Democrats on Monday unveiled their 2018 agenda entitled "A Better Deal," and on Tuesday the hosts of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" panned its rollout.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski said that Democrats need a leader to energize voters rather than a slogan and set of economic positions. Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson said that the slogan was lackluster, but host Joe Scarborough went furthest and said they should redo it entirely.
"It's so bland, it's so vanilla, it's so terrible," Scarborough said. "Democrats lost the unlosable race in 2016. The question now is, are they going to lose the unlosable midterm in 2018?"
"They're scared of their own shadow," he added. "They have to get in Trump's face, and you do that by taking a slogan like 'Take America Back Again,' or 'Americans First,' playing off Trump's 'America First.'"
Brzezinski said that, as a Democrat, she thinks Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), and others rolling out "A Better Deal" are "great" but that they need a leader to emerge.
"They need a person who stands for those things in how he or she has lived his life and can communicate those things effectively with his or her voice," Brzezinski said. "Then the slogan should follow."
She examined their message and concluded that it was not going to resonate.
"They're looking for a complete shakeup of anti-trust enforcement," Brzezinski said. "They want the Federal Trade Commission and other regulators to blah blah blah."
Robinson wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post critiquing "A Better Deal," saying it lacks emotional resonance.
"As slogans go, A Better Deal, it's not the worst I've ever heard, it's far from the best," Robinson said. "There's nothing there that sort of punches you in the gut, that tears at your heart, that involves you emotionally."
Scarborough suggested a series of big ideas that could go with the idea of putting "Americans first."
"Putting Americans ahead of your own ambitions, putting Americans ahead of Washington," he said. "Putting Americans ahead of Wall Street, putting Americans ahead of the special interests that own Washington, D.C., whether Democrats are running it or Republicans are running it."
"They have got to be bold, and this is so horrible," Scarborough said. "It was a slogan by committee and it is not going to inspire anybody. They need to go back to the drawing board."
MSNBC's hosts are not the only ones criticizing Democrats' messaging. Fox News' Steve Doocy said that people have been comparing their message to Papa John's pizza ads.