Why the Democrats are funding my opponent

Watching this unraveling inside my party has been utterly bewildering. The only thing that has been more nauseating has been the capacity of my Democratic colleagues to sell out any pretense of principle for political expediency—at once decrying the downfall of democracy while rationalizing the use of their hard-raised dollars to prop up the supposed object of their fears.

The Democrats are justifying this political jiu-jitsu by making the argument that politics is a tough business. I don’t disagree. But that toughness is bound by certain moral limits: Those who participated in the attack on the Capitol, for example, clearly fall outside those limits. But over the course of the midterms, Democrats seem to have forgotten just where those limits lie.

Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat and a fellow Iraq War veteran, took a heroic stand in the House chamber on January 6. In an April interview with Politico, Gallego recounted removing his jacket in case he had to fight his way out of the chamber, that he “would have killed all those motherfuckers to save this democracy. Like, I survived a war. Whatever it took, I was going to survive.” Yet last week, Gallego defended his DCCC dollars going to a staunch supporter of ‘those motherfuckers,’ tweeting, “You help a far right member of Congress who will vote for McCarthy to be leader or ‘moderate’ Republican to vote for McCarthy to be leader. Politics ain’t beanbag.” Indeed politics ain’t, and as Gallego gears up to primary Senator Kyrsten Sinema in 2024, it’s clear he will rationalize what is needed to survive in Democrats’ good graces.