Conventional wisdom in Washington may hold that the 2016 presidential race will pit Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton in the general election, but two seasoned political veterans tell Bloomberg’s “Masters in Politics” Podcast, “not so fast.”
Tad Devine, senior strategist of the Bernie Sanders campaign, says even though Hillary Clinton had a good night on Super Tuesday, her winning streak may be over. “We see a path forward and I understand the math that’s involved and also the working of proportional representation in the Democratic Party. I think we can do it.”
Devine, who was also a top strategist to the Gore and Kerry presidential campaigns, recognizes that it’s a tall order. He concedes that the Sanders campaign needs a big win to move forward, but he is hopeful that he can run up the delegate tally in his favor. “We are going to have to beat her in a number of upcoming states and we are going to have beat her in some decisive battleground states – big states, like probably New York her own home state, and a state like California, at the end of the process. And I think if we do, if we can put together enough delegates, if we can win the race for pledged delegates, I think it’s going to be close but I think we can still win it.”
Devine also gave a preview of the Sanders campaign’s message to Democratic Party super delegates who, in the case of a close nomination fight, would need to be convinced to abandon the so-called “establishment” candidate Hillary Clinton. The key to that argument, according to Devine, is that Sanders would be “a stronger candidate in the general election. I think we’ll have a very strong case to the leadership of the Democratic Party, to the super delegates and to others that it would be best if Bernie were the nominee, we’d have the best chance of defeating the Republicans.”
The veteran strategist waved off arguments that the Sanders campaign is purely symbolic or that he is a protest candidate. Devine said, “This is not a symbolic candidacy, this is not a message campaign, this a campaign to win the Democratic nomination. So if we feel that that’s not a real possibility, then sure, he’ll look at it, he’ll reevaluate it. But I think right now we all feel right now – that yes, it’s an uphill road, we concede her advantage but we still believe we can win this race. We’ve got a plan. The plan is going to go all the way through June and we are going to stick to it.”
On the Republican side is veteran strategist Katie Packer, who has made stopping Trump her political mission as the Executive Director of a newly formed anti-Trump Super PAC. Responding to the charge that it’s too late to defeat Trump, who has a sizable lead in delegates coming out of Super Tuesday, Parker said, “I think it’s insane to think it’s too late. Seventy percent of the delegates have not been awarded. And everybody wants to say that it has never happened before where somebody has won all of these early states, and has not gone on to win. Well nothing about this cycle is like ever before.”
Packer brings her credentials as the former Deputy Campaign Manager for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign to her new role as Super PAC director. In light of Romney’s recent, biting criticism of the Trump campaign, Packer acknowledges that the Trump-Romney relationship looked a lot different in 2012. But, she says, the reason for that was simply political survivorship. “Trump said a lot of bombastic things about all the candidates [in 2012] and we sort of made a strategic decision that either we have this guy on our team, so he’s not ripping on our candidate all the time, or we don’t. And maybe it was a mistake, but we reached out to him, and he supported Governor Romney.” In fact, she explained that it was her interaction with Trump four years ago that sparked her “passion” in helping to defeat him. “I found him [then] to be just as pompous and narcissistic as he’s turned out to be as a candidate.”
The “Our Principles” Super PAC has been up and running since January, and has been responsible for churning out political ads that aim to shine a light on the litany of past controversies that have plagued Donald Trump’s business career. “The next phase we are looking at is Donald Trump as a businessman. He touts his success but the truth of the matter is that if you talk to financial experts they will tell you that if he had taken his inheritance that his daddy left him and he had simply invested it in the stock market, he would be far wealthier than he his today. He has actually squandered a good deal of his wealth.” In the coming days, she warns, “You are going to be hearing from a lot of real people telling their story about this con man and the ultimate con that he is trying to push on the American people.” Her goal is “a much more concentrated effort to tell these stories in states that have big delegate contests.” By the time the March 15th primaries arrive, she contends that “those voters are going to be very familiar with his record.”
Packer also did not hold back on her view of Chris Christie’s surprise endorsement of Trump last Friday. To Packer, the Christie decision to embrace Trump at this critical time, was “a further example of the lengths that Chris Christie will go to exact revenge on people. It makes the Bridgegate thing all the more plausible to me now. Because we see what he’s willing to do when he is angry at somebody. He clearly doesn’t like Marco Rubio, he was angry at John Kasich for ever getting into the race, and so this was his way to sort of exact some revenge on them.”
Overall, Packer says that “everything about Chris Christie’s support for Trump has been very sad, for a guy that a lot of people used to have a lot of respect for. He’s made a mockery of himself. Everywhere you turn today people are mocking Chris Christie. Six newspapers in New Jersey called for him to resign as governor. He has sort of reached a new low as a governor.”
If, in the end, Trump does emerge as the Republican nominee, Packer warns that there will be a “civil war within the party” which just may spark a third-party candidacy of someone who could be “a more conservative alternative”. Ultimately, Packer argues that such a candidacy would “ensure that Hillary Clinton will win in the fall because I think the Democrats are not going to be nearly as kind to Trump as his primary opponents have been.”
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