Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Laugh Out Loud, Soulless Hacks Edition

Ryan Cooper writes (The Week) that Democrats need fewer soulless hacks and more true believers:
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.
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. 
He goes on to describe how Rahm Emanuel and David Brock have abandoned liberal principles in favor of soulless political partisanship. True enough, but then goes on to say this about Terry McAuliffe, Governor of Virginia and close Clinton confidante:
This is a guy so obsessed with party politics that he once left his wife and hours-old infant in the car while he dropped in on a fundraiser. (He's also got a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease.) Yet as governor, he has worked diligently to get ObamaCare's Medicaid expansion in his state, and more importantly, used his pardon power to restore voting rights to 13,000 ex-felons...[H]e is one of only a handful of the Democratic old guard who seems to grasp that sometimes doing the morally right thing (on the advice of left-wing activists, no less) is also smart tactics. Re-enfranchising felons not only guarantees Democrats several thousand votes come election time, it also lends the party extra credibility among black voters (Virginia is 20 percent black) on the most pressing racial justice issue of the day, and among white liberals in the D.C. suburbs. 
Hang on: leaving your family for a fundraiser makes you a true liberal? And enfranchising felons so they'll vote Democrat, that's a liberal principle too? And McAuliffe, a bought and paid for Clinton partisan, is supposed to be a true believer? In what?!

Remember when liberals cared more about people than politics? Yeah, me neither.