes another run to end the American experiment in himself- the administration. The real problem with Ms. Lake is not that she doesn’t have a plan to reduce her premiums; that’s what she stands for: a targeted attack on our democracy.
Whether or not they were involved in choosing their opponents, Democrats were lucky, at a time of great national turmoil, to run against a party that had reorganized itself around. lies, fraud and corruption. In obedience to Mr. Trump, Republicans have given Democrats the invaluable gift of fighting on a high ground of truth, morality, and fair play.
Start there, and the rest will take care of itself.
