More post-mortem on the resounding Democratic victory in Virginia. Joe Scarborough tells Mike Barnicle it's really a matter of "the basics."
"We say this all the time on the show before elections. and it is obvious, but it's obviously the reason why people win," Scarborough said.
"It's just like blocking and tackling with football games -- it's turnout, and you see across the state, Ed Gillespie did fairly well with Republicans. The ads that were offensive to a lot of us, they actually brought Republicans home, if you look at the polling.
He told Barnicle more Democrats "stood in line, more Democrats called their friends, more Democrats took their friends to the voting booths, more Democrats were engaged than Republicans. It was just because of a great turnout."
Without mentioning the obvious: What sparked that turnout?
Scarborough said Democrats still have an "uphill battle" to take back the Senate next year.
Barnicle agreed.
"You saw that in the numbers and percentages yesterday in every place where they voted," he said.
"But back to basics. One of the basics we have to measure here, if you walk around anyplace in this country, there's a level of both exhaustion and embarrassment with Donald Trump. Exhaustion because of the tweets multiple times of the day, embarrassment because I think a lot of people sit and think, is this the kind of behavior we want from the president of the United States?
"We saw a clip of the president at the top of the show talking about congratulating China on the fact that they're doing for their people what he is unable to do for our people here," Barnicle said. "They're taking advantage of us, because within moments of his assuming the presidency one year ago, he immediately rescinded TPP, the transpacific partnership which was a terrific boon for trading for the United States of America. That's gone now. The Chinese and the Russians are gonna dominate the Pacific Rim because we've withdrawn.
But then Barnicle got down to the other basics.
"People pay attention in this country. People pay attention to things like the proposed tax bill. They call it tax reform -- no, it's tax revenge," he said.
"If you look at the elements of that bill, people are sitting out there in the suburbs and the cities thinking, wait a minute, state and local tax, we're not going to be able to put that on our tax returns? High medical costs, that's going to be eliminated, student interest, loans are going to be eliminated.
"That's the problem Republicans have. That's the problem they're living with. That's the problem that's going to drown them," Barnicle predicted.
That's right. And if Democrats are smart, they'll stand back and let it happen.
