Every now and then there is a quote that sums up the current political environment better than anything else.
“When they go low, we kick ’em in the nuts.”
And there you go. A quote by Sean Clegg, a longtime Democratic strategist in California, about sums 2018 up.
It’s a far cry from Michelle Obama’s plea to “just go high” when Republicans go low, made just two years ago.
Clegg, talking to Politico, called Michelle Obama “almost a perfect public figure,” and recalled in “We go high” a “gorgeous speech that really spoke to me in the moment.” But he added that “I think Michelle Obama would be the very first person to acknowledge … that what we faced in 2007 and 2008 was a wildly different world, and a wildly different media environment.”
Now, he said, “When they go low, we go high: To me, that’s not the formula to beat Trump. … Ultimately, what I think Democrats are going to want in a nominee is, ‘Is this person tough enough to stand up to him?’”
Perhaps that’s why Michael Avenatti, the attorney for Stormy Daniels, has made shocking claims that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and other men would ply women with alcohol or drugs at house parties and then gang rape them.
That’s hitting Kavanaugh in the nuts, especially if the story cannot be substantiated.
“Different times call for different measures. You can’t have a single approach or a single speed,” Avenatti said in an interview. “These are desperate times for the future of the republic.”
Avenatti contends Democrats widely misinterpreted Obama’s 2016 remarks, calling her speech “admirable” but saying he saw them as aimed at a specific kind of verbal assault: one involving her family.
“You have to look at the context of when that statement was made by the former first lady, who I respect immensely,” Avenatti said. “There were personal attacks on her family and her kids; that’s what was happening when she said that. I do not believe that she was speaking to a general political approach.”