Politico reports that, in Pennsylvania:
Democrats helped engineer Mastriano’s win. One of the most fascinating things we read last night was our colleagues’ back and forth on the POLITICO live blog about how Mastriano’s rise can be partly attributed to Democrats.
How?
Viewing him as the easiest Republican to defeat in the general, Shapiro and the state Democratic Party sent out mailers boosting him, our Holly Otterbein noted, helping him rise above other GOP candidates, including former Rep. LOU BARLETTA (R-Pa.).
And:
And while Mastriano spent less than $370,000 on TV ads, the Shapiro campaign pumped more than $840,000 to air a spot that attacked Mastriano as too conservative for voters, an ad which actually boosted him on the right, our Zach Montellaro reported. Case in point: The ad called him “one of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters” — which, to many GOP primary voters, is a feature, not a bug.
It took Republican primary voters — not scheming Democrats — to choose Mastriano once he was on the ballot. Had those primary voters wanted to, they could (and should) have just said, “No.” But they didn’t, and now Mastriano is the nominee. And, as Politico notes, he could plausibly win:
But this election is far from a sure thing for Democrats. Given soaring inflation, ongoing supply-chain issues, painfully high gas prices and a spike in violent crime, the general environment is still rich for the GOP. Throw in Biden’s poor poll numbers, and anything can happen.
This being so, I do not want to hear a single thing from the Democratic Party about the “threat” that Doug Mastriano presents to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, or to the republic in general. I am, from this moment on, not remotely interested in that case. Why not? Because the Democratic Party clearly doesn’t believe a word of it. When one truly believes that a given candidate is a threat, one doesn’t “send out mailers boosting him,” or spend $840,000 on television advertisements designed to improve his standing.
“For a party that claims to care about the fragile state of democracy,” Politico notes, “this is a risky strategy.” Indeed. But, quite obviously, the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania does not really think that the “state of democracy” is “fragile,” because, if it did think that, it wouldn’t have played Machiavellian games in a wave year.
This isn’t new. In 2016, it was imperative to stop Donald Trump from winning the election — but not imperative enough for the Democrats to moderate in order to win on-the-fence voters. Since Joe Biden won in 2020, the party has treated us to endless lectures about “our democracy,” while pursuing a wholly unsolicited partisan strategy that has led it into the electoral mire. Astonishingly, it is doing the same thing in Pennsylvania in 2022. If it turns out badly, as it may, I don’t want to hear a peep out of those who orchestrated it.