MSNBC Inadvertently Highlights Pathetic Democrat 2020 Field by Noting One Who 'Stands Out'
Given that the presidential election cycle begins the moment the last presidential election is called, it should be a bit unnerving to Democrats how thin and/or shopworn the 2020 field currently seems to be.
A recent poll showed the top four candidates for the Democrats are Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. In other words, nobody on the left has learned their lesson.
However, what about an outsider? Perhaps it could be someone from the private sector like President Donald Trump was. Perhaps it could be someone who’s on cable news every waking hour of every day, the kind of character who can take up all the air in the room. It would help if he’s someone that’s creditably anti-Trump, too.
MSNBC believes they’ve found just the man: Michael Avenatti.
Before you laugh, creepy porn lawyer dude actually believes he can be our next president. Stormy Daniels’ attorney traveled to the Iowa State Fair this week and said that he was considering a run for the White House.
“I’m here to listen to the great people of Iowa, explore the fair and see whether it makes sense to run for the presidency or not,” Avenatti said, according to CNN. “I’m serious about considering it. I haven’t made a decision as to what I’m going to do. I’ll make a decision in the coming weeks. Maybe a bit longer than that.”
Wonderful. At least we know where the comic relief is going to come from in 2020. (I mean, aside from Bernie Sanders. And Joe Biden. And Cory “Sob Sister” Booker.)
But, according to a segment on MSNBC, Avenatti is a legitimate front-runner.
“You look at the field of Democrats right now, and Avenatti’s the one who stands out. He’s the one who’s not a politician,” said Philip Rucker, The Washington Post’s White House bureau chief.
“If he gives the base what they’re looking for and shows he can go toe-to-toe with Trump, he’d have a chance.”
“If they decide they value a fighter most, people would be foolish to underestimate Michael Avenatti,” said Nicole Wallace, host of MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House.”
“I have always said they need a fighter,” political science professor Jason Johnson, an MSNBC contributor, said. “You need someone who is not going to take the high road because the high road doesn’t work with (Donald Trump).”
Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post was the only one who thought that Avenatti was ill-prepared, although not for the same reasons most of us would.
“Just because Donald Trump ran as a celebrity and has become the worst president in history, doesn’t mean the Democrats should duplicate it,” she said.
“They better get someone with a decent personality,” she added, while conceding there wasn’t one in the potential field of candidates yet.
All of this love for Avenatti stems from a common Democrat trope: Trump was completely unprepared for the White House, so now anyone can win. The first part of this equation is demonstrably false, however. Your personal feelings about our 45th president aside, it would be difficult to deny that Trump was someone who was studying public policy issues for decades before he decided to run for the White House.
The fact that he was in the private sector may have helped him build a different knowledge base than most lawmakers have, but he’s also someone who paid close attention to the political tides in Washington for years. As the far as the concept of a citizen president goes, Trump would be the ideal candidate from a knowledge standpoint.
As far as I can discern, Avenatti started getting seriously interested in politics when he became the lawyer of a porn star trying to break an NDA.
Yet, according to the MSNBC panel, he’s a “fighter” who “hit a lot of the right notes.”
“I’m not advocating for another person who hasn’t worked in politics,” Wallace said during the segment. “I’m just saying, why not?”
If you seriously can’t answer that question, you probably shouldn’t be opining on politics for a living. Then again, if the Democrat field is so pathetic that Avenatti is being seriously considered, perhaps the problem isn’t necessarily with MSNBC.
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