In boosting Trump acolytes, Democrats become what they once condemned

Around midnight, it became clear that Meijer had lost, and hearty congratulations were due to … the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Yes, you read that right: The DCCC intervened to help the Trumpiest candidate win — spending, in fact, more money boosting Gibbs than his own campaign did. Given the tight margins of the race, there’s a good chance its support was decisive.

And why did it do this apparently insane thing? Why, because it thinks Gibbs will be easier to beat in November.

After six years of calling Trump the greatest threat to American democracy since the Civil War, the hypocrisy of this is astonishing. Yet the two-faced chicanery is somehow less amazing than the cavalier disregard the Democratic politicians involved are showing for their oath of office.

Last year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) urged the Republican Party to “take back the party,” saying, “Hey, here I am, Nancy Pelosi, saying this country needs a strong Republican Party, and we do, not a cult, but a strong Republican Party.” She was absolutely right, and yet somehow, a year later, her party is running a recruiting drive for the cultists. It’s not just Gibbs; Democrats have run the same playbook in several tight primary races, unfortunately with considerable success.

They’ve done this despite the risk that Trump’s minions will not just take over the Republican Party but also the House and the Senate — possibly with Trump himself back in the presidency come 2025. It’s so obviously dangerous that even some Democrats have publicly expressed disquiet. The defenses, meanwhile, range from paper thin to actually transparent.

We won’t linger over the disingenuous insistence that the ads that Democrats ran weren’t really aimed at boosting Gibbs et al., but were merely a head start on the general election. I cannot pretend, even for the sake of argument, that anyone who has seen the ads is stupid enough to believe this.

Slightly more plausible is the argument that the money didn’t matter. Only given how little money or name recognition Gibbs had, that’s hard to believe, too.

Nor will it do to say that, actually, the real risk was letting Meijer win the primary, since his stronger general election candidacy marginally increased the possibility of the House under the control of Trump sycophant Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). That might be plausible — if still brazenly immoral — if nominating Gibbs meant an easy win for Democrats. But it doesn’t.

“This is either a district with a modest D lean or a pure toss-up,” says election analyst Sean Trende. “Depending on what type of year 2022 turns out to be, Gibbs can definitely win.”

Which leaves us only with the common deflection: Why blame Democrats instead of the Republican voters who chose a candidate aligned with Trump? I think those voters are grievously mistaken, and should stop supporting the treasonous oaf, or his imitators. But at least they think they’re doing the right thing.

The DCCC can hardly offer the same excuse. Only a week ago, its chair, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (N.Y.), declared, “The dangers of Trumpism go far beyond Trump.” Too right, Congressman. So how can you justify taking any risk of giving this movement more power?

I know what you want to say: Politics ain’t beanbag. It’s an excuse you hear a lot in politics — in fact, almost every time it becomes expedient to do the wrong thing.

Over the past few years, I’ve heard it particularly often from Republicans trying to explain why they pretended to enjoy Trump’s outrages and believe his lies — and, ultimately, why they said nothing while he disputed a legitimate election and incited an angry mob to insurrection.

They didn’t have a choice, they said. Too many Republican voters supported him. If they tried to stand up to Trump, those voters would just toss them out in favor of Trumpier substitutes.

To which Democrats and left-leaning pundits correctly retorted: You always have a choice. In this case, you also have a moral obligation to choose your country over your personal political interests. It’s right there in the oath you took to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

Said politicians and pundits were justifiably outraged when so many Republican politicians nonetheless kept supporting Trump. They were understandably just as lacerating about conservative pundits who made excuses for this craven capitulation. A thousand think pieces tried to pin down just exactly what combination of institutional rot and personal character flaws could lead a person, or a party, to behave like this.

After Tuesday, however, Democrats can stop asking how Republicans could have sold out their principles and their country in a pathetic grab for some evanescent political advantage. Because now they know.