Eags (Timothy Egan) does not suffer fools gladly. He takes a number of the Dem (and Dose) White House aspirants to the virtual woodshed for furnishing attack material for the LK (Lyin' King) in the Oval Office and Moscow Mitch McTraitor in the Senate. Those scummy denizens of the nation's capital should be the targets for every attack that can uttered in the campaign of 2020 — not POTUS44. Neither the LK nor Moscow Mitch is worthy of licking dirt from the soles of POTUS44's shoes. If this is the (fair & balanced) ultimate truth for the 2020 presidential campaign, so be it.
[x NY Fishwrap]
Worst Democratic Strategy Yet: Attack Obama’s Legacy
By Eags (Timothy Egan)
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With 66 weeks to go until the election, the Democrats tasked with saving a sinking ship of state have shown that they would rather drown in a sea of self-righteousness than steer the Donald Trump-rotted hulk to a fresh shore.
You know the presidential debates this week were a disaster for Democrats because Republican attack ads are already parroting the lines used by the leading candidates: Take away people’s private health care, decriminalize the border, socialism!
And rather than effectively prosecute the easy case against the worst president ever, the Democrats went after one of the best: Barack Obama. This is a winning strategy only in a world where everyone gets a trophy, which is to say, much of the younger Democratic base.
Debates are supposed to refine and reduce a party’s message. The unwinnable and unpopular are shown to be just that. Crazy falls away. Good ideas rise. A story emerges. A governing strategy is presented. You can imagine the Day After Trump, which is what a majority of the country desperately wants.
I know politics ain’t beanbag, but beating Trump is: make it about him, and his horrid, racist, anti-worker, anti-woman, anti-environment, anti-science, anti-truth, anti-progress, anti-city, anti-American policies. He has no discernible governing philosophy but to rant and rage, to divide and belittle. People are begging for change.
In savaging one another, all but a handful of the 20 Democrats on display this week ignored one of the best things the party has going for it: Trump is actively trying to take away health care from millions. His administration is litigating to kill all of Obamacare, which would gut cherished protections for pre-existing conditions. The Democrats crushed the 2018 election on a message to save this enduring part of Obama’s greatest legacy.
But progressive Democrats have replaced that winning message with a losing message of their own: eliminating the private health insurance of more than 150 million Americans. This is how Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders expect to win.
Perhaps in a world where Mitch McConnell would let a modern idea see a vote on the floor of the Senate, replacing all private health insurance with a government-run system would be worthy of vigorous debate. And maybe it’s a debate the Democrats could even win. But as of now, it’s wildly unpopular.
As Senator Amy Klobuchar said, “We are more worried about winning an argument than winning an election.” To which Warren has replied that someone should not go through all the trouble of running for president without big ideas. True. But nor should someone go through all the trouble of running for president and not have the right ideas needed to win.
Sanders, as wild-eyed, scowling and angry as an Old Testament prophet on the downside of the prediction racket, is a sloganeer. Like all sloganeers, he has simplistic ideas; they sound best when shouted through a bullhorn. He should run for president of the socialist party of his choosing, and leave the Democrats to fight for the American majority.
Two things are going on in a debate: There are the personal clashes, atmospherics and zingers, always the focus of the pundit class, which views politics as theater, and then there are the statements and projections of policy, which voters pay attention to. Warren may be the best debate athlete, but she’s promoting unwinnable positions on health care, open borders and how to pay for all the trillion-dollar things she wants to make free.
Meanwhile, Obama, of all people, is now a target for cannibalistic candidates from the left. No Democrat is more popular. A Pew survey last year found that more people named him the greatest president of their lifetime than any other. He wasn’t attacked directly by name this week, but his policies — the audacity of common sense — were.
“If you cross the border illegally, you should be able to be sent back,” said Joe Biden, espousing a position mocked by many Democrats. “It’s a crime.” This was Obama’s position. Trump has taken it to a cruel and catastrophic new level, separating families and keeping children in cages. But because enough Democrats want to decriminalize border crossings, Trump can still get the edge on this issue.
The Beltway magpies projected a Biden collapse after the first debate. A month later, he still leads the field by a healthy margin. As long as Biden keeps defending the best of Obama’s legacy, he will continue as the Democrat most likely to rid the world of Donald Trump.
But he may still falter on acuity and focus. And by rattling off a number at the end of the debate that sounded as if he were giving out his personal PIN code, Biden clearly had a senior moment.
That leaves room for Mayor Pete Buttigieg. The youngest candidate in the field shows the most wisdom of the ages. He’s bright, articulate and forceful and projects a toughened American optimism. When he shamed Republicans for refusing to stand up to Trump, he showed that he’s one of the few candidates rising to history’s call — hearing the same clarion that guided Barack Obama.
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[Timothy Egan is a contributing opinion writer who covers the environment, the American West, and politics at the NY Fishwrap . Egan — winner of both a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 as a member of a team of reporters who wrote the series "How Race Is Lived in America" and a National Book Award (The Worst Hard Time in 2006) — graduated from the University of Washington with a BA ( journalism), and was awarded a doctorate of humane letters (honoris causa) by Whitman College (WA) in 2000 for his environmental writings. Egan's most recent book will be the forthcoming (October 2019) A Pilgrimage to Eternity. See all other books by Eags here.]
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