EVEN MORE FRETTING OVER DEMOCRATIC INTERVENTION IN GOP PRIMARIES

I see that there's more hand-wringing about Democratic interventions in Republican campaigns, this time in a New York Times op-ed by Brian Beutler of Crooked Media.

In Arizona, Democrats have intervened on behalf of Kari Lake, a candidate for governor who has fanned lies about the 2020 election and demanded the imprisonment of the Democratic front-runner. In Pennsylvania, Democrats ran ads boosting Doug Mastriano, a Christian theocrat who participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection before running for governor.

To say that the Democratic strategy of putting a thumb on the scale for these charlatans and conspiracy theorists, in this political climate, has alarmed prominent liberals would be an understatement. The MSNBC host Chris Hayes called it “insane.” Barack Obama’s former chief strategist David Axelrod, who once helped orchestrate similar manipulation, recently wrote that in the Trump era, “I fear the tactic.”

I've written about this before. As I've pointed out, Mastriano won by more than 23 points over his nearest rival in that Pennsylvania primary; Darren Bailey, an election-truther candidate for governor of Illinois for whom Democrats also intervened, won by more than 36. Democrats can't buy that many Republican votes -- if these guys won blowouts, it's because Republican voters liked what they were hearing about them. (It didn't hurt that both were endorsed by Donald Trump.)

Beutler seems to suggest that he agrees with Hayes and Axelrod -- but he's not opposed to Democratic intervention categorically:

I don’t believe Democrats can remain fully neutral during Republican primaries; they will invariably have to respond to the serial outrages pouring out of MAGA candidates. But they should hone a strategy that does more than simply elevate certain Republicans over the rest of the party simply because Democratic strategists believe voters will find them uniquely dangerous or threatening. That strategy obscures and diminishes the truth staring all of us in the face: that the Republican Party as a whole has radicalized against democracy and can’t be trusted with power.

I agree with this: The entire Republican Party is dangerous. Even "nice" Republicans are dangerous. So am I right to think that Beutler disagrees with Hayes and Axelrod? If more beatable Republicans are only marginally worse for America than Republicans who seems mainstream, that means the elevate-the-crazies strategy isn't "insane" or frightening, right? Yet he's equally fretful.

Beutler writes:

The better course would be to find a balance between these two approaches: adopting a coherent overall strategy by attesting honestly to the state of the Republican field as a whole, rather than singling out a few bad apples and spending millions of dollars to boost them.

At some level, Democratic leaders already understand that Mr. Trump’s imprint on the G.O.P. poses a mortal danger to the country. Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, told her caucus last week, “The Republicans are not capable of governing a democracy.” That’s a powerful and honest assertion that can, with relentless messaging, remind the 81 million voters who cast their ballots for Joe Biden why they turned out in record-shattering numbers.

That could have been a powerful message in 2022 if Democrats, Pelosi very much included, hadn't been saying exactly the opposite for years. Pelosi, President Biden, and other Democrats regularly sing the praises of the Republican Party, or at least a bygone version of it; Democrats have elevated Liz Cheney to star status and love to boast that their infrastructure bill is bipartisan. (Note that Pelosi made her statement in a closed caucus meeting, and it was leaked to the founder of a subscription-only newsletter read only by D.C. insiders and politics junkies; this is still not a message Democrats have agreed upon for public consumption.)

Also, Pelosi's statement is abstract. Trumpist candidates make it concrete. Saul Alinsky's last Rule for Radicals is "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Republicans know that this works. That's why they demonize specific Democrats -- Pelosi, Hunter Biden, Hillary Clinton, the Squad. I think Democrats should nationalize the spotlight on nutjobs like Mastriano and Lake (and Herschel Walker and others). But just having some of the worst candidates running in purple and blue states could be helpful. If we're lucky, we won't have to assert that Republicans are crazy. They'll prove it every time they open their mouths on the campaign trail.