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.

Trump Is Still Dangerous-- But Most Of America Has Started Ignoring Him

Robert Reich released this video above before the new Morning Consult weekly poll came out. But it seems to back up what Reich said. "Trump's net approval sank to its lowest point since Putin handed him the key to the White House following the release of a redacted version of Mueller’s report. While 57% of registered voters disapproved of his job performance, only 39% approved. Worse news for Trump is that among independent voters, 32% approve and 58% disapprove (41% strongly).

Most indicators point to voters being pretty much done with Trump:

• By a margin of 63-37%, most Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction. (Among independents, the score is a more frightening 66-34%.)
• Asked if they planning on voting in the Democratic or Republican presidential primaries in 2020, 45% of registered votes said the Democratic primaries and just 34% said the Republican primaries.
• Asked who they would vote for if the general election was today, 24% said definitely for Trump, 10% said probably for Trump, 49% said definitely for someone else and 8% said probably for someone else. (among independents, that comes out to 16% definitely for Trump, 10% probably for Trump, 46% definitely for someone else and 11% probably for someone else.
• Asked who they would trust more to protect Medicare and Social Security 48% of voters said the Democrats in Congress and 29% said the Republicans in Congress
• How important of a priority is each of these areas for Congress to tackle:

• Reducing federal deficit- 80%
• Healthcare reform- 79%
• Immigration reform- 74%
• Infrastructure- 72%
• Climate change- 63%
• DACA protection- 62%
• Reducing economic inequality- 59%
• Gun control- 58%
• Investigating Trump's conflicts of interests- 52%
• Regulating tech companies- 52%
• Impeachment- 41%
• Building a wall- 40%

• Asked which version of Russian interference they believe, 23% said Trump's version and 46% said Mueller's version. Among independents, only 14% believe Trump's version.

A new poll from Tulchin shows Bernie beating Trump in head to head match-ups in 3 key states:

Michigan- Bernie- 52%; Trump- 41%
Wisconsin- Bernie- 52%; Trump- 42%
Pennsylvania- Bernie- 51%; Trump- 43%

And by the way, even Trump staffers were ignoring him:




You remember Joe Lockhart? He was a Bill Clinton press secretary for a couple of years toward the end of Clinton's term. After that he worked doing communications for Kerry's campaign, Facebook and the NFL, a kind of middle of the road, establishment Democrat. He did an OpEd for the NY Times yesterday, There's A Bigger Prize Than Impeachmentm making the point that "letting Trump stay in office will destroy the Republican Party." He claims that leaving "Trump in office is not only good politics-- it is the best chance for fundamental realignment of American politics in more than a generation" since he's already "three years into destroying what we know as the Republican Party. Another two years just might finish it off. Trumpism has become Republicanism, and that spells electoral doom for the party."

Trump has abandoned most of the core principles that have defined Republicans for the past century. Free trade abandoned for protectionism. Challenging our adversaries and promoting democracy replaced by coddling Russia and cozying up to dictators near and far. Fiscal conservatism replaced by reckless spending and exploding deficits.

What’s left of the party is a rigid adherence to tax cuts, a social agenda that repels most younger Americans and rampant xenophobia and race-based politics that regularly interfere with the basic functioning of the federal government.

Republicans today are the party of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson-- a coalition that, in the face of every demographic trend in America, will mean the long-term realignment of the federal government behind the Democrats.

Lockhart eagerly acknowledges that Trump is unfit for office and that "he represents a clear and present danger to our national security" but judges the whole sordid mess in terms of the Republican impeachment of his old boss. He fears united the GOP around defending Trump; he fears Democratic overreach-- which would be something that hasn't happened in 7 or 8 decades-- and he fears the Senate rejecting impeachment. "And," he wrote, "in politics, a loss is a loss-- there are no moral victories." No salient arguments there.

Allowing Mr. Trump to lead the Republican Party, filled with sycophants and weak-willed leaders, into the next election is the greater prize. Democrats have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to realign American politics along progressive lines, very much like Ronald Reagan did for Republicans in the 1980s.

Trumpism equals Republicanism as long as Donald Trump is at the top of the ticket. And a real shift to progressivism in America will be delivered by a devastating rebuke of the president and his party, a rebuke that will return control of the Senate and state houses across the nation. Politics is always a gamble-- and this is the best bet we’ve had in a long time.

I would bet that Lockhart defines progressivism as the neo-liberalism of the Clintons, Joe Lieberman and Joe Biden. I would also bet that Lockhart, like other centrist Democrats, would welcome Republicans leaving the GOP into the Democratic Party to the point of allowing them to take over and helping the corporatists shut down actual progressives. We owe American history an impeachment of Trump, not as a moral victory-- and independent of a shameless Republican Senate refusing to convict hi-- but as a gift to posterity. And as an example of calling out a criminal as a criminal, marking him forever, whether he lives in the White House or not. School children in the future should be encouraged to piss on his grave.