Jim Messina Trounces Axelrod in UK Election, Now to Advise Hillary

American political adviser Jim Messina is getting credit for leading conservative British Prime Minister David Cameron to an overwhelming, if surprising victory, but he said Friday that once he comes back to the United States, he's Hillary Clinton "all the time."

"I'm coming home tomorrow and it's whatever it will take to get Hillary [elected]," Messina said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program.

But for the past few months, Messina, a former Deputy Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama and the man who led the president's 2012 re-election victory, has been raising eyebrows by serving as Cameron's senior campaign adviser and led the campaign to his re-election, despite polls that were calling for his loss.

Messina told the show that most such public polling "is garbage" and his candidate won because of his vision for the future.

"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."

Messina wasn't the only top-name American operative working with the British election. David Axelrod, who worked as a political adviser to President Bill Clinton and as a campaign adviser to Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign, was working as adviser to Miliband.

Messina's work with Cameron raised eyebrows in the United States, though, as Cameron's agenda is in contrast to Obama's. Cameron says measures are needed for his country to rebound after years of Labour Party rule and that tough immigration laws are protecting British values and jobs, a stance echoed by American conservatives.

Back in the United States, Messina heads the super PAC Priorities USA, which supported Obama and is now pro-Clinton.

He told MSNBC that he and Axelrod had no bets going on the outcome of the British election, and called his rival "my brother."

And while the polls had Cameron losing, such surveys are highly subjective, said Messina.

"It's all about sample size, whether you're doing cellphone, whether panel, whether you're actually understanding the electorate has changed and lots of people are communicating in ways they didn't 10 years ago," said Messina.

Watch the video here.

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