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My Point of View by Robert Hoffman

“We’re the idiots,” former Obama adviser Van Jones said during a recent interview that President-elect Trump is smarter than himself and all of his critics.

“Let me just be very clear,” he said. “Donald Trump is smarter than me, you and all of his critics. You know how I know? Because he has the White House, the Senate, the House, the Supreme Court, the popular vote.”

Van Jones’ statement was just published Monday by Hanna Panreck for Fox News and came from an interview by former CNN reporter Chris Cilizza during an interview on his YouTube channel about Trump’s successful presidential campaign.

Jones said Trump was the most powerful person of our lifetimes and argued the Democratic Party looked like “idiots.”

“We’re the idiots,” he said. “We lost. So we have to go back in the locker room and we have to sit down and figure out how in the hell did we get beat, and when you look at it closely, it’s the arrogance, it’s the elitism, it’s not respecting people, it’s not listening to people.”

“There’s a reckoning inside the Democratic Party,” Jones said at the New York Times Dealbook Summit this month. “Kamala Harris promised us freedom … well, she delivered it to us, because now we’re free from having to run anything in Washington, D.C. That’s not what we were signing up for, it’s what we got.”

He then listed a series of high-profile figures who have been so alienated by Democratic Party politics that they have allied themselves with the MAGA movement.

“RFK was a rebel inside of our party, he wanted to run against Joe Biden fair and square, the DNC wouldn’t let him, pushed him out. You can walk down the list. Don’t forget Elon Musk was an

Andrew Yang Democrat four years ago, he’s out,” Jones said. “You can walk down the list. Joe Rogan was very favorable toward Michelle Obama, he was a Bernie guy, he’s out. So there’s something that’s happened in this party where the rebels in this party no longer feel like they have a place, and we’ve got to be able to talk about that stuff honestly.”

I agree. We have to be honest about this last election and not just say Republicans won but also that Democrats lost. Did Republicans mop the floor because of their great campaigns or did the Democrats try really hard to lose and do a very good job of it?

Locally we reelected state Reps. Peggy Bennett and Patty Mueller again and knocked it out of the park with Congressman Brad Finstad again also. As a Congressional District, (CD) every single one of our 22 counties in CD1 voted red except Olmsted County (Rochester), and in Freeborn County every single Republican on the ballot won their election in Freeborn County, again. This is the third election in a row this has happened. We are a very center-right southern Minnesota County and can be very proud of it.

I’ve read a few recent articles from the local DFL team talking about their successes during this last election, and it’s tough to say if it’s simple stupidity, being so out of touch they just don’t know any better or from page one in chapter one of their playbook: titled “Lying,” but the local Democrats have done a fantastic job of losing. So here’s your gut check guys: You are doing a really good job (of losing elections.)

To those of us in Freeborn County on the center, center-right or center-left that voted for Republicans, here’s our gut check too; did we do a really good job of winning? Did we try as hard as we could to do good? Did we try as hard to win as the local, state and national Democrats tried hard to do such a horrible job? Kamala Harris spent a billion and a half dollars in 107 days to lose and still owed $20 million after. That’s a tough bad to beat! I want to win because we won, not to win because they lost. There’s still a lot to unpack after the last election. This is just some of it.

Let’s talk again soon. Enjoy the Christmas, holiday and New Year season. Talk politics. Bring up Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. After the holidays come to our next Freeborn County Republicans meeting on Monday, Jan 13. We have our monthly meetings on the second Monday of every month at the Edgewater Bay Pavilion at 5 p.m. with a social beforehand at 4:30 p.m. until we kick off at 5 p.m. with a prayer and the pledge.

With effort, we will turn Minnesota red in 2026 capitalizing on both our successes and the failures of Tim Walz. That starts right here, right now. Merry Christmas.

Robert Hoffman is chairman of the Freeborn County Republican Party.