In the New York Times this weekend, Jonathan Martin had an article about Elizabeth Warren's "role" in the 2016 election, entitled "Role for Warren: To Push, if not Supplant, Clinton."
You can already see how worthless the article will be in how it is framed at the start:
DES MOINES — Eight years ago this month, then-Senator Barack Obama began his evolution from political phenom to presidential contender with his first-ever trip to New Hampshire, a visit that attracted 2,500 voters, 150 journalists and a comparison by the state’s governor of Mr. Obama to the Rolling Stones.
Last week, in the side room of Java Joe’s coffee shop here, the liberal group MoveOn.org took the first step to propel Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, on a similar path, holding a rally to encourage her to get into the 2016 race.
Yet there were only about 75 people present, some of them local political professionals engaging in a bit of reconnaissance and recreation, and just a handful of reporters. The highest-ranking official there was the Iowa Senate president, who carefully avoided stating her support for a Warren candidacy.
Not that there is such a thing: Ms. Warren herself was not here, and she has repeatedly stated in public that she is not running for president. In private, according to several Democrats who have talked with her, Ms. Warren, 65, has also indicated that she would not challenge Hillary Rodham Clinton.
On one hand, there's what looks like a political rally featuring a soon-to-be-announced candidate. On the other hand, there is a group of local activists meeting to talk about someone who is not present and who has declared no interest in running for president. Who would have ever thought that the turnout would be so different?
But this example of weak framing is not why I'm writing about this article. I'm writing about the article because of this passage:
“After six years of having to pursue economic policies primarily geared toward addressing crises, the party is restless and impatient and wants to start addressing broader issues of inequality and stagnant wages,” said Anita Dunn, a Democratic strategist and former top aide to Mr. Obama. “And they’re looking for a leader who can really articulate this anxiety. But that’s not inconsistent with saying they also want Mrs. Clinton to win the nomination.”
Yes, Anita Dunn has worked for many Democrats, including Obama. Here's how she describes herself on the SKD Knickerbocker website:
As White House communications director and senior adviser to President Obama’s presidential campaigns, Anita directed conventional and new media communications strategies, as well as research, speechwriting, television booking, presidential events and cabinet affairs press.
Anita has worked for a wide range of elected officials and candidates across the United States, including working for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee as communications director from 1987-1990 under Senator John Kerry and then-Senator John Breaux; leading Senator Bill Bradley’s political and communication teams from 1991-1993; serving as a consultant to the Democratic Senate Caucus in 1995 and again in 1999, during the impeachment trial of President Clinton; and working as then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle’s communications director in 2001.
She has worked with a wide range of Democratic Party officials, including Senator Evan Bayh, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Rep. John Dingell.
But her work hasn't consisted solely of consulting for Democratic candidates. After leaving the White House, she decided to
greatly expand the corporate work of SKD Knickerbocker, leveraging all of those connections she has in the White House:
Her consulting firm has thrived. SKDK focused for years on media campaigns for Democratic candidates, but soon after her return from the White House, it announced a “major expansion” emphasizing strategic communications and advocacy work for businesses.
Nearly doubling in size to 60 employees, the firm hired a dozen Washington insiders tied to the Obama administration or the Democratic Party, including Ms. Rosen, a former lobbyist; Jill Zuckman, a senior Transportation Department official; and Doug Thornell, a former senior aide to House Democrats. And it took on corporate clients including General Electric, AT&T, Time Warner, Pratt & Whitney, Kaplan University and TransCanada, which is developing the Keystone XL pipeline.
The firm has also helped run industry coalitions seeking to influence federal policy on particular issues, working with lobbyists and other media specialists that represented companies like Oracle, Google, Disney, Pepsi and Microsoft.
To call her a "Democratic strategist" while leaving out this sizable portion of her work is quite misleading.
As is leaving out her other political work, that not in the United States.
When I excerpted her bio above, I left out a key line:
In addition, she worked with Prime Minister David Cameron and the Conservative Party in the 2010 elections in Britain.
In other words, this "Democratic strategist" is also a "Tory strategist."
Back in 2010, she was coaching David Cameron on how to seem less like the insincere, uncaring, poor-hating, condescending aristocrat that he is and seem "more relatable" to the general population:
Ms Dunn, from the Washington-based political consultancy Squier Knapp Dunn, was given the task of ‘de-poshing’ Harvard-educated Obama to enhance his appeal to middle and working-class women voters. Cameron’s team hope that she will be able to pull off a similar trick for the Eton-educated leader.
Ms Dunn has told Cameron to ‘project stability’ by standing centre-on to the podium, holding both sides of it when he makes a key point, projecting a forward-looking gaze and walking with a ‘relaxed but in-charge stride’.
He has also been told to use a series of arm gestures when answering questions which ‘suggest accommodation and compromise rather than confrontation’ and to use his eyes so that they never look ‘shifty’, or dart about, but stay centred and calm.
The Democratic Party is, for better or for worse, the party of the center-left in the US. One would think, then, that Democratic strategists would work for the parties of the center-left in other countries if they were to venture abroad. In the UK, that would be Labour. Insofar as Labour is to the left of the Democratic Party, it is because of its past accomplishments (most notably the National Health Service), and less so any ideology or governing vision. Tony Blair's "New Labour" of the late 1990s was largely similar to the "New Democrats" over here in the 1990s, both advocating a rollback of the welfare state, an embrace of privatization, and an enlargement of corporate power. Both Labour and the Democrats attempt the same awkward balancing act between an activist base of progressives and labor unions and a donor class that despises both of these very groups.
Every so often some people will highlight the fact that the current UK Parliament passed marriage equality legislation to imply that, at least, the Tories are socially liberal. But that wasn't because of Tory votes. The Tories voted against it 136 to 127 whereas Labour voted for it 217 to 22. Lib Dems voted for it 44 to 0. The Tories are the conservative party of Britain. They may not be as rabid as the conservatives of the US. But they are still conservatives.
I could go on a long rant against the disastrous austerity policy of David Cameron, but, instead, I'll turn you to this handy list of the "100 worst failures of the Cameron government" as well as the Guardian op-ed by a waitress who saw Cameron preach public sector cuts at a banquet while standing in front of a golden throne. They are openly interested in rolling back the state to the 1930s.
By working for the Tories, Anita Dunn should become persona non grata in Democratic circles. That she isn't says a lot about the Democratic party.
I would say the same about former Obama adviser Jim Messina, who is currently working for David Cameron (at the same time that he is working for Ready for Hillary).
People like Dunn and Messina should not be trust by Democratic voters or activists. They are not so much "Democratic strategists" as "unprincipled political hacks who will do whatever they get paid to do and will actively work against the party's base."
If Anita Dunn is helping big corporations fight regulations and economic royalists win elections in the UK, then she very well might see inequality and stagnant wages as a problem. But the problem to her would be that inequality is too low and that wages are merely stagnating, not falling.