The headline of James Hohman’s new column emphasizes the questionable strategy of spending by Democrats to promote Big Lie Republicans in GOP primaries in the hopes of having easier general election opponents in the fall. I would emphasize the hypocrisy of this move on the part of Democrats. Hohman puts it well with these words: “Democrats cede the moral high ground when they bray about democracy being at risk and then spend heavily to promote the very people who are putting it in danger.”

Either way, Democrats would do well to focus on those measures that genuinely have the capacity to safeguard robustly competitive electoral democracy, even if it increases the chances that Democrats might lose some specific races to non-MAGA Republicans who also share a belief that democracy should be a system in which the voters themselves get to choose between teams, each of which is committed to the principle of taking turns depending on what the voters collectively prefer at any particular time.

UPDATE: Aaron Blake of the Washington Post also has a column with more details on this dangerous Democratic strategy. Focusing on swing states, he writes:

“Arizona and Pennsylvania today aren’t red like Missouri and Indiana were back then, but they are highly competitive. The most recent polling shows Lake neck-and-neck with Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D), and Mastriano with the margin of error with state Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D).

... it’s not that difficult to see this blowing up in Democrats’ faces. It’s surely on the table.

And Pennsylvania and Arizona being swing states rather than red states in a way makes this even dicier. And it’s because of precisely the same thing that Democrats say candidates like Mastriano and Lake are so dangerous: the fact that they’re election deniers. Republicans in positions of power in such swing states generally stood up to Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, but both Mastriano and Lake have assured voters they would’ve handled things quite differently.

We’re a few steps away from that actually coming into play, but imagine if it ever came to pass. Then we’d really see some soul-searching.”