It’s something that seems backward: Democrats spending money that serves to boost far-right candidates, many endorsed by former President Donald Trump, in elections all across America.

Yet it appears to be true. Political groups and nonprofit organizations linked to the Democratic Party have spent nearly $44 million on ads that have raised the profile of far-right candidates in Republican primaries in at least five states, according to Open Secrets, a nonpartisan group that tracks U.S. campaign spending.

It’s part of an old political strategy, actually, in which political parties meddle in the candidate-picking process of the other side. The hope is that if “weaker” opponents prevail, it will make it easier for the meddling party to win the general election.

But it can be a dangerous game, note political experts. In some instances, it’s a waste of scarce campaign funds that could be better put toward things like turnout operations. It also could backfire.

In Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial primary, for instance, Democrats spent heavily on TV ads highlighting the positions of Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who supported President Donald Trump’s efforts to decertify the 2020 election and continues to promote the false claim that it was stolen. Senator Mastriano won the May GOP primary, beating more moderate rivals – and is now only a few percentage points behind Democratic candidate Josh Shapiro.

In general, meddling in the other’s side primary with this so-called Pied Piper approach can come across as the kind of consultant-driven political gamesmanship that many voters say they dislike. That could be particularly true this year when Democrats say democracy is under threat from candidates denying the 2020 election results – while simultaneously appearing to boost some of those same candidates behind the scenes.

“It just seems to be playing with fire,” says Jennifer Victor, an associate professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. “Putting money behind candidates who use rhetoric and take positions that are inconsistent with democratic norms and values is really problematic.” 

Ric Dugan/The Frederick News-Post/AP

Maryland State Delegate Dan Cox gives a thumbs up as he enters a victory party after winning the Republican primary for Maryland governor, July 19, 2022, in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

Sometimes putting a thumb on the scale of an opponent’s primary works. In 2012, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri wanted conservative Todd Akin to win the GOP nomination, seeing him as the candidate she could most easily beat. She and her consultants came up with the idea of a “dog whistle” ad that would appear critical of Mr. Akin but would actually appeal to Republican primary voters, Senator McCaskill later wrote in a memoir. 

The ad quoted Mr. Akin saying highly negative things about then-President Barack Obama, and called him “too conservative” for Missouri. On the surface, it appeared as if Ms. McCaskill was attacking him, but as she noted in her book, “when you call someone ‘too conservative’ in a Republican primary, that’s giving him or her a badge of honor.”

Ms. McCaskill spent more money on Mr. Akin in the last two weeks of the primary than he spent on his entire campaign. It worked. He surged in the polls and won the primary. And then Senator McCaskill beat him handily in November, helped by some Akin gaffes dealing with abortion and women’s rights.

Fast forward to 2022, and Democratic campaign entities are employing a very similar approach in some Republican primaries.

In Maryland, the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) spent more than $1 million elevating Dan Cox, a conservative state delegate who organized buses to take Trump supporters to Washington on Jan. 6. The money went to TV ads and mailers tying Mr. Cox to former President Trump and detailing his conservative positions, including his opposition to new gun restrictions.

On Tuesday, Mr. Cox won the primary over a moderate opponent endorsed by Larry Hogan, the popular two-term GOP governor in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans almost 2-to-1.

DGA officials say they were just starting the general election campaign early against Mr. Cox, not trying to boost him in the primary.

But some analysts were quick to chalk up Mr. Cox’s win as a win for Democrats as well. In a state President Joe Biden won by 33 points, Mr. Cox’s pro-Trump positions won’t cut it, noted Jessica Taylor of the Cook Political Report following Tuesday’s primary.

“This [race] now moves completely off the board and into Solid Democrat,” Ms. Taylor wrote Wednesday morning. 

Ross D. Franklin/AP

Former President Donald Trump introduces Arizona Republican candidate for governor Kari Lake, right, as Trump speaks at a rally on Jan. 15, 2022, in Florence, Arizona. Former U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination for Arizona governor in June, leaving just two top contenders in the GOP contest. Mr. Salmon was widely seen as trailing former TV-news anchor Kari Lake and developer Karrin Taylor Robson.

Can you really pick your opponent?

Maryland is not the only state where Democratic entities have run ads boosting the profiles of Trump-backed gubernatorial candidates. They have tried it with Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, who won his GOP primary in May, and Darren Bailey of Illinois, who cruised to a primary victory in June. They’re running ads drawing attention to the Trump ties of Kari Lake of Arizona, who faces a gubernatorial primary in early August. 

Efforts to elevate far-right GOP candidates for offices from governor to member of Congress in California and Colorado did not succeed, according to Open Secrets. 

In general, how do such ads work? Are they really effective?

“They could work. A primary race is one of the places where persuasive political advertising is likely to have an impact,” says Travis Ridout, a professor of government at Washington State University and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks political advertising.

In a general election, party affiliation is a cue that influences the choice of many voters. In a primary, without the red vs. blue choice, indications of ideology or placement in a party’s political spectrum can make a difference, Professor Ridout says.

That means that an ad noting whether a candidate is endorsed by President Trump or not could make a huge difference to GOP voters, whether the ad is critical or not.

The other reason it could make a big difference is that in a primary, voters’ knowledge of candidates is pretty low. Basics such as name recognition are important. Democratic ads that blast out a Republican name, especially when the Democrats are spending more for ads than the Republican candidate can themselves afford, could change the nature of the race.

“There’s a rule in politics: You’re not going to vote for someone you’ve never heard of before,” says Professor Ridout.

Furthermore, the man-bites-dog nature of one political party elevating another’s candidates is irresistible to the media, and leads to stories that repeat and magnify the ad effects.

That said, it is also easy to exaggerate the race-swaying power of political meddling. Not every such case is McCaskill v. Akin.

Take Pennsylvania, where Democrats have been criticized for boosting “MAGA longshot” Doug Mastriano, only to find he has at least a chance of winning. 

Democratic ads elevating Mr. Mastriano were only a very small contribution to his primary victory, says Christopher Witko, associate director of the School of Public Policy at Pennsylvania State University.

A much larger reason was structural: There were too many anti-Mastriano Republicans in the race. None stepped aside to allow mainstream opposition to Mr. Mastriano to coalesce around one candidate.

“That was the biggest thing. If you’d have had only one person running against Mastriano it would have been different,” says Professor Witko. 

What about small-d democracy?

But for small-d democrats, is the Democratic Party meddling in GOP primaries the right thing to do?

In some ways it is politics as usual – even politics as it should be. Democrats believe they are engaging in a strategic maneuver that could increase their chances of winning important elections.  

“That’s what we want political parties to do,” says Jennifer Victor of George Mason University.

On the other hand, the Democrats’ action is essentially promoting extremist candidates, she says. In the current highly polarized political environment, where about half of all Republican nominees for the Senate, House, governorships, state attorneys general, and secretaries of state have flirted with the unfounded viewpoint that the 2020 election was fraudulent, democracy with a small “d” is already on the ballot this November. Democrats with a capital “D” shouldn’t inadvertently make things worse.

“For a party to provide substantial support to extremists, even for strategic reasons – that, in itself, I think runs counter to democratic values,” says Professor Victor.

Yves Herman/Reuters

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks at a news conference in Brussels on July 20, 2022. She accused Russia of "blackmailing" the European Union by withholding energy supplies.

It has been decades in the making, a cooperative partnership based on an assumption audaciously out of sync with current world politics: that countries can be persuaded to forgo their national interests, even some of their sovereignty, in defense of shared values and common goals.

But that assumption at the heart of the 27-member European Union is now being tested as rarely before.

And how successfully the union hangs together will have implications beyond the EU itself. Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly hopes that the cracks will widen, thus weakening the Western pushback against his invasion of Ukraine. The Biden administration – and war-battered Ukraine – are trusting that unity will prevail.

The immediate crisis concerns energy. Russia has reduced its deliveries of the natural gas that is critical to a number of the EU’s member states, including its most powerful economy, Germany. Soaring gas costs have slowed the bloc’s growth and sharply driven down the value of the EU currency, the euro.

Russia began pumping gas again this week after a 10-day suspension for maintenance on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, but only at 40% of traditional levels.

The even deeper concern is that Mr. Putin could halt gas supplies completely, especially as next winter’s cold begins to bite. And that’s where the main challenge to Europe’s unity comes in.

The EU’s best hope of cushioning the effects of a total cutoff is to cooperate in a common strategy among member states. This would include immediate consumption cuts so as not to run down stocks, coordinated gas purchases from other countries, possibly rationing, and, perhaps most importantly, a willingness in countries less dependent on Russian gas to share what they have with those under more immediate threat.

Such cooperation would be a delicate task even in the best of political circumstances. Some internal tension is inherent in the EU, which is based on persuading member states to balance their national priorities with those of more than two dozen sovereign neighbors.

The gas crisis, however, has hit at a time of political flux in the EU. The main facilitator of compromise in years past – former German Chancellor Angela Merkel – has gone. In France, the EU’s other heavyweight, recent elections have left President Emmanuel Macron without a working majority in parliament.

And on Thursday, an 18-month-old unity coalition collapsed in Italy, which is another major customer for Russian gas. It had been led by Mario Draghi, a former head of the European Central Bank vocally supportive of the EU’s tough stand on the Ukraine war.

Remo Casilli/Reuters

Attendees applaud Italy's Prime Minister Mario Draghi as he arrives at the lower house of Parliament ahead of a vote of confidence in the government on July 21, 2022. He lost the vote and tendered his resignation.

While EU governments have long anticipated a tighter supply of Russian gas, they haven’t yet done much to coordinate their responses. Individual states have been scrambling to do their own deals with alternative suppliers.

Still, the EU’s own central cabinet in Brussels – the European Commission – is hopeful the tide is beginning to turn back toward coordination and cooperation.

This week, it asked member states to cut back gas usage by 15% through next spring, a voluntary target it said would become mandatory in the “likely” event Russia cuts supplies altogether. “Russia is blackmailing us,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said. The policy still needs the approval of EU governments.

The steeper obstacle may be persuading countries to put in place a formal arrangement for sharing gas supplies across the EU, which could be critical to coping with a full Russian shutdown. So far, none of the major EU countries that buy significant amounts of gas from non-Russian sources, such as France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Spain, has signaled support.

The optimists in Brussels, however, point to the last major crisis that hit the EU, the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, too, member countries’ initial instinct was to go it alone, shutting borders and hoarding medical equipment and other supplies. But ultimately, they chose cooperation.

Once pandemic shutdowns eased, wealthier northern states like Germany agreed to use their strong credit positions to back mutualized EU borrowing that funded a multibillion-euro recovery package disproportionately benefiting poorer member states.

And the Ukraine war, rather than denting this unity, has – at least so far – reinforced it.

Within days of Russia’s invasion, the EU adopted unprecedentedly strong sanctions against Moscow. It also used its financial heft to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance for Ukraine, agreeing for the first time to fund the purchase of military equipment.

Mr. Putin seems to expect that gas shortages will cause so much damage to European economies and so much discomfort to shivering citizens that EU unity will burst at the seams.

But an opinion survey in Germany last week found 70% of respondents determined to stand firm in supporting Ukraine despite rising energy prices. And Ms. Merkel’s successor as chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has reaffirmed his government’s commitment to sanctioning and isolating Mr. Putin’s regime.

He said too much was at stake to retreat. Germans’ own security and liberty depended on not allowing Mr. Putin to “get away” with his attempt to bomb Ukraine into submission, he wrote in a recent op-ed in a leading German newspaper.

“The autocrats of the world,” he added, “are watching very closely to see if [Mr. Putin] succeeds.”

Energy interdependence worked for Germany before Russia invaded Ukraine; now it’s clear that energy revenues help fund Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war machine. Energy independence from “individual suppliers” is becoming a matter of national security, says German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. 

That vulnerability was made even more evident this month by a halt in natural gas flows from Nord Stream 1 – the massive gas pipeline connecting Russia and Germany – for 10 days of scheduled maintenance. Russia only partially resumed flow today, and the European Commission President likened Mr. Putin’s actions to blackmail. 

Germany is largely dependent on Russian energy, with half its natural gas and a third of its oil coming from that country. There’s currently no other way to quickly secure Europe’s supply of energy for heating, transportation, and industry, says the German government. But they’re trying. Leaders have decided to build liquefied natural gas terminals, which opens up new energy supplies but also raises a bevy of questions about Germany’s energy security.

How realistic are Germany’s plans to switch to LNG as a replacement for Russian gas? 

Nuclear energy has been phased out, and renewables such as wind aren’t yet ready to pick up the slack, so lawmakers have decided that LNG is the answer to Germany’s energy crisis. They’ve announced plans to build two domestic LNG terminals, which re-gasify the supercooled form of natural gas that arrives on ships. Leasing floating terminals and securing supply via terminals elsewhere in Europe is also in the works. Essentially, Germany is trying to buy whatever it can, from wherever it can. 

The short-term fear is that energy supplies will need to be rationed as Europe heads into winter, which means industry won’t get what it needs while households could be without heat when they need it the most. At the most extreme, rationing and skyrocketing gas prices could result in deaths among lower-income households during the brutal winter. With the high stakes, EU lawmakers are working urgently to shore up reserves. They have also been working with Qatar – a dictatorship – as a possible future supply of LNG. 

It’s still unclear whether LNG will do the trick, as Germany’s dependence is so “massive,” says Axel Ruppert, project manager focusing on peace and security issues at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung’s Brussels office. “Many people within German government are scratching their heads to work out the whole interrelation of supply that’s there, the energy shifts that will be needed, and the terminals that are required, the prices demanded [by LNG suppliers], and the timeframe in which this can all happen.”

Does building LNG terminals push Germany further away from a green energy transition?

LNG is a fossil fuel, and building LNG terminals doesn’t bring Europe’s largest economy any closer to carbon neutrality or meeting the Paris climate agreement. But analysts say lawmakers aren’t abandoning their environmental goals.

Consider the fact that the Germans aren’t willing to sign traditional long-term LNG supply contracts, which are typically 25-30 years in length, says Henning Gloystein, director of energy, climate, and resources for Eurasia Group. Instead, officials are lobbying for contracts of eight to 12 years, to enable an easier transition to hydrogen as part of future gas supply. 

“If you look at the fixed LNG terminals that the Germans will build … that will almost certainly be designed in a way that they can be transferred and switched to importing liquid ammonia in the future, which can then be cracked into hydrogen gas and fed into the system,” says Mr. Gloystein.

The government has also said it would bring forward its 100% renewables target by five years to 2035. Doubling down on natural gas will create “a short term increase on emissions,” says Mr. Gloystein, “but to compensate they will try and accelerate the de-carbonization of its economy in the longer term.”

This dual agenda – to rapidly boost domestic LNG production while also weaning off fossil fuels – means Germany’s overall energy supply will go through a “really awkward cycle,” Mr. Gloystein adds, especially considering new terminals usually require 20 years for return on investment. LNG demand is sky-high now, but by the time the local terminals are all up and running, demand should be dropping off.

By buying LNG, is Germany simply switching reliance on Russia to dependence on the United States? 

Imports of U.S. liquefied natural gas into the EU had already reached a historic high in 2021, with a value of about €12 billion ($12.2 billion). The huge amount of demand in the near term definitely means buying more from the U.S., and that flow should only increase as Russia’s gas supply gets choked off. 

That raises concerns. “Say we flip contracts [from Russia’s Gazprom] to the U.S., and then in two years Donald Trump is president again,” says Mr. Gloystein. “We know that he imposes tariffs and uses energy as political leverage. And that worries a lot of people in Europe.” 

Ultimately, Europeans are aware of the pitfalls of single suppliers, and that’s partly why leaders are visiting Qatar, Norway, and elsewhere to shore up supplies. Longer term, there’s going to be an emphasis on diversity of supply, but right now it’s buy, buy, buy from wherever they can get it. 

How will Germany’s plan to use LNG impact the rest of Europe? 

“This is actually, quietly, a very closely coordinated effort across the European Union,” says Mr. Gloystein. “It’s just Germany gets all the headlines, because it’s the biggest economy, and it has the most awkward relationship with Russia.”

In other words, it’s all hands on deck, with cooperation across Europe where needed. 

For example, the Germans are working with the Dutch, who’ve ordered an additional floating LNG terminal, which will help feed northern Europe. Spain has excess LNG import capacity, which may be shared with Italy and other neighbors who rely heavily on Russian imports. 

“I’m not certain whether the public sees energy as some sort of European love project that they now have to do together, but it’s certainly helped bring governments together,” says Mr. Gloystein. 

“I mean, governments have disagreed on virtually everything before this war. Poland, Hungary, Germany are now agreeing on virtually everything.”

"Fellowship Point," by Alice Elliott Dark, Scribner/Marysue Rucci Books, 592 pp.

Maine, long attractive to writers for its rocky coastlines, woodlands, and wildlife, lends itself to stories about tensions between locals and summer people, and between developers and conservationists. In her exquisitely written, utterly engrossing new novel, “Fellowship Point,” Alice Elliott Dark explores these strains while celebrating Maine’s gorgeous but threatened landscape. At the same time, she celebrates the beauty – and sticking points – of a lifelong friendship between two women whose choices have taken them down different paths.   

It is hard to write about this novel without gushing. You sink into it with a sigh of contentment, as into a hot bath. Its characters, settings, and deftly woven plot pull you right in, the better to soak in its reflections on aging, writing, stewardship, legacies, independence, and responsibility. At its heart, “Fellowship Point” is about caring for the places and people we love.

Dark is best known for her twice-filmed, prizewinning story, “In the Gloaming.” First published in The New Yorker in 1993, it is about a mother who, in losing a son to AIDS, rediscovers what it means to really love and be loved. Dark, who teaches creative writing at Rutgers-Newark, has been working on “Fellowship Point” for nearly 20 years. It shows. There is nothing half-baked about it.  

At the novel’s center is 80-year-old Agnes Lee, a writer who has never married. She is beloved for her “When Nan” series of children’s books about a plucky 9-year-old girl’s adventures, beginning with “When Nan Was a Lobsterman” in 1965 to the most recent installment, “When Nan Ran a Wind Farm.” But what Agnes considers her real work are her six “Franklin Square” novels, published one per decade under a pseudonym, which enabled her to write undercover about women from her tony Philadelphia social set. To her dismay, these women, like her best friend Polly Wister, made “themselves smaller in order to fit into the roles available to them. Their talents were subsumed into utility and support.” Agnes intended her books as “cautionary tales ... that real women would learn from.” 

We meet Agnes in 2000, struggling to write one last Franklin Square novel. She is less concerned about her recent cancer diagnosis than the future of Fellowship Point, the coastal peninsula in Maine where she has summered her whole life and felt most free and happy. In 1872, her great-grandfather, William Lee, a Philadelphia Quaker from a rich merchant family, bought 145 acres on Maine’s fictional Cape Deel and established the Fellowship Point Association with his brother and three Quaker friends. Its rules state that its five members would own shares in the association rather than individual plots of land. Further, shares tied to the five “capacious, yet not absurd” family cottages William designed were to be passed down to only one blood-relative member in each succeeding generation. Agnes and Polly are the current shareholders of their family’s cottages, Leeward and Meadowlee.  

William and his descendants have particularly treasured a 35-acre wildlife sanctuary at the property’s tip, dubbed the Sank. But to Agnes’ dismay, this hallowed land, formerly Abenaki territory, is threatened with desecration by a local developer who hopes to build a resort and village on Fellowship Point by luring shareholders with the promise of an economic windfall. Agnes’ counter-plan, which changes somewhat over the course of the novel, is to muster the required majority of shareholders – three votes – to dissolve the association and establish a trust to protect the land. She is counting on her friend Polly to support this move, but, frustratingly, Polly doesn’t do anything without consulting the men in her life.

Dark sets up a tug of war between Agnes’ strident independence and Polly’s deference to her self-important husband and money-hungry eldest son, who belittle her at every turn. Several contingent plotlines add intrigue, including the unfortunate ordeal of a smart local landscaper who is falsely accused of theft by Agnes’ ostentatious cousin Archie Lee, a shareholder eager to capitalize on his holdings. The other two original families no longer come to Fellowship Point, and we eventually learn what happened to one of them 40 years earlier. Dark cleverly uses Agnes’ intimate notebooks written at the time to pull off this long flashback.  

“Fellowship Point” has the complexity, pace, and length of an absorbing 19th century epic. Another narrative strand involves an ambitious New York editorial assistant named Maud Silver, who hopes she can jumpstart her publishing career by convincing Agnes to write a memoir callled “Agnes When,” about how she came to write the “When Nan” books, now celebrated for their proto-feminism. Agnes, with big secrets to hide, pushes back, but can’t help being impressed by Maud’s mettle – especially when she learns that the young woman, a single mother, is further saddled with the guardianship of her intractably depressed mother. 

The novel’s various plotlines dovetail with amazing grace, culminating in a moving, well-earned climax. “Fellowship Point” is, on one level, the story of how Agnes gradually lets down her guard and opens up, beginning with her uncharacteristic decision to share her notebooks from the early 1960s, a turning point in her life. “It’s awful what we do to ourselves by not talking openly,” she comments. Polly, too, blossoms with her recognition of how the “habit of a lifetime of acquiescence” had prevented her from recognizing her own intelligence. This magnificent novel affirms that change and growth are possible at any age.  

Heller McAlpin reviews books regularly for The Monitor, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR.

AP

Then-Vice President Mike Pence, left, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, officiate at a joint session of the House and Senate to count the Electoral College votes cast in the 2020 presidential election, at the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021.

On July 20, a bipartisan group of senators proposed reforms to an archaic election law that was used to justify last year’s attempt by a mob at the Capitol to overturn the 2020 presidential electoral vote count. A day earlier, the House passed a bill with strong bipartisan support to codify federal protections for gay and interracial marriage. Those measures followed the adoption last month of the first federal gun control law in a generation.

That legislative activity underscores the design of the U.S. Constitution to resolve national disputes through consensus. It also provides confirmation of a gradual shift toward civic renewal measured by a new index of political division over the past 40 years. While “disagreement, not unity, is the normal state of affairs in American public life,” researchers at Vanderbilt University note, “the path to a more unified country is not out of reach.”

The two election reform bills introduced in the Senate mark a significant step toward restoring public trust in democracy and its institutions. The proposals would clarify ambiguities in the 1887 Electoral Count Act, which former President Donald Trump and his supporters used to challenge the validity of the 2020 election results. They would vest governors with sole authority to appoint electors to the electoral college and raise the threshold for challenging a state’s election results in Congress to one-fifth of the members of each chamber. Currently one member of the House and Senate can require Congress to debate a state’s results.

The bills also stipulate that the vice president has no authority to reject a state’s slate of electors, and add safeguards to ensure that mail-in ballots are accurately processed by the U.S. Postal Service. Drafted by 16 senators (nine Republicans, seven Democrats), the reforms reflect an earnest attempt at “finding common ground on a matter that is so foundational to our democracy: faith in the system that selects our leaders,” said Matthew Weil, executive director of the Democracy Program at the Bipartisan Policy Center, who helped shape the bills.

There have been sparks of progress in other areas, too.  A study published in March by the University of Colorado Boulder showed prolific bipartisan responses to climate change in many of the most divided state legislatures. According to the study, between 2015 and 2020, bipartisan-sponsored legislation promoting decarbonization strategies among businesses and financial incentives for shifting to renewable energies reflected that “elite polarization” on climate issues is abating.

At a time often described as the most divided point in American history since the Civil War, bipartisan proposals in Congress and state legislatures are proving the founding wisdom of entrusting critical public issues to the American people and their representatives.