Rahm Emanuel takes liberal base-bashing to a whole new level

[yurbud]

We have certain rules on DU about not criticizing Democratic candidates in general election season.

Corporate Democrats need to exercise similar restraint about not shitting on Democratic voters.

Message to Rahm: you need more than just wealthy donors and corporations to win elections.

Rahm thinks of himself as some kind of Democratic Karl Rove, but he is more like the cashier at an expensive restaurant, who thinks he's important because he handles the rich people's money.

Among the least effective ways to help a struggling candidate is to berate that candidate’s base voters. Self-evident as it is, this basic lesson is nonetheless often ignored by President Obama’s most vocal supporters. Typically, they criticize liberals who have not merely the audacity to hope – but also the audacity to cross-reference the president’s record with his original campaign pledges. So anathema is such an act to Democratic partisans that Obama administration officials now brazenly defy their most crystal clear promises – and then openly mock those who object to the duplicity.

Now, though, as the election enters its final death throes and the spasms of partisan desperation get ever more intense, Democrats are flinging out a special version of the old berate-the-base tactic. Rather than copping to the president’s betrayals and explaining them away as allegedly necessary compromises, one of the president’s chief surrogates, Rahm Emanuel, is publicly insisting that the president’s most loyal supporters are downright stupid because they believe Obama made specific promises which he supposedly never made.

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EMANUEL: I find that — it’s like this. He told everybody he was going to be aggressive. He told everybody what he was going to do about targets. He said that “If I can find Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, I’ll take that chance.” You may not want to hear it, but he’s talked about it. It’s not a surprise. You may have been selective in what you heard, but he said it. You can’t point to a single part of the way he’s executed policy that he didn’t enunciate beforehand.

http://www.salon.com/2012/10/16/rahm_emanuel_takes_liberal_base_bashing_to_a_whole_new_level/