Free Republic

Former Obama 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Republicans would be “changing the rules” in the middle of an election when discussing former President Donald Trump and Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen calling on the state legislature to assign it’s Electoral College votes with the winner-take-all standard. Co-host Jonathan Lemire said, “If that changes and we don’t know that it will, the state legislature is going to look at it, but if that changes, that takes away Biden’s best path to win because if you get, if he wins Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, then loses the...

Joe Messina, one of the original guitarists for Motown Records' in-house backing band the Funk Brothers, died on Monday at the age of 93. Born on Dec. 13, 1928, in Detroit, Messina began playing guitar as a child and dropped out of high school to pursue a career as a jazz musician. He gigged in local clubs and led a band, the Joe Messina Orchestra, before joining the house band for the daily children's television show The Soupy Sales Show, where he played alongside jazz legends such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and John Coltrane. In 1959, Motown founder Berry...

Jim Messina, campaign manager for former President Barack Obama's successful re-election campaign, predicted that Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., would be unable to counter President Trump's economic messaging and would therefore lose in a 2020 electoral matchup. "Bernie Sanders is unlikely going to be able to stand up to the constant barrage that is Donald Trump on economic issues," Messina said during the Powerhouse Politics podcast this week. Messina contended that swing voters were "incredibly focused on the economy" and that winners of the last five presidential elections were those candidates who were able to "win" the economic argument with swing...

President Obama's former campaign manager on Monday sharply criticized Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren for releasing the results of a disputed DNA test that she said backed up her claims of Native American ancestry. He claimed she was throwing her party off-message just weeks before November's critical midterm elections. "Argue the substance all you want, but why 22 days before a crucial election where we MUST win house and senate to save America, why did @SenWarren have to do her announcement now?" former President Barack Obama's 2012 campaign manager, Jim Messina, tweeted. "Why can’t Dems ever stay focused???" added Messina,...

It appears all the bragging done by Obama advisors about their cozy relationship with Facebook is about to bite the social media giant in the behind. Washington Free Beacon reports: Missouri’s Republican attorney general Josh Hawley delivered an investigative subpoena to Facebook’s Menlo Park offices on Monday, demanding a wide-ranging group of documents related to the social media giant’s handling of user data. The civil investigative demand, which was provided by the attorney general’s office and can be viewed here, comes a week after a group of 37 state attorneys general sent a letter asking for answers on how user...

Jim Messina, a former campaign manager for Barack Obama, apparently isn't one to mince words. During an appearance Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Messina spoke about the irrelevance of public polls so early in an election year, Mediaite reported. Then he underscored the point to host Joe Scarborough. "Joe, you know how I feel about public polls," he said. "I think all public pollsters should be shot.” Messina said there were other, more important yardsticks at this point to determine a candidate's viability. “What you care more about is passion and intensity,” he said. “When I ran President Obama’s campaign,...

From Richard Fernandez, Forget the Lifeboat, It's the Iceberg that Counts: The rebellion is real and therefore the causes of the rebellion are also real. Yet even on the day after Brexit, the establishment still found ways to deny the vote was anything more than bigotry and xenophobia run wild. Perhaps the most damning example of its attitude comes from a Tweet by Sharyl Attkisson:Faced with the threat of an EU breakup, the foreign policy crisis of a lifetime, Obama sent a spin-doctor and gave a speech — Howdy Messina, spin-doctor extraordinaire and it didn’t work. . . . Don’t...

February 14, 2016 -- The remaining presidential candidates have launched from New Hampshire, to the next prizes on the campaign trail: Nevada and South Carolina. As the field narrows, the campaigns and their spending will become more fierce and focused. The Making of the President in this election year will involve billions of dollars and some new political tactics. Last week, kingmakers from both political parties, Republican Karl Rove and Democrat Jim Messina, appeared together and gave their views on what's different about the 2016 race.The Making of the President 2016

Long before Jim Messina became a trusted aide to President Barack Obama and one of the most powerful men in Washington, he was just a simple boy from Boise. Now, after working in politics for just over a decade, he lives in a lavish D.C. estate. How this happened is a classic Washington Cinderella story. Raised in Idaho by a single mother, Messina moved to Washington in 1995, in his mid-20s, to take a job as a legislative aide for Max Baucus, the conservative Democratic senator from Montana (now ambassador to China). Baucus supported George W. Bush-era personal and corporate...

President Obama's campaign mastermind suffered a humiliating end to his political career today as the British Labour party he was paid almost $500,000 to help to victory plunged to a catastrophic defeat. David Axelrod had been touted as the man to get Labour's Ed Miliband into - and the Conservative prime minister David Cameron out of - Downing Street. Instead he slunk out of Britain early, as his former Obama campaign colleague Jim Messina, who advised the winning Conservatives, crowed over a victory which had 'stunned the world'. Axelrod had already vowed that he was 'done with campaigns' after complaining...

At 9:21 a.m. Eastern Time on Friday in America, former top Obama aide David Axelrod conceded the UK election. “Congratulations to my friend @Messina2012 on his role in the resounding Conservative victory in Britain,” Axelrod wrote on Twitter. The surprisingly decisive victory for Prime Minister David Cameron and his Tories also delivered a big win to Jim Messina, President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, who advised the Conservative Party and triumphed over his fellow Obama aide, Axelrod, who advised the Labour Party.

Ah! The nudge to remove Hillary Clinton from the stage. Some get it. Some don't. Among those who don't get it is Alex Wagner who lacks the subtlety to see that the exit of Hillary could very probably mean the entrance of the "progressive" heroine, Elizabeth Warren. Lawrence O'Donnell gets it which is probably why he was very critical of Hillary's email situation. The subtext in this video seems to be Lawrence O'Donnell trying to ease Hillary from the scene as Alex continues to guzzle the Clinton Kool-Aide without really thinking ahead. First we shall see Alex perform her Clinton...

Sources say White House cadre bypassing agencies, jeopardizing security JERUSALEM – A small group of officials working mostly from the White House are tightly controlling U.S. foreign policy, bypassing other government agencies and making decisions without employing the expertise of those agencies, according to diplomatic sources speaking to WND. The sources said some of the decisions may be jeopardizing U.S. security. A senior Middle East diplomatic source said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently apologized to a Mideast leader, explaining to him U.S. policy regarding his country is being dictated by the White House and not her agency. The diplomatic...

"We want Hillary Clinton to be the next president of the United States," Messina told an MSNBC host. "It's her turn and her time. I think she would be the right leader for this country moving forward. We're going to do whatever it takes to make sure she's the president of the United States."

A justice of the peace in Messina, Italy has fined three girls an amount of approximately $3,500 each for wearing what is considered common beach wear in Italy, based upon the supposed offense to the sensitivities it created for some Saudi Arabian tourists who were also at the private resort of Taormina. It has become common place for Muslims to make demands upon others to adhere to their standards, so it should not come as too great of a surprise that they filed their complaint. What is surprising is that the Italian court concurred and fined their citizens for engaging...

Jim Messina, pasty white self-proclaimed "maestro" of the Barack Obama campaign for President, has shed his populist image for the trappings of capitalism. Jim Messina, the former campaign manager to President Barack Obama who spent two decades in politics out of the public eye, is increasingly stepping out from the shadows — and onto other Democrats’ toes. Messina is moving aggressively to capitalize on his newfound fame and status as the maestro who ran a masterful reelection campaign for a president mired in a slumping economy. He’s building a political fiefdom through his deep ties to rich Democrats and a...

Jim Messina, President Barack Obama’s former campaign manager, is still making $7,000 per month from Obama’s 2012 campaign, Politico reports. While the campaign ended nearly a year-and-a-half ago, Messina has not entirely finished “winding it down.” The lengthy Politico article reports on how Messina is attempting to become a Karl Rove-like figure for the Democratic Party. Messina—like Rove before him—has gravitated away from the party and campaign system in which he cut his teeth toward the unlimited-money outside infrastructure that reshaped politics after the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision. It’s a notable shift, given that Democrats up...

A former top White House official and the head of President Barack Obama’s personal advocacy group is joining the board of a green energy company backed by a major Democratic donor that recently received millions in federal contracts. LanzaTech announced Wednesday that Jim Messina, Obama’s former deputy chief of staff, reelection campaign manager, and the head of his retooled campaign apparatus Organizing for Action was appointed to the company’s board of directors. “Jim’s proven ability to merge technology, messaging, and communications in support of ideas that transcend ‘business as usual’ will help us continue our mission of reshaping how our...

A former top White House official and the head of President Obama’s personal advocacy group is joining the board of a green energy company backed by a major Democratic donor that recently received millions in federal contracts. LanzaTech announced Wednesday that Jim Messina, Obama’s former deputy chief of staff, reelection campaign manager, and the head of his retooled campaign apparatus Organizing for Action was appointed to the company’s board of directors. “Jim’s proven ability to merge technology, messaging, and communications in support of ideas that transcend ‘business as usual’ will help us continue our mission of reshaping how our world...

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear… Bad enough that Big Guy just gave the proverbial finger to that small, “severe” part of America that doesn’t idolize him. Butt did he have to do it on his 501(c)(4) site? I guess it’s not technically illegal to spike the ball for no particularly good reason on a tax exempt  site, butt it sure is tacky, I don’t care who you are. Not to mention childish, immature and unprofessional. That’s my el Presidente! Although it’s getting pretty hard to tell the difference between the OFA blog and the official Big White Blog site. They...