Why are so many Democratic operatives cynical, soulless hacks?

[WestVirginiaRebel]

The Week:

The narrowness of Hillary Clinton's stunning loss to Donald Trump — especially given the fact that she actually won the popular vote by 2.5 million and rising — has led many liberals to conclude that the Democratic Party only needs a slight adjustment to win future presidential elections. A better candidate, a more competent campaign, or a more credible message on economic issues — any one of them might have kept the presidency in Democratic hands.

 

On one level, this is true. A large football stadium's worth of additional votes distributed correctly across three states, and Clinton would be president-elect today. But it also obscures the fact that the Democratic Party has basically collapsed at the state level.

 

There are many things the party must do to rebuild. Here's one more to add to the growing list: The Democrats need a better breed of operative.

 

Democratic hacks today have a poor understanding of how to think clearly about their party's best interests. Too often, they confuse being monstrous with political savvy, and fail to see the harm their constant pursuit of big-dollar donors does to their political cause.

 

Consider, for example, Rahm Emanuel. Now the mayor of Chicago, he was President Obama's chief of staff from 2009-10. He's the guy who cynically suggested ditching ObamaCare when it hit its first political hurdles, who helped lock in a jaw-droppingly horrible deal giving control of Chicago's parking meters to a consortium of investors for over 70 years, and who suppressed video of a police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald so he could win re-election last year.

 

Or consider David Brock. A former rabidly anti-Clinton conservative attack dog, Brock has since seen the liberal light and founded Media Matters for America, a political nonprofit, as well as several political action committees. He is probably best known today for building a stable of writers whose slavish hero-worship of Hillary Clinton was matched only by their crazed hostility to Bernie Sanders. Now, much of Media Matters' output is still worthwhile. But overall, Brock's various institutions produce unusually cloddish center-left agitprop.

 

The political style of Democratic operatives like Emanuel and Brock is characterized by a focus on opposition research and propaganda, an obsessive pursuit of political cash at nearly any cost, and occasional sops to the liberal base when it can't be avoided. Instead of trying to build genuine enthusiasm among the working class with integrity and simple, good policy, they would attack the enemy and essentially dupe people into voting Democratic with psychological tricks, massive ad campaigns, and coordinated use of social media.

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Attack of the Democratic drones.