Another reason Pritzker wants Irvin defeated? He is African American, and, as the former mayor of Aurora, the second-largest city in Illinois, he could contest Spritzer’s hold on minority voters.

Former GOP governor Jim Edgar says the Democrats have never been “as obvious as they have been” this year, with this hypocritical ploy.

But some Democrats privately worry they are playing with fire. “There is always the chance that in a wave election against your party, the same crazies you wanted to win the other party’s primary wind up actually beating your guys and making laws,” Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf once told me.

It wasn’t so long ago, after all, that Trump was seen as a bump in the road to Hillary Clinton’s path to the presidency. And the economy isn’t doing Democrats any favors.

It’s telling that the media is largely ignoring the Democratic dirty-tricks ad buys, even though there is no comparable effort on the GOP side. An exception is the attention paid by National Journal columnist Josh Kraushaar, who asks: “How seriously does the party take its own argument that American democracy itself is threatened by Republicans when they’re boosting some of the most radical conspiracists and election-deniers for naked political gain?”