Ex-Obama campaign manager claims Trump would be ‘excited’ to face Sanders
Jim Messina, former President Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, claimed in a new interview that if Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wins the Democratic presidential nomination, the party could suffer and have a smaller chance of beating President Trump.
Messina argued to Politico that Trump’s arguments of a strong economy could resonate over Sanders’s socialist positions . He also claimed that the Vermont senator’s agenda would work to the GOP’s advantage, and force Democratic House and Senate candidates to face questions about socialism.
“If I were a campaign manager for Donald Trump and I look at the field, I would very much want to run against Bernie Sanders,” Messina said. “I think the contrast is the best. He can say, ‘I’m a business guy, the economy’s good and this guy’s a socialist.’ I think that contrast for Trump is likely one that he’d be excited about in a way that he wouldn’t be as excited about [Joe Biden] or potentially [Pete Buttigieg] or some of the more Midwestern moderate candidates.”
Messina, who is not endorsing a 2020 Democratic candidate, added that from “a general election perspective, socialism is not going to be what Democrats are going to want to defend.”
“If you’re the Democratic nominee for the Montana Senate race, you don’t want to spend the election talking about socialism,” he said.
The comments from Messina arrive less than a month before the Iowa caucuses and after a new poll showed Sanders with a narrow lead over the rest of the Democratic field in the early voting state. The Des Moines Register/CNN poll released on Friday showed Sanders with a 3-point advantage over Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg and former Vice President Biden registered in third and fourth, respectively.
“If [Messina] spent less time in boardrooms courting CEOs, he would witness the incredible energy generated by Bernie’s campaign, which has more than 5 million individual donations — the all-time record for a presidential candidate at this point in the race,” Sanders’s communications director, Mike Casca, said in a statement to Politico, referencing Messina’s work as the CEO of the Messina Group, a strategic consulting business.
David Sirota, a speechwriter for Sanders, has also pushed back against the arguments that Vermont senator’s progressive messages would hurt him. In Saturday’s edition of his “Bern Notice” newsletter, Sirota noted that similar attacks were leveled against former Obama when he was campaigning in 2008.
“Washington elites called Obama unelectable in swing areas — and they are trotting out the same line against Bernie, despite all the data to the contrary,” he wrote.
The Sanders campaign did not immediately respond to a request for further comment from The Hill.
This isn’t the first time Messina has pushed the argument that Sanders would struggle to beat Trump, Politico noted. In April, he told ABC News’s Powerhouse Politics podcast that the Vermont senator wouldn’t be able to sway swing voters.
“I think if you look at swing voters in this country, they are incredibly focused on the economy,” Messina said. “I think today you look at it and say that Bernie Sanders is unlikely going to be able to stand up to the constant barrage that is Donald Trump on economic issues.”
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