Bad Advice from a Bad Source

Only a unifying figure can beat Trump in 2020, former Clinton adviser says

Oh, good. Because who knows more about how to beat Trump than. . . a CLINTON ADVISER?
Seriously?
That's like asking someone from the Rams for tips about how to beat the Patriots!

If Democrats don’t put forward a unifying candidate in 2020 and try to win back at least some voters who supported President Donald Trump in 2016, they will lose, a prominent Democratic operative said.

No. No. Not listening.

When will these DNC types learn? Trying to appeal to voters who thought Donald Fucking Trump was a good choice for president is a fool's errand at best. You will never, NEVER, get these people to vote for a centrist Democrat. Remember 2016? We nominated the epitome of a moderate centrist Dem. How did that turn out again?




Oh, right!

“I imagine by the time people start actually voting, what they’re going to be looking for is someone that can bring the country together,” said Jennifer Palmieri, a top 2016 adviser on the Hillary Clinton campaign. “Either that’s the kind of nominee we’re going to have or we’re going to lose.”

Well, that's great. Because that kind of candidate doesn't exist.No one is going to "bring the country together." That's a utopian fantasy.Did anyone ever try harder to bring the country together than Barack Obama? From his famous "One America" speech, to bending over backwards to try to get just one Republican to vote yes on the ACA, his entire political career was based on trying to bring the country together. And how did that work out again?

Oh, right!

Now, looking back at 2016, the Republicans nominated the most divisive candidate I can ever remember running. He openly sneered at and slandered large swaths of the population, told his followers to assault people who disagreed with them and doled out insults like they were Halloween candy. This is a candidate that, by your logic, should have zero chance of winning a national election. How did that turn out again?

Oh, right!

Palmieri, in an interview on the Yahoo News podcast “The Long Game,” said that the political press now is overestimating the degree to which the Democratic primary electorate will move to the left.

Really? Cuz. . .

Morning Consult poll: Bernie Sanders is most popular senator, Mitch McConnell is least popular

Poll Finds Bernie Sanders Is Most Popular Politician In America

It turns out Americans are still feeling the Bern. According to a Harvard-Harris survey, the Vermont senator is viewed favorably by 57 percent of registered voters.

“The press equates enthusiasm and interest on the Democratic side with ideological extremism, and those two things, I don’t think, go together,” Palmieri said.

Well, I guess it depends on how you define "extremism." Because when the policy proposals of the Sanders/Warren/AOC wing of the party poll like this

Americans want Congress to raise the federal minimum wage. Poll after poll shows widespread support, even among Republican voters. And a majority of voters want it increased to $15 an hour.

Seventy percent of Americans support 'Medicare for all' in new poll

BY MEGAN KELLER - 08/23/18 11:16 AM EDT

Three quarters of Americans favor higher taxes for wealthy -Reuters/Ipsos poll

maybe it's time to realize that what you call "ideological extremism" is actually mainstream politics. The times, they have a-changed. Your old road has rapidly aged. Please get out of the new one if you can't lend a hand.

“There are constants in politics, and predictions being wrong a year out are one of them,” she said.

Four years ago at this time — a year out from the first primary contests — “nobody was thinking … that the 2016 campaign was going to end up being an election about the kind of country we are.”

EVERY ELECTION is about what kind of country we are! God, you people are so terrible at this!

2004 was about whether we would remain a country that uses torture, invades countries that have done nothing to us and tosses out habeus corpus every time we think there's a monster under the bed. And the voters said "Yup! That's the kind of country we would like to continue being!" Then in 2008, the election was a bout whether we wanted to keep going down that path or if we wanted some Hope and Change, and we said "Hope and change, please!" That's what elections are. They are choices about what kind of country we want to be. Otherwise, we would just pick the most qualified, experienced candidate and Hillary Clinton would be in the Oval Office as we speak. She isn't because people like you don't understand that simple fact and keep convincing yourself that the electorate is going to make sensible, logical decisions. You'd think after we elected the dullard son of a failed one-term president TWICE, you'd have figured this out.

Democrats were “all freaked out” by the massive amount of money being raised by a super-PAC supporting former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, “that they were going to spend on [attacking] Hillary,” Palmieri said.
“As it turns out I think they spent most of that money trying to take down [Sen.] Marco Rubio and other Republicans,” she said. “That money never got spent on us, and yet we lost.”

And yet, you think you're someone who should be giving advice about elections! That's some god damn chutzpah right there!

Palmieri wrote a book that came out a year ago called “ Dear Madam President ,” in which she exhorts female leaders to imagine new models of leadership that are feminine and not carbon copies of male leadership.
But the book is also a tale of Palmieri’s soul-searching in the wake of the 2016 election, which she said felt like “the universe exploded.”
“Nothing made sense to me anymore. Right. This is how the man who worked in coal his whole life and now can’t find a decent job feels,” she wrote. 

Well, it would be if the unemployed coal miner had a book deal and was going to get hired by every other centrist coal mine in the country willing to pay top dollar, winning be damned!

In that vein, Palmieri said on “The Long Game” that since 2016 she has gone out of her way to spend more time with people who think differently and who are politically conservative, taking trips to the South and reconnecting with old acquaintances from her childhood who are reliable Republican voters.

NO! God, you people have such an extraordinary talent for learning exactly the wrong lesson!

You don't win elections by making nicey nicey with your opponents. You are not going to convince them to come over to your side .They've spent the last 30 years listening to Limbaugh and Hannity and O'Reilly tell them that our side is pure evil, that we hate America, that we want to destroy white culture or whatever. They aren't going to say, oh, your candidate is more of a centrist? That means they only want to be sorta-Marxist, right? Great, count me in!


A wise man, I believe it was Harry Truman, once said something along the lines of "if you give people a choice between a Republican and a Democrat who acts like a Republican, they'll choose the real thing every time."

Palmieri said it was too early in the process to give any particular Democratic candidate an edge but said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is one candidate who is “underestimated.”
“She’s different in that she’ll grab on to an issue that might not have a ton of support or certainly comes with a lot of controversy, and she just doesn’t let go, and she doesn’t care. And she knows she’s going to get attacked for it and she sticks there anyway,” Palmieri said. “That’s something a little different.”

Seriously? That is the OPPOSITE of being a "unifier!" Latching on to a controversial issue and sticking to your guns when you're attacked for it is the opposite of "unifying." The thing is, though, that IS how you win elections. You take firm positions, you defend them, and you energize your base. You don't win by trying to find some unicorn candidate that is going to be all things to all people and bring everyone together. You win by driving more of your voters to the polls than the other guy drives voters of his  -- boy,  I'm glad my English teacher mother isn't around to see that sentence structure!

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock should also get a hearing from the Democratic party, Palmieri said, because of his ability to work with a very conservative legislature.

Damn it! You had it, then you lost it.

The goal of this election cycle is NOT to elect a President that can work with a condervative legislature. The goal is to elect a progressive president who will have no trouble working with the progressive legislature that we put in place instead of the current one. We already flipped the House, in 2020 we need to flip the Senate. Otherwise nothing will ever get accomplished. Barack Obama spent 8 years trying to "work with" the conservatives in the legislative branch. He was rebuffed at every turn. They didn't even try to pretend that they were interested in any kind of bi-partisanship or compromise. The very idea is anathema to them.

There is no working "with" today's Republican Party. Even if some of them wanted to reach across the aisle, their base would punish them for it. The only way we are ever going to get good things is to beat them at the ballot box, then steamroll them in the legislative process. Barack Obama had three signature achievements, the economic stimulus plan, the Lilly Ledbetter Act and the Affordable Care Act. All three were pushed through while Democrats had a majority in both houses, with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Once Republicans took back the Congress, that was over. They blocked, obstructed, and filibustered EVERYTHING. They were completely shameless about it. If we have another situation with a Democratic president and a Republican majority in either house (or a large enough minority in the Senate to filibuster) history will repeat itself. They will bring the government to a grinding halt rather than let a Democrat have any accomplishments. And their voters will reward them for it.

There is no bi-partisanship. It's dead. The only way forward is to defeat them utterly and do what needs to be done without any consideration for their disingenuous whining. We're not going to bring the country together. So we might as well win.