Tuesday November 8, 2022 is Election Day in the United States of America. In addition to Congressional "midterms" at the federal level, many state governors and other more local offices are up for grabs. Given how things shook out over Election Day 2020, things could get a little crazy.
...or, perhaps, not! But here's the Megathread for if they do. Talk about your local concerns, your national predictions, your suspicions re: election fraud and interference, how you plan to vote, anything election related is welcome here. Culture War thread rules apply, with the addition of Small-Scale Questions and election-related "Bare Links" allowed in this thread only (unfortunately, there will not be a subthread repository due to current technical limitations).
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Notes -
One of the nefarious stratagems the Democratic Party engaged in this election was to intentionally boost and generously fund far-right Republican candidates over their more moderate opponents in the Republican primaries. This potentially risky gambit was intended to allow Democratic candidates to coast to an easy victory by knocking out the moderate Republican option from the general election. This strategy was not just an after-thought, as the Dems put in a ton of resources into the effort. In Maryland for example, the Dems spent $1.2 million on Dan Cox's campaign, more than twice the money the candidate raised at that point. I thought then and still think this is dishonorable and contemptible behavior, but from a pure power play perspective, I concede it was a sound tactical decision. All six Republican candidates (3 governors, 1 senator, 2 house) targeted by this play lost the general election, five of them by double-digit margins.
It's important to emphasize that the Dems didn't force Republicans to do anything. All they did was dangle the candidate's Republican bona fides with "oh no it sure would be terrible if this person that loves Trump and still thinks the election was stolen ends up being the nominee oh no" and voters agreed with them. Given how much of a resounding success this was for the Dems, I anticipate we'll see it again in the future.
If so, can the GOP do anything to immunize itself from this effort? Should it even try to? Also, two can play at this game but is this strategy something the GOP can successfully levy? Dems have no shortage of total crazies (as Libs of TikTok can demonstrate) after all. What would that look like and what are some candidates that come to mind?
As disinclined as I am towards charity at the moment, I will note that the party isn't a monolith and I heard at least a few prominent lefty voices aggressively critiquing the practice on exactly those grounds. Ezra Klein went after them for this on his podcast repeatedly; whether he believes the whole "threat to democracy" thing or not, he was pretty consistent in articulating the positions one would if they were concerned about the integrity of the Republic going forward.
Additionally, I'll note that perverse incentives can result in people doing things that they personally believe are immoral. Imagine, for a moment, that you're personally concerned with Our Democracy(tm), but employed as a campaign manager for someone staring down a tough matchup with a moderate Republican. At a minimum, your incentives don't line up with your principles. On the flip side, it's trivial for me to imagine being in the same spot from the Republican side, considering either an avowed Marxist opponent or a middle-of-the-road Democrat that I'm more likely to lose to. I genuinely, sincerely hate Marxist positions and think they're incredibly dangerous, so I'd sooner have the moderate - even if I lose, it's really not so bad. This makes the shouting about "fascists" seem pretty insincere to me.
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