Democrats' Elevation Of Election Deniers Worked
By: robillard (HuffPost)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Throughout the late spring and into the summer, Democratic operatives made a series of risky choices to elevate Republican candidates who wholeheartedly embraced former President Donald Trump's cornucopia of lies about the 2020 presidential election.
In Republican primary after Republican primary, Democrats aired ads serving two purposes: promoting seemingly unelectable candidates to the GOP base while attacking them for a general election audience. The ads noted how close the Republican candidates were to Trump, played up their support for strict restrictions or bans on abortion and other things the GOP base loved but general election voters hated.
On election night, those risky bets paid off. All six of the election-denying candidates on the ballot whom Democrats boosted ― three gubernatorial candidates, two House candidates and a Senate candidate ― lost, most of them resoundingly.
The strategy was met with scorn and incredulity from "never Trump" Republicans. Other Democrats from across the party's ideological spectrum said the strategy was unwise, immoral or both. Thirty-five former Democratic elected officials signed a letter suggesting the party was playing with fire.
"Our democracy is fragile, therefore we cannot tolerate political parties attempting to prop up candidates whose message is to erode our dedication to fair elections," the officials wrote in August.
"Be careful what you wish for," Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) told HuffPost in July. "You may select somebody who actually wins, and then you hurt the country as well as your own party."
Not all of Democrats' attempts to meddle worked. They tried to boost a conservative candidate running in Republican Rep. David Valadao's district in the Central Valley of California to no avail, and they spent more than $4 million backing Ron Hanks in Colorado' Senate primary.
The cash in Colorado had become particularly controversial since some of it was used to promote the eventual GOP nominee, Joe O'Dea, as a moderate. But Sen. Michael Bennet (D) easily dispatched O'Dea, winning by 13 percentage points.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Prtizker, a billionaire businessman, was the first to deploy the strategy, pouring tens of millions of dollars of his own money into the Democratic Governors' Association, which aired ads boosting ultra-conservative state Sen. Darren Bailey in the primary. As of midnight on Tuesday, Prtizker was winning his race by roughly 14 percentage points.
Democrats used similar tactics to ensure Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Maryland state Del. Dan Cox would win gubernatorial primaries they were likely to win anyway. Both ultra-conservative candidates ran nearly nonexistent general election campaigns, and Democrats romped in the two mid-Atlantic states.
"In a cycle like this, where Republicans try to rewrite history by scrubbing their websites and downplaying extreme beliefs they ran on in primaries, defining Republicans early was a critical component of our strategy this year," said Noam Lee, the executive director of the Democratic Governors' Association.
The most important involvement may have been in the U.S. Senate race in New Hampshire. After establishment Republicans began airing ads attacking retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, the main Democratic super PAC, Senate Majority PAC, began airing ads designed to boost him and attack Republican Chuck Morse.
Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan was considered vulnerable in the Granite State, but after hammering Bolduc for a variety of extreme comments and positions on everything from abortion rights to the FBI to the opioid epidemic, she ultimately cruised to an 11-point victory, a margin better than President Joe Biden's 2020 presidential win over Trump.
Hassan's win, along with other results on Tuesday night, especially Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman's victory, has significantly narrowed the GOP's path to a Senate majority. They now have to win two of Georgia, Arizona or Nevada to gain the 51-seat majority they need.
In a pre-election interview, a GOP Senate strategist, who requested anonymity to speak frankly, said Democrats' interference in the state could make the difference. Morse, the state Senate president, would have two major assets Bolduc lacked.
"First of all, he had the allegiance of the governor, who would've been all in for him," the strategist said. (Bolduc had once suggested popular Gov. Chris Sununu was sympathetic to the Chinese Communist Party.)
The second asset? "He had the business and political connections to be a major donor fundraiser instead of nickel-and-diming it with online fundraising," the strategist continued. (Hassan raised $38.8 million this cycle, compared with just $2.2 million for Bolduc.)
Finally, Democrats worked to get weaker candidates in two House seats. They pushed Bob Burns in New Hampshire's 2nd Congressional District, which covers the state's western half and is the more Democratic of the two congressional districts. Rep. Annie Kuster ended up romping, with a 16-percentage-point lead as of 2 a.m. EST Wednesday.
The final district where Democrats interfered may have seen the most hubbub. Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.), a military veteran and heir to a grocery store fortune who represented a district based around Grand Rapids, had become a darling of "never Trump" Republicans after supporting Trump's impeachment. Democrats boosted his opponent, John Gibbs, with ads in the primary, spending more on the spots than Gibbs had managed to raise himself.
On Wednesday morning, The Associated Press called the district for Democrat Hillary Scholten.
Meijer, for his part, had fumed in an essay written shortly before his loss: "Republican voters will be blamed if any of these candidates are ultimately elected, but there is no doubt Democrats' fingerprints will be on the weapon. We should never forget it."
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You're giving yourself too much credit - I watched Lake and Mastriano speak like airheads. A glass of water with a V on it would have tossed them to the curb.
i think you are missing the point. it is precisely because they are airheads that the democrats never should have been blamed for getting them nominated.
or couldnt GOP voters tell they were airheads?
I feel a little vindicated about this, just because the strategy never bothered me. It seems a tad "unfair" but what does fair have to do with it ? GOP voters nominated these crackpots, not Democratic money.
Exactly, alls fair in politics and war. And it’s not like the Dems we’re going to work across the aisle with those moderate Repubs so fuck em.
Maybe the few moderates left have learned a lesson.
I am sure Peter Meijer will remember the knife that Democrats put in his back. Doubt he will ever run for office again. I am sure Fascist Democrats thank him for his bipartisanship and voting for impeaching Trump.
They backed what they deemed a "threat to Democracy" in Gibbs just to get a more favorable opponent.
Only Fascists would be that hypocritical and brazen.
How many Democrats voted against Peter Meijer? It is incredible how the media has let the Democrats be blamed for this. GOP VOTERS NOMINATED MEIJER'S OPPONENT, NOT DEMOCRATS.
Using the old Bart Simpson excuse again are you?
https://youtu.be/WTbgsoHDc24
Really John, what about Fascist Democrat voters that crossed over in open primary states like Michigan?
Glad Fascist Democrats are happy.
One day they will hopefully be held accountable.
So, Democrats are brazenly congratulating themselves for rigging the election? What's that say about democracy?
The old, "Look what you made me do", excuse!
Democrats are justifying their claimed rigging of the election by voting in Republican primaries as the 'ends justify the means'. If that's not the old 'look what you made me do' excuse then there's no hope for those who deliberately delude themselves.
Democrats are congratulating themselves for voting in Republican primaries. Democrats are claiming they deliberately rigged the election. Democrats are claiming that they chose these candidates and Republicans couldn't do anything to stop them. Democrats self-congratulation only demonstrates that democracy is a sham.
No, what happened was that American voters rejected most of Trumps hand picked low down lying election denyers...
No they're not. The rest of your comment is ridiculous.
So, Democrats are unintentionally deluding themselves? How is that different than Democrats being clueless?
Did Democrats do something illegal here? Seems to me to be partisan politics as usual, the only ones I see complaining about it are the loser whiners bitter about the sour grapes. Republicans are free to try the same tactics by elevating Democrat election deniers, reality deniers and all-around insane candidates in Democratic primaries, though that will likely be more difficult since I can't think of any for them to pick from. On the Republican side there was a cornucopia selection of insane election denying, reality denying Trump brown nosers to pick from.
Which only shows that rigging elections is legal. Does that somehow make rigging elections acceptable?
Were those election denying Republicans placed on the ballot by Republicans or by Democrats voting in Republican primaries? You know, if Republicans did the same thing that Democrats crow about doing then both parties will only nominate bad candidates.
Isn't it time to reform the party primaries? Even after Democrats played partisan politics (in a legal manner), many of the elections were determined by a very small fraction of votes. The country has been deliberately divided by following a partisan playbook that has been arbitrarily made legal by partisan intent. Democracy is a sham.
Ok, show us your proof that far right wackos were nominated as GOP candidates because Democrats voted for them in the primaries.
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So, now you are claiming the article you seeded is a lie? That, in itself, is all the proof that is needed.
Is paying for political ads really considered "rigging" an election? That's just utter nonsense. No elections were "rigged", there was no widespread voter fraud. The backlash from this is just more evidence that apparently conservatives are monumental sore losers. Many conservatives have spent the last two years, along with their dumb shit Dear Leader, claiming the last presidential election was "stolen" from them yet they're not able to provide a single shred of evidence of their claims. Now we have whiny sore loser conservatives claiming Democrats are "rigging" elections legally because some of them funded ads for Republican candidates. They're being accused of cheating or "rigging" because they gave their opponents opponent money. As the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. It's the same logic that I'm sure Putin had when he decided to spend millions to support Trumps campaign, but I don't recall any Republicans admitting that the 2016 election was "rigged".
If Russian or Chinese pay for those political ads then it's meddling in the election and rigging the election. How is that different from Californians paying for ads in Pennsylvania or Georgia?
Our election process begins with primaries. Democrats voting in Republican primaries (and vice versa) rigs the primaries and that rigs the election. Making it virtually impossible for independent candidates to compete rigs the election, too. There's no way to overcome rigged primaries in our current partisan election process.
Republicans are going to control the House. Republicans may yet control the Senate, too. If there are going to be sore losers from this election, it will be Democrats. Biden isn't very popular so Democrats are trying to spin bad news into good news. But that's not the reality of the election outcome.
A 'red wave' was impossible. The absolute best outcome for Republicans would have been a 2 seat majority in the Senate and a 20 seat majority in the House. Four months ago that absolute best for Republicans was highly unlikely.