On Democrats Funding Fascists in GOP Primaries

I have strongly disapproved of Democrats intervening in GOP primaries to support fascists for a long time. Basically, it just normalizes fascism in the party. Maybe you win this given election but in the chase to go the farthest right possible, Republican voters sprint instead of jog. Meanwhile, it seems to ignore how few voters these days will actually vote for the other party in any circumstance. So you end up in a world where all Republican candidates are effectively fascists and that’s all their voters know, creating that expectation next time, all without probably helping you very much.

I try not to link to 538, but I think this should be an exception:

However, it’s unclear to what extent Democratic interference actually altered the outcomes in these Republican primaries — and, in some cases, how much the primary’s outcome significantly altered the general election outlook. For instance, four of these six candidates had former President Donald Trump’s endorsement, which boosted many Republican candidates in primaries this cycle. Additionally, Democratic incumbents are defending three of these seats, potentially providing a small lift to Democratic chances in both New Hampshire races and Illinois’s gubernatorial election. And a couple of these contests are taking place on fairly blue turf, so they would have been more likely than not to favor Democrats regardless.

In the Republican primary in Michigan’s 3rd District, the most competitive seat in this batch of races, former Trump administration official John Gibbs challenged Rep. Peter Meijer, one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in 2021. Meijer had a huge spending advantage in the primary, where a financial edge can matter most; Gibbs had Trump’s endorsement. Gibbs may have also received a boost from ads run by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that ostensibly attacked him as “too conservative for West Michigan.” After Gibbs narrowly edged Meijer by 3.5 percentage points, our forecast swung from clearly favoring the GOP — we had Meijer as the default nominee until then — to favoring Democrat Hillary Scholten, whom Meijer defeated in 2020. Now, conservative anger toward Meijer over impeachment and Trump’s endorsement of Gibbs made the primary race highly competitive from the get-go. Still, the DCCC’s spending probably didn’t hurt Gibbs, either.

…

But before Democrats take all the credit — or blame — for Mastriano’s advancement, it doesn’t take a tremendous leap to imagine him capturing the GOP nomination without Democratic assistance. After all, Mastriano won the GOP primary by more than 20 points. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but a more important factor may have been the crowded primary field, which hampered attempts by anti-Mastriano Republicans to coalesce around one candidate. In fact, a last-minute effort by Pennsylvania Republican insiders to stop Mastriano failed in part because they couldn’t coax Mastriano’s main rivals to drop out and rally behind one candidate.

Hindsight may help assess whether Democratic involvement affected some or all of these races, but it’s clear that myriad factors influenced the primary outcomes. And even if Democrats shifted each race and improved their chances, perhaps only New Hampshire’s Senate contest would notably affect which party controls either chamber of Congress and the nation’s governorships. Whether all this was worth the intangible cost of aiding candidates who mostly deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election while Congress works to unravel the events of Jan. 6 is another matter entirely.

It’s just not worth it. Alas, most DC Democrats are still operating under the illusion that we are not at the brink of the end of American democracy.