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In reply to the discussion: AOC: Why do we listen to people who lost elections as if they are experts in winning elections? [View all]Celerity
(44,551 posts)to the left too much. It hollowed out her support.
There is a limit to how much this tippy-toe to the right can go, and she found it.
McCaskill asked black leaders to push back on criticism of her campaign. No one would.
https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article207156999.html
African American leaders in Missouri are frustrated with what they see as Sen. Claire McCaskills lacklustre engagement with minority voters. Frustrated enough that they refused to sign a letter pushing back against comments made last month by Bruce Franks, a prominent black activist and state legislator from St. Louis, who called on McCaskill to show up and earn the support of minority voters in her state. Im going to vote for Claire, but Claire is going to have to bring her ass to St. Louis, Franks said to applause at a town hall he hosted Feb. 17.
In response to Franks comments, McCaskill had asked African American elected officials in Kansas City and St. Louis to sign the letter. Among those who were approached by McCaskill are U.S. Reps. Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City and Lacy Clay of St. Louis, and state Rep. Gail McCann Beatty, the minority leader in the Missouri House.
Each declined to sign.
Im 100 percent certain that nobody signed it, Cleaver said in an interview Wednesday with The Kansas City Star. We talked about it very seriously and strongly and every one of us said, Were going to support her, but signing this letter isnt going to achieve what she wants. Its just going to make people angry.
Cleaver said hes sympathetic to McCaskills plight. Shes a Democrat running for re-election in a state Republican President Donald Trump won by nearly 19 points in 2016. He understands she must win over some right-leaning voters to survive. But as McCaskill works to burnish her reputation as a centrist, Cleaver and other African American leaders said they worry shell leave minority voters on the left with the impression that shes taking them for granted and it could cost her turnout in the urban centres that are crucial to her base. The state is large and diverse, but she might need to take the campaign into the repair shop in the black communities, Cleaver said. I think if people see that shes actually trying to win them over then I think it will be a benefit to her re-election.
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Sen. McCaskill distances herself from Warren, Sanders and crazy Democrats
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sen-mccaskill-distances-herself-from-warren-sanders-and-crazy-democrats/2018/10/31/30ef5e4c-dd27-11e8-85df-7a6b4d25cfbb_story.html
Facing a tough reelection battle, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) is distancing herself from liberal members of her party, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) even as Warrens leadership PAC donated to the Missouri Democrats campaign this cycle. PAC for a Level Playing Field, which is affiliated with Warren, gave McCaskill $10,000 last year, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Republicans seized on the donation, with the National Republican Senatorial Committee arguing that McCaskills efforts to separate herself from leading Democrats were laughable in light of the funds.
The back-and-forth comes as McCaskill has taken aim at crazy Democrats in the final stage of her campaign against Missouris Republican attorney general, Josh Hawley. Polls show a close race. Claires not one of those crazy Democrats. She works right in the middle and finds compromise, a male voice says in one of McCaskills recent radio ads. She has also tried to distance herself from recognizable liberals such as Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
I would not call my colleagues crazy, but Elizabeth Warren sure went after me when I advocated tooling back some of the regulations for small banks and credit unions, McCaskill said in a Fox News Channel interview broadcast this week. I certainly disagree with Bernie Sanders on a bunch of stuff.
McCaskill was among 16 Senate Democrats who voted to advance a Republican-led rollback of banking regulations in March. At the time, Warren criticized those Democratic colleagues on Twitter and also rebuked them in a fundraising email, a move that ruffled feathers among some members of her caucus. McCaskill told CNN this week that the crazy Democrats are the people who are getting in the face of elected officials in restaurants and screaming at them. The crazy Democrats is whoever put a swastika on one of Josh Hawleys signs in rural Missouri.
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Here she is being praised by a RW anti-immigrant think tank
Claire McCaskill Pushes MSNBC to Open Its Eyes to the Border Crisis
https://cis.org/Kammer/Claire-McCaskill-Pushes-MSNBC-Open-Its-Eyes-Border-Crisis
Claire McCaskill, the former Democratic senator from Missouri, was too liberal to survive last year's election challenge from Trump loyalist Josh Hawley, who is now representing the Show Me State. But McCaskill, whose resume includes work as a county prosecutor, state representative, and state auditor, was known in the Senate as a moderate with her finger on the public pulse and a willingness to compromise. She has said she believes that the center is where the most valuable legislative work gets done.
A Bloomberg column after the election reported on McCaskill's assessment of politics in Washington. She said the news media had become part of the problem. She pointed particularly at MSNBC and Fox, which she said were aiming at "the people making the noise".
That's why it was a surprise to learn in January that MSNBC had hired her as a political analyst and commentator.
Good for MSNBC, which often manifests a liberal bias as blatant as the conservative bias on Fox. Consider MSNBC's head-in-the sand reporting on the ongoing influx of Central American asylum-seekers.
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