One of the most fascinating bits of advice to Democrats comes from MSNBC’s conservative talk show host Joe Scarborough in a long email to the founder of Daily Kos which is run with his permission. In the first part of it, he talks about his experience as a candidate and bad advice he got about how he could only win if he ran as a moderate. And then he writes this:
Fast forward twelve years and now we find many making the same misguided arguments, except this time they are giving their stupid advice to Democrats generally and Connecticut voters specifically.
Ned Lamont may be a pencil-necked geek, as Imus claims, but he is the type of candidate that will bring out the Democratic base in an off-year election. That is especially true this year because George W. Bush is even more unpopular than Clinton was when the GOP swept into power.
My advice to Democratic voters this year is “Go left, young man!”
There may be hell to pay in 2008, but for now the only thing that should matter to you is seizing control of Congress. Do that for the first time in a decade and then you can start worrying about swing voters in the suburbs.
Read the entire email. He’s not giving advice to sabotage the Demmies; he clearly means it. (We’ve often said here and verbally that Scarborough is one of the most refreshingly unpredictable talk show hosts on many issues.)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.