Jennifer Rubin's Messaging Advice to Dems: 'Republicans Want to Kill Your Kids'

Some people just aren’t adjusting well to the results of the election. Case in point: Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post. Just two days after the election she posted this gem. (She locked her account so I have to insert my reaction to her tweet.)

This is nuts @washingtonpost https://t.co/RyyvUL7bTC

— John Sexton (@verumserum) November 8, 2024

This is dumb in so many ways, starting with the fact that Hitler is Hitler because of the planned, industrial-scale murder of Jews. Unless someone else carries out a similar holocaust, he’s not Hitler.

Ironically, Rubin’s main point was that because the situation was so dire, there was no time to review Democratic “messaging errors” including the decision to spend the final month of the election comparing Trump to Hitler which, evidently, didn’t work.

More recently, Rubin jumped in on the boycott of the Morning Joe show after Joe and Mika admitted to having a sit down with Donald Trump. Naturally, she’s now posting her thoughts on Bluesky.

“Disgusting,” Rubin reacted to the meeting on the social media platform Bluesky…

“The market works great. You can stop watching Morning Joe anytime,” Rubin wrote Monday evening.

She then followed, “On MJ: If you don’t appreciate the audience you have, betray that audience and lose their trust you are [going] to lose lots of them. I have seen this movie.”

She’s probably right about the audience at MSNBC which is made up of people who a) only want to hear the kind of Trump is Hitler nonsense that Rubin herself is serving up and b) are all in for canceling anyone who disagrees.

Yesterday, Rubin offered dejected Democrats some more messaging advice. If Dems want to win they should start telling voters that Republicans want to kill their children.

“You have to boil it down to nuts and bolts and you have to be pithy. What do I mean by pithy? How about this: Republicans want to kill your kids. It’s actually true,” Rubin said with a straight face in a now-viral clip from her podcast “Jen Rubin’s Green Room.”

The scribe, who has been writing opinion pieces for the left-leaning Washington newspaper since 2010, was attempting to give advice to Democrats on how they must condense their messaging.

“If you’re going to oppose vaccinations, if you’re going to stop breakthrough medical research, if you’re going to allow minors and all sorts of people to get semiautomatic weapons — which they use to shoot up schools — well then, you are responsible for kids’ health and death,” she continued.

Here’s the clip.

Wow. Washington Post Columnist Jen Rubin says that Democrats need to message “over and over and over again” that “Republicans want to kill your kids.” She should be fired over this if there’s any sanity left in the world @JeffBezos. pic.twitter.com/9w4j3324x5

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) November 20, 2024

I don’t like the idea of going after people’s jobs for their opinions. The right doesn’t need to adopt left-wing cancel culture. But I do think the Washington Post has to think about whether they want this particularly shrill voice to be the one people keep hearing about even as they are losing tens of millions of dollars per year. The financial situation is so bad that nervous Post employees are worried Jeff Bezos could decide to “pull the plug.”

Even before 250,000 digital readers unsubscribed from the Washington Post in protest, the paper was on track to lose at least as much money as it lost last year: $77 million. A deputy managing editor shared the figure in a recent meeting with reporters and editors, per multiple sources. The editor did not say what the added impact of the non-endorsement exodus would be, according to those present. “Mind-blowing,” as one staffer put it. “The level of anger is through the roof, and fear is also through the roof. There’s huge concern that Bezos is going to pull the plug.”

That doesn’t seem likely, at least in the near term. Instead, owner Jeff Bezos — and his already controversial publisher pick, Will Lewis — seems determined to fix the paper, whether the current staff likes it or not.

To be clear, I’m sure Rubin’s schtick is popular with the Post’s current readers. In fact, I’d argue she’s the face of their current resistance journalism brand. And if the brand were doing great, I think she’d have a job for life. But it’s not doing well at all and the owner is looking to make changes.

From that perspective, I think her voice limits the paper’s appeal to anyone who isn’t an angry resistance democrat. How long before someone higher up decides that “It’s 1933 and Republicans want to kill your children” is not a winning message for the paper’s future growth? Like Taylor Lorenz before her, I think Rubin is skating on thin ice at this moment.

Update: The leading voice at the Washington Post seems like a deeply unpleasant person.