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It would be ridiculous for Republicans to not expect primary shenanigans: in 2024, I expect vast swath of Democrats to coordinate in reregistering as Republicans and voting with Never-Trumpers for a particular non-Trump candidate in every state, or at least states which are key electoral states for the primary vote. Obviously, then, Democrats would gladly switch back to their own candidate for the general election. (Rush Limbaugh coordinated Republicans doing this in 2008, Operation Chaos, to force the Democrat superdelegates to pick between the first Black President and the first woman President).
What are ways that the Trump contingent could bring such a conspiracy to light without sounding like schizophrenic conspiracy theorists? And then how to combat such a scenario at the polls effectively?
I think at this point, I suspect shenanigans on all sides in lots of ways.
But if something like Operation Chaos happens, you’d see the change statistically. Youd see a reasonably large spike in GOP primary voters and a similar drop in democrat voters. If the numbers are off then you can at least try to point to them.
Wouldn't you expect that anyway if Biden runs again?
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It almost feels like you're laying the groundwork to cope with a Trump loss in the 2024 GOP primary. The Democrats would much rather run against Trump in 2024 than against DeSantis. Trump largely failed to advance his agenda in four years, he antagonized the Democrats into increased turnout, he offended everyone in the middle by trying to steal the 2020 election, and (crucially) he already demonstrated that Biden can beat him. DeSantis turned a swing state blood red, won it by twenty points in a cycle where Trump's nominees were failing left and right, demonstrated competent governance against COVID and hurricane disasters, and successfully prosecuted the culture war using the levers of executive power.
If you want further evidence that the Dems would rather run against Trump, look to their shenanigans in the 2020 cycle. They were supporting Trump's own nominees and fellow election denialists over more traditional GOP politicians. And it worked; Trump's guys generally lost.
If Trump losing the primary in 2024 causes the party to split, that would lead to an extremely easy victory for the Democrats. DeSantis, whatever his qualities, is not going to displace Trump without splitting the party.
It might. Trump could run as an independent, and has threatened to do so. He does really like attention and he'd get a lot of attention if he did this. The media would certainly do its utmost to keep him in the spotlight if he did.
On the other hand, he really doesn't like losing, and I'm not sure that all of the attention would be worth living a year-long slow-motion loss.
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I'm more interested in a theoretical matchup with Trump AND DeSantis as VP.
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Raises the question- would a Trump/Lake or Pompeo v Biden/Harris v West/Fuentes v Desantis/Hawley election inevitably go to the house?
It’s not out of the question that a GOP which moves to disown more trumpian elements could pick up enough blue electoral votes to make it a difficult run for democrats, and that’s before Kanye makes an appearance.
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Yup, that's all plausible. Best I can say is that it isn't inevitable.
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I honestly think that Trump's running makes the 2024 cycle bad for Republicans regardless of the outcome. If Trump had stepped aside and let DeSantis (or anyone else, really) step into the spotlight it would have, at worst, made things like 2016 with 67 candidates on the debate stage, all angling to take out Joe Biden or whoever his handpicked successor is. As it stands now, the possibilities aren't good. First, while I don't think it's likely, Trump could take the nomination unopposed. This just makes it look like the GOP is doubling down on Trump and MAGA and, in light of the recent midterm fiasco, this doesn't look like a winning strategy. It doesn't help that the official platform is still whatever Trump wants it to be, and I doubt they'd be able to change it into something substantive at the convention without significant pushback from the man himself. Hell, if Trump can still get the GOP to kowtow to him after this it's only going to make him more cocky about his grip on the party, which will drive away even more voters. This isn't desirable.
The second possibility is that Trump wins the nomination despite a serious challenge from DeSantis (or someone else). At this point, it no longer looks like the party is kowtowing to Trump, but that isn't necessarily a better look—if even a guy like DeSantis who has been proclaimed by the media and all the smart money as the genius who will lead the Republican party into a new era can't win the nomination from Trump then it proves that it's still Trump's party in a much more salient way than simply handing him the nomination does, and it's likely to have the additional downside of driving away crestfallen DeSantis partisans who pinned their hopes on his winning the nomination.
The final possibility is that someone like DeSantis actually wins the nomination from Trump. This seems like the best scenario, and, indeed, probably is the best scenario, but it's still not really a good scenario. Sure, the party will have shown that it has moved on from Trump. The problem is that there are still a lot of Trump partisans out there; if there weren't, we wouldn't be talking about the possibility of Trump winning a competitive nomination. DeSantis has been holding his tongue about Trump for the past 2 years but once he's in a competitive race Trump will eat him alive if he doesn't fight back. If he's going to go after Trump he actually has to go after Trump without worrying about offending his (Trump's) base. And the obvious effect of this fight is that it's going to piss off a lot of Trump supporters and, nationwide, there seem to be a lot more Trump supporters at present than there are DeSantis supporters. In certain areas I see near-Eucharistic levels of devotion to Trump, and I doubt that these people will turn out for DeSantis in the kind of numbers he needs to win a national election after months of him badmouthing Trump and Trump badmouthing him. And I highly doubt Trump will graciously concede and give a speech supporting DeSantis at the convention. Trump will not go away peacefully.
As a sort of aside, I think that the main battle line of this nomination is going to be the 2020 election. As a state government official whose election practices weren't questioned by anybody, he's had the luxury of being able to stay relatively mum on the subject. Sure, he can spout generalities about election security and such, but he can easily dodge questions about whether he actually thinks the election was stolen. In a primary battle he no longer has this luxury. Trump is bound to spend countless hours bemoaning the theft of the 2020 election, and such bemoaning is really off putting to anyone who isn't already on the Trump Train. If DeSantis agrees, or even equivocates on this (i.e. saying that certain things were suspicious) then he's completely sunk himself in the general election. At that point he's just another MAGA election denier regardless of what his other positions are. If he pushes back and affirmatively states that Joe Biden was legitimately elected president, then he's completely alienated himself from the MAGA faithful. This is more detrimental than most people realize—for what it's worth, the DeSantis supporters I know IRL aren't moderates but Trump supporters who think the election was stolen but happen to like DeSantis better and, more importantly, think he has a better chance of winning the general. Whether or not these people would continue to support him if he pivots hard anti-MAGA remains to be seen, and even if the hardcore MAGA-types don't represent a majority of GOP primary voters, their lack of participation could be enough to cost DeSantis in the general. It's worth remembering that Trump's rise was largely based on attracting the kind of non-voter who was looking for someone far outside the political mainstream, and it isn't clear whether these people will turn out to support a normal, boring Republican.
This changed my thinking quite a bit, to DeSantis not running. If DeSantis can't win without Trump supporters backing him, he has no reason to run this cycle. If he badly loses the general due to Trumpers staying home after a bloody primary (and Trump almost certainly not endorsing him after the nomination loss), he's kaput. DeSantis is only 44, though the Florida governorship is only two terms and I doubt he could ride the "Trump but effectual" train for another six years to office.
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I totally agree with you that the best possible outcome is one in which Trump has an epiphany and stands aside for DeSantis, or failing that dies in his sleep of natural causes. But I'm not so bearish as you on the scenario where DeSantis challenges him and beats him.
I think there's a play where he respectfully criticizes Trump's failure to enact durable change while in office, and contrasts it with his own agendas in Florida. The kind of criticism of Trump that fails in the GOP primary is arguing that Trump's agenda is no good. What hasn't been tried is agreeing with Trump's agenda but arguing that another candidate will be better at executing the agenda. "Mr. President, you said you would build a wall along the entire Southern U.S. border, but only X miles were actually built. I will get it done. Look what I did with Disney, with racist indoctrination in schools, with forcing sanctuary state governors and sanctuary city mayors to declare states of emergency because I sent them a fraction of the illegal immigrants that Southern states have to deal with every day, etc. You signed an executive order to review the use of critical race theory in federal agencies. But Biden immediately revoked that order, so it accomplished nothing. By contrast, I passed a state law banning the teaching of critical race theory in school, and giving every parent the ability to enforce that law themselves with private lawsuits. No one can undo what I achieved there."
Again, I think there's a way to thread this needle by attacking Trump's effectiveness without weighing in on his claims directly. Criticize Trump for being victimized, for failing to produce evidence, and contrast with the election work DeSantis has done in Florida. "Mr. Trump didn't deliver. He never came up with the evidence to back up his claims. Governing means doing your homework. In Florida, when we got wind of XYZ elections issue, I did ABC to enforce blah blah blah. We got it done. Mr. Trump says he is a victim, that Mr. Biden robbed him. But the buck stops here. If I'm the nominee, I guarantee you that Biden will not be able to steal the election from me."
That's a possibility that I didn't consider, but on the whole I think it's actually worse than the third possibility I outlined above. The possibility I outlined above of Trump loyalists dropping off is certainly mitigated, though probably not eliminated entirely. The real problem here is that by branding himself as a more effective purveyor of the Trump agenda he alienates himself from anyone who explicitly voted against the Trump agenda in the previous 3 elections. This is what I alluded to when I brought up the DeSantis supporters whom I know personally; they complained about Trump but they still voted for him and all his loser candidates (except maybe Mastriano). For the Republicans to win in 2024 they would have to flip either Pennsylvania or Michigan. Neither state has elected a Republican in a statewide election since Trump and Toomey in 2016. Regardless of what you think about his cognitive abilities post-stroke, John Fetterman is much further to the left than I would have previously thought possible for PA. Josh Shapiro's win makes this the first time since the '40s that one party has held the governor's seat for longer than 8 years consecutively. Flipping PA means convincing people who voted for Wolf, Casey, Biden, Shapiro, and Fetterman that it's worth taking a chance with the GOP. DeSantis made a name for himself by loosening up Florida's COVID restrictions, but Michigan just reelected Gretchen Whitmer by a large margin, whose COVID policies were, shall we say, a bit different. Lose both of these states out and it's lights out for the Republicans in 2024, regardless of how many other swing states they manage to flip. I doubt a message of "Trump policies but more effective" is the way to do this.
If he's able to do this then he's also able to ignore the whole hornet's nest entirely and say nothing. But I doubt that will be the case. With Trump beating the election fraud drum a journalist is bound to ask him directly whether he thinks the election was stolen, and unless his answer is an unequivocal "No" his chances at winning the general are pretty much sunk. If he says what you suggest then any decent journalist would follow upo with something that doesn't allow for that kind of answer, like "Do you think Mr. Trump won Georgia?" or "Do you think there was any fraud in Pennsylvania?" or "Do you think Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election?" or "Would you have supported attempts to prevent certification of the election in the Senate?" then no one gives a shit about what evidence Trump had or what DeSantis did in Florida. Even saying "I can't comment on Pennsylvania because I wasn't supervising that election" is enough of a dodge that it looks like he's unwilling to say anything one way or the other. Theoretically he could equivocate during the primary and be more direct about it once he has the nomination locked up, but that's such an obvious move that the swing vote he needs to secure would see right through it. Trump already called him out on not admitting that he'd been vaccinated, so I have no doubt that he'd respond to any equivocation by hammering DeSantis relentlessly for it. The only chance I see DeSantis having is if he goes hard anti-Trump and anti-MAGA, but I wonder if he's too afraid of losing the hardcore base to have the stomach for it. But anything else and he has to spend the entire general election retracting everything he said during the primary, and that doesn't seem like a recipe for success.
I mean have you seen DeSantis's very first campaign ad when he was running for governor? He is committed to the Trump agenda in broad strokes and there's no undoing it (although he can still play around the edges). And he has proven that he's electable in a swing state nonetheless.
Besides, what else would a GOP nominee run on? Back to the Romney playbook of calling to defund social security? Trump won where Romney lost in part because his agenda is more appealing to the electorate than the traditional GOP agenda.
This is a general argument that it's hard for a Republican to win, not a specific argument that Trump is better able to do it than DeSantis. Trump won those states in 2016, but he lost them in 2020 after they had seen what Trump is like in office.
This is not that difficult, really. Responding to this journalist during the primary: "Trump says the election was stolen, and a lot of good people are in jail right now because they believed him. But he never came through. He never showed up with evidence, not with all the power of the executive branch at his disposal. His own Attorney General said he was wrong. The best he can do is complain that he was victimized by Joe Biden. Well, I'm a doer, not a complainer. My record shows that much. I promise you that Joe Biden will never steal an election from me." And then in the general, give the same answer but leave out the last three sentences. It's really easy to pivot from that question to hitting Trump for failing, for letting himself be victimized, for failing to even keep the support of his own cabinet. That kind of answer projects strength to the GOP without coming close to participating in Trump's election denialism.
Trump's whole winning shtick in 2016 was that he's a winner, that he knows how the game is played and can out-play the Democrats, that he'll be too busy winning to worry about their political correctness and BS. But now he's a loser and a complainer, and the best that he can argue is that Joe Biden victimized him, that he got swindled and played by Sleepy Joe, which undermines his whole shtick. It's totally doable to call him out for that without getting dragged into the object level of whether Trump was right in his complaints. It just takes a modicum of political talent, which DeSantis has.
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Isn't this the exact opposite of what they supposedly did in the midterms, where they (allegedly) promoted Trumpists who then got trounced in the general? And wouldn't this trouncing imply that supporting Non-Trump Republicans is not a good strategy?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/12/democrats-interfere-republican-primaries/
It's not allegedly - they spent real money (tens of millions) in several races to promote the nuttier R candidates.
I just put that qualifier because I hadn't looked into it in any detail myself.
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Ice cold take, here: It depends. For the Democrats, it's good policy to support any Republican who is likely to either (a) say/do stupid things such that a Democrat will be more likely to win the general election, or (b) actually caucus with Democrats on particular issues (e.g. 1/6, immigration, synthetic sexual identities, government service reform, etc.
While it is overwhelmingly likely that Trumpist republicans will not fulfill (b), it is possible that republicans from either strain could fulfill (a). This is particularly true when taking into account individual politicians' local reputations, and the idiosyncracies of local primary electorates.
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Maybe I'm out of touch because I'm not American but I thought Clinton's Pied Piper Strategy to push Trump to the nomination in 2016 was an established fact. Or at the very least a widely accepted theory even in mainstream / leftist media sources.
"They're trying the same thing again" doesn't seem like it would be treated as an outrageous conspiracy theory. Although by the same token it wouldn't be a shocking revelation either, just the standard dirty tricks that happen every election.
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Is there any evidence that these kinds of shenanigans have changed an election outcome?
It seems that for every single Democrat who registers as a Republican to prevent Worse Than Hitler from being nominated, there'll be approximately one other Democrat who registers to ensure that Certain Loser is nominated. Both of those numbers will be very small compared to the total number of "real" Republican primary voters. If the margin is enough to sway the results either way, it was more or less a toss up to begin with.
This also is a vaguely plausible situation only if it's an uncontested Democratic primary, which would only be the case if Biden runs for reelection.
Also, as a Democrat I'd love if Republicans temporarily switched registrations to vote for who they thought was the better candidate, even if they would never vote for them in the general; it'd be a welcome correction to certain excesses in the party base right now and improve policy and electibility. (That gratitude wouldn't extend to them voting for who they disliked more as an attempt to sabotage things.)
No
Agreed. Though I’m in an open-primary state.
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Yes
They'd switch registrations to vote for who they thought would be least electable. Think Marianne Williamson, not Buttigieg or Klobuchar.
But in the OP's case, they were suggesting that in the Republican primary Democrats would vote in droves against Trump, who is perceived as being less electable than the alternatives (hence political bosses tactically supporting Trump-affiliated candidates in the last election in the hopes of having an easier time of it in the general).
Yeah... I agree with OP's premise that Democrats are likely to try to intervene in GOP primaries, but disagree about which candidate they hope to prevail.
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It would be ridiculous not to expect Democrats voting in Republican primaries. It also usually wouldn’t be “shenanigans.”
There are 18 open primary states. Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, N. Dakota, Ohio, S. Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas were fully open and voted red in 2020. Anyone living in one of these states would be well within their rights to vote in the Republican primary. I expect them to vastly outnumber any partisans going undercover in closed states.
I did it this year, and I’ll do it again in 2024. Texas is still hugely Republican-biased, and I’d quite like to get some input on the election. Plus I get to vote against Ken Paxton and Greg Abbott twice.
As someone relatively moderate in a blue county in a red open-primary state, my choice of primary each year is dictated primarily by whether I want a maximal voice in electing local or state winners for the November ballot.
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Texas has a bill filed to move to closed primaries for exactly that reason.
Whether they actually do it or not is very much up in the air. Probably depends on what phelan’s margins look like for speakership elections.
Edit- if you’re relishing the prospect of voting against Abbott and Paxton twice, who’d you vote for governor in the primary? All of Abbott’s primary challengers were pretty far to his right.
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They'd also be well within their rights to move to a state with friendlier politics or push their own party to field candidates who are more competitive in the above states in question, so as to make the available options better.
Not sure why "cast a fruitless vote in a primary consisting mostly of people I inherently disagree with" somehow comes across as the optimal choice for influencing outcomes.
I'm really not sure how one can conclude this tactic is actually effective at improving the situation.
It seems pretty optimal to me. The cost of voting in one primary over another is pretty low. The benefit is, too, but that’s true for basically all political participation. I could spend actual time and money trying to herd the Democrats and see roughly as much effect.
As a bonus, I don’t inherently disagree with Republicans! In the general, I voted for a couple who were able to make sober, reasonably technocratic pitches. I’m not interested in supporting the populist wing. Is there really a difference between expressing that preference in the primary vs. in a non-competitive general?
I’m assuming, in Texas, that you voted for Hegar but not the Republican candidates to be commissioners of whatever description (who were usually far to the right of the party as a whole), but I’m curious- who running as a republican was a more technocratic governor candidate than Abbott(I mean arguably Beto was less technocratic too, it was just a different kind of populism)?
Broadly correct on commissioners. In the general election, I leaned Dem on those unless the Libertarian seemed competent, in which case I did my part to get him to 5%. Unfortunately, but perhaps to be expected, lots of the L candidates don’t bother with much of a site/statement. Most of my R votes went to county or judicial positions where the Republican was usually more experienced.
You’re correct that I didn’t have a more technocratic/competent option than Abbott. I chose not to vote for him anyway because I really disapprove of his theatrics. Not sure if I abstained from this one or voted for...I think Belew was the most centrist?
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How much time do you spend researching candidates, their positions, background and their pros and cons? That is, what is the minimum amount of effort it really takes to be an 'informed voter' in this scenario?
What could you maybe do with that time instead?
Hm. I’d do the same basic research for either party, so I guess you’re now comparing to “instead of voting at all.” Video games, probably.
If you were to suggest an “optimal choice for influencing outcomes,” what would it be? Bonus points if it can be achieved in only a couple hours a year.
If you are a person of substantial means, probably giving money to a candidate who is in a tight race and where a few hundred or few thousand votes might actually tip things. If you have a PAC you find trustworthy then maybe just hand them the money. I'm skeptical of political donations as a class, however.
If you are someone with a decent amount of clout in a given community, then speaking to people who respect your opinion and might alter their voting pattern accordingly could work. This could lead to your input causing a shift in a few dozen votes (or if you've got REAL substantial reach, a few hundred!) which might have some impact on outcomes.
If you are an averageish joe with no particular wealth or clout in your community, you should probably just focus on your local races, maybe your state level races. And if applicable you should maybe focus on saving up enough wealth to either insulate yourself from the consequences of said elections or allow you to pick up and move somewhere else if the outcome is disfavorable enough (like, for instance, the apparent hundreds of thousands of people leaving California and New York). Getting too involved in political processes above the local level is a good way to set useful money and effort that could have gone to productive uses on fire/enrich political actors.
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No one's vote materially influences outcomes. A Democrat in Idaho has every bit as much influence as a Democrat in California.
If a Republican likes living in California or a Democrat likes living in Idaho, why should they uproot their life to be governed by people who happen to share their party affiliation?
Yes, you're making my point about moving even stronger.
They shouldn't. They should be allowed to secede and be ruled by people whose politics they prefer, or nobody at all. That's clear to me at least. It solves for almost all political gripes at once.
But Democrats consider that idea (secession) verboten so in absence of that, why do you suggest that casting a pointless vote is a reasonable action?
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I'm not entirely clear on what people think is illegitimate about this tactic. I don't want to play stupid, I get how it feels kind of off, but I'm not sure I've heard a clear articulation of why switching parties for a primary shouldn't be allowed. Lots of states have open primaries and this doesn't seem to result in any particularly chaotic results. If one of your party's candidates is so thoroughly despised by the opposition party that they would forgo participating in their own choice just to keep OrangeHitler or a KenyanMuslim out of office, why should a somewhat neutral observer see that as an issue to be fixed?
Perhaps more importantly, I'm not aware of any examples of this tactic actually doing much of anything.
I don't know that anyone's claiming it's illegitimate, but there is something a little... hardball about it. We aren't talking about voting for whoever you think is the best candidate in the other party's primary, we're talking about voting for whoever is the least electable candidate in the other party's primary, in the hopes that you'll coerce your opponents into nominating someone terrible who will then lose the general election. It may sound far-fetched, but the Democrats did it this cycle and it worked.
My state has open primaries. Given incumbents so often retain their party’s nomination, I often vote for people in the primaries that I don’t vote for in the general. In as much as my one vote matters (not much) this is not a bad strategy based on how primary ballots shake out.
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Are we all talking about the same thing? What I'm responding to from the OP is:
I think Democrats often sincerely believe that Trump is significantly more terrible than other candidates, particularly someone squishy like Evan McMullin. I don't agree with them, but I'm pretty sure it's what they actually think. Voting for the candidate you think is easier to beat is definitely more of a bad faith move than voting against the candidate that you think is a "danger to democracy".
Yeah, I think OP has it backward and the Dem interference would be directed toward securing the nomination for Trump. But OP (somehow) thinks Trump is more electable than DeSantis.
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The most likely course of events remains that Desantis endorses trump, who wins the primary in a landslide, and loses the general to Biden again following an election marked by train wreck ballot handling in key states.
The most likely event is that Desantis takes an early lead and Trump goes to absolute war on him and is either ineffective (Desantis takes the nom) or is effective (some third person slips in amidst the chaos).
I think to get to your proposed outcome, Trump has to take an early lead, but Desantis hangs on until and wins Florida, at which point (approximately midway through) both candidates size up their advantages and if Trump has a decently commanding lead Desantis could be willing to capitulate.
If neither Trump nor Desantis is frontrunner by then, I don't see Desantis throwing in for Trump.
There is zero evidence of any kind of DeSantis rise outside of the core of the anti-anti-Trump faction on social media - aka, right-wing college-educated conservatives. The type of people who were never going to be NeverTrumpers, but were also never going to be comfortable with Trump and Trump's supporters for a variety of reasons. They want the gaucheness of Trump gone, replaced by a National Review-friendly version in DeSantis, but there's no evidence the actual Trump base is buying into it.
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You’re assuming Desantis runs.
I mean, obviously many people want him to. But it’s very much in his self interest to bow out, endorse trump, and then say nothing until he gets re-elected again.
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Speaking as someone who strongly hopes for a Democratic victory in 2024 (and indeed in pretty much every election), I would probably be much more inclined to get whichever Republican was most likely to lose nominated rather than aiming to win it for the least worst moderate Republican.
I think this is a really bad idea.
how confident am I in identifying the worst candidate?
is the difference in candidates even enough to swing the election?
what signal am I sending for future primaries?
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I would probably consider the possible second-order effects here. If the Republican nominee is going to be weak, then seems likely that the Dem candidate might also be weaker than usual since the candidates on the Dem side will sense an opportunity.
Likewise, would you want there to be a general norm of outside-parties sabotaging the primary process of the parties so as to ensure the worst picks win every time?
Would it be good or bad for the nation (which, I presume, is where you live) if the parties consistently nominate weak candidates despite 'objectively' better options existing and entering the fray?
If this were an accepted tactic by the Democrats I would honestly consider it strong evidence for the GOP's "The Democrats are anti-American" thesis, since pushing weak candidates towards national offices will have the predictable effect of leading to weaker candidates running the national government, and what kind of actual patriot would ever want that for their country?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
In an ideal world, you would want your election for the most powerful role in the country to be a 'fair' showdown between the best possible candidates that can be mustered. Because the national election is supposed to ultimately be the culmination of a friendly competition to advance the good of the whole, and efforts to undermine that are inherently self-destructive, no?
Like, we wouldn't want the winner of the Super Bowl to be some mediocre team that happened to be good at sabotaging all the other teams behind the scenes, would we? They could hire thugs to kneecap star players and try to sneak drugs into their opponents' water cooler, and that would help them win! But that would kind of tarnish the whole affair, and be a poor reflection on the state of the sport of professional football. All participants are competing but are still better off if contests are decided by skill at the game and not backstabbery.
Your model assumes that our political contest is similar to competitive sports, a cooperative exercise in pursuit of shared goals, and may the best man win. I don't think this is the way most politically-active people on either side see things these days. I don't think it's possible to reasonably assess the claim that either party is "Anti-American" without understanding that the two parties' members disagree pretty strongly on what America is and should be.
I guess I'm a tad bit old fashioned in that I think what "America" the nation-state is and should be is defined in large part by the Constitution which created said nation-state. And that it is completely fair game to criticize and even undermine that document as a valid founding instrument worth obeying... but you don't then get to aggressively enforce obedience/adherence to the very political ties/institutions that were created by said instrument. The States agreed to cede political power to a Federal government in exchange for very substantial limits on what the government could do. I see no reason why the States are morally, ethically, or legally required to continue to obeying the Federal government when it begins to blatantly exceed those limits whilst still claiming to be operating by that founding document.
So I see shit like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1619_Project
And I conclude that they (Democrats, which can include at least part of 'the left') simply do not care much for the nation "America" that was founded on a particular set of ideals and with a particular set of rules, but VERY MUCH like "America" the economic/political unit that is currently the most powerful human-controlled entity on the planet. And they will pretend to support the former in order to maintain control of the latter.
So to make my point clear: I have concluded that the Democrats, on most levels, are completely against the norms, traditions, and legal boundaries that were supposed to define the nation they aspire to govern, and more relevant, are completely willing to discard said norms, traditions, and boundaries whenever they're an actual impediment to their own party's interests.
I don't even have to invoke the concept of "The Cathedral" to reach this conclusion, I generally just have to look at Democrat rhetoric surrounding the First Amendment ("Hate speech isn't free speech, AND I don't care if Corporations violate free speech!" and their insistence on forcing Christian Bakers to bake gay wedding cakes and claim its not violating religious freedom) and the Second Amendment (ignoring any language therein aside from "well-regulated militia") compared to say, their rhetoric around the "right" to abortion which simply does not exist under any sane reading of the actual founding document, but which could surely be added via the prescribed amendment process if it had the overwhelming support they claim.
The GOP has it's own problems in this regard (military adventurism in particular), but it's blatant to the point it cannot be ignored when it comes to Democrat politicians.
Either we can agree that the Constitution is the valid founding document under which our political institutions are legitimized and have our fights within that context, or we don't, at which point one or both parties can, I think, validly said to be 'anti-American' to the extent they refuse to accept such founding document and the rules it imposes.
I agree with pretty much everything you've written, as far as it goes. The problem is, other people don't, and it seems to me that nothing you've written is persuasive to them. You've given an excellent description of one side of the divide, but what we need is a way to bridge it, and what you're offering won't work.
Do they agree that they're criticizing and undermining the document, or do they think they're implementing it as designed? The latter seems to match Progressive self-perception much better. I don't think you'll get Progressives to agree that anything they've done with or to the Constitution has been in any way untoward or unseemly, or that they've sacrificed their right to federal enforcement of their values in any way.
More generally, the fact that this disagreement can't actually be adjudicated in any binding way makes me pessimistic that the Constitution was ever going to last in any case. The document is, at best, a coordination mechanism. It can't make things work on its own.
Aren't both parties "anti-American" from each other's perspective, and "American" from their own? What makes the other side accept your definitions and judgements? Are you willing to accept theirs? ...People rag on me for pessimism and rabble-rousing, but honestly, I think everyone would be a lot calmer if they stopped looking for the consensus that they absolutely aren't going to find.
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I often see very similar rhetoric in left-leaning spaces levelled against Republicans. Are you confident that Republicans hew to tradition, norms and legal boundaries?
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This doesn't actually work; it just displaces the substantive questions to various interpretational meta-questions like: "what does 'Necessary and Proper' mean?" and "Is the 'militia clause' prefatory or limiting?" and "what does 'Due Process of Law' mean?"
If only there were a theory of legal interpretation which sought to determine the original meaning of those words as intended by the drafters and signatories to the document at the time it was drafted and signed.
Which, incidentally, is how almost all other contracts are interpreted by courts.
Okay, so now you've just displaced the object level arguments one meta-level higher; now it's a battle over whatever historical evidence you can turn up or torture to support your position. Originalist arguments can be made on both sides of most constitutional questions if you work hard enough at it, and there are may very smart, well-paid, and/or motivated people who work full-time at doing just that.
But this whole debate is pointless; you can't make people conform to an interpretational theory. There's just no processing or proceduring your way over serious substantive conflicts in society, or stopping the inevitable drift in culture, language, economic relations, technological circumstances, morality, and language that occurs across the generations.
I'd say that there was a few decades there where people were 'made' to conform with the 'living constitution' interpretational theory.
So it apparently does work on some level.
Sure. And in years past this resulted in actual amendments being passed via the prescribed process. Women can vote now, Chattel slavery is outlawed, we have an income tax, and at one point alcohol was banned nationally.
Because it was, seemingly, agreed on that this was the proper approach to ensuring the document kept up with the culture of the nation.
I don't think there's anyone who thinks that the Constitution is unable to be changed or updated, but many object to this being done by judicial fiat without giving citizens the chance to have a voice in the process.
I really don't know what your point is, otherwise.
Either the Constitution is the solid foundation upon which the Union of states is supposed to operate, and should be treated with sufficient reverence by the institutions involved, or it is not, and we are not held together by anything but historical momentum and a bare sheen of national brotherhood arising from shared history.
Where do you derive your definition of "America" from?
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They did it in 2016, this was the pied piper strategy
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
Yes, I have updated a couple times towards the Democrats being an 'Anti-American' party. This isn't me endorsing the GOP, however. This shouldn't be a difficult tactic to counter, either.
Wildcard rule, this is annoying, stop doing it.
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Hahaha. The two parties are corrupt coalitions of monied interests led by gerontocrats who, trump excepted, generally obey the machine rather than giving the orders. In practice the R or D next to the candidates name tells you a lot more about what they’ll do in office than the actual name does.
For our purposes I'm pretending that Third parties have some influence when they put forth a candidate.
But if we go with the "all political candidates are inherently the product of the party machine" then it suggests one should REALLY focus on improving their own party's machinery rather than futzing with the opposition's.
Or focus on burning both down.
Why? Shouldn't your model conform to reality?
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That would be odd, since if anything Democrats did the exact opposite this year.
That is not what the linked article says, and in fact every other serious candidate withdrew from the race by the end of January of 2008, so if anyone "force[d] the superdelegates to pick between the first Black President and the first woman President," it was voters in Iowa and the handful of pre-Super Tuesday primaries.
Agreed that Limbaugh’s campaign can’t be credited with much. Source. If shock-jock political frothing were actually an effective tool for coordination, both parties would be leveraging it much harder.
Ironically, that’s not what the article says. As objectionable as I find the practice of funding extremism in the Republican party, it doesn’t really count as coordinating a fifth column of primary voters.
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Rush was coordinating an effort to keep the election close enough that the superdelegates would provide the margin of victory. It's a smart tactical move as it means one candidate's fans feel screwed by the party elites.
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If that actually happened, would it really be a plan of which the general populace disapproves? Seems to me that voting against someone you don't want elected is well within the spirit of democracy. I welcome republicans to do the same during democrat primaries.
Counterexample: It'd be a lot shadier if democrats purposefully won trump the nomination because they expected him to lose the general election. It's both risky and it feels more of a hack to vote for someone you don't actually want.
This is basically the strategy they used in 2020, intervening in GOP primaries to advance Trump-style candidates knowing they'd be easier to defeat in the general (which they were).
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Am I being crazy in thinking that it's probably not good for the country in which you live and are a citizen if all parties that aspire to national office end up consistently putting up weaker candidates than what they actually have available for the national offices? That this kind of sabotage is ultimately incredibly self-destructive?
This seems like an obviously less preferable equilibrium that a, I guess, "SANE" nation would outright reject if possible since they would want to have the choice be between the strongest candidates possible so even if their preference loses at least it won't be a drastic difference in 'quality.'
OP was talking about democrats boosting non-trump candidates. Presumably, democrats are picking candidates they like better than trump. That's not sabotage, that's just expressing your preference.
If democrats were purposefully selecting weak candidates they don't prefer nor think can win an election, I would agree it's sabotage, that it leads to weaker nominees and that it's not good for the country.
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They can't. If this happens, the media will report it both as straight news with a positive spin, and call any Republicans complaining about it "schizophrenic conspiracy theorists". When the other side controls the media, you have to write off optics.
Celebration Parallax once more:
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