Tuesday November 8, 2022 is Election Day in the United States of America. In addition to Congressional "midterms" at the federal level, many state governors and other more local offices are up for grabs. Given how things shook out over Election Day 2020, things could get a little crazy.
...or, perhaps, not! But here's the Megathread for if they do. Talk about your local concerns, your national predictions, your suspicions re: election fraud and interference, how you plan to vote, anything election related is welcome here. Culture War thread rules apply, with the addition of Small-Scale Questions and election-related "Bare Links" allowed in this thread only (unfortunately, there will not be a subthread repository due to current technical limitations).
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Notes -
Which principles of democracy does this undermine? Have D voters gone and voted in R primaries for the weaker candidate? I will agree that this is unsavory and risks further escalation. If they campaigned for a weaker R candidate to help them win the primaries, then it's not different from any other PAC or from accelerationists voting for the worst candidate. I agree that the latter comparison does make it sound like the subversion of the democracy, but if R activity against meddling with their primaries ends up destroying PACs as well, I will call this a win-win.
I actually did once raise the idea of people being able to pick both primary candidates at once, I guess this is sort-of what could happen.
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Not sure what GP meant precisely, but I agree with the conclusion. In the case I'm most familiar with, D party paid for ads, before R primary, promoting the R candidate who was questioning the 2020 election results. IIRC the ads specifically mentioned the 2020 election.
I don't think the general form of strategy ("promote the opponent party's weaker candidate") is much of a blow to democracy---it's plausibly a boost to independent candidates long-term, in which case I guess I should be happy!
But to specifically claim, with one mouth, that "election denial is a thread to democracy", and "these guys are insurrectionists", and then with the other mouth to be promoting the supposed insurrectionists, is nakedly hypocritical. The conclusion I draw is that Ds (by which I mean "political class" Ds and "decision making" Ds, to be clear) do not actually believe that Jan 6 and the associated theories are anything like a serious threat to the country. If they did, they'd be desperate for the election deniers and insurrectionists and whatever else to lose, in primaries, as write-in candidates, to never get funding, and on and on.
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