Sounding like a political consultant furious with his clients, Joe Scarborough went on an absolute tirade against the Democrats on today's Morning Joe, upbraiding them for having veered too far left. Scarborough railed that for the most part, "the election was an absolute repudiation of the Democratic party brand."
And in his own words and that of others, Scarborough warned the Democrats that if they don't change course, they will get destroyed in the 2022 mid-term elections. Or as a Dem congresswoman he quoted colorfully put it, Democrats will get "f---ing torn apart."
A table-pounding Scarborough also pointed to Republican state-legislature wins across the country, which will position them for the next 10 years in crucial redistricting decisions.
Willie Geist added a quote from Rep. Jim Clyburn about Senate runoffs in Georgia: “If we're going to run on Medicare for All, defund the police, socialized medicine we are not going to win.”
Kasie Hunt said her Democrat sources said “they were going to pick up at least to five to seven senate seats, potentially they were going to pick up 10 to 12.” No wonder they're depressed.
Hunt suggested “If you want to govern, you have to figure out a way to make that happen in places where people are not firmly entrenched on one side of this culture war or the other.”
Of course—Scarborough being Scarborough—he couldn't stop himself from taking an inane swipe at President Trump, making his umpteenth Trump/Hitler analogy, even hitting the daily double by working Stalin into it. Sidekick Mike Barnicle—ever the imitator—kicked in with a Trump/Hitler analogy of his own.
Scarborough urging Democrats to moderate their positions or face destruction in the 2022 elections was sponsored in part by Shark Vacuums and USAA.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
11/6/20
6:31 am ETJOE SCARBOROUGH: I got to put a sidebar in here. Because after the dust settles, if Joe Biden ends up winning the presidency, then, I think a lot of people are going to turn to what happened to the Democratic party.
There is no way to put this, other than to say this election was, was — Joe Biden winning looks like a one-off. This election for the most part was an absolute repudiation of the Democratic party as a brand. Their brand doesn’t work across most of America. It just doesn’t.
They got routed in Senate races they should have won. And I mean, and if you don’t believe me, just look back at all the predictions. Are Democrats going to win nine, ten, 11 Senate seats? The House results are perhaps even more shocking. Nobody thought that this was going to be close. The weekend before the election, Republican pollsters were talking about hemorrhaging support in suburbs and couldn’t believe the numbers. They said, we’re going to get destroyed. Well, it ended up, they couldn’t believe the numbers for a good reason. The numbers were wrong!
And Kasie, this is going to have a profound impact [pounds table] over the next ten years. The state legislatures that Democrats thought they were going to gain, the state legislatures that Democrats lost, all of this is going to have a consequential impact on redistricting and the shape of the map over the next ten years.
Talk about the incredible phone, conference call where Abigail Spanberger — you know, I’m sorry. I’m a former Republican so I guess my opinion doesn’t matter. She told it like it was: stop talking about socialism! Stop talking about defunding the police! It doesn’t work. And of course, leaders of the Democratic party have actually come on this show and said of course they don’t support the defunding of the police. But she was very angry. Believed that what’s happened to the Democratic party’s brand has been shattered and they need to fight back.
Here's what she said: "We need to not ever use the word socialist or socialism again. We lost good members because of that," she said heatedly. "If we are classifying Tuesday as a success, we will get blanking torn apart in 2022" and I've already — you know, when I was saying I was talking to the smartest, smartest data people alive that basically told me that the numbers were a mirage in Florida and across the upper Midwest, those same people say that the Republicans are going to have a huge year in 2022. Just looking at this data, looking at our exit polls if they don’t correct course. If the Democrats don't correct course.
