Dems propping up bad republican candidates actually worked

Merde alors!

Don't do this again. I'm feeling relief, but a lot of this was too close for comfort.

I already apologized for Dems getting Mastriano the nomination, I was worried about him. He was too crazy for the crazies.

There was an awful lot of chat around here about how this was going to badly backfire!!

Wise people promised that.

As long as it’s not illegal, and undeniably unethical, I don’t care how we win. Republicans count us being the ones to be the bigger person, while they kick sand in our face. Screw that. Kick that sand right back in their faces.

We played to win. Finally!

Kent (R) is losing to Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D). Still not called.

It's also where Perez is performing strongest against Kent. Last I looked it was 65% tallied, with a higher percentage already accounted for in the less-populated counties. Fingers crossed for that one!

they didn't do that in NC?

But I suspect that the Democrats did indeed do that, at least in the 13th, because a D just beat MAGA loon, Bo Hines.

i was referring to Beasley's loss to magat Budd for US Senate.

It normalizes insanity and makes it even more extreme. Yes, there is a short-term gain, but the cost to society could be enormous.

...it just so happens that the weakest are the worst of them.

I'm not really seeing value in less extreme republicans, especially when practically ALL of them rubberstamp the extreme legislation championed by any majority they might achieve.

or “promote” them.

I fail to see how telling the truth about Republicans will cause an “enormous cost to society.”

More than they would get from a more centrist candidate. That has to have consequences to society.

It's one thing to “expose” them to the people who are listening to you. Undeniably, that is a good thing. But there are millions of people across the nation who will never hear the exposé, only the nutjob, day after day; and who will take that crazy football and run with it. I think we're already seeing some of that with the Paul Pelosi attack.

More crazy and more time to spew it is not a good thing for any society.

I am glad that they did it.

No way--in my estimation--could he defeat Joe Biden.

The thought kinda make me sick, but...?

...making it into a definite strategy mostly gives me the willies.

Still, I'd say folks looking to get elected should do whatever they think will work... pretty much what candidates do every election.

If it comes to a contest between the both of them, and there is no Democratic contest, I am prepared to vote for one or the other in the Republican primary-- whichever way will cause the most damage or prolong the contest.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

My take is that if Joe Biden and Donald Trump face off again, that Biden wins again. And with a much larger popular vote.

I'd expect the same result.

We referred to it as "Vote for the Worst". It came directly from an internet campaign that encouraged people to vote for the worst contestant on American Idol. In this case it was to vote for the worst GOP candidate- and it worked. Within a few days of winning the primary Todd Akin made his infamous comment during an interview and Claire McCaskill won by nearly 70%.

Unfortunately, his awful comments in 2012 are considered the gospel truth by the MAGA crowd.

...it just makes sense to single out the one you think is beatable and work to make them your opponent.

Consequences either way you go.

I remember several posters here trying to shame me for it back in 2012.

I had a discussion at another site with someone who was appalled that Dems were doing this, deliberately propping up the crazies bc the calculation was they would be easier to defeat.

My estimation? Anything that might work was worth a try.

The particular candidate in question was John Gibbs from Michigan, a total RW loon, who was in fact defeated in Michigan but went so far as questioning women's suffrage (an earlier Coulter claim). The argument was the risk involved supporting/propping up these truly crazy candidates in a primary set against the fact that they could actually be elected over more 'moderate' (whatever that animal is) GOP candidates.

My argument then was that when you're in an existential battle for the very soul and continuation of the country, you need to take risks, put it all on the table, go for broke.

It will be interesting when the dust settles and final counts are in to see how many of the propped up primary crazies were defeated.

In desperate times, sometimes desperate measures are required. For better or worse, I still stand by that.

Ammon Bundy might have won in Idaho if he got the Republican nomination.

It is not as if Democrats ran ads saying "support this candidate" regarding the election deniers.

They ran advertising stating "X candidate is too extreme for Michigan!" These were ATTACK ads against them-- general election type attack ads, but prior to the primary election.

So hey, Republican primary voters did not take our good advice-- that was their choice, wasn't it? They fell victim to "reverse psychology", either because they WANTED the most extreme candidate, or because they have trained themselves to do the opposite of whatever Democrats say-- it matters little which.

But Democrats never "promoted" the extreme Republican candidates, at least in Michigan. They actually attacked them.

It was a clever employment of "reverse psychology", and served the further purpose of softening up these candidates for the general election-- as most of the people viewing the ads would be future general election voters rather than Republican primary voters.

If Republican primary voters were foolish enough to fall for the reverse psychology just to "own the libs"-- or because they wanted the most extreme candidate-- that's their problem. "Politics ain't beanbag", and Democrats are entitled to spend their campaign cash in any legal manner which they wish to do.

But the most important point here, is that this advertising did not "promote the extremist GOP candidate"--- it attacked them, which is clearly what Democratic advertising would be expected to do. There was no "false flag" here...

The mainstream media seems to have lined up against this effort because it was rather "clever", and Democrats aren't allowed to campaign in any way that would be considered "clever" or approach a "dirty trick"-- (even though Republicans have been far-and-away the party of "dirty tricks" for the past century).

but there were no dirty tricks here-- (at least in the Michigan campaign)-- the extremist election-denying candidate was labeled as what they were-- "too extreme for Michigan!" They may have run the same ads in the general election, and there was no change in the party's position on that candidate.

So if Democrats were able to manipulate Republican primary results by telling the truth--
that is too bad, but Trumptard voters are not too bright...

What I saw was that they tied the candidates to Trump. Here in West Michigan, they ran ads about John Gibbs that showed him with Trump, and then said he's for abortion bans. So basically, things that would make him appealing to Republican voters, but not appealing to Dems.

It basically defined Gibbs before he got a chance to pretend he wasn't an extremist in the main election.

It was a brilliant strategy, not only did you help the weakest candidates win the primary, but you ran ads that helped your candidate win the general. And it just shows how warped Republican values are.

The criticism wasn't based on ads praising them, because those ads didn't. it was just that we didn't want to give these crazies a chance to get into office should something weird happen.

My district was Gibbs vs Hillary Scholten. She routed him by 13 points. But this is a fairly even district, it was redrawn from R+9 to D+3, but I think that Peter Meijer if he won the primary would have been really tough for Scholten to beat. Mejier is from a very respected family in West Michigan, he's a vet, a moderate, and he voted to impeach Trump.

I think at the state level, Tudor Dixon was definitely the GOP candidate that Dems most wanted to run against too. One of the more moderate candidates Dixon beat in the primaries would have done much better than the extreme Dixon. Whitmer was always going to win though, she's been great and the state loves her.

Well, that's a relief. Because after we blew the first hand off with Trump, that wasn't lesson enough.

"Hey ma, this hand is ok this time!"

Oh, lovely. We're relying on the teenager logic.

Didn't work for us in 2016.

I remember how excited many people were that the Republicans were nominating Donald Trump and how November would be a bloodbath.