I agree a bit with jt (below) about whether it was immoral for the democrats to intervene in the republican primary elections. No one's ever accused me of being a moralist or a philosopher, so I only have a citizen's eye view of the problem, but when faced with a confirmed amoralist like Trump, I have to give the democrats' strategy some leeway.

It was inarguably cynical and meddlesome, but wasn't it also -- hear me out -- optimistic? Its premise is that the non-MAGA or less-MAGA republican voters will see, when the general election comes around, what democrats do: these candidates are beyond the pale, and represent something unseemly in their party.

As Yascha points out, this is a risk, but electoral politics is always about risks of various magnitude. None of the ads I saw said anything that wouldn't be entirely consistent with the democratic nominee's positions. A quote from an ad about Dan Cox in Maryland seems pretty consistent with others: "Too close to Trump, too conservative for Maryland." That's an honest characterization that any democrat could make in any context.

The bet is that this will thrill the MAGA voters, and leave the reasonable republican voters with a more reasonable choice in the general. And the bet paid off. There were enough reasonable republican voters who made what the democrats saw as a pragmatic choice.

I wouldn't want ultimate success to be the only measure of the strategy. But I also don't want a more favorable and generous interpretation to be left off the table. Yes, this was hardball politics. But it relied on a belief (reasonable, in my opinion) about the better angels republican voters might listen to when they had a consequential decision to make.

I'm not sure how I'd feel about this when the stakes are at the presidential election and the option isn't Trump adjacent but Trump himself. But the strategy this time added to everything else that is weakening Trump, and that is a good thing that has been hard to do in any other way. At best the motives were mixed. But I've always said that about Machiavelli, and human nature in general.