Editor's note: In January 2021,sex prank videos nude a Lincoln Project co-founder, John Weaver, was accused of sexually harassing numerous young men online. Further reporting has claimed that other co-founders knew of his behavior well before it became public. To read more about the scandal and new questions about the group's finances, read our most recent coverage.

The Lincoln Project occupies a strange place on the internet, one that neither liberals or conservatives could imagine existing prior to President Trump's election.

Founded by former Republican strategists who view Trump as an existential threat to American democracy, it has an obsessive focus: Vote him and his Congressional enablers out of office. The super PAC is a nimble, reliably viral force that churns out ads and social media posts against Trump and in support of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. It combines Republicans' trademark ruthless desire to win the messaging war with the eccentric humor, trolling, and blunt force of internet speech.

"We do not have a candidate, we do not have a campaign, we do not have a political party, so it leaves us an enormous amount of creative and operational freedom to do the things we think are effective," Reed Galen, a Lincoln Project co-founder, told Mashable. "We also all came up in Republican politics, which is: If you want to govern, you have to win. If you don't win, you won't govern."

In that respect, The Lincoln Project is arguably a liberal's dream. It's a once-in-a-lifetime reversal of fortunes. Accustomed to being at the mercy of Republican operatives, liberals now get to watch them use those same dreaded tactics in an effort to elect a Democrat president. Even better, their team of brawlers insists on aiming the punches directly at the president and those who push his agenda, which Democrats haven't done with the same consistent fearlessness. Then there's the group's appeal to country over party, which can make skeptical liberals feel like they're part of a rebel coalition to save democracy.

All of this is presumably why Democrats are giving The Lincoln Project fistfuls of cash. The super PAC has raised nearly $77 million and spent more than $40 million of that on the presidential race alone. They're trying to convince Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in critical states like Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, and Iowa to dump Trump and vote for Biden.

Yet, there's plenty of liberal angst about The Lincoln Project, too. Their tactics can sometimes be offensive, whether the group steals memes, uses body shaming to humiliate Trump, or says in a now-deleted tweet that he's the "most racist president" America's ever had, never mind the presidents who actually owned slaves. Progressives fear they'll pivot if Biden wins and pressure him to become an insufferable centrist on policies like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All.

Critics also say the group's co-founders can't be taken seriously because of their past lives. Conservative lawyer George Conway, husband of former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, is a co-founder. Others worked in the George W. Bush White House and played a leading role confirming conservative Justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts to the Supreme Court. Maybe they're just "resistance grifters" preaching to the converted and looking to make a dollar off of desperate Democrats. (Rep. Emilia Sykes, Democratic minority leader in the Ohio State House, implored Democrats to "stop giving them money" after its "most racist president" tweet.)

These tensions make The Lincoln Project, which has 2.6 million Twitter followers and a combined 1.7 million followers on Facebook and Instagram, a fascinating slice of internet culture. They also force liberals to think about who they'll trust in politics, and why. It's a profound question to ponder at this moment in America's history. Some liberals, after all, may be tempted to write-off the Lincoln Project, convinced it's impossible to do anything with them but vote Trump out of office.

Indeed, the group's founders haven't suddenly become radical leftists. Galen helped run campaigns for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the late Sen. John McCain, and worked for the Bush administration and campaign. But when Galen and his fellow founders defend Democrats against accusations of socialism, say they're against Republican obstructionism, and suggest that restoring democratic norms and institutions should include structural remedies like addressing systemic racism and ensuring voting rights for all, it seems like a mistake to dismiss their very public, personal reckoning as a disingenuous hustle.

"If you're not going to trust us now, after all these things we've done, after we're so clearly willing to burn our boats for what we see is the good of the country, I'm not sure you're ever going to trust us," says Galen.

The group's work might look like a frivolous joke to a crowd of cheering supporters precisely because often it's designed to be funny. Galen says they're looking to drive an emotion, including laughter born of parody that diminishes "the person with whom we're tangling." Their "audience of one" content, aimed specifically at the president himself, can offer entertaining satisfaction for his detractors as well.

The group's supercut of a recent Trump rally presents a montage of embarrassments, effectively reducing the supposed strongman to a suit-wearing pile of nonsensical verbal tics. A clip featuring the president's own footage uses '80s era edits and graphics to portray him as an amateur salesman instead of a statesman.

When The Lincoln Project tweeted video of Trump appearing to struggle as he walked down a ramp this summer, with the question "Is the President of the United States physically well?," many of the replies included some form of a taunt or chuckle. Critics of this genre of content, regardless of who publishes it, effectively argue that it's ableist. Galen says his crew is being funny but also trying to cut off Trump's angle of attack on questioning Biden's health.

Then there's the merciless takedowns of Trump's closest associates. One ad that's been viewed nearly 1 million times compared Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham to a parasite by using footage of maggots devouring rotting animal flesh. (One can only imagine how liberals square this with Michelle Obama's plea to go high when others go low.) The group relished when Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner threatened to sue it over billboards in Times Square that contrasted images of the pair with a damning quote regarding the administration's COVID-19 failures and the U.S. death toll.

"[Trump and Kushner] are turning towards us," Galen says. "They're not focused on Joe Biden...they're now helping us put corona, Trump's incompetence, and his nepotism back front and center, for two or three days, a week before Election Day. Not a lot of folks are going to do that."

Their darker material feels like a punch in the throat. In a minute-long spot, two daughters say goodbye to their COVID-stricken mother on the phone. A gravelly voice intones: "On November 3rd, vote Biden-Harris. Life's too important not to."

This is the kind of take-no-prisoners approach to winning that Democrats tend to reject, often for very good reasons. From Galen's perspective, many Democratic groups have to contend with so many different allies and interests that satisfying everyone ultimately waters down the message.

"There's just alevel of discomfort with that kind of campaigning," he says. "We campaign that way against Donald Trump because that's the way to affect Donald Trump.If we could do it based on high-minded ideals and policy prescriptions, and we thought that'd be most effective, we'd do that."

Liberals are right to worry that they've traded their principles for the chance to collectively howl with laughter at a president who spends a lot of his time humiliating others. But The Lincoln Project is not joking about its commitment to restoring American democratic norms and institutions, which liberals should take seriously. Galen says that includes backing efforts to strengthen the Voting Rights Act and making Election Day a federal holiday.

"Coalitions are how things get done. That doesn't mean we agree on everything all the time," says Galen. "But it means there are a set of things that we do agree on, and when we're able to...we march in step together and say, 'We believe that this is for the good of the country.'"

It makes sense that some liberals, wary of getting burned once again by hollow calls for bipartisanship, would reject The Lincoln Project. It's also true that the country can't move beyond Trump without unlikely alliances that put democracy ahead of partisanship. The liberals who don't like the way The Lincoln Project communicates shouldn't watch their ads or donate to their cause. They also shouldn't forget, however, that for decades they've wanted Republicans to see things from their point of view. Some of them finally have.

Related Video: Stacey Abrams on how American democracy hinges on the right to vote