Former Hillary Aide: Dems Lack Leader, Message, Agenda

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Democrat strategist Patti Solis Doyle, who was Hillary Clinton's first 2008 presidential campaign manager, slammed the party for being "leaderless, messageless and agendaless" while acknowledging that the 2024 election cycle was a mandate for President Donald Trump.

"It sounds really depressing, what's going on at the party," Solis Doyle said Thursday on "Next Up with Mark Halperin," adding she's "never been happier not" to be working in politics.

"If your party doesn't hold the White House, the leader of the party is the last president of that party. So right now for us, that's Joe Biden, but he has completely — he's off the radar completely," Solis Doyle said.

"Right now we're leaderless, we're messageless, we're agendaless, we don't have any alternative ideas to the president and the Republicans right now. So I'm concerned, to say the least."

Solis Doyle also took issue with Democrats who refuse to acknowledge that the 2024 election cycle was anything but a "massacre."

"I know there are people who say, 'Oh, it wasn't a landslide, it wasn't a mandate,' it was. It absolutely was. Democrats lost ground in every single county in America," she said. "I think it's very, very difficult to look at what happened … and not think that it wasn't just a massacre to Democrats."

Solis Doyle demurred when asked if those deniers are "deluded," telling Halperin she hasn't "dissected" those factions and doesn't "know who those people are."

Democrats were doomed in 2024 when Biden ran for reelection, she said.

"The original sin was, sort of, running an 80-plus-year-old man who was not as with it as they were telling us … and then asking us not to believe our lyin' eyes," Solis Doyle said.

Solis Doyle was replaced by Maggie Williams as Clinton's campaign manager in February 2008 and transitioned to senior adviser to Clinton's failed primary campaign against Barack Obama for the Democrat presidential nomination.

Mark Swanson

Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.

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