Keith Olbermann’s “Worst Person In The World” and the left’s evolving rhetoric
Keith Olbermann, who may be best known for his days as one half of the wisecracking Sports Center duo with Dan Patrick in the 1990s, is reinventing himself as a political commentator (for the umpteenth time). Olbermann now has a new daily YouTube series called “Worst Person In The World.” Each installment is no less than fifteen minutes and features Olbermann using incredibly charged language against President Trump, his supporters, and others in Trump’s sphere. Olbermann has referred to Trump as a “terrorist,” his supporters as “trailer park trash idiots,” and his White House staff as “flying monkeys.” That kind of language is what recently got Senator Mitt Romney to call out Olbermann in a recent letter addressed to political leadership in both parties as well as members of the media as being accomplices in creating a “vile, vituperative, hate-filled morass.”
Olbermann’s language here is not something you often associate with the modern Democratic party, encapsulated in Michelle Obama’s 2016 Convention Speech with “when they go low, we go high.” The tone has recently shifted, and the Democrats seem to be allowing themselves to go low and stoop to the same dung flinging found in the Republican Party. You can find examples of this not just with Olbermann but with other outlets like The Lincoln Project. Their ads would likely have been condemned in a non-Trump year but are now welcomed into the vast arsenal of Biden’s 2020 campaign toolkit.
The central campaign of Biden has mostly managed to stay away from this low-brow content. They are, for the most part, running a positive campaign. The vast majority of advertisements from the Biden campaign proper do not attack Trump as much as they promote Biden. Biden talks to voters about his plans rather than scream at voters about why Trump could ruin America, as Trump often does for Biden.
This does not mean, though, that the Biden campaign opposes using this kind of language against the President; they’d rather keep their own hands clean and let someone else do the dirty work. Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville, famous for his work in the election of Bill Clinton in ’92, compared the Biden campaign to a contractor in that they outsource their material and tools to get the job done. Given all of the different factions of support for Biden, as Carville put it, “nobody’s waiting on word from headquarters.” Biden’s team sits back and watches as outside groups do a significant portion of the heavy lifting. This isn’t to say that Biden’s team is doing a half-assed job or that they can only survive with this outside help. It’s more that it would be impossible for them to give orders to every group that is helping to make sure Biden wins, or rather helping to make sure Trump loses — it’s an important distinction.
Despite the general culture of niceness portrayed in his ads, Biden is known to, from time-to-time, lash out in charged or intense language. In the first presidential debate, Biden called Trump “a clown,” “the worst president in history,” and insinuated that he was dumb. Biden uses meaner rhetoric than Obama used with McCain or that Hillary used with Trump in ’16, but he isn’t on par with Trump either.
This dissociation from the official campaign allows there to be a loosening of restrictions of the party. A party that has long prided itself on moral superiority. But what is the reason for the break with that tradition?. Was the Democratic strategy of being the party of tolerance, respect, peace, love, Disney magic, etc., an effective one? Did they lose elections because of an insistence that they were above the kinds of attacks we see today? It may turn out to be that the answers to those questions are yes.
A large part of this change is the opponent the Democrats face today, in Donald Trump, who attacked and defamed his way to the Republican nomination in 2016. In those early days of his political career, his entire debate strategy was to scream over Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz, attack their families, and call them names — some may argue that that’s still his strategy. People enjoyed this kind of vitriolic language. “Trump tells it like it is,” “Trump speaks his mind,” “Trump talks like I do,” were many of the reasons that his supporters gave when asked about what attracted them to Trump.
As his following grew and his political standing grew, many believed he would soon abandon this kind of behavior, but he soldiered on. After achieving the nomination, his attention shifted to a new target, Hillary, where some of his most vile and, sadly, most effective language would come out. He popularized the phrase “lock her up” at rallies, called Hillary a “nasty woman” referred to her as “unhinged,” among many other things.
After he won, many believed the office’s weight would dampen some of his incendiary rhetoric, but as well all know he wasn’t deterred. We had to endure early morning Tweetstorm after Tweetstorm calling out his political rivals, media members, and sometimes even his advisers and staffers. The insults and child-like behavior kept going.
I think if Trump had dropped the intense rhetoric he’s famous for at the door of the White House; Democrats wouldn’t have had the necessity to up the ante on their end. But the fact that he’s sullied the office for four years and continued the attacks caused the Democrats to think it over and realize that they had to start being more aggressive. In the past, the Democrats had to maintain at least some semblance of politeness towards their Republican colleagues. But when the President stokes the flames of domestic terrorism and retweets videos that say “the only good Democrat is a dead democrat,” your hands are tied. Donald Trump forces everyone to play his game or get left in the dust.
Commentators like Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Ben Shapiro have been spewing the same vile ectoplasm through the airwaves that commentators like Keith Olbermann are now dipping their toes into. I think the party better not raise their voices at Olbermann. They better sit back and never disavow it just like the Republicans have been doing for the better part of a decade. Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, you go high” may have worked in a different political context, but today you need to go a little lower.
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