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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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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'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.