Hey, NeverTrumpers: Please quit lecturing actual Democrats about how to win

[DonViejo]

NeverTrumpers are full of bad advice for Democrats: Be more like Jeb Bush Republicans! Because that worked so well

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
JUNE 26, 2019 1:00PM (UTC)

As I write this, we are just hours away from the first debate of the presidential primary season. It's hard to believe that four years have passed since the last round of primary debates. It feels like 40. But here we are, getting ready to embark on yet another presidential campaign featuring Donald Trump. Everyone on the planet has advice for the Democratic candidates about what they need to do to beat him. It may be the most annoying conversation in all of politics, and that's saying something.

The pundits are all dully blathering on about "lanes" again, extending the horse race metaphor to ridiculous lengths, as they did in the GOP primaries in 2016. So far they've declared the lanes to be "establishment," "insurgent," "youth," "black vote" and "working class." And yes, they are meaningless, since the person who wins the nomination will have to take up big parts of all these "lanes" and more. But it makes it easy for pundits and analysts to drone on endlessly about polling, despite the fact that there is very little chance this campaign will end up going the way they predict.

Former candidates have been all over TV the past week or so talking about what the candidates absolutely must do in these first debates, which almost always comes down to "getting attention" and "being themselves." I'm sure that's good advice, but I would guess that anyone who needs to be told this probably shouldn't be running for president. In fact, they probably shouldn't be in politics at all.

Of all the annoying advice inundating us in recent days, the most irritating has to be that coming from the NeverTrumpers, meaning those conservatives and Republicans who never supported the president and are eager to drive him from office. First, let me say I totally believe that they, like the majority of Americans, are desperate to defeat Trump, and I would never reject anyone who wants to enter the fray to make that happen. I'm not a NeverTrumper-basher. (I also understand that some of them have a lot to answer for in terms of how we got to this point, and I look forward to the day when the Trump emergency has passed and we can sort all that out. If that day doesn't come, we will have bigger problems to worry about.) I welcome them to the fight.

So I hope the NeverTrump troops don't take this the wrong way. But they really need to zip it when it comes to haranguing Democrats about their primary. They particularly need to stop speaking to the Democratic base as if they were a bunch of fools who need remedial lessons in politics from Republicans, the people who couldn't stop Donald Trump from snagging the nomination right out from under them. They should know better than anyone that running against him is like running against an alien from outer space. There is only one race that Democrats and NeverTrumpers can look to for clues about how to defeat him — and neither of them were successful, so nobody gets to claim the high ground here.

more
https://www.salon.com/2019/06/26/hey-nevertrumpers-please-quit-lecturing-actual-democrats-about-how-to-win/

[uponit7771]

1. K&R, it's a lot of never Trumpers that keep Red Don's numbers high in republican polls otherwise

... we'd see his electorate numbers crumble.

[rampartc]

2. i'm tired of hearing these not quite deplorables' opinion on anything.

at least the neocons have shut up now that a war is brewing.

[Wounded Bear]

3. Couldn't agree more...