President Joe Biden tested a new GOP message that a former Republican member of Congress says could change the trajectory of America.
On MSNBC, Alicia Menendez interviewed former Rep. David Jolly (R-FL).
"David, I need to ask you before you go, I'm sure you caught president Biden using some new language, at least new to me, out on the stump," Menendez said. "Where, instead of talking about Republicans, really talking about MAGA Republicans and hitting that note over and over again."
"We have talked about this before, it almost seems as though he's creating a permission structure for Republicans who still want to think of themselves as republicans to say, 'This is the moment, you choose, you want to be a MAGA Republican or do you want to move into the future with the rest of us?'"
"There's a line Joe Biden used that could change, not just political history, but his election prospects," Jolly said. "When he said now is the time for Democrats, independents, and mainstream Republicans to unite. There has never been, in modern political history, a coalition available to a major political party like there is to Democrats right now."
"And it takes just a recognition that, hey, with independents and Republicans, not only can we stop Trump, we can stop Trumpism, we can change the trajectory of America," he explained. "That was a new message, a very new message and let me tell you, millions of Americans who are not registered as Democrats heard Joe Biden say something different in Rockville on Thursday."
"And if he stays on that message, watch out Republicans, Joe Biden is coming for your lunch," Jolly warned.
Jolly expanded on this point in a new column.
"Though opposition to Trump and Trumpism was the catalyzing force behind today’s coalition, within that coalition lies a broad swath of American voters sincerely looking for a permanent home. They simply need to be invited into the tent, and they need to be able to see their politics and their ideology fitting alongside, not replacing, traditional Democratic orthodoxies," Jolly wrote. "For national Democrats, it means targeting the millions of Americans who have left the Republican Party but not yet joined the blue team. That data is readily available through public records. Spend resources targeting former GOP voters and make the case that the Democrats’ legislative successes this year represent a reasonable compromise of competing political approaches."
But Jolly has not joined the Democrat Party, he is a leader of the new Forward Party.
"These strategies are understandably not natural strategic moves for a party. Parties today are built around shared dogma, not coalitions. In fact, over the last 20 years every major and minor party has largely extracted from their tents any semblance of a coalition and focused instead on intensifying and hardening their ideological positions," he wrote. "But if the stakes are indeed as high as Biden declared— that the fate of our republic hangs on the premise of uniting 'Democrats, independents, and mainstream Republicans' — then both basic math and last year’s Governor’s race in Virginia would suggest that now is the time to put in the work to keep independents and mainstream Republicans in a Democratic-led coalition."
Watch:
David Jollywww.youtube.com
