Democrats are making a mistake by focusing on the nation's Dreamers over the economy, and that will hurt them in the 2018 midterms, John Sununu, former chief of staff for President George H.W. Bush said Monday.
"There will be three issues in the election," the former New Hampshire governor told Fox News' "America's Newsroom." "One will be the economy because it's always the economy. Second the Democrats are going to try to make the Dreamers the issue, and certainly the president himself will be an issue."
The economy will likely get better, said Sununu, and "the Republicans will figure out how to milk that."
Meanwhile, the Democrats' focus on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program is a "symbolic issue," said Sununu, and will only apply to the "600,000 to 1.8 million non-voters that are dreamers."
This means Democrats could find themselves backing a great symbolic issue, but having "nothing of substance" for other voters.
Over the weekend, House Senate Leader Mitch McConnell told The New York Times the 2018 elections will be challenging, and Sununu agreed it will be more "intense."
"Every election seems to be the most challenging in history, and certainly a lot of that comes because technology changes and the technology used this election for communication change," he said. "This is going to be more intense because there is more personal communication through Twitter, Facebook and the rest of social media."
However, he said he does not believe the "Me Too" movement will help Democrats, as the "Harvey Weinstein crowd" may hurt Democrats.
"It points out they've been hypocritical on this issue for years and hypocrisy does move voters," said Sununu.
Sununu also commented on the indictments issued against 13 Russian nationals last week, saying he thinks the news shows what Republicans have said all along: That there was no substance to claims of collusion.
"But special prosecutors, special investigators have a tendency to move off what they start on," said Sununu. "I have no idea where Mueller really is taking this. So it bears watching through the process."
He added that he expects an inspector general's report to come up next, and that congressional Republicans are "too souped up" to go after former Obama administration officials such as James Clapper.
"I think the Obama administration keeps finding itself in quicksand here and the Republicans aren't going to let go of this thing and they will make a strong effort to create an equivalent of their reports with whatever else is coming out," said Sununu.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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