The naming of MSNBC host and leading Trump-Russia conspiracy enthusiast Rachel Maddow as one of the five moderators for the first Democratic presidential primary debate in Miami on June 26 and 27 is yet another sign that the party still does not understand why it lost the 2016 election. Democrats seem bound and determined to once again limit their appeal to the narrow core of urbanized progressives they already have in the bag while eschewing any attempt to attract middle-of-the-road potential voters.
Rachel Maddow
Beyond the ludicrously partisan and more than slightly unhinged Maddow, the rest of the crew that will be asking the questions was intentionally assembled with the goal of pleasing leftists obsessed with identity politics fixations. Did you know that a radical feminist group called UltraViolet Action has urged Dem candidates to pledge only to attend debates that contain female moderators? According to Vox Media, Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) all took the pledge, and presumably would have boycotted the Miami debate were Maddow or NBC’s Today show co-host Savannah Guthrie not part of the panel. Meet the Press host Chuck Todd is the only white male among the five moderators, and the fact that this is by deliberate design gives further evidence of the pandering social justice spirit that will wearily be on display in South Florida.
She’ll Bring the Derangement
But it is the presence of Maddow that is likely to play the most significant role in preventing any of the 20 candidates who will take the debate stage over two nights from straying too far from the suffocating progressive dogma that currently rules the Blue Roost. The Dem primary battle desperately needs a breakthrough performance by a bold candidate who can resonate with the nation at large. But Maddow, seen by many as something of a party queen-maker, will only encourage more of the same obligatory anti-Trump prattling by candidates that Dems have been mindlessly espousing for three-plus years now.
Take prominent contender Sen. Kamala Harris’ (D-CA) January interview on Maddow’s MSNBC show. When asked by Maddow why she had decided to run for president after only two years in the Senate, Harris responded, “November of 2016.” This is otherwise known as the Apocalypse in Maddow World. Harris then babbled in a barely coherent manner about fighting the good anti-Trump fight:
“We – each of us has to figure out where we’re going to step up and what we’re going to do. You know, it’s one thing to complain, but I think this is a moment that should require everyone to look in the mirror and ask what am I doing right now and what can I do?
“Here’s my perspective. If you want to just take to it a more long-term, years from now, members of our family, our children, our grandchildren, they’re going to look at us and they’re going to ask us, where were you at that inflection moment? And they’re going to want to hear and I think we’re going want to say something that is more than just how we felt.”
The inflection moment? This is the kind of content-less messianic Trump-bashing that has served Dems so poorly throughout the Trump administration, and yet it is precisely the trap Democrats regularly fall into when they are around the feverish Maddow. This is the woman, after all, who as recently as January 30, pondered the dire implications of Russia wiping out the U.S. energy grid in a major city on a snowy winter day. “What would happen if Russia killed the power in Fargo today?” Maddow luridly asked her viewers. “What would happen if all the natural gas lines that serve Sioux Falls just ‘poofed’ on the coldest day in recent memory and it wasn’t within our power whether or not to turn them back on?”
Talking-Head Roadblock
Now imagine a possible outside-the-box candidate like Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) or even a more conventional Dem like Elizabeth Warren trying to expand on their already stated support for a restrained anti-interventionist U.S. foreign policy in the face of Maddow’s anti-Russia Trump mania?
In May, Trump’s re-election Campaign Communications Director Tim Murtaugh told The Hill that Maddow’s clout within Democrat circles gave full proof of the leftward spiral that has engulfed the party. “There is no centrist lane in the 2020 Democrat contest. The activist left requires purity of thought and absolute adherence to their socialist policy proposals,” Murtaugh accurately stated. “So it’s not surprising that all the candidates are lining up, hoping to get Rachel Maddow’s seal of approval,” he added. “If they’re looking for adoring approval of their socialist policies, that show is the place to be.”
And now she will be asking the questions at the first debate. It would seem that from its point of view, the Trump campaign could not have handpicked a better choice. But for Democrat candidates looking to separate themselves from the rest of the pack, Maddow may very well serve as an anchor around their necks.
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