Facing an imminent election disaster, the party flails away, and Paul Begala is not helping.

In just the past week, Democratic party players across the spectrum have struggled. As Nick reported today, the administration is laughably trying to say that one solution they see to the foibles of Biden is to have him speaking directly to the American public. They say this while at the same time Jen Psaki is still trying to dig him out from under the speech he gave in Georgia. Biden has been completely managed and prevented from over-talking because of his tendency to speak in hand grenades.

For these reasons, the administration is already talking about enacting a reset plan, barely one year into a term, when Biden should still be in the honeymoon phase. The variety of bills Biden has directed Congress to craft on his behalf have been less about the public good than serving as silver bullets to slay his bad PR. The reality is that this desperation to get manufactured results has led to an administration that is alleging a threat to our democracy from the GOP, all while it has been challenging the Constitution on the regular.

Congressional Democrats are retiring by the dozens, and those remaining are either wasting time on a January 6 commission that is designed to battle a non-existent President while delivering no returns, or they are whining about removing the filibuster, an effort that carries with it the admission that they do not have the juice to get anything accomplished. These persistent challenges mean a threshold has been reached in the press, as gradually more stories are reported because of the sheer flood of unignorable negatives.

Democrats, facing a rarely seen pushback in the media, are exhibiting signs of a football team resorting to trick plays as they are getting trounced on the scoreboard. When placed in a never-before-experienced position of no media cover, they show an inability to ad-lib on their own. When departing governor Ralph Northam was questioned on his lack of action, he blamed the drivers. Then he attempted to play it off as a freak storm that took everyone by surprise, a comment that earned a harsh pushback from normally apolitical weathermen.

Next, we will see that the supposedly wise and politically omniscient party planners are also struggling to both explain away the garbage barge pile of negatives that exists for Biden and his party, and to set the table for the November election so it is not the consummate disaster so many are predicting it will be. On CNN, their resident political insider is Paul Begala. (This requires a brief flashback; it was back in March when Brian Stelter was bemoaning the ethics violated when former Trump administration Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany signed with Fox News.)

Begala was on with Poppy Harlow to discuss Biden’s diminishing prospects, including getting his recent bill passed. The amusement rests with Begala attempting to both gaslight, and to determine what the problem is to be repaired. You see from whence the problem springs, when you are trying to say everything is going great AND there is something monumental in need of being fixed.

Democratic strategist @PaulBegala: "I think the problem for the Democrats right now is not that they have bad leaders. They have bad followers." pic.twitter.com/gAXuDc1IYi

— Mediaite (@Mediaite) January 17, 2022

This is just so amazing. Paul is trying to insist that the Democrats are actually doing an amazing job. The man who ushered in record inflation, a stagnant economy, shortages of goods, and created a fatal fiasco in Afghanistan is not a bad leader. Nancy Pelosi rigging a kangaroo court of a commission and using any press event to divide the nation is not a bad leader. The party facing 26 retirements from Congress — and counting — is not a result of bad leadership.  

Then Begala turns and makes the daft decision to suggest that the Democrats – desperately in need of voter support – are suffering because the voters are not doing their part. Insulting your voter base. Maybe that is seen as a potentially winning strategy due to all the other tactics which have failed to work.