Mark Penn, an adviser to the Clintons for over a decade and now runs the Harris Poll, contends that Democrats’ demonization of Donald Trump caused voters to tune out the noise.
Mr. Penn spelled out his sentiment in an op-ed for Fox News, where he laid out eight lessons for Democrats and Mr. Trump following the president-elect’s seismic victory last week.
Among the points was that the Democrats’ “politics of demonization failed.”
“I think that they went way over the top here — Hitler, fascist, picking up on these things — and I think the voters just tune those out eventually because they’re way over the top,” Mr. Penn said Friday on Fox News Channel as a follow to his written piece.
He recalled his work on former President Bill Clinton’s 1996 campaign, saying candidates knew a line couldn’t be crossed when mudslinging.
“I think they took all the rails off, and I think they wasted a lot of the campaign time doing that because, you know, fundamentally campaigns need to be about issues, not insults, not identity,” Mr. Penn said.
While Vice President Kamala Harris avoided calling Mr. Trump a fascist on the campaign trail, she agreed with the moniker during a CNN town hall appearance.
Meanwhile, the Democrats used shots from Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, retired Gen. John Kelly, who said the president-elect “certainly falls into the general definition of fascist” and contended Mr. Trump appeared to praise Adolf Hitler’s generals.
Mr. Trump didn’t shy from name-calling, either, often at rallies accusing Ms. Harris of being a Marxist, communist, socialist and fascist.
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.
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