CNN’s David Axelrod Agrees with Dave Portnoy: Democrat ‘Moral Superiority’ Is Not Working

BASH: “One thing that I’ve heard you say that I completely agree with you on, and we talked about this earlier around the table, is not just about the policies, in fact, it might not be about the policies very much at all, it’s about the communication and where you are delivering and how you’re delivering that message, and how the Republicans are just light years ahead of Democrats in having their influencers and figuring out the algorithms to find new voters or Democratic voters or disaffected voters or never — you know, never before people who have paid attention to politics using the Internet and doing it on their phone. One influential guy, Dave Portnoy, who has a podcast ‘Barstool,’ he is somebody who said after Roe that he thought it was insanity. He thought that the whole country was a mess for a lot of reasons, but that was part of it. He identifies as a moderate/independent, and yet he voted for Donald Trump. Listen to what he said.”
[Clip starts]
PORTNOY: “The people pulling the strings in the Democratic Party, get rid of them. They’ve lost the plot. Tonight is on the Democrats. (...) It was a ringing endorsement for the Republicans, Trump, ringing indictment against the Democrats. They got to look themselves in the mirror. This moral superiority complex they have, this arrogance they have, it’s not working. It’s time to wake up and see that.”
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BASH: “Is that just a more blunt way of saying what you told me at the beginning?”
AXELROD: “I think so. No, no. I — I — I — I absolutely think that that’s what it is. And I don’t — you know, I don’t know if I put it just that way, but I think that he’s on point there. The one thing I would disagree with is, you know, Donald Trump was less popular in this exit poll by a small margin than was Kamala Harris. So I don’t know whether it was a ringing endorsement of Donald Trump as much as a rejection of the — of incumbency, but also of this attitude that he’s speaking of. I mean, I think we need to — we owe people the — the respect, the respect for what they do and what they mean, you know, and all these blue-collar workers and people who do things with their hands in the back, they make this country go.”
BASH: “Mm-hmm.”
AXELROD: “They’re doing important work. And we calling this —“
BASH: “And they used to be the backbone of the party.”
AXELROD: “Yeah. And they —“
BASH: “Yeah.”
AXELROD: “— and they — and they feel like they are thought of as less and that their priorities are not the priorities of the Democratic Party.”