After bringing American-style negative campaigning to the UK, Jim Messina says he’s coming home to throw his weight behind Hillary Clinton
After the surprise win of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party in Thursday’s national election, the spotlight has now fallen on American political operative Jim Messina, who led the pro-austerity party to victory.
Prior to working the British political machine, Messina served as campaign manager–orself-described “mastermind”–of U.S. President Barack Obama’s successful 2012 election bid and, before that, White House deputy chief of staff under Rahm Emanuel from 2009 to 2011.
Before his appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Friday, host Joe Scarboroughintroduced Messina, who was hired as an official adviser to the party of Prime Minister David Cameron, as “the man being called a traitor by liberals worldwide.”
During the interview, Messina credited the victory of the austerity-driven Conservative Party to a “resounding economic mandate for the prime minister.”
“First of all, the prime minister laid out a compelling economic vision, and second you had a campaign that tried to take us back to the 1970s and 1980s,” Messina said of Cameron’s liberal Labour Party challenger, Ed Miliband.
“All elections are always about the future, especially an economic future,” Messina continued. “We won that choice by over 20 points last night and that’s why we stunned the world. And it looks like he’ll have an absolute majority, which I don’t think many people thought we’d have.”