David Axlerod says we've become the Smarty Pants Suburban College Educated party

[Bluetus]

48. I don't know if we could have overcome the trans ads

no matter how much money and desire we had. But we are not smart about these things. We hold these fringe issues out as a target, making it way too easy for people like Cruz and Trump to define us.

I assume most people here support LGBTQ rights. But I ask all of you how we can help that cause by putting that front-and-center in our campaign, leading to a slaughter? It just isn't smart. It isn't strategic.

While Trump and Cruz were busy defining all of us, just as Axelrod has said, what were we doing to define ourselves in a more appealing light? 90% of Harris' stump speech was platitudes -- nothing that anybody could latch onto or even remember. The only economic proposal I recall was some vague statement about wanting more paid day care, but she never said how. She talked vaguely about corporate greed, but never said what she would do. Europe has a windfall profits tax. People can understand that. We even have a bill sitting on Congress It is SB-4642. Did Harris ever mention that, even once?

Trump was pretty darned specific. He wants to deport 20 million brown people. He wants to put tariffs on everything imported. Project 2025 wants to get rid of the "deep state" in favor of 100,000 patronage jobs and wipe out what remains of Medicare and Social Security.

Don't expect Americans to think through the consequences of these proposals. Americans, on average, are too dense to do that. It makes their brains hurt to think too much. So they compensate by instinctively supporting the person who makes the boldest proposals and delivers them with conviction. That is not going to change, so we had better learn how to play that game. And yes, that means telling the special interests to stand aside during election season. There is time for a big tent after we win the election. It does no good to have a big tent when that means losing the elections.