Joe Lockhart Is A Disaster Containment Expert-- And He Has Plenty Of Advice For Status Quo Joe

C'mon, man!

Joe Lockhart's name should sound familiar. He was Bill Clinton's version of Sarah Huckabee Sanders for his final two years in the White House. He had also worked as press secretary for failed establishment candidates Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis and after the Clinton administration ended he worked for John Kerry's campaign. More recently he worked for Facebook and the NFL trying to contain myriad scandals. In 2017 Obama bought his mansion in DC.

I don't know who Lockhart, a Third Way creature, supports for president, but I'd give odds that it's Status Quo Joe. On Friday, CNN published an OpEd by Lockhart, What Kamala Harris and AOC can't make Joe Biden do, about the glories of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, personified by... who else?-- Status Quo Joe. "Anyone expecting to see a major reboot in the Biden campaign or a Joe Biden 2.0," he wrote, admiringly, "just doesn't know the former vice president. He knows what he knows, which isn't everything, and is not likely to refashion his image based on a poll or a debate performance." Lockhart suggests Biden do my interviews like the one he did with Chris Cuomo and spend more time on the campaign trail as he is suddenly doing in Iowa. As a supporter of a Bernie/Warren ticket, I couldn't agree more. The Cuomo interview was a catastrophe as are all of Biden's public appearances. Biden is damaged goods and the campaign was polling in the 40s when they managed to keep him out of sight. Now that voters are seeing who he is, his approvals have sunk into the mid-20s. That was fast!

Lockhart, who is a specialist in containing catastrophes-- like Clinton's impeachment and Facebook's... well Facebook's existence-- and he's offering some advice for the on-going Biden meltdown. It's the opposite of what Biden's campaign is suggesting. Lockhart wants an out-of-touch, tongue-tied, dishonest and increasingly senile old man to do what he's not capable of doing. He wrote that Biden "needs a better pushback to the kinds of charges directed at him in the Democratic presidential xebate (Facebook lingo) by Sen. Kamala Harris... Biden made clear he was surprised not by the attack, but by the way Harris delivered it, in such a personal way. He implicitly charged Harris with a bit of demagoguery-- that she criticized his position while holding essentially the same position herself. But he visibly pulled back from elaborating, saying he is determined to stay above what he calls the scrum. Is this a good strategy? Can he survive in a modern campaign while not going personally after other Democrats? That remains to be seen. What's not in doubt is he's not likely to change his views."

The rest of the [Cuomo] interview was a much clearer expression of how he intends to run this race and where he stands on the issues. Apart from his own personal philosophy and ideology, I know Biden will not lurch to the left to be nominated. He doesn't believe that's where Democratic voters are. He smartly [stupidly, actually] cited the 2018 midterm results. While much of the media focused on Alexandria Ocasio Cortez' victory, Biden's team was watching Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA operative who upset Republican Dave Brat in Virginia's 7th District, which has been reliably Republican for decades.

The Democratic victory in 2018 was the result of center-left Democrats winning against more left-wing opponents in primaries. According to the Third Way think tank, 33 of the 40 Democrats who won in swing districts defeated someone on their left on primary day.

Biden also doesn't want to do anything that will open himself up to Trump-style attacks on election day in November. That's why he'll stick with his version of Medicare for those who want it rather than Medicare for All. Again, from Third Way, no Democratic candidate in a swing district ran an ad touting Medicare for All.

As Ron Brownstein rightly pointed out Friday, Biden is the only top-tier candidate who is for preserving the private insurance market for those who have it and want to keep it. Biden's team believes that is a key element in winning or losing the health care debate next fall.

He also made the point that he believes our system of political asylum works if it is properly administered, following both humane practices and the law. That puts him at odds with many of the candidates running against him and some Democratic party voters. But Biden is betting that a plan to reform immigration policy is both the better approach and inoculates the party from charges that it is for open borders.

On style, this interview was a very good performance by Biden. Make no mistake, he's no Obama or Clinton. His strength is his passion, not his performance skills, so don't expect major changes there.

In the end, some of Biden's tactics will change as the campaign moves forward, but his strategy won't. The voters will decide if he's got it right.

Neoliberals like Joe Lockhart-- and, more so, Joe Biden and the Clintons-- have had their days in the sun and... the result? A contemptible, vulgar reality TV loudmouth and authoritarian ignoramus in the Oval Office.