Never Trumpers - and a Mark Shields stuck firmly in 1990

On Friday's PBS Newshour's Political Wrap, David "Bobo" Brooks dn and Mark Shields grumped about how it was obvious that what the Democrats really need is to be more like Republicans. Shields and Brooks on Democratic debates, Supreme Court rulings 06/29/2019 (transcript here);

Shields, if anything, was even worse. Shields has always been anti-abortion and only mildly supportive of women's rights on the issue, if at all. Here, he sounds like he actually thinks the Republicans have more-or-less surrendered to the Democrats on abortion!

Just think of the 80 yards of the field that Republicans have surrendered to them on the abortion issue. [R]epublicans have been running away from what Republicans did in Alabama and Georgia and in Missouri, in Ohio. And the president has been distancing himself even.

And what do Democrats do? I mean, they basically just endorse abortion and throw in — well, how about trans people, covering abortion?

I just — I mean, to me, they just — wasn't thinking in terms strategically. I mean, they owned the majority position in the country, safe, legal, rare. And so, to me, I just don't understand the strategy.

Abortion rights are under siege across the country. And Shields thinks the problem is - that Democrats are fighting back.

He also repeats what he must know is a propagandistic polemic against national health insurance, aka, Medicare for All, that doesn't really make any sense (to put it generously):

And at great political cost, the Democrats, without any help from the Republicans, with total objection and resistance, passed it in 2010, under a Democratic president, Barack Obama. And ever since then, five consecutive elections, Republicans have run on, we're going to repeal it, going to repeal it.

As a consequence, Democrats — public by 2-1 thinks the Democrats are better on health care. So what do the Democrats suggest? We're going to get rid of it. We're going to get rid of it, going to get rid of — you like private health insurance that you have and guaranteed for preexisting conditions covered under the Affordable Care Act, we're going to get rid of private insurance.

Bobo's fellow Never Trumper Bret Stephens also thinks - surprise! surprise! - that Democrats aren't being Republican enought (): "None of this means that Democrats can’t win in 2020. The economy could take a bad turn. Or Trump could outdo himself in loathsomeness. But the Democratic Party we saw this week did even less to appeal beyond its base than the president. And at least his message is that he’s on their — make that our — side."

Stephens seens to be preparing for a "I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me" moment. Even though, he isn't even a Democrat. I never trusted the Never Trumpers. This is why.

Digby is slightly more generous in Hey, NeverTrumpers: Please quit lecturing actual Democrats about how to win Salon 06/26/2019. But she has their number (italics in original):

I'm not a NeverTrumper-basher. ...

So I hope the NeverTrump troops don't take this the wrong way. But they really need to zip it when it comes to haranguing Democrats about their primary. They particularly need to stop speaking to the Democratic base as if they were a bunch of fools who need remedial lessons in politics from Republicans, the people who couldn't stop Donald Trump from snagging the nomination right out from under them. They should know better than anyone that running against him is like running against an alien from outer space. There is only one race that Democrats and NeverTrumpers can look to for clues about how to defeat him — and neither of them were successful, so nobody gets to claim the high ground here. ...

More importantly, NeverTrumpers telling Democrats what they shouldn't do is even worse. It's not just insulting, it's also strangely naive. In a way, it explains why some of these folks were so surprised that a demagogic con man took out that venerable list of GOP all-stars back in 2016, with none other than the odious Sen. Ted Cruz being the last man standing. These are not normal times, and simply assuming that the way for Democrats to win is to be more like pre-Trump Republicans is going to fall on deaf ears, and for good reason[.] ...

But if there are Republicans and GOP-leaning independents who are appalled by Trump's assault on the system and the Republican Party's descent into madness, these NeverTrumpers could make their best contribution e by helping those folks realize that stopping Trump means we can all live to fight each other another day on the issues where we may strongly disagree. There's no guarantee of that if Trump wins again.