There are Pop Warner football games with larger crowds than what we saw in Newark on Saturday evening, Save Jerseyans, the latest sign of lukewarm enthusiasm for Phil Murphy’s reelection campaign even among members of his own base. Could he still win? Absolutely. There are over a million more registered Democrats than Republicans in New Jersey in the post-Christie/Trump era. That being said, Barack Obama flew into Newark on Sunday for a reason. Murphy can’t count on Democrats showing up this year.
What’s more, the incumbent can’t rely on his record. He’s gotta change the subject to keep his job, and that’s the proximate job Barack had on Saturday… help refocus the 2021 campaign on 2020.
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“He wants to go backwards,” Obama warned, delving into wild allegations of what GOP nominee Jack Ciattarelli might do in office (the usual stuff about defunding schools and what not) but also Ciattarelli’s primary season appearance at a ‘Stop the Steal’ rally.
“When you’re standing in front of a sign that says ‘Stop the Steal,’ and there’s a guy in the crowd waving a Confederate flag, you know this isn’t a neighborhood barbecue,” the former president said. “You know it’s not a League of Women Voters rally. Come’on, man. That’s not what New Jersey needs.” We’ve heard this Confederation flag line before; there’s a Murphy campaign ad up inferring that Ciattarelli sympathizes with white supremacists, and the Governor recycled the stars-and-bars line during his closing remarks at the final debate and was met with a roar of boos from the audience.
Of course, there’s no shortage of irony to be found in the fact that Murphy keeps making an issue of “democracy” while simultaneously pushing the endorsement of Stacey Abrams, a woman who still hasn’t conceded her own Georgia defeat in… 2018. Three years ago!
That’s not the end of the hypocrisy. Obama tweaked his speech a bit for a same-day Virginia rally, attacking the “phony culture wars” surrounding that state’s raucous public schools debate. That’s rich coming from the guy who made the infamous “bitter clingers” remark, but I digress…
Are you noticing a pattern, folks?
The same Democrats warning that Republican candidates will take us “backwards” in office can’t themselves stop talking about the past! Phil Murphy can’t tell you what he’s going to do differently moving forward despite, for example, New Jersey now having the nation’s third highest unemployment rate. His ideas failed, just the same as Obama’s failed and Joe Biden’s are currently failing in spectacular fashion. All they have is the same old playbook from the last political battle, one which they dust off annually to scare mostly well-meaning supporters into signing up for another master course in empty rhetoric.
Obama’s routine hasn’t changed in over 13 years; he employs lofty terms and phrases like “forward” and “hope” while simultaneously stoking and appealing to Americans’ worst political stereotypes concerning one another.
I think people are starting to get wise to it; Joe Biden’s 42% job approval rating – and the fact that Team Murphy felt it needed the former fearmonger-in-chief in Newark this weekend – are proof enough that I’m probably right.
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