Time For Hillary And Obama To End Their Republican Outreach Efforts

I have been critical of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for reaching out to Republicans during this election cycle. Obama did it in his convention speech and Hillary did it last week during her speech about the Alt-Right.  My main problem with this approach is that, by categorizing Trump as a mere anomaly -- and not the result of radicalization within the GOP -- the Democrats are letting Republicans off the hook and thus making it harder to convince down-ballot voters to punish the GOP for creating the conditions which allowed Trump to rise.

As recently noted by Ed Kilgore, Hillary's outreach strategy makes no political sense in the short term:

[W]hether or not it works in terms of peeling off Republican voters, Clinton’s outreach to them is risky and not really necessary. Yes, in the long run converting today’s Republicans into tomorrow’s Democrats is part of a strategy of building a governing majority that can put the Donkey Party back in that breathtaking moment in November of 2008 when all things seemed possible. But the changing nature of the electorate will do more to make that happen than all the “bipartisanship” or cross-partisan outreach you could want. And in the heat of this year’s presidential battle, taking the fight to the partisan enemy makes more sense than begging it to surrender.

I couldn't agree more, especially given that Hillary is absolutely hated by Republicans. Indeed, they have been conditioned over the last quarter century to hate her. Had the Democrats nominated a candidate who enjoyed better likeability numbers, this outreach strategy might have been worth a try. But Hillary is the second most unpopular major party nominee in history and is thus unsuited to make the pitch for Republicans to cross over and vote Democrat this cycle.

The Democrats should instead pivot off this conciliatory approach and begin aggressively attacking the GOP for creating the political conditions which allowed the rise of Donald Trump, the most unpopular major party candidate in history. And the person leading this attack should be Barack Obama, who had a front-row seat to the radicalization of the Republican Party in recent years and is currently enjoying a surge in popularity.

Obama should campaign, not for Hillary, but for Democrats down-ballot. He should show up to campaign rallies for Democratic Senate, House, and gubernatorial candidates who are in close races with their GOP opponents and make a pitch that the voters of this country need to punish the GOP for allowing white nationalists to seize control of the Republican Party. 

Gary Legum at Salon summed it up best yesterday when he wrote:

Why not remind the public at every turn that this warped, deformed version of the Party of Lincoln, the electoral equivalent of Quasimodo without the redeeming inner beauty, was fundamentally broken as a political institution and should not be trusted to run so much as an ice cream truck, let alone the massive apparatus of government?

Amen.  Hillary and the Democrats have superior ground forces, whereas Trump and the GOP have no ground game at all. Time to take the gloves off, folks.