David Axelrod: Voters don't want a ‘Democratic version of Trump’

POLITICO's Off Message

POLITICO

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🗓️ 30 October 2018

⏱️ 57 minutes

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Summary

The strategist behind Obama's presidential campaigns gives his midterms predictions, shares his lightning-round thoughts on 2020 candidates and tells Tim whether he thinks any politician can recapture the Obama magic. David Axelrod doesn’t like the path the country—or the Democratic Party—is on. The chief strategist who steered Barack Obama’s winning White House campaigns worries that President Trump has laid a trap—and that his party is walking right into it. “Escalation breeds escalation,” Axelrod said in an interview for POLITICO’s Off Message podcast. “And within the Democratic Party, I think there is a big debate about how to deal with Trump because he has no boundaries. He’s willing to do anything and say anything to promote his interests. It’s a values-free politics; it’s an amoral politics. And so, there is this body of thought that you have to fight fire with fire and so on. But I worry that we’ll all be consumed in the conflagration.” Stressing that “civility actually is a really important element of politics,” Axelrod criticized Hillary Clinton and former Attorney General Eric Holder for recent comments they’ve made, and described the backlash he has faced for urging Democrats to avoid confrontation. The best way to defeat Trump, Axelrod argued, is by nominating someone who can appeal to an exhausted electorate. “I don’t think people will be looking for a Democratic version of Trump,” he said. “I don’t think they’ll be looking for people who can go jibe for jibe and low blow for low blow. I think people are going to be looking for someone who can pull this country out of this hothouse that we’re in.” At his offices in Chicago, where he directs the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, we discussed Axelrod’s predictions for the midterm elections, the risk of overreach with a new House majority, and the strengths and vulnerabilities of the top-tier 2020 Democratic hopefuls. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Off Message. I'm Tim Alberta.
0:04.8	This is the question that a lot of folks have when they look at this next crop of Democratic politicians.
0:11.1	Are there people you look at in whom you see that same flicker, that same raw political potential
0:17.7	that could be harnessed in the way that you saw it in Obama all those years
0:21.1	ago. Look, that's unfair, you know, that's like saying, well, which of these horses remind you
0:27.0	of secretariat? We meet again. Thank you for listening, and thanks also for your continued
0:32.1	feedback. Wendy loved last week's podcast with Chip Roy. She called it, quote, one of the best interviews I've ever heard, unquote, and said, quote, as a deep blue liberal, I think it's so important to have conversations like this with conservatives, unquote. Very perceptive, Wendy. Jimmy called the interview, fake news, all caps, and said, quote, you must be looking hard to make him look bad, unquote.
0:56.1	And Kyle wishes I would have pushed Roy further on what he means by Let Texas Be Texas,
1:02.1	a phrase that suggests the state is culturally and politically monolithic.
1:06.5	This week, I'm going to let Axelrod be Axelrod.
1:10.0	That's David Axelrod, the former chief strategist behind Barack Obama's winning White House campaigns.
1:15.6	These days, he's the director of the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics.
1:19.9	He's also a senior political commentator for CNN and host of one of my favorite political podcast, The Axe Files.
1:27.0	Axelrod is never afraid to speak his mind, and with so much happening, the conclusion of the
1:31.6	midterm elections, the onset of the 2020 campaign, and the intensifying rift inside the Democratic
1:36.4	Party over how to defeat Donald Trump, I could think of no one better to break it all down.
1:42.5	I usually like to start these interviews on a light note, but given the events of the week,
1:46.8	I just had to jump in here.
1:49.1	We had this string of bomb scares directed at any number of figures, and obviously your former
1:55.8	boss, President Obama, was one of them, and your current employer, CNN, another one.
2:00.7	And I just wonder where you see the country now in terms of sort of the escalating polarization
2:08.5	that we've been witnessing for many years now.
	...

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