https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1206667019602583553

As individual items they polled well.



In 2017 he took away the Conservative party's majority in the House of Commons.

The real two reasons why Labour took a pounding is Brexit and Corbyn himself.

1) In 2016 Corbyn did not do a good job promoting the need to remain in the EU as he was an old school socialist who never wanted to join the EU in the first place. But 70% of his party voted to remain. In 2017 Corbyn said he'd respect the result of Brexit but didn't elaborate what that meant. Labour leavers in key northern seats stuck by him because they felt he was on their side. Labour remainers were mostly in London and University towns which are safe Labour seats anyway. But in 2019 he said he'd support a second vote. Labour leavers felt betrayed and voted for either the Tories for the first time or the Brexit Party (Nigel Farage). Farage's new party won no seats but they were a damaging protest vote.

2) Corbyn was seen as a weak leader. He got attacked viciously by the press and never fought back the charges. He was seen as weak on national security because he in the past said Britain's nuclear weapon defense program was a waste of money and morally wrong. He was seen as a traitor to patrioticism because he met with the IRA, Hamas and Hezbollah while criticising the British army for war crimes. He couldn't stop antisemitism growing under his leadership. He already had to fend off a vote of no confidence from his own MPs. He was basically made out to be anti-British, open borders, weak on crime, economically damaging communist and that campaign evidently worked.

But I repeat, the policies as individual items polled well. Maybe a new, less problematic leader can sell them better. A new Labour leader will still get destroyed by the right wing press. Ed Miliband had it just as bad, if not worse, as they targetted Miliband's deceased father who was a Jewish British WW2 veteran who fled persecution in Nazi occupied Belgium.



The key is also not to overpromise. Too much too soon is bad. Tony Blair won in 1997 by being charismatic, young and media saavy. Blair won in 1997 with his "education, education, education" mantra. Winning an election is not about out-promising your opponent because you're just going to disappoint everyone and fail once in government. And you might not even get in government as people stop taking you seriously. Focus on a few key policies, hammer them every day, have a good media response team. Do the work and the voters will follow.

That abhorrent, vile rag hasn't lost an election in the UK since 1974. Every party they have backed --- with the exception of Tony Blair's Labour --- has been the Conservatives. And every party they have backed has won.

The most read paper in the UK with the exception of the City of Liverpool where it is boycotted for blaming the victims of the Hillsborough disaster.



Tony Blair only got their backing because he was to some extent seen as agreeable by Murdoch since Blair shifted Labour to the middle and the Conservatives had 18 years of uninterrupted power. Jeremy Corbyn ironically was elected leader to reverse the "neo-liberalism" of Blair but look what happened. The conservative party will probably get to 2029 with their big majority with the only Labour leader to win a general election in half a century being despised by progressives and endorsed by The Sun. Blair won three elections on the trot very easily. No one else who has led Labour could win one.

When Pete entered the race



vs

When Pete is now a serious player in the race



It's as if now he's a threat to this journalist's preferred candidate, it's no longer that he's not passing the purity test on healthcare and college debt, he's not passing the purity test on being sufficiently gay.

Give me a break.

...that we held our candidates to some sort of purity test to take no PAC money and those who have received donations from billionaires get hounded for it.

Yet all it's actually done is encourage actual billionaires to sense an opening and join the race.

Beto ran out of money. Kamala ran out of money. They didn't lack in grassroots support. They had a healthy loyal band of supporters but they weren't growing their base because they didn't have the money to reach new people whether it was just through ads or actual ground game with pooling resources into different states.

Running with one hand tied behind your back is precisely why Bloomberg has joined the race. He doesn't need the small donors. He'll just blow you out of the water with what to him is pocket change.

Yet they have security clearances and travel the world on tax payer dime to "represent" the US government.

Give me a break about "unelected bureaucrats" you republican morons.

https://twitter.com/joepike/status/1204018593656180736

It just finished. I got a link on youtube to stream it. My God...Boris really is the British Trump. Offered nothing on policy but the slogan "get brexit done" all the time. Corbyn nailed a few zingers but you can tell the disinformation campaign has worked to raise suspicion about him because one of the questions put forward was whether he'd shut down MI5

https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1202670854410297344

The amazing part is Andrew Neil is a conservative. He is the chairman of the Spectator magazine. He grilled Jeremy Corbyn last week and now Boris is scared to appear because he only does softball interviews. He also schooled Ben Shapiro on the BBC earlier in the year.



Could you imagine an American conservative journalist throwing the gauntlet to a right wing figure? Instead they're a bunch of bootlickers.