Contrary to what many of you might be inclined to believe, I am very, very often incorrect about what I believe to be accurate. I do tend to push back when I am challenged by someone else calling it to my attention, mostly because on many of those numerous occasions it turns out that indeed I was correct. It’s a lot easier a reality for me to accept when I’m the one who actually stumbles across what I’ve been mistaken about. But regardless, when I’m wrong, I’m wrong, and I’ll gladly admit it.
And with perhaps two exceptions that are both in the public record I haven’t been as wrong for so long as I have been about who has been sheparding the Democratic party’s campaign strategy, which given the way this year had been playing out until just about a month ago I was consistently ascribing some of the blame to the folks who were steering the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016, in particular one Mark Penn, whose corporate services I have been a client of on numerous projects over the years. It became a particular sore spot when it was revealed that the Trump campaign had engaged the services of Cambridge Analytica, the British company that oversaw the analysis and support behind the Brexit movement and whose breakthrough methodology helped them identify where and who swing state voters who weren’t available through traditional polling methods could be reached, particularly via social media, and it helped create the last-minute tsunami that propelled Trump to arguably the most unlikely Presidency in modern history. That, and perhaps some ill-advised usage of e-mail servers.
But had I bothered to pay attention, I would have realized that Penn, at least personally, had nothing to do with all of that. When I saw his unmistakable face turn up on a panel on one of the myraid FOX NEWS broadcasts my roommate seems to have on our living room TV almost any time he’s home, I was stunned. A few internet clicks explained what had happened:
In May 2008, Time’s Karen Tumulty wrote that Penn thought the Democratic primaries were “winner-take-all“, rather than allotted proportionally, citing anonymous sources who attended a Clinton strategy session with Penn in 2007. Senior Clinton staffer Harold Ickes is reported to have asked in frustration, “How can it possibly be that the much vaunted chief strategist doesn’t understand proportional allocation?”[56] Penn and Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s communication director, both denied that the scene had taken place. According to Politico, Penn has become disenchanted with the leftward shift in the Democratic Party. Philippe Reines suggested that Penn shouldered too much of the blame for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential defeat. Throughout 2018 and 2019, Penn was vocal with his criticisms of Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, regularly appearing on Fox News and contributing columns to The Hill in which he, in the words of Politico, “bashed” the probe and ensuing attempt to impeach then-President Donald Trump.[64]
So I honestly have no idea who got the blame for Hillary’s 2016 loss, nor who can take credit for Joe Biden’s 2020 win, nor who has been in such position since. I know Jeffrey Katzenberg is no huge fan of research and Nancy Pelosi, despite her geographic proximity, is not enough a fan of the Oakland A’s to have embraced a “Moneyball” approach to the games she plays.
But I do know that whoever was responsible for the move to replace Biden at the top of this year’s ticket, not to mention just about everything else they’ve been doing since, seems to be on the right track. And yesterday THE NEW YORK TIMES’ Lisa Lerer and Ruth Igielnik reported the latest objective, credible results of the polling their publication has been conducting to reinforce exactly how transcendent a month it has been:
Vice President Kamala Harris leads former President Donald J. Trump in three crucial battleground states, according to new surveys by The New York Times and Siena College, the latest indication of a dramatic reversal in standing for Democrats after President Biden’s departure from the presidential race remade it.
Ms. Harris is ahead of Mr. Trump by four percentage points in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, 50 percent to 46 percent among likely voters in each state. The surveys were conducted from Aug. 5 to 9.
Moreover, Harris’ somewhat surprising selection of Minnesota’ Tim Walz as her running mate has helped to broaden her appeal beyond her personal base of loyalists, and his early returns show he is more than capable of verbal jockeying and is willing to take the mantle to do so. Harris may have borrowed some Cardi B energy to be the poster child of “brat” summer, but Walz has helped to make “weird” a more popular word than the heyday of Al Yankovic.
They’ve even performing to as many more sellout crowds as either Cardi or Weird Al ever did, a fact that seems to concern and rattle the size-obsessed Trump more than most other more pressing issues, as BUSINESS INSIDER’s Kelsey Vlamis also reported yesterday:
Since Vice President Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, there’s been an unmistakable enthusiasm surrounding her campaign, from record-setting donations to closing the gaps — and even leading — in some swing state polls.
With the latest burst of momentum that surrounded Harris choosing Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, the former president even seems a bit rattled..with Harris, Trump can’t quite seem to nail the counter-messaging, at times even appearing visibly frustrated at a press conference this week by the hype surrounding her campaign. He’s been unable to avoid bringing up race and gender — even falsely calling Harris’ heritage into question while speaking at a conference for Black journalists — despite allies urging him to focus on the issues.
Which has made the appetite to actually see these two duke it out on the same stage all the more rabid, and when it was announced that indeed Harris will keep the date that her current boss had previously made for a second debate with Trump after the bed-crapping that her former boss delivered on June 27th, a drumroll began that had pundits on both sides speculating what tactics Trump might try that he didn’t with Clinton (stalking) or the first round with Biden (incoherent yelling). In both of those cases, his performance did not help his cause.
And perhaps out of his own desperation or delusion, he now seems to actually want more of this, as REUTERS’ Jeff Mason and Nathan Layne reported yesterday as well:
U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Democratic opponent Kamala Harris will debate on Sept. 10 on ABC, setting up the first face-to-face match-up between the rivals in what polls show is a close race.
In a news conference at his Palm Beach, Florida, residence, Trump said he wanted additional debates on Sept. 4 and Sept. 25 that would air on Fox and NBC .
Harris said in a post on X that she was looking forward to the Sept. 10 debate after Trump “finally committed.”
She told reporters after a Detroit-area campaign stop that she was open to discussing more debates, but a campaign official reiterated their position that a Sept. 4 Fox debate is off the table.
So to whomever is indeed advising the Harris-Walz campaign my question is simply WHYYYYYYYY?
There is unquestionable momentum with the electorate. Harris has extensive experience as a prosecutor, which is effectively what a good debate strategy entails. She has handled hostile witnesses before and has done so in less-than-optimal venues. It should be quite easy for her, with her relatively youthful energy, to call out every lie, exaggeration and misstep that Trump is likely to make, let alone shout down anyone in any biased audience who might try to rattle her. She has both the skill sets and permission to pretty much diss and dismiss whatever accusations, insults or slurs that Trump might be inclined to toss out, much like a cornered feral cat.
Showing up for the FOX debate will neuter any chance he or his continually mocking and cocky team might have to regain momentum and to continue to press the point that she is afraid of the very confrontation she seemed to ask for when she first began her campaign rhetoric with “if you have something to say, say it to my face”. You have to actually put your face in his line of sight to do that, Madame Vice President. Remember’s he’s nearly as old and possibly more mentally challenged than the guy you’ve been sort of dealing with for the past three and a half years.
Trump continues to get disproportionate accolade and credit for at least being willing to step into “enemy territory”, as he did with the NABJ. His “performance”, capped off by his early departure, resonated strongly with a whole bunch of undecideds. Perhaps the fact that he’s, at least on paper, willing to show up at NBC at all has gotten him enough of a pass from Cesar Conde and company to earn a free pass for all of the misstatements and exaggerations he delivered in that sparse Mar-A-Lago foyer the other day, a fact that has Lawrence O’Donnell all but ready to lead yet another coup against his employers, not that the one Joe Scarborough tried to incite got all that far.
A Harris appearance on September 4th, more than likely with better results than Biden delivered, will increase the pressure on Trump to keep those later dates. As we saw in his Clinton debates, his rhetoric grew more incideniary and his tactics more desperate. All the more reason to increase the likelihood of something like that, or worse, happening.
And, frankly, they might need every chance they have to expose that version of Trump to those crucial undecideds. Remember for as unhinged and arguably illiterate as he is he still has some pretty shrewd advisors and strategists propping him up. And, for all we know, that could include Mark Penn.
Until next time…
1 thought on “Now Is NOT The Time To Stand On Ceremony”
Praise allah that she correctly avoided the Jew on the ticket. Instead she chose “literally hitler”, a Democrat favorite. He set up a “snitch on your neighbor” hotline, much like his mentor ‘dolf. He imprisoned a grandmother and cost her her business because she violated his illegal orders. There’s video of him sending his gestapo to the streets shouting at people sitting on their porches to get inside, then shooting them with paintballs for not immediately complying. He honored and paid an imam who praised ‘Dolf and the 10/7 “resistance”.
THIS is today’s Democrat party.
Be PROUD! Or does that have a different meaning these days?
Noah