“After years of claiming that money in politics is bad and Trumpists will destroy America,” writes Joe Lancaster in Reason, “Democrats spent millions to boost the people they are most afraid of.”
In a strategy that might be designated Too Clever by Half, “Throughout the 2022 primary season, groups affiliated with the Democratic Party funded ads to boost immoderate Republican candidates,” Lancaster explains. “The goal was to boost the least moderate candidates in the hopes that they would be easier to beat in a general election.”
The Senate Majority PAC bought ads for New Hampshire’s Republican U.S. Senate primary, for instance, calling Chuck Morse a “sleazy politician,” allowing a retired brigadier general to advance on to the general election — only to lose to the incumbent. Another Democratic PAC pushed “nearly $100,000 on ads proclaiming Republican House primary candidate Robert Burns ‘the ultra-conservative candidate’ who ‘follows the Trump playbook.’” Burns went on to defeat his more moderate competitor and then be defeated in the general election.
That was the pattern around the country.
If this all sounds familiar, this is how we got Trump into the forefront in the first place. Hillary Clinton’s campaign infamously orchestrated the corporate news media’s fixation on Trump in 2015 and through to Trump’s winning the primary contest. And then, you will remember, the news media changed course and started the great anti-Trump freak-out.
This time, however, it may have paid off. Or at least not horribly backfired, for the much-prophesied Election Day 2022 “Red Wave” merely eroded the Democrats’ stranglehold on unified government.
Washed away, instead, is the idea that Democrats truly fear these “mega-MAGA Republicans” or care about democracy.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with DALL‑E
—
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
