I don’t totally agree with this. But there’s a lot of insight into the world of political campaigns contained in this note from TPM Reader JD. For context, this is largely a response to this post from yesterday …
Hey, I struggled yesterday not to send you a full-throated defense of Weaver. So here’s my half-throated one.
We campaign types are not comms people. Simply put, running a nuts and bolts campaign with heart and verve requires one to be a little crazy, a yeller, a quick decision-maker, a braggart, and translating that to cable news is not commonly done for a reason. Tad is pure comms, he gives no fucks past a certain level of politeness he has for fellow humans. You can ambush Tad and the others with crazy questions and what not and they won’t crack, but lob soft balls at campaign manager types and you’ll see they’re happy to hit a couple out of the park just like you want. We don’t get to be on TV for a reason, the media trainers who try to cram us in a box inevitably fail because they’re lame and have no balls and you’re running a campaign that needs hope and saving and the staff need morale and to know you’re going to hold on with bloodied hands.
So all I’m saying is have some pity. He gets to go on TV and spout off because he’s Bernie’s oldest ally but at the end of the day, he is the CM and not the GC. These decisions will not be his to make and he knows plenty well he’s just going to be one voice in a sea of senior staff and advisors. That is the lot of a rough and tumble campaigner with much more practice dressing down a staff member or trying to bluff a donor with big talk than slipping nimbly past the media minefield.
I don’t buy for a second that this is a Lewandowski/Manafort repeat despite a lack of messaging unity.
I think there’s a bit more going on here than that. Devine is a long time party insider. He’s been running Democratic campaigns for decades and actually played key role in creating the super delegate system back in the early 1980s. Weaver meanwhile, as far as I know, has only ever worked in politics for Bernie Sanders. He’s run his campaigns, was actually his campaign driver at one point way back when; he ran his House and Senate offices.
These days when he’s not running Bernie’s campaigns he runs a comic book store in DC. Really. That’s not snark. He has a comic book store in DC. So this is very much eye of the beholder. Is Devine someone with a bit more perspective of what’s at stake in November, a bit more rein on his emotions and a bit less inclined to blow up the Democratic party if his candidate doesn’t win? Or is he a Democratic party guy who wants to be running campaigns in the future, regardless of what happens with Sanders’ ‘Revolution’? Again, eye of the beholder.
So I suspect there is some cleavage here. And in any case, if he’s a Bernie before everything loyalist and not used to being on TV, that might be a reason not to have him on TV. Regardless, some good insight into how campaigns works.
