Editor’s note: Joe Trippi, who has a legendary reputation as a campaign consultant because of his success in helping Howard Dean become a frontrunner in the 2004 presidential primary, appeared at a fundraiser for Doug Racine on Monday night. The event was held at the Burlington Country Club and about 40 people were in attendance. Racine has hired Trippi as a consultant for his own campaign.
What follows are a sampling of direct quotes from Trippi and video footage.
It’s a great honor to be working for Doug. I met him a while back before that other campaign.
This is a very important year. I don’t think things are going to go well for Democrats in November. When you have the Congress and the presidency in a mid-year election you lose seats. That’s just the way it is. The difference really is that we’ll take our hits but the one place that really matters right now is the governor’s offices.
There are very few chances in the country when we have a chance to pull off a gain in the office of governor. Pennsylvania, Michigan may turn republican for the same reason. Vermont and California have a real shot at turning it over to a Democrat and that’s one of the reasons I’m here working I think Doug can do it. He’s taken on Dubie before and won.
It’s not just important to win this thing, it’s also important to have someone in there who knows what the hell they’re doing, who has the understanding of how to get things accomplished, who actually has brought people together in the past to get some real solutions. If it’s just about getting a D in there that’s great, we’ll smile for a couple of months and then it’s not going to turn out well.
The best thing Democrats have going for them across the country is Republicans right now. Sharron Angle for example. I’m not sure Harry Reid had a chance he really stuck his neck out on a lot of progressive issues it looked pretty bleak if you looked at the polling and the data. Sharron is tea party fringe in terms of where her positions are, and she’s trying to modify them as quickly as she can, but people saw the primary they know where she is watching this political move over again. I think Harry Reid has a shot now.
I don’t think we’re going to lose the House and the Senate, we’re going to lose seats. It’s not going to be as bad as it could have been because they’re trying hard to mess it up for themselves.
Look the problem is the Bush administration left the economy in a mess. We’re not going to get out of it anytime soon. We have the greatest president in the world and it’s going to be a slow turn in the economy. This is not going to be a V-shaped ripping out of a recession.
It’s going to take a governor who understands it’s going to be difficult. It’s not going to be easy, we’re gonna have to live within our means, maybe use the rainy day fund. We’ve got the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression and we can’t use the rainy day fund? What were taxpayers putting money into it for?
This is the key across the country, the Democrats need candidates who are talking fiscal reality, being straight with people and understanding it’s going to take patience, time and working together to get through it.
I think I’m involved in another race in Colorado where the incumbent senator has fallen three points behind the challenger. People have sort of a real distaste right now for anything from Washington. They don’t want politics as usual. They want grounded people who are doing what’s best for their state and what’s best for the country.
What’s led me to get involved in this is we live in a country that has become too transactional. The politics are transactional. I’ll give you a tax cut for your vote. When you have two parties doing transactional politics, what you get is what you’re seeing. There is no transaction that gets you out of the mess we’re in. I’ll raise your taxes for your vote. Let’s be more responsible, let’s live within our means. None of these are messages that get ya big gains in the polls. Transformational politics is someone who is going to treat us like adults, tell us what’s really going on, give us the information we need and start to build together a path to the future.
If you don’t have that leadership that’s willing not to transact, that’s willing to walk away from the transactional politics that got us into the mess, those are the people we need to get us out of here or we’ll keep voting for the guy who promises the biggest tax cut. We’ll keep down this path
That’s why I’m proud to work for Doug Racine.
You can’t wave the budget problems away with a magic wand. There’s real pain at the end of those numbers.
