Ari Fleischer: Democrat debates have been a display of losing ideas
After the second round of Democrat primary debates, former White House press secretary and Fox News contributor Ari Fleischer lays out the three big ideas he believes will push voters away from the Democrat Party in 2020.
A liberal Democratic agenda is putting the party in danger of losing the 2020 presidential election, former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said Friday.
Appearing on “America’s Newsroom” with anchor Bill Hemmer, Fleischer noted that of the top three Democrats leading in the polls—including former two-term Vice President Joe Biden, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders—two of them are socialists.
“And, if Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders are the nominees for the Democrats…Which, you add them up right now, those two socialists are beating Joe Biden. If one of them becomes the nominee, the Democrats have moved so far to the left in a direction way beyond [onetime Democratic presidential candidate George] McGovern, way beyond any of the liberals they previously nominated. I think they make it almost impossible for them to win a general election,” he told Hemmer.
Fleischer, who served as press secretary under President George W. Bush from 2001-2003, also pointed to profound ideological divides between the party’s moderate and progressive wings.
“You saw that tension build at the beginning of the debate, where they spent about half an hour on Medicare-for-all. And, you heard Democrats like Biden and [Minnesota Senator Amy] Klobuchar are warning the rest of the field how dangerous an idea it is to go this far,” he said.
“But, it’s what Bernie wants, what Warren wants, [Julián] Castro wants—many of the Democrats want it,” said Fleischer.
Earlier Friday morning on “Fox & Friends,” the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., told viewers that the Democrats provided nothing to the American people: “They need people to be dependent on big government because if you’re not, they really don’t offer anything. We saw nothing new last night. We saw no plans and that’s scary for them.”
Fleischer agreed with the younger Trump’s analysis because “what you saw in the first two debates scared a lot of people in the middle and, of course, on the right.”
“The whole Democratic agenda is putting the Democrats in jeopardy. And, that’s a huge issue in a general election,” Fleischer said.
The top three Democrats in the polls include Biden, Warren, and Sanders, whom Fleischer says is “just not cutting it this year.” He also noted that Warren feels fresher to voters, although “they’re ideologically very much the same.”
Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg and California Senator Kamala Harris are following their lead, but not closely.
The candidates debated with polls showing a majority of voters believe the country is headed in the wrong direction under President Donald Trump, but Democrats have seemingly yet to answer fundamental questions about who or what the party stands for beyond simply opposing the first-term Republican.
When Hemmer asked if it was possible that there could be more than one candidate sent to the convention in Milwaukee next August, Fleischer told him it was still too soon to say. “I still think you have three people at the top and basically nobody else matters for now. And, those three are Biden, Warren, and Sanders. That seems to be the shape of the race.”
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