THAT'S NOT ELECTION INTERFERENCE, THAT'S "PROTECTING OUR DEMOCRACY."

We're on to the scam, and we're tired of it.

For years, the Democrats have been yammering about “election interference” by Russia that turned out to be either de minimis or entirely fabricated. Now, in a stunning display of hypocrisy, they are aggressively interfering in Israel’s internal politics.

Scott wrote here about the fact that the Biden Administration “obviously seeks to depose the government of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.” The administration has gone so far as to make public an alleged intelligence community assessment to the effect that Netanyahu is unpopular and his government is likely to fall.

That's Power Line's John Hinderaker, reacting to New York senator Chuck "Mr Whipple" Schumer's call for regime change in Israel.  The good news, for the United States and for Israel, is that the senator is not one of the Kennedy brothers, and Binyamin Netanyahu is not one of the Diem brothers.  "Israel Fires Back at Chuck Schumer's Foreign Election Interference and Tells Him to Pound Sand."

But destroying Our Democracy^(TM) in order to save it is just another day at the courthouse for the Donks.

Worried that third-party bids from a centrist group called No Labels and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could siphon off votes from Biden in key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona, American Bridge has hired prominent election attorney Marc Elias to help thwart these outsider bids, among other things.

A central tactic employed: flagging technical issues or starting a legal challenge as third-party candidates navigate a patchwork of laws of get on state ballots.

"We're keeping an eye out to make sure they're dotting all their i's and crossing their t's, and we are not ruling out legal action with our attorneys if we identify a problem — and that applies for all third-party threats to President Biden," Pat Denis, president of the American Bridge group, said in a statement to Reuters.

Other Biden allies have also launched a multi-pronged assault to starve third-party candidates of financial and political support. In addition to trying to keep them off state ballots, they say they are asking donors not to send them money and warning potential candidates to stay on the sidelines, according to interviews with groups involved in the efforts.

The two major parties have grandfathered themselves onto the ballot, often with filing criteria that border on the pro forma, whilst the upstarts have to demonstrate far more support for their presence on the ballot, and if you show up a few seconds late because some party operative has locked the courthouse door early, that's the breaks.  Scroll through the article and you'll discover an observation that might otherwise be a Friday short take.

Barbara Wejnert, a political science professor at the University of Buffalo, says most of the world’s democracies have adopted parliamentary-style governments that embrace multiple parties.

"The U.S. is the most hostile democracy when it comes to third parties," Wejnert said.

Meanwhile, the establishment figures will do everything they can to guilt-trip people into treating the choice as binary.

Richard Gephardt, a former Democratic congressman, formed a Super PAC called "Citizens to Save Our Republic" to warn Americans against supporting third-party candidates. He has raised $200,000 so far for an information campaign.

"Sometimes in life, you don't get two good choices," Gephardt said. "You don't even get one good choice. You get two choices you really don't like but you got to make a choice. And that's what we're trying to say to Americans. You may not like this choice, but don't make a choice to put somebody back in office who tried to overthrow the federal government."

Sorry, if both of the choices are lousy, the best thing to do might be to undermine the belief that everybody else is choosing as if it is between Demented and Erratic. That means either sitting the election out, or rejecting the false binary.

Tony Lyons, the head of the pro-Kennedy Super PAC, said Americans should be "outraged" by the lengths Democrats have gone to prevent third-party bids.

"We live in a democracy, at least we are supposed to. How is it possible, even legal, to keep spending millions to keep a candidate off the ballot or tie them up in nonsense legal fights?" Lyons said.

The destruction of Our Democracy^(TM) in the service of re-electing Democrats goes on.  Perhaps all there's something happening here, and it might be people rejecting the false binary.

The Democratic National Committee is building its first team to counter third-party and independent presidential candidates, people involved told NBC News, as the party and its allies prepare for a potential all-out war on candidates they view as spoilers.

The DNC has hired veteran Democratic operative Lis Smith, best known for her work guiding the 2020 presidential campaign of Pete Buttigieg, to help oversee an aggressive communications component of its strategy, which also includes opposition research and legal challenges.

At Cold Spring Shops, we understand "spoiler" to mean "the political bundles are too darned big." It's no surprise here that the party of Big Government is going to have faction fights between "make it a little bigger" and "make it much bigger, but in particular ways." The Trump voters, however, are less concerned about the nature of the bundle than they are about ending the Abuses and Ufurpations of the Political Class.

The move comes as a coalition of outside groups — which includes Democratic and anti-Trump Republican organizations — stockpile money and work to stymie third parties.

“There is some Jill Stein hangover,” Pat Dennis, president of American Bridge, a Democratic opposition research group, said referring to the 2016 Green Party nominee who was seen as a spoiler in places like Michigan. “A lot of people, including me, regret that we didn’t go after her further.”

Democrats have long blamed Green Party candidates such as Stein and Ralph Nader for contributing to their losses in 2016 and 2000.

But they say third parties will be especially impactful in 2024 because of the nature of Trump’s support base.

“Trump needs to split the anti-Trump coalition. If we're united he can't win, if we're split he can,” Dennis said. “We see [Kennedy and No Labels] essentially as an arm of the Trump campaign and we intend to treat it as such.”

No Labels is explicitly, it's right in the name, a rejection of the false binary. Mr Kennedy? Sometimes he's the only campaigner making any sense, as erratic as his policy positions are.  All that Democratic lawfare, whether it's keeping Donald Trump off the Republican ticket, or Robert Kennedy or Jill Stein from running as Green 19 or as a garden-variety greenie?  People might sensibly conclude, "Democrats scream Donald Trump is a threat to democracy while doing everything they can to block voters from even being able to see him, let alone vote for him."

Dig down, dear reader, and even among all the fretting that continuing the Biden disaster is somehow less bad than another dose of Trump, what you really see is the Political Class seeking to perpetuate their reign of error.

Citizens to Save Our Republic has already run TV ads warning “all third parties and spoilers," is preparing for a much bigger ad campaign in key states, and has begun an insider push to pressure No Labels to commit to standing down if it becomes clear it can't win.

"The Biden campaign is going to have to spend a boatload of money educating people about the danger of a third-party vote,” former Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill said. "Biden will have to spend money explaining there’s no vote for anyone else that’s not a vote for Trump.”

The anti-third party coalition, whose hub is the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, has mostly focused on No Labels, given its superior fundraising and organization.

Behind the scenes, insiders in both parties have been pressuring potential candidates not to join the No Labels tickets, warning they would lose and be pariahs in their party, which has contributed to No Labels' struggles to find a credible top of its ticket.

What makes that reporting even more amusing is a passage about how third party voting might have affected the pluralities in the likes of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada.  What third party would that be?  The Libertarians, who don't rate even a mention in either of the two articles being quoted above. ("Had Trump convinced Libertarians to abandon their party and vote for him, he could have won [Wisconsin].")  But a Libertarian vote is probably a Schrödinger vote, simultaneously against Biden and against Trump.