Yeah the “hey let’s get a bat shiat crazy MAGA guy/gal on the November ticket and hope enough Independents find them too extreme” seems like a dumb strategy as at least a few are going to slip through the general and we’ll get more Boebert/ MTG types in Congress which is exactly what we don’t need.
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The “threat to democracy” part is objectively true.
The Dems trying to get these people on the ballot so they have a potentially easy win is just playing with fire imo. For example if that Pennsylvania guy gets elected governor he has already said he will try to give their electoral college votes to the Republican regardless of the outcome of the actual votes.
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You are conflating “Democrats” with the DNCC. Democrats are not a monolith; there is a huge range of political views among those that end up voting “D”. There is a reason why the saying goes “Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line.” Most democrats and progressives are largely frustrated with capital-D Democratic party leadership.
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I am a bit torn. Republicans have been playing dirty games like this for years and that is how they have gained power. Add gerrymandering to those games. It’s certainly risky to do where a fringe candidate might end up winning, but it also seems risky to just let Republicans keep doing their thing. If 10 seats flip to moderate republicans or 2 seats flip to MAGA candidates…what is the bigger danger to democracy. Remember you also have districts like Wyoming where Liz might get the boot to one of those nutjobs running against her, so MAGA candidates are going to go up this election regardless…keeping the majority might end up being the lesser of two evils.
I’d rather both sides play by my rules, but that is not realistic.
In 2016, I voted for the former President in the GOP primary, partly because I thought he was the easiest-to-beat option, partly because I believed Congress would be a check on any excesses if he were elected (whereas I thought Cruz + a GOP Congress would be disturbing), and partly because the Democrats’ primary outcome was a foregone conclusion in this state.
I made at least two assumptions that, in retrospect, were very poor.
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Or perhaps they think all Republicans with the exception of a handful that have basically been driven out of the party are a threat to democracy and the threat is best countered by promoting the least electible of them.
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Don’t I remember hearing about at least one race in Florida where the GOP supported the “candidacy” of a person with a similar name to the Democrat-to-beat, in an effort to split the vote and get an easier-to-beat nominee?
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Fucking awful. Normally I would call it dirty politics, caused by a failure of our generally shitty system.
Post Trump, I would call it suicide politics, motivated by individuals trying to grasp power and damn the consequences.
I’m happy to accept dirty politics as an inevitability. But this seems too likely to backfire.
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Yeah, I think anyone amplifying the signal of the Big Lie, insurrectionists, or white nationalists is doing a disservice to the country. I understand the strategy, but I don’t like it.
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I can’t speak to your numbers, but broadly I’d much rather have fewer Traitors than more Democrats.
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I think the bigger issue (for the Democratic Party, and the Nation as a whole (IMO)) is that once these “moderates” are in Congress, they’ll fall under the heel of the MAGA “Republicans.” Especially if the GOP takes control of either chamber. They’ll need to get reelected and only one way to do that is to suck some dick, metaphorically (I presume).
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The issue is that fewer traitors as a whole might lead to having traitors as chairs of powerful house committees, like judiciary. I don’t like the gamble, but I get why they do it.
Broadly, I agree, but we had a literal traitor in the White House that might return in a few years, and non-traitor republicans in the house had shown zero spine in holding him accountable, so do we really expect the moderates to moderate if he comes back?
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This was along my line of thinking. That Democrats view MAGA Republicans as some serious threat, but they’re also worried about moderate Republicans having to toe the MAGA line for votes. Perhaps overly confident in their political committees made-for-tv events, Democrats think that they should foist MAGA Republicans into races so that they can more directly attack and defeat them in the midterms.
Like others have said, it seems really risky. Can you imagine a scenario where MAGA candidates win, help take back the House, and they get on these political committees that immediately start scrutinizing Democrats and establishment bureaucrats in the various agencies they perceive as having unfairly targeted Trump? It could get ugly.
My concern is that even if the maga candidates do not win, and the D’s control the senate and have a larger minority in the house, the maga candidates winning the primaries will push future candidates more towards trumpism (not sure what to call it, it isn’t conservatism.)
To some extent… yes.
Mitch McConnell and Mike Pence, for all of their many flaws, were not remotely complicit in attempting to count the votes from the alternate slate of electors… thus preventing a Constitutional crisis. Imagine if there had been Trump puppets who were willing to do his bidding instead.
We dodged a bullet. I think there needs to be zero tolerance for the kinds of clowns who would go along with that kind of scheme in Congress.
Eh. One big reason Trump failed so much is that he had no allies in Washington. He’d regularly fire enemies and replace them with loyal subjects, and those subjects would turn on him later when he committed another more audacious crime.
Not to mention key people who had spent their whole time looking the other way abandoned him at the key moment.
Mike Pence is in the ash heap of history. Mitch McConnell appears safe in his position as senate leader although Trump has tried to recruit Rick Scott to challenge him. Kevin McCarthy and Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are pathetic ass lickers. So the Republican party today is a bunch of Trump acolytes and Mitch McConnell.