Now It's the Democrats Who Are Putting Winning Ahead of Democracy | Opinion

American democracy is in bad shape. The primary season for the 2022 midterms is slowly crushing any hope that either party will moderate its worst instincts and put democracy above the will to power.

Republicans, in a disappointing but predictable continuation of the Trump era, have nominated scores of candidates who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. And yet despite positioning themselves as the defenders of democracy, the Democrats have been engaging in one of the most cynical and revealing campaign tactics imaginable, showing that they also see winning elections as a higher priority than democracy itself.

Democrats have been pouring money into Republican primaries in order to boost the most extreme, far-right candidates. They are doing this because they believe that the crazier their opponent, the easier they will be to beat in the November general election. As of last week, Democrats had spent around $44 million to help right-wing candidates.

This would be a cynical tactic in normal times, but at a moment where Democrats are claiming that the far right of the Republican Party poses an existential threat to democracy and are hosting prime-time committee hearings on the subject, it is especially exasperating.

In Maryland on Tuesday, this strategy came to its logical conclusion with the nomination of Dan Cox in a Republican primary. Cox is a far-right candidate who denies the legitimacy of the 2020 election, called Vice President Mike Pence a traitor on January 6, and has dabbled in QAnon conspiracy theories. The Democratic Governors Association spent over a million dollars on ads "attacking" Cox for being "too conservative." In reality, the ads were trying to boost Cox's standing among Republican primary voters by highlighting that he was "Donald Trump's handpicked candidate" and had far-right stances on guns and abortion.

Thanks in part to the extent of the Democratic support (DGA spending exceeded the TV and radio expenditures of all the other Republican candidates combined), Cox won his primary, beating out his more moderate opponent. And although Democrats may indeed have a better chance at flipping the Maryland executive office with Cox as the nominee, that opportunity came at the cost of elevating the exact type of anti-democratic candidate who Democrats claim to detest.

If only this were a one-off. But the tactic has been deployed by Democrats all over the country, in all sorts of elections. In Pennsylvania, the Democratic candidate for governor, Josh Shapiro, spent over $800,000 airing a television ad helping an extremist candidate, Doug Mastriano, win his primary against a more moderate Republican. With Shapiro's help, Mastriano managed to win and now Pennsylvania voters have around a 25 percent chance of electing a governor who could throw the 2024 presidential election into peril if he refuses to accept the results. Democrats had similar success in Illinois, where they spent $30 million on attack ads to sink a moderate Republican candidate and helped a far-right candidate, Darren Bailey, win the Republican nomination.

Fortunately, aside from these three cases, most of the Democratic attempts to elevate extreme Republicans have failed. In Colorado, Democrats' chosen radical was unable to win the Republican primary for Senate, Governor, or for a congressional seat. Democrats faced similar disappointments in Nevada and California.

Whether it succeeds or fails, it's an ugly gambit. It's incredibly hypocritical to claim that democracy is under threat from extremists and then spend millions of dollars to help get these very people within reach of real power. If far-right Republicans are truly a threat to democracy, Democrats must act like it rather than exploiting it as a convenient campaign strategy.

Moreover, America is already facing existential threats due to polarization and collapsing trust. The Democrats' tactic of elevating extremists guarantees that some independents and Republicans will shift far to the right in November—pulling America further apart than it already is.

The Democrats are also deceiving their own supporters. Imagine being a Democrat who has donated to the Democratic Governors Association, only to find out that your money is going to fund a far-right Republican who denies the legitimacy of the 2020 election. What Democrats are doing is a form of exploitation.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this could backfire spectacularly. The midterms are fast approaching, and with Biden's approval rating below 40 percent and voters concerned with rising inflation and crime, November could be a massive red wave equivalent to that of 1994 or 2010. If that happens, voters could end up electing Republicans like Cox in Maryland and Mastriano in Pennsylvania who pose a real threat to American democracy.

The behavior Democrats have exhibited in this year's primaries would be far less concerning if American democracy was stable. Unfortunately, it isn't: around two-thirds of Americans think that American democracy is in crisis and at risk of failing. Given this precariousness, Democrats deserve derision for their instinct to bemoan the Republican Party's extremist and anti-democratic turn at the same time that they celebrate the potential political gains. And when Democrats take this a step further by actively supporting and boosting extreme Republican candidates, they deserve to lose votes, fundraising capacity, and their status as the defenders of democracy.

If democracy is truly in peril, Americans deserve a party to protect it. The Republican Party, in its current MAGA iteration, is not up to this task. Unfortunately, it's becoming increasingly apparent that the Democratic Party isn't, either.

Seth Moskowitz is a journalist and an associate editor at Persuasion. He has previously worked as a Democratic campaign strategist. Follow him on Twitter @skmoskowitz.

The views in this article are the writer's own.