Veteran journalist Jeff Greenfield joined host Lawrence O’Donnell on Thursday’s edition of MSNBC’s The Last Word for some old-fashioned liberal punditry and expressed hope that the growing support for socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders could signal the “healthy” birth of “a socialist wing of the Democratic Party...that Europeans would recognize as a left wing.”
Greenfield’s comments were prompted by observations from O’Donnell about polling data of one-on-one presidential general election match-ups showing Donald Trump and Jeb Bush in tied and closely behind Hillary Clinton, respectively along with Carson leading Clinton that had O’Donnell dubbing “the real crack cocaine of polling.”
Greenfield first dismissed the new polls, claiming that he could “go back and show you Gary Hart beating Ronald Reagan” before the 1984 election and “John Anderson being competitive with Carter and Reagan” in the early moments of the 1980 presidential campaign.
With polls being taken so early in the going, Greenfield stated, “they form like a hypnotic effect on people” that cause them to overlook that fact that “there's not any front runner in the modern air era since the primaries began who has not at one point or another had to take a punch.”
Following that declaration, Greenfield went off on a detour about his hopes for the Democratic Party moving further left in the near future after a decades-long obsession with false “identity politics”:
There's no question that Bernie Sanders is talking to a progressive wing of the party. I don’t know, maybe there will be a socialist wing of the Democratic Party out of this. Maybe we’ll actually have something that Europeans would recognize as a left wing, other than what we with would pass for that in the past several decades, which has mostly been identity politics. I think that might be healthy[.]
The relevant portion of the transcript from MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell on September 10 can be found below.
MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell
September 10, 2015
10:35 p.m. Eastern
LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: The electability argument for Hillary Clinton has always been supported in the polls when they do one-on-one match-ups of Hillary against Republicans at the beginning of the campaign season. Not so much now. The latest CNN poll has one really shocking result. Actually, they might all be shocking in their way compared to earlier polls. In a matchup with Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton in this poll is tied 48-48. She no longer has the big lead over Donald Trump she's had in the past. In a match-up with Jeb Bush, Jeb Bush edges ahead of her, 49-47. That’s statistically really a tie in polling. The big shocker here is Hillary Clinton matched up with Ben Carson and Ben Carson beats her in this poll with the majority of the vote, 51-46 in a one-on-one match-up. Jeff Greenfield, this is the real crack cocaine of polling because they are talking about a general election a year away, but the Ben Carson number is shocking. 51 percent to Hillary Clinton's 46.
JEFF GREENFIELD: Except that we’re at a point now where we are treating people's preferences is like trying on hats. I mean, I can go back and show you Gary Hart beating Ronald Reagan. I can show in 1980 John Anderson being competitive with Carter and Reagan. The numbers are – they form like a hypnotic effect on people. What I'd like to point out to you there's not any front runner in the modern air era since the primaries began who has not at one point or another had to take a punch. There's no question that Hillary’s taken several. There's to question that Bernie Sanders is talking to a progressive wing of the party. I don’t know, maybe there will be a socialist wing of the Democratic Party out of this. Maybe we’ll actually have something that Europeans would recognize as a left wing, other than what we with would pass for that in the past several decades, which has mostly been identity politics. I think that might be healthy[.]
