With MAGA Candidates, the Democrats Embrace High-Stakes Risk

By Jim Geraghty

Thursday, September 15, 2022

 

In my perfect world, the Overton Window would run from about… Ted Cruz to Amy Klobuchar – from pretty darn conservative to the center-left, steering the country in a center-right direction. Oh, Congress could have some hard lefties, preferably of the Russ Feingold wonky variety and less of the AOC celebrity variety, and I’m fine with idiosyncratic figures who don’t always fit an easy mold like Justin Amash or Rand Paul or Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. People with different life experiences see the world differently, and sometimes they’ll see something that you just miss. There are a lot of people you don’t want at the head of the table, who you still want to have a seat at the table.

 

But to turn the Overton window sideways, the goal is sometimes to get the highest ceiling – electing the best possible elected officials, enacting the best possible policy outcomes – and/or to raise the floor, electing the least-worst possible elected officials, enacting the least-worst possible policy outcomes.

 

A Democratic Party that consisted of Joe Liebermans, Heath Shulers, John Bel Edwards, Sinemas and Manchins would be one that had a particularly high floor — electing a lot of Democrats like those would mean I would have less to worry about from government. The policies enacted would rarely be exactly what I wanted, but they would also rarely be some progressive pipe dream and catastrophically self-destructive for the state or country. I could easily vote for one of them, particularly against a subpar Republican.

 

A Republican Party that consisted of Mike DeWine, Charlie Baker, Larry Hogan, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski would be a low ceiling… but it would still be significantly better than being governed by progressive Democrats. We wouldn’t see a lot of bold and groundbreaking conservative reforms… but there’s something to be said for cautious, careful, incremental changes.

 

By using significant amounts of resources — $53 million over 13 primaries, according to the Washington Post! – to promote MAGA Republicans in GOP primaries, the leadership of the Democratic Party is accepting a risk of a much lower floor (from their perspective) in exchange for the chance at a much higher ceiling, or to keep the ceiling around the same height.

 

Democrats would not love waking up in early 2023, and realizing they live in a world with Pennsylvania governor Lou Barletta, Maryland governor Kelly Schulz, Illinois governor Richard Irvin, New Hampshire senator Chuck Morse, New Hampshire congressman George Hansel and Michigan congressman Peter Meijer serving another term.

 

But those Republican figures are all relatively sane, and don’t spend much time obsessing over conspiracy theories that Venezuelan hackers or some other sinister force altered the votes and changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. From a Democratic perspective – and not just from that perspective! – that floor is significantly higher!

 

But to avoid that outcome, Democrats accepted the risk of living in a world with Pennsylvania governor Doug Mastriano, Maryland governor Dan Cox, Illinois governor Darren Bailey, New Hampshire senator Don Bolduc, New Hampshire congressman Robert Burns and Michigan congressman John Gibbs.

 

Democrats will probably beat these MAGA candidates in the general election, but when the president’s approval rating is so low and inflation is so high, in a midterm year, there’s never a 100 percent chance of victory. A couple polls have Mastriano hanging around within a few percentage points. Bolduc’s head-to-head numbers against incumbent Democratic senator Maggie Hassan were pretty close earlier in the year.

 

The Democrat-backed MAGA candidates are all pretty nutty, but if any of them pull off a victory, it will represent Democrats getting what they deserve for trying to help candidates that they regularly denounce as a threat to democracy. If you think a particular figure is a lunatic and a particular danger to the country, don’t spend millions of dollars to help them win a primary! Because if you do that, no one believes that you genuinely see that figure as a danger to the country, and there’s always a chance they could actually win the general election. Hillary Clinton and her campaign were convinced Donald Trump was the easiest Republican to beat, and we all remember how that turned out.