I heard there was a bit of a kerfuffle related to this tweet thread. Here’s a post for those who can’t see this on twitter or don’t want to use twitter. I did not see an unrolled version. If there is one, someone post a link in the comments and I’ll add it. Thanks, WereBear!
What do you guys think? Is this a big deal?
Kamala Harris is taking power back from the press corps. She learned from Biden’s fatal error. A THREAD.
1. The first thing you need to know about the vice president’s approach to the Washington press corps is look how well she’s doing as a result. Kamala Harris is now leading Donald Trump in some national polling averages as well as in some swing-state polls.
2. True, her lead is within the margin of error in most cases, but that’s an improvement from where the Democrats were before Joe Biden dropped out of the running and orchestrated instantaneous unification around his second-in-command.
3. I don’t think I’m overstating things. Her lead, the millions she’s bringing in, the thousands who are signing up to help, the big big mo’ – I think all of it comes directly from her campaign’s decision not to give the press corps too much access too fast. 4. I think that decision comes directly from the fact that Harris saw firsthand what the press corps did to Joe Biden’s campaign.
5. Some members of the press corps have noticed how well Harris is doing without them, and apparently, it doesn’t sit right. Here’s Chris Cillizza with a representative sampling. 6. The former Post writer said the vice president has been “almost entirely” ignoring the media since she launched her campaign, and that’s bad, he said.
7. Cillizza: It “bypasses the argument that the media is a critical part of our political system and any candidate who wants to be president — whether they are winning or losing — should be regularly subjected to scrutiny from the press.”
8. Even if I agreed that candidates who want to be president should be regularly subjected to media scrutiny, I don’t think this press corps, as it is currently organized, is able to. 9. There are exceptions, of course, but this press corps is generally not equipped to scrutinize candidates on matters of fact and substance. I say this because this press corps has conspicuously traded matters of fact and substance for vibes.
10. It didn’t matter what Joe Biden did – pull the country out of a pandemic, dodge a recession, tame inflation, grow jobs, revive every single one of the “left behind” counties that voted for Trump in 2016 because of “economic anxiety” – it *didn’t matter* what Joe Biden did.
11. The press corps decided nothing was more important than his age, and lo! 2024 became an election about vibes and vibes ended his candidacy.
12. Vibes are this press corps’ forte, not fact and substance. If fact and substance were its strength, there would have been a different reaction to The Disaster Debate during which Biden talked about policy and issues while Trump didn’t bother.
13. Trump was incoherent and false, but he came off as confident and strong, and he came off as that way, because the press corps’ forte isn’t fact and substance. 14. If fact and substance were important, there would also have been a different reaction to Biden’s NATO press conference last month. He did it after the Disaster Debate to show he still had what it takes. He talked for an hour about foreign affairs, international laws and war.
15. But this press corps didn’t hear any of that after Biden said “Vice President Trump” by mistake. There’s no grace for the old in Washington, nor is there interest in anything but vibes in the Washington press corps.
16. There was a time when liberals and Democrats would have nodded in agreement with Chris Cillizza on the merit of candidates being regularly subjected to scrutiny.
17. But after this press corps made a fetish of Biden’s age, I don’t see any more room for the benefit of the doubt – and there’s no going back.
18. This press corps made the election about vibes and it’s going to remain an election about vibes, and if those vibes now grind against the instincts of this press corps, tough shit. You reap what you sow. 19. In the future, we might look back and see the most important difference between the Biden and Harris campaigns is their level of trust in the press corps.
20. The president believed voters would reward him for the substantial things he has done, and he trusted – indeed, he depended on – the press corps to inform voters, as it’s supposed to.
21. But where he saw fact and substance, the press corps saw only vibes. And in depending on the press corps to get his message across to voters, Biden effectively handed over power that was rightfully his.
22. He allowed the press corps to be the principal arbiters of his reality, rather than reserving that right for himself. You could say Biden was waiting for power to be given to him and he suffered gravely for it.
23. By contrast, the Harris campaign is not letting the press corps wedge itself between her and voters. She is not allowing the news media to mediate her message. She’s preventing the press corps from speaking for her and she’s preventing it from exercising a veto on her speech.
24. In that, she is *taking power* – defining her campaign as well as Trump’s. She is turning the narrative about Biden’s age (81) back against Trump’s (78), such that whatever he says in self-defense is seen as proof of the allegations against him.
25. This decision leaves the press corps on the outside looking in. She’s sustaining a conversation with voters directly, on her own terms, and she’s doing well as a direct consequence of that decision. 26. But being on the outside looking in feels bad to people who see themselves as the adjudicators of American politics. They have incentive to turn attention back to where they think it belongs.
27. That’s why some are busy manufacturing a phony moral standard by which to scam Harris into playing by their rules. That phony moral standard goes something like this, courtesy today of Chris Cillizza:
28. He’s being coy but, in essence, he’s saying that Harris is violating some kind of taboo, or worse, that she’s hiding something of great importance from voters. This, of course, is favorable to her opponents, but let’s be clear: she’s violating *nothing*.
29. There is no lawbook declaring that candidates shall talk to reporters. There is a playbook, if that’s what you mean, but not a lawbook. The vice president could go the whole time without talking to one reporter and she would not have done anything morally wrong.
30. I will repeat myself till I burst. This is a democracy. Harris is obliged to talk to Americans. That’s the end of her obligation. She’s not obliged to talk to the press corps, as if it were a constituency. If she stopped talking to voters, that would be disqualifying.
Link to the above article at #35.
BR
I was surprised to find Morning Joe of all places saying bluntly that the media is biased in favor of the GOP and also being very clear in agreeing with Biden and Sanders that the GOP is setting up an argument to contest the election if they lose:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUVHe2Tb0L0
WereBear
Here’s from my history.
Unrolled Thread
WereBear
@BR: President Biden didn’t have confidence Trump won’t turn to violence if he loses.
I figure he’s planning something.
NotMax
WaterGirl, you receive the e-mail sent August 9?
columbusqueen
@WereBear: Yep. It’s going to be a different ball game with Joe controlling the troops.
JaySinWA
Here’s the link to the article from the last screen shot
https://www.editorialboard.com/kamala-harris-is-taking-power-back-from-the-press-corps/
BR
@WereBear:
It makes a big difference to have the White House until 1/20/25 this time around. The thing I worry about most is there have been reports over the years that a lot of DOJ rank and file (not leadership) are MAGA. The question is whether they will follow orders.
PJ
I can’t disagree with this analysis. Kamala should talk to the press when it benefits her campaign, not when it benefits the press.
Kelly
Frank Lutz can’t find enough young female undecided voters to hold a focus group. Seems they all support Harris
https://www.nj.com/politics/2024/08/gop-pollster-on-trump-harris-i-havent-seen-anything-like-this.html
rikyrah
Yeah…you saw the post….Thanks for posting this :)
Baud
The criticism about Biden doesn’t ring true to me, and in any event, it seems odd to compare Biden and Harris given in this manner given how little time has passed.
I think there’s a universal rule that if you want to get noticed, find a Dem to criticize.
rikyrah
@WereBear:
He’s gutless. He will ask the rubes to commit violence.
I shrug. If they want to go to jail for him….oh well.
BR
@columbusqueen:
There’s another advantage to Dems if Trump is falling back on contesting the votes — he makes it more likely that he’ll lose big, and that there’ll be states that he doesn’t have a GOP legislature to rely upon.
Kay
As I said yesterday, I don’t agree with this take. I think it’s really important we stay close to normie voters – try to think like they do- and I fear a pissing match with media takes us away from that. It’s backward looking and wholly negative IMO and I think we have a winning message that is forward looking and positive.
I think Kamala Harris is doing well because she’s talented and people like her so far – I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that. But I’m confident Harris will do interviews with mainstream media of her choosing soon, because it’s an easy way to reach a whole bunch of people who aren’t political junkies.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Yeah. I don’t agree with the analysis of Biden.
bbleh
I’m less worried about insurrection than I am about sabotage that lands things in court, because the Supremes won’t hesitate to throw the election to the Felon (likely via the House).
We have to SWAMP them at the polls. The Narrative must be clear and fixed by late election night.
And yeah the article is spot-on, but it’s nothing anybody who’s been paying attention didn’t know. The Obama WH knew it 15 years ago, and I think Joe knew it too, though he tried to be a nice guy. But it’s refreshing to see it put out there in the open and so explicitly by a member of the profession.
Baud
Kamala will do the interviews but I’m not opposed to social media telling the media that she shouldn’t do the interviews.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: What is the big information value of Trump talking to the media when they stage it at his house in such a way that you can’t hear the questions, and the reporters don’t push back on the answers? (As analyzed in that Lawrence O’Donnell video.)
Sean
@Kay:
I don’t think the take is “she shouldn’t talk to the media” it is more she shouldn’t (and isn’t) letting them dictate the terms of when and how they do. Which is a good and valid point.
She and her team can best strategize when and how to speak to the media to frame their arguments from a position of strength, rather than appeasing the NYT and WAPOs of the world hanging a countdown clock over her head saying “it’s been X amount of days WHERE IS KAMALA?” Fuck them and that.
She’s said she’s working on a long form sit down, arena TBD, she’s definitely going to reach out to voters using news media, just not on the arbitrary and navel gazing terms they set for her.
Citizen Alan
Honestly, I am disgusted by the fact that Dems were still willing to talk to that fucking pig Chris Cilliza after “Mad Bitch Beer.” That should have been the end of Cilliza being considered anything other than an enemy of the Democratic Party.
bbleh
@Kelly: lol. He needs to hang out in more diners in Ohio, or maybe Alabama.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
“Trump said X. How will Harris respond?”
kwAwk
What I notice is that some of the media is demanding that Harris submit to an interview and questioning, but nobody is saying that Trump should be subjecting himself to questioning about the Mara Lago documents case, the Jan 6th case against him or the election tampering case against him in Georgia.
He really should have to sit down and talk to the American people about these charges before he’s allowed to be President again. His 5th amendment rights don’t apply to media interviews and if he is as innocent as he claims, he shouldn’t have anything to fear.
The American people deserve to know what he was doing when the Jan 6th riots were happening.
I actually support Harris not talking to the media at this point. It’s keeping the focus on Trump and he is melting down spectacularly.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Kelly: wow! Great link 👍
Sid
What do I think?
Bam!
Kay
Back in the day we would have said this was too “meta”. Too much political junkies talking to other political junkies and media and rehashing old battles over and over. Obviously I’m not a normie but imagine being one and there’s this whole elaborate discussion about the NYTimes and CNN going back to Bush v Gore. They’re not going to feel part of this or get this at all, is my guess.
The campaign has to stay grounded. I’m confident they will. If people on social media want to work the refs that’s a good thing, probably. But I don’t think the campaign should go anywhere near that.
bbleh
@Baud: something something Questions something Clouds something
HumboldtBlue
@Kay:
Meh, her positions are out there and the press could report on them. They just want to be hand fed. There is still the convention, and once that’s over, the return to some normalcy in press access will shift. For now, though, ignore them all, create your brand on your terms and let them follow.
And has been mentioned by numerous others, start off with local and regional news outlets, that reaches people in am more direct fashion than major cable news outlets.
Tractarian
@Kay:
I agree with this sentiment. But what makes you think doing big-media interviews and frequent press conferences will allow Kamala to avoid the “pissing match”?
Seems to me the media is mainly motivated by a relentless (and deeply misguided) desire to seem “even-handed” and “non-partisan”, which effectively means Kamala will be subject to a much more exacting standard for honestly and accuracy. That will be true regardless of how many interviews she does…
cain
@WereBear:
Roger Stone is in the thick of it. Of course, he’s a moron and perhaps the 3 letter agencies could figure it out what it is with a phishing mail.
WereBear
@BR: Since Reagan they have been infiltrating.
I’ve come to see right wingers as having a dysfunctional mindset. Might be individually bright, but their Swiss Army knife has only three useless gadgets.
This is how their thinking becomes set in stone.
WereBear
@Kelly: The ladies are not undecided.
BR
@Sean:
I think I agree with Kay and you. Harris should set the terms, not the media. And I would love it if she ignores the NYT specifically. But it’s also a bad idea to just do one “big” interview because the media will try to blow anything from that out of proportion. Better for her to do a dozen interviews back to back in two days, so no one interview is that big of a deal.
TBone
It’s kinda like the old saw about sobriety – if you’re walking down the street and fall into a big hole, next time you walk around the hole. Eventually, you just find a new street.
Fuck those assholes.
WereBear
@rikyrah: Oh, not worried about MAGAs. But the rest of us.
Kay
@Sean:
OK. I said my piece. We just have so little time. I hope she stays focused on positive, forward looking and bringing people in. I’m fairly confident no normie is interested in media analysis and criticism, coming from either the media or the candidate. I know the GOP base eats it up with a spoon when Republicans do it over and over and over but our thing is different (and better).
Chris
To add to the FDR thoughts I had in the last thread:
FDR had fireside chats because he knew he had to take his case directly to the American people. If he’d allowed the media to be the unchallenged filter between what he said and what people heard, they simply would have lied their asses off about everything he did. Because then as now, regardless of their stated or assumed partisan identity, most media outlets were reactionary rags owned by robber-barons who had no interest in seeing liberal politics succeed.
Finding a way to talk around the media has always been crucial for any liberal administration. They are not and never have been friends, or even impartial observers.
divF
@Kay:
Assumes facts not in evidence, i.e. that there exists MSM that will allow any sort of communication to occur ?
(1) Where do normie voters get their news? Certainly not the NYT, which has been a lifestyle paper for the UMC for years now.
(2) As a business matter, the elite political press has a vested interest in not having anything resembling a good-faith discussion on policy with any democrat – it’s gonna be gotcha questions all the way. What is the value proposition in that for Harris ?
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: Yeah this thread leaves out the part where Biden was relentlessly bashed for lack of press conferences. The notion that Biden may have overemphasized the effect of policy on voters is fair. But saying he had some sort of naive trust of the media, goes against everything we saw over the past year. Biden had downright contempt for the press corps, and for good reason.
Jeffro
shorter:
“I’ll hold a press conference when you all agree to actually act like reporters – deal?” – KH, I wish
and although this is a given and goes without saying, I’m going to say it anyway: fuck Chris Czillizza
gratuitous
All that and more. But here’s a bit of gristle for the political media to chew on: Why should Vice President Harris give you the time of day when for the past eight years, the felon has called you the enemy of the people? What has been your reaction to that? Do you defend your position as privileged and unique under our Constitution? Or do you let the felon run you down like that without a meep of protest? Do you have that little respect for your own profession? Why is that? The famous formulation is “without fear or favor,” but you’re showing lots of both in the face of the felon’s antipathy.
If I thought you had an ounce of shame, I’d say, “Shame!”
TBone
@Chris: 👍
WereBear
@cain: Rudy Giuliani was their security consultant. I remember the R’s disastrous first canvassing app. They constantly have audio and video surfacing.
They aren’t subtle.
oldgold
Like with the age issue, here Trump is being hoisted on his own petard.
Trump spent considerable time and money making age an issue. Now, he is the oldster in the contest.
Trump spent considerable time and money deriding the national media as fake. Now, he wants to make an issue of Harris being wary of the national media.
Jeffro
THIS
Or the $10M bribe from Egypt, or the Epstein files, or or or
Heck, if they’re bored, they should just ask him again about E. Jean Carroll and watch as he costs himself another $80M
JCJ
Hot Ones. Start there. Mr Cole posted a link to the interview with Lupita Nyongo’o a while ago. I just checked – it has 1.7 million views on the Hot Ones youtube channel. The Jennifer Lawrence interview from last year has 16 million views. More people would see MVP interviewed on Hot Ones than on any teevee show.
I am kidding, but many people enjoyed the video where she cooked with Mindy Kaling, so why not.
Here is the Lupita Nyongo’o interview. She is great
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv6lwXOff3I
cain
@Kay: I think the problem is that the media is the one who wants the pissing match. Harris will pick the time and place not them. They are trying to force her to the table – just like how the NYT was doing the same to Biden.
Baud
@JCJ:
She should definitely do new media as well.
HumboldtBlue
OK, I honestly did not have “evangelicals for Harris” on my election bingo card.
But here they are.
Spider-Dan
Outstanding thread/article. Perfectly captures the moment.
The US mainstream media, as currently constructed, cannot be salvaged and should not be trusted. The Republicans made this decision decades ago, and their constant working of the refs has destroyed the media beyond repair. All mainstream media should be treated like Fox News at this point.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: I agree. Biden did NOT do what the OP is saying. In fact, arguably part of the issue was that Biden refused to interview with the FNYTimes and the rest of the press took it as an insult. Good. they deserved it. Biden didn’t cede any powers to those fucking assholes.
What actually happened (IMO) is that the press had a hobby horse — ageism, and they rode that horse like a rented mule, like they pounded on butteremails in 2015-16.
Things have moved too fast for the lazy bums to figure out something to ding Harris with. That, coupled with Harris’ decision to hold rallies with “vibes” (I agree with the OP there – Harris is smart) has kept the lazy bums off balance, and momentarily dazed.
Fuck ’em, I hope they all fall off an iceberg like the lemmings that they are.
Ksmiami
@divF: unironically, aside from the wsj editorials, business publications have been more reasonable and realistic on the economy and Trumps insanity. It’s a super weird disconnect
Sean
@BR:
I think she should do as many media avails as she and her team think benefit her message. They’re clearly smart and are on their game, so I think they’ll manage well. I only mentioned the long-form deal because Kamala had already noted it as something she wanted to do at the end of August after this first set of campaign swings. Their strategy will probably morph a dozen different ways by the end of the month, especially post-convention.
Scout211
@Kelly: That was surprisingly good. Frank Luntz? Who would have thought?
For those who can’t link to the article, here’s some highlights.
Chris
@Baud:
Yeah, I’d agree with that.
A ton of the reason Harris is doing so much better is simply because she’s had all the spotlights trained on her for less than a month, after being largely ignored for the last four years and not all that much talked about before then. As opposed to Biden, who’s had to endure the concentrated fire of every media outlet in the nation for four years, and was already much more defined – and caricatured – in people’s minds even before 2020.
That and the fact that after nearly a month of utter panic from “knowing” that Biden was screwed and couldn’t win this, Democrats were desperate for a fresh start (and the ones who were sticking by Biden were largely “party not person” enough to transfer loyalties to Harris immediately once the changeover happened).
None of this is to dump on Harris. She’s played the hand she has probably as well as could be. But a ton of what she’s got going for her right now is inevitably going to fade, though hopefully not until after the election.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: Of her choosing and in her own time. That’s the key.
Dangerman
I love sweet bread. Some butter, some Ollalieberry Jam (Lynn’s, natch), coupled with a tea, nothing better on a ….
….oh, shit, needed my glasses. Tweet thread. Carry on.
Jeffro
@TBone: thank you! I had not heard that one before, but just looked it up and wow – what a great metaphor for sobriety and/or ditching things that just aren’t working.
(There are several versions out there, all of them inspiring!)
Let’s all find a new street, America! I hope Harris/Walz work that into their speeches. It’s past time, that’s for sure.
CHETAN R MURTHY
@JCJ: I read Ariana grande went on hot ones and hit a high note after consuming a particularly spicy one. I do not mention it to joke, but rather to illustrate its reach: I know nothing of her, yet I learned this
SatanicPanic
3. ALL of the enthusiasm for Harris is because she’s ignoring parts of the media? That’s kinda nuts. People weren’t immediately jumping up to do TikTok edits two days after Biden dropped out because she was ignoring the old line media. They were doing it because they like her.
lamh47
So basically like I’ve said before, the media trying to hard to set narratives against Kamala Harris either to aide chump or just casue they mad that Kamala HQ is so good at setting it’s own narrative and doing so by going around the media’s bias…
Ksmiami
@Chris: no. I think you’re heavily discounting Dobbs and Project 25. And the economy is good, solid. Once normie people get a good look at the real Republican agenda, they run screaming as they should.
Frankensteinbeck
What this thread leaves out is that the national press creates the vibes. ‘Biden is old’ became the vibe because the press decided it was, in the same way as ’emails’. It’s not a simple process, thank goodness. They have to settle as a group on something that has at least a little traction, and it takes time to turn a molehill into a mountain.
NotMax
@Chris
“Collapsed” is a loaded term.
lamh47
DAFUQ!!
how dafuq did Tim Ryan lose to this guy…smh
I know, I know…it’s Ohio, but come on!!!
Jeffro
OT but for what it’s worth, Harris appears to be ahead in polling averages in AZ, and is less than a point behind in NC.
=)
Scout211
@Kay: As many of us have said, she is planning a sit-down interview at the end of the month. She is not refusing, she is just making sure it’s the right network or news service and the right interviewer. And she is making sure she gets her message out to the voters FIRST.
Plus, she was interviewed in Essence Magazine. There are many normies who read Essence.
Chris
@UncleEbeneezer:
In fact, I remember when people were making this exact argument for Biden, whose comparative reticence to talk to the press was favorably compared to Hillary Clinton’s and held up as a sign that he’d learned the lessons of 2016.
It didn’t ultimately help, because the press is going to suck up all the air in the room trying to create a scandal whether or not the Democrat engages with them and regardless of how the Democrat engages with them.
Jeffro
PS: has anyone else seen Eric Swalwell’s new ad, with trump as a back-to-school bus driver?
I’m dyin’ here… =)
lamh47
Also…why say anything when your opponent is crashing on their own?
Case in point:
https://x.com/PettyLupone/status/1823819045390762000
rikyrah
@kwAwk:
Exactly.
Sean
@Kay:
I’m not arguing with you on that point, but I also don’t see KH or her people taking the approach of antagonizing the press. A lot of folks like the unrolled thread are, but they’re making huge assumptions about KH and her campaign and motivations. I don’t think KH or Walz are interested in a big inside baseball fight with media organizations, or we’d see her rapid response team picking those fights too, and so far, that has not been the case. I think they are looking to get past what is hopefully a successful convention before anything else. If I was betting on anything, I’d guess we’d see a news media rollout strategy after that. I’m curious how they approach it, but given what we’ve seen in 3 weeks, I’m confident they know what they’re doing.
Lacuna Synecdoche
WaterGirl @ Top:
As one of the many (I presume) who don’t want to sign in to twitter: Thank you!
rikyrah
@Kelly:
Gonna say this again…
Frank is trying to find relevancy.
The Orange Menace broke up his grift too.
And, he’s desperate to get it back.
Chief Oshkosh
@Jeffro: Or the $2 BILLION dollars to his fucking son-in-law.
Hell, the fact that they have access to the hacked emails but won’t touch them tells you everything you need to know. I don’t advocate for doing that per se, but they sure as shit DID do it with Hilary and WILL do it with Harris if presented the opportunity.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I think you’re right about the political junkie Dem vs normie voter outlook being wildly different as regards the media. I can tell when I’ve lost a normie while making a point that requires that shared backstory.
One of the many mistakes DeSantis made in his delightfully humiliating presidential run was to assume voters were as online and in the wingnut bubble as he is. Even Iowa primary voters were baffled, and they aren’t as normie as general election voters.
Kay
@Sean:
Agreed. I’m confident it will be fine.
NotMax
@rikyrah
Luntz is the Carville of the right. Any relevance expired with the last century.
sentient ai from the future
some wag, commenting on how Ol’ Handsome Joe had frozen out FTFNYT, and good lord they were so thirsty over it, especially after going on Howard Fucking Stern, said that he’d be on an episode of Hot Ones before he gave those fash an interview.
Well, Harris DID grow up in a household eating indian food. and her dad is half-Jamaican. I’m pretty sure she has a pretty decent tolerance for capsicum-based heat, based on those data points alone.
it’d be pretty awesome, too. Have Walz on in a second episode, for contrast.
Baud
@Kay:
If things go south, Walz seems well liked and would be a good replacement.
Chris
@Ksmiami:
I think she’s good through November, barring a major misstep, though partly for the reasons I said.
Scout211
@rikyrah:
Good points. The modern day Trumpist Republicans don’t care about what voters want or what voters think. Luntz is irrelevant as a campaign consultant because they won’t buy what he sells. LOL
Xavier
In #10, the list of things Biden never got credit for, I’d add the Afghanistan pullout.
KatKapCC
What really baffled me was this whining from the media started almost immediately after Biden said he wasn’t staying in the race and endorsed Harris, and then just keep amplifying exponentially every day. They were acting like she had nothing else to do. Even if, as I suspect, she knew this was coming for days, maybe even weeks, before Biden made it public, she still had a heck of a lot of work in front of her. And they want her to take time to sit with them while they ask disingenuous loaded questions and criticize her using right-wing talking points?
Other than Trump, I’m not sure there is anyone more full of themselves than journalists.
Baud
@Xavier:
The media put that in the blame column.
BR
@lamh47:
Not beating that weird label too well…
JML
While I’m generally in agreement with the idea of the Harris team controlling their own narrative and not kowtowing to a media establishment that has been deeply aligned against Democrats while giving the GOP a pass…I do think they need to de-fang this issue. Do a sit-down with a couple of more local papers in battleground states, do an interview with unrepresented media.
Don’t bow before the altar of the deeply stupid entrenched DC political media, and especially no favors for the NY Times. But make them look petty, stupid, and entitled if they keep trying to run this line of attack, while avoiding picking a fight with people who make ink by the barrel as they say.
Make the NYT say “it doesn’t count unless it’s US” or the Chris Cilizzas of the world and see how well that goes over with a) their own colleagues and competitors, and b) the public.
But they’re way smarter than I am on media strategy, so I think it’ll be fine.
UncleEbeneezer
@SatanicPanic: Agreed. I think Kamala is managing her media approach wisely. She understands that this sort of lightning in a bottle enthusiasm means she doesn’t have to rely on the MSM. It’s just too much for the media to counter. But the enthusiasm isn’t because of that strategy. I think Harris sort of hit a royal flush by being (relatively) young, attractive, cool, charismatic, brilliant, experienced, fierce and a Black Woman etc., at a time when our side was finally ready for some joy and hope. It’s not something she cultivated and it’s not something anyone could have predicted. People are fickle and crowds can go from negative to positive (or the other way), in the blink of an eye and often do so for the dumbest possible reasons. Harris is definitely doing things to keep that enthusiasm going, but it somewhat came out of nowhere even before she had started doing appearances. I think a lot of this shift was just pure, dumb luck, but I’ll take it!!
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I’m all in favor of her doing interviews with local press and non-traditional outlets like Teen Vogue. Trump doesn’t give interviews with unfriendly press. Why should she?
K-Mo
I commented on this in the other thread, didn’t realize it had taken on its own thread. Anyway, here’s what I said there:
This is a powerfully true encapsulation of how the national press has lost its claim to being an essential intermediator.
I think it overattributes Harris’s success relative to Biden to her handling of the press, though. It’s not just that she has eschewed press conferences. Is that she has brought an energy and an excitement to the campaign that wasn’t there before. Her rallies, her social media, her message…all of it has been a massive improvement.
AND sooner or later I think she will fare much better in a debate with Gish Gallop and much better in a sit-down with the TigerBeat Press than Joe did. She’s better at this.
KatKapCC
@Scout211: Hmmm gee, why would most people in the mainstream press not consider that particular publication to be worthy of note? Such a mystery!
patrick II
@Kelly:
What issues and conditions favor Donald Trump? Low unemployment? Rising wages? > A woman’s right to choose? Healthcare? The growing economy? Not being a fucking Nazi?
UncleEbeneezer
@JML: She should do interviews with PBS, McClatchey, AP and local stations/journalists/podcasters.
JWR
Trump said last week that “Kamila” hasn’t done an interview since this whole “scam”, (swapping Biden for Harris), began, which was what Jeffrey Goldberg was bitching about while opening last Friday’s Washington Week in Review. He mentioned how much fun Harris seems to be having, ‘perhaps because she hasn’t done a serious interview’, and it just went downhill from there. Aside from a few murmurings in support of Harris from, I think it was Susan Glasser, it was a Repub cheering section all the way down.
And yes, I know how easy it is to avoid these shows, I’m just curious about how Big Media™ is reacting to feeling snubbed by VP Harris, and they are not amused. ;)
rikyrah
@lamh47:
No vetting at all.
rikyrah
@Jeffro:
That’s GOTV
That means NC is worth the investment.
Yeah, let’s put NC in serious play.
lamh47
Soooo basically Chump’s entire speech is ridiculously full of insults and ramblings…smh.
@Acyn on twitter watch and clips so we don’t have to here: https://x.com/Acyn
M31
test
Westlake
Who died and made Cillizza boss
She’ll get around to talking to whoever she wants whenever she feels like it
Meanwhile, tfg will never release his taxes
Anonymous At Work
When did her “Whatcha Got?” conference, she just got one question about doing more formal interviews and a few questions about things TFG said and was asked her response. The press covered itself with something, not glory.
brendancalling
I’m glad she’s stiffing the press. They’ve been worse than a failure—just look at their pathetic “coverage” of Trump’s public meltdown last week.
Just yesterday, as I was heading out to do Instacart, someone from WHYY public radio was on my street putting promo materials in people’s mailboxes. He asked me if I wanted one and I declined, saying I never listen, because the news shows are so bad and seemed to have it in for Biden. “Biden recession!” “Red wave!” “Biden ruined Afghanistan!” “He’s OLD!!111”
The fellow said “well, are there other programs on WHYY you value?” He actually said that, “value.” So I said no, all the good original programming like Radio Times and You Bet Your Garden are gone, and your local news is farmed out to KYW (their “news partner,” and our CBS affiliate).
If Kamala talks to the press, she should set the time and tone. Because if there’s one thing Trump DID get right, it’s that our legacy media is fucking GARBAGE (takes trash to know trash, I guess).
lamh47
CBS sent out invites for VP debate on Oct 1!
KatKapCC
@lamh47: I’m not gonna listen to explanations of laugh types from someone who literally never laughs.
p.a.
The Big Money Boiz, whatever their political persuasion, need accurate info. The WSJ news division (well, it’s been a looong time since I perused it) makes the WSJ commentary seem as if from a different planet.
It’s also the reason FoxBusiness is a flop. Tainted by their “news” division, no one pays attention even on the odd chance they don’t b.s. the info.
Hoodie
@JCJ: I was thinking something like this except have her invite a few of these hacks over for South Indian food, the hotter the better. They can only ask a question after taking a bite.
brendancalling
@UncleEbeneezer: she should absolutely not talk to PBS or NPR. They are horrible. There’s a reason we used to call them “totebaggers.” NPR in particular has been disgraceful since Biden was elected.
3Sice
Boring, low energy, and in an empty house. He and the audience run on hate. Absent that, silent flaccidity.
And in other news, the Dow closed over 40k today….
sdhays
@CHETAN R MURTHY: I don’t watch it often, but the Conan O’Brien episode is out of this world. I actually watched it twice. Conan commits to it 1000% and gives both a hilarious and thoughtful interview.
zhena gogolia
@Chief Oshkosh: Come sit by me.
UncleEbeneezer
Their attempt to manufacture a scandal only works if we take the bait, give them clicks and spend all day “debating” it.
We (collectively, not you or I, per se) took the bait several times with Hillary.
We took the bait on Biden-So-Old.
But we aren’t taking it for their attempts to create a scandal for Harris. We aren’t letting them knee-cap Kamala. More importantly, we aren’t helping them do so. That’s the big difference.
rikyrah
@lamh47:
tee hee hee
WaterGirl
@JaySinWA: Thank you! I added that up top.
UncleEbeneezer
@brendancalling: No NPR for sure. I thought there were still some decent (non-hack) shows/reporters at PBS, but I haven’t watched it for news in a very long time (like early 2000’s) so I could be unaware of how bad they’ve gotten.
Ruckus
@zhena gogolia:
As someone not all that much younger than Joe Biden I do somewhat agree with the analysis of him. Because it’s not saying he can’t do the job OK, it’s saying he does not run a campaign all that well. He just doesn’t think that way as much as necessary in this country. I don’t know if it’s his age or him or both.
Your question at #18
There is no value in anyone talking or listening to shitforbrains. His brain has gone so far past it’s prime (which of course has never been all that and a box of crackers but is now far, far worse) that he actually seems to be ready for the jacket with the wrap around sleeves.
Danielx
Perhaps if political reporters like Cillizza didn’t act like whiny little brats…,”pay attention to meeeee!”.
Fucking Villagers.
M31
lol Frank Luntz’s grift wasn’t working any more, poor baby
though you know, at least he didn’t find some weird fundy Indiana homeschool cult and claim it was ‘heartland undecided voters’ lol — is that good?
it’s like trying to do a study where you have to find a group of young men who haven’t ever seen porn (it’s not possible)
or, in my field, to find people who have NEVER been exposed to movies or Western pop/radio/classical music — you can’t ask questions like ‘why do we think major key music is happier’ without a control group without all the associations! lol but some researchers did go way up the Amazon and did it, some tribes that never were even exposed to radio. Turns out ‘major key’ music isn’t intrinsically happier. But that it gets hard to distinguish pitches when they get really high, that seems to be innate. Cool, eh?
WaterGirl
@Kay: I think local press interviews are a better way to reach mainstream normies than interviews with the national press.
JWR
@patrick II:
Immigration and the economy, neither of which are understood by the vast majority of Americans. I think those two issues loom large in people’s minds, and they just regurgitate their “concerns” back to pollsters, never knowing who’s policies work for or hurt them while never encountering an immigrant.
lamh47
I hope MVP Harris does not one damn interview with the political media…CNN GOP on the panel literally talking about Chump’s North Carolina speech as if it was coherent and just IGNORING that majority of what he did was insult Harris…smh…
FUQ this media.
frosty
Thank you yet again WG. To be clear, I’m not avoiding Twitter because of Musk. I’ve never signed ip and never felt a need to – I have enough time-wasters already!
I’m just hoping that people who post links give some thought to how I and others can read the threads. And if that’s my job, OK. I’ll probably just continue to ignore them.
piratedan
it’s just my opinion, but I think Ms. Harris should be able to pick and choose who she sits down with and when.
I remember back just a month or so ago, when President Biden sat down with George S to alleviate fears of his ability to lead the nation and I harken back to the quality and tone of the questions that were offered.
Now even a twink like Cilizza feels emboldened to take potshots at VP Harris for what? You think they want to ask her questions that Americans might have on their minds about what she proposes to do once elected? The answers to that are Fuck! and No! They want to try and institute some kind of bullshit character debate and have her “justify” who the fuck knows what. The 4th estate is making this about THEM and have completely put their own agenda instead of you know, actually talking about issues.
As we’ve seen repeated over and over again, when someone shows you who they are… believe them. These asshats are no more caretakers of the sacred flame of journalism than I am an Olympic athlete. Harris and Walz should run their own campaign how they see fit. There’s an atrocious double-standard in place and the Media as a whole refuses to address it.
Kay
@lamh47:
Oof. Mr. Vance is going to be hearing that a lot. Did everyone know the men of the far Right spend their days talking about what “females” should or should not be doing? I didn’t know how pervasive this is until this weirdo went national.
UncleEbeneezer
@JWR: Also, a nine month media smear campaign against Biden. The media is big-mad that it wasn’t enough to hand Trump an easy win. He should be WAY AHEAD!!!
cmorenc
@Kelly: That Luntz is reprehensible for applying his talents on behalf of a reprehensible party does not negate the fact that he is extremely skilled and clinical in figuring out what makes people’s opinions tick- where the most advantageous fulcrums are in their psyche to craft campaign messaging to reach. I wish he worked for our side instead of theirs.
Sometimes he will deliberately skew how he selects and handles a focus group if the main thing his client wants is a propaganda piece. But his real unique skill is his ability to suss out feedback from more representatively chosen focus groups to find the available levers of persuasion (when he is working for eg CNN) and how to best leverage them (in ways both fair and unfair) when he is working on behalf of his GOP political clients.
Dislike what Luntz uses his talents for, but foolish to disrespect or deny that he is one of the very best at his craft.
Barbara
@K-Mo: Another way to think about it is that the press should be reporting on Harris’s campaign — the energy, the events, and so on. Its coverage should reflect what the campaign is doing, which includes policy statements that you can find on any website, or just, you know, by analyzing the record of the current administration of which she is an integral part.
They didn’t seem to have any issue with this kind of reporting when Trump was running in 2016, and we were barraged with endless coverage of rallies and speeches (many of which were sanitized). Cillizza is whining about what he sees as losing the opportunity to define the campaign through the lens of the press. No candidate should be willing to let the press define them.
SatanicPanic
@UncleEbeneezer: yes , exactly.
M31
@Anonymous At Work:
that “watcha got” was great, but the press questions were moronic, EVERY SINGLE ONE was about Trump, wtf
whar policy questions whar
Teen Vogue first, then some Black TikTokers, mabye Philly Inquirer as the trad newspaper, MAYBE, then Highlights for Children Goofus and Gallant edition, then the newsletter for her sorority, then Minnesota Farm Radio Soybean Futures Update Show, then maybe schedule a few NYT interviews but cancel them all
scav
The important thing the candidate has to do is communicate to the public. The professional press is only one / a few of the ways by which information is passed. They cannot anoint themselves the one, the only, the true path of all valid communication — it’s rather like the buggy whip naming itself the singular method of producing acceleration in travel.
UncleEbeneezer
@piratedan: She should do like a pay-per-view special, broadcast on every major news network who wants it, but the interviewer has to be Melissa Harris-Perry.
cain
@lamh47:
Oh, go fuck yourself, Vance. JFC.. My parents are not caretakers of my brother’s kids.
Also, didn’t they attack Forever FLOTUS’s mom for taking care of the kids at the white house? Inconsistent much?
gvg
@Ksmiami: Trump is not good for business. He is good for crooks and money hoarders, but not stable economies, people growing businesses, making long term investments etc. And the republican constant threat to default on the US debt is terrible in a lot of ways and would tank a lot of lending. Its only simple thugs and greedheads that think he is a good idea, but a lot of people think they know more than they do.
Chet Murthy
@Kay: These fucking misogynists want to pretend that evolutionary fitness is everything. Sure, let’s pretend that current …. hypotheses about the reason that human females experience menopause are correct. Sure, let’s go with that. The male is useful for only one thing: providing semen. And you want to get that semen when it’s as young as possible, b/c older men’s semen is much, much lower-quality. So we need to milk young men, around age 18, and then sterilize ’em. Sterilize the lot of ’em, so that all children are born from semen we milked from young men.
It’s what’s best for the species! You wouldn’t want to stand in the way of having the best sperm fertilizing eggs, would you, JD?
They’re fucking moral idiots.
P.S. And “is” != “ought”. Just because evolution selected for a trait or even a behaviour, doesn’t mean that that’s what humans should be condemned to do or be.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Kay: I’d like to see her doing interviews with regional media outlets—the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Kansas City Star, the west coast papers, some from Texas and the southeast as well.
I think they’d be more likely to ask questions their readers care about. I think they’d do their homework better. I think they’d be more willing to look at how X piece of legislation had produced Y effect in that area.
And I think it could be used to her advantage: “Harris agrees it’s important you know her plans and positions, so she’s reaching out to talk about these things without national media trying to play it for clickbait and letting the message get lost.”
Plus the effect of “She knows you won’t let her off easily, but she also knows you & your readers really care about the nitty-gritty of what these mean to the American people, all labels aside,” is the sort of thing to flatter non-national media into giving her a better chance to talk about actual things, instead of just vibing about the vibes.
And if FTFNYT and the WaPo fume about it, well, hey. Maybe they can reprint some of them.
Local media is a good place to bring up Project 2025 as well—Social Security, veterans’ benefits, child labor, education—these aren’t political theory here in flyover country, they’re daily life & if they don’t directly affect you they do affect people you know.
HeleninEire
That tweet thread is spot on. But it also speaks to where we are as a country.
Everything is changing. We thought we were there when Obama was elected. We were ecstatic. But they weren’t. They were appalled. And they’ve spent every day and hundreds of millions of dolars since then fighting against change.
But a lot of America is tired. We want peace. We want to not be stressed all the fucking time.
We want JOY!
Baud
@lamh47:
I have a much better understanding of his economic vision. Thanks.
Ksmiami
@gvg: he’s a complete effing fraud. His chaos would throw the economy in the shitter.
SatanicPanic
@Betty Cracker: the tail end of the Biden campaign was the largest gap between normies and online liberals I’ve ever seen. Harris doesn’t seem to be catering to too many traditional online sources either and I think that’s to her benefit.
Chet Murthy
@M31: In my moments of craziness, I wish VP Harris would get herself an “Anger Translator” (or maybe better, a “Scorn Translator”) who would step in when somebody asks a ridiculous question, and rip the reporter a new one. She could have a phalanx of comedians on tour with her, so they could take turns. It could be like an improv show.
And she should require that any outlet that reports on her press conferences must also give equal billing to her Scorn Translators’ remarks.
But I’m crazy, I know. Na ga ha pen.
M31
@lamh47: ugh leave it to the incel crowd (anyone who uses the term ‘females’ like that needs to be kicked in the nuts) to take a kind of cool question of evolutionary biology (why menopause instead of just trying to have as many offspring as possible until you die?) and turn it into something creepy
and then to bring in his Indian wife? lol as though that’s a special trait just for them? THAT’S RACIST.gif lol
BR
@Kay:
What’s notable about this is that this new Vance clip is from an interview he did with the director of Thiel’s VC firm, Eric Weinstein, who is a really prominent VC. This isn’t some conversation with some random 4chan podcaster like some of his others but one of the big names in tech investing. As Anil Dash has written, these guys are in the throes of VC Qanon:
https://www.anildash.com/2023/07/07/vc-qanon/
Manyakitty
@JWR: Susan Glasser said something nice? I change the channel every time she shows up on MSNBC. Fully over her sour face and snotty comments. She and Peter Baker can take their nepo baby and move back to Russia where they belong.
KatKapCC
@lamh47: Pardon me, I have to clean up because my head just exploded.
rikyrah
@UncleEbeneezer:
Those that would have been so inclined know that they’re already on thin ice.
Barbara
@lamh47: Her mom was able to live with them for a year and take care of their firstborn because she had a job she knew she could go back to — she took a sabbatical from her job as a tenured professor at the University of California at San Diego. Does JD Vance thank the great state of California for being willing, as an employer, to have employment policies that permit people to better integrate their personal and work lives? No he does not.
But let it sink in that statement — “the whole purpose of a postmenopausal female” — is said in context about a woman who is still a full-time professor of biology at the University of California.
Baud
@KatKapCC:
Could be a post menopausal thing.
scav
@M31: What he loves about his wife is she’s a good mother, which clearly means equipped with the unpaid post-menopausal help. Maybe a sister or two to handle the vacuuming and cooking.
KatKapCC
@Baud: Sadly for my sanity and temperature regulation, I am CURRENTLY menopausal. Eagerly awaiting the post days.
lamh47
harris campaign IS NOT playing around.
Ad here: https://x.com/DBrodyReports/status/1823659987475804626
Kay
@BR:
Oh, thanks. Interesting! I struggle with this because I think he’s horribly disrespectful to his wife but I also want very much for Democrats to use it against him, which will of course be painful for his wife and her family
It’s this weird clinical remove they have about women – they genuinely do not see us as people.
cain
@JML:
I don’t think anybody is saying ‘Don’t talk to the media’, just pick the right media – Essence, ProPublica – you can pick who you want to talk to. You don’t need to talk to the NYT.
If you’re running into a city, talk to the local press – you are reaching normies that way.
#150 – oh mmmy!
M31
lol there’s going to be a weekly drip drip drip of creepy incel shit from Vance from now on, isn’t there?
and all from interviews that I assume were out there, sure, not in the Lexis database but these aren’t homemade recordings, these are under the radar but actual media, yes?
so it means Trumps people saw all these and thought they were fine
which I believe, actually — they’re so stewed in the MAGA fever swamps that weird stuff about ‘females’ and ‘ethnic grandmas’ isn’t weird to them
Baud
@lamh47:
At this rate, we’re soon going to have Bigots for Harris.
BR
@Barbara:
Just this morning Vance was saying that professors are the enemy. Martin had been saying that he knows Vance’s in laws at UC San Diego — I wonder what they think about all this.
JWR
@frosty:
I rarely post links to “X”, but when I do, I at least add enough to get the gist of the thing across. And I never post or even bother opening a bare or naked link.
Manyakitty
@cain: but melon’s parents took care of Barron, so it’s okay now. (Gagging)
UncleEbeneezer
@KatKapCC: Is it better than the “Peri” stage? Asking for a
friendwife (she’s also a friend:)).Baud
@BR:
Republicans always get a pass because they’re just saying it to win.
BR
@Kay:
This bit from Anil Dash’s piece describes Vance (and Thiel, Musk, etc.) perfectly:
JMG
Let’s not overthink where this race is now. It was very clear that a decisive bloc of voters, maybe 20 percent or more, were completely repelled by the idea of Biden vs. Trump. That’s unfortunate, but it’s reality. People wouldn’t respond to the “Biden’s too old” stories if they hadn’t had the thought in their own minds. Now, however, they don’t have to choose between two alternatives they didn’t like. There’s a new one, Harris, who is not Biden, while Trump, equally unpopular remains himself. Harris has done a tremendous job capitalizing on the change, primarily through amazing Democratic mobilization, but it’s the fact she’s (relatively) new that’s driving her rise in polls, fundraising and such.
As for talking to the press, the problem is, the mutual jealousies of the media (I was a member, I know) will mean that just giving a couple big interviews will not stop the bullshit, because those not picked to do them will howl as if they never happened. One thing she could do is give interviews on specific topics, like the economy, or immigration, or whatever, to the reporters who cover those topics, not the horse race crowd. If the Times (which has many such reporters) doesn’t like the idea, too bad. No interview for you.
KatKapCC
@Kay: I recall an old George Carlin line, probably from the 90s, where he said anti-abortion conservatives think a woman’s* role is to be a broodmare for the state. Even more true today!
(*dependent on skin tone in many cases, of course…)
M31
@Baud:
ok I snorted
that is really funny
Steve LaBonne
Just a note to say that you can also read Stoehr’s stuff in non-Xit format on his own site (The Editorial Board).
Manyakitty
@cain: MVP sat for an excellent interview with Essence. I think someone linked to it yesterday.
Ruckus
@Danielx:
Do remember that their careers are based upon being recognized for their outstanding commentary. And just because they actually have zero outstanding commentary to get paid for doesn’t mean they don’t think they are the very, very best.
KatKapCC
@UncleEbeneezer: They are each their own type of hell. For me, perimenopause was annoying mostly for how long it took and getting used to my historically regular cycle now being a total sporadic mess. At least being in actual menopause means I’m in the final stage, ROFL. Could do without all the sweating, though. Ick.
cain
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
1000% this.
We have to change the playbook. Shake it up, baby. Twist and shout.
waspuppet
If I’m not mistaken, at least two of the five questions she HAS been asked are “When are you going to answer some questions?”
[Great-job-everyone dot gif]
Matt McIrvin
@BR: My understanding is that the tactic they’re going to try this time doesn’t involve legislatures at all–it’s a new theory, that any red county election official in any state that Harris won can just nullify the whole state’s electoral vote by refusing to certify the vote from their own county (even if they claim the trouble is somewhere else), which by state law will prevent the governor from certifying.
It’s very “the card says Moops”. It also implies that any such official who didn’t like a presidential election result could have sabotaged it at any time in history (or could in the future), and I have a hard time believing that even this Supreme Court would go with that if they didn’t accept Eastman’s crackpot theory.
UncleEbeneezer
So I was just out getting tacos in my Kamala 2024 (pink, in Barbie font) tee shirt and I see this older, white dude giving me the once over. As I’m leaving he leans towards me and says “Nice shirt!” and I thanked him and smeyezed (smile-with-eyes, since I was wearing a mask). I was totally getting myself mentally ready for some kind of snide, MAGA bullshit, so it was a nice surprise.
BruceFromOhio
Happy to see the rest of the world finally catching up to Steve Gilliard.
May you rest in power, you saw it coming and said so long before anyone else did.
UncleEbeneezer
@KatKapCC: We knew things were happening when my wife started complaining “is it hot in here?” I was like “who are you?” I’m the one usually taking the “it’s hot” side when we disagree about the 75 degree temperature. She’s almost ALWAYS cold…until now.
BR
@Matt McIrvin:
The good news, in the scheme of things, is that certification is a process that happens way later on — weeks after the election. So our job is to win so decisively on election day that the day after it’s clear who won and half of the GOP is running sideways from Trump as fast as they can in the morning.
SatanicPanic
@UncleEbeneezer: if I had to knock any part of the campaign it’s that their official tshirts are kinda lame. I was stoked they came out with that retro one, but I already ordered a plain Harris-Walz one. They really need more fun ones tho. I don’t think they could do like the one you have for IP reasons but I’d love it if they got a little more creative.
Update- then again the hats are apparently a hit.
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
Listening to a sports podcast and they have Nate Silver on to talk about the betting odds and he’s gone nutz. He says JV is a drag on the ticket and Walz is a positive for the race, but Kamala is a neutral factor. WTF? Hundreds of millions of dollars donated, hundreds of thousands of volunteers, jammed packed arenas and it’s because of her, yet Nerdlinger thinks that’s neutral.
Kay
@BR:
I think that goes to gratitude too. The lack of gratitude. How miserable and put-upon they are. Wa wa wa, poor me, people don’t love me.
They won’t (can’t?) recognize that external factors helped them succeed. Entitled.
I do get a kick out of how bad Musk is at politics. I forgot that he publicly announced that DeSantis would win “and wouldn’t even have to campaign”. Good call, Elon. Brilliant.
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer:
https://youtu.be/GeZZr_p6vB8?si=XTCeSRdudnpcjkAT
cain
@Barbara: If I was her, I would be fucking pissed. You can bet that there will be some words exchanged because he just devalued everything she worked for as a professor. If all he sees is someone to take care of his spawn.
I don’t think Vance is going to stay married for long. He’s going to make a slip and disrespect his wife or someone is going to disrespect her and he’s going to keep his mouth shut because he’s a coward.
Baud
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch:
Neutral compared to what?
“Kamala doesn’t add anything to Kamala” is technically accurate.
cain
@lamh47: Full on media panic. Forget the GOP, they are gonna get panicked.
Jeffro
@rikyrah:
I signed up earlier today to write postcards, specifically for NC
Y’all know what? You know what? I think it’s going to…
…GO BLUE!!!
KatKapCC
@UncleEbeneezer: Same!! I was always the one turning the heat up before.
Princess
@Kay: I agree. Of course Harris is going to do interviews. When she decides the time is ripe. And she’ll do a good job because understanding how to respond to malicious or obtuse questions was part of her day job for years. I hope she does a whole range of venues, and does a lot of them. I’m sure she will.
If she feels she needs to do NYT, maybe she could sit down with Ezra Klein.
Frankly I’d be glad if both candidates would sit down with interviewers who would challenge them on policy and on their past actions. That’s how it’s meant to be. The worst interview I saw Obama do in 08 was with Olbermann because it was nothing but flattery and softballs and Obama was rightly fed up.
The press will do what it does regardless. They didn’t hammer on Hillary’s emails because of some interview. If they think an interview with Harris will magically give them the key to defeat her, I suspect they’re out of luck.
cain
@Manyakitty: Someone should ask Trump if he agrees with JD Vance that Melania’s only role now is to take care of grandkids?
StringOnAStick
@M31: Your job description is intriguing!
Trollhattan
@Chet Murthy:
I’m 100% behind this and further, nominate Leslie Jones as Kamala’s Anger Translator.
https://www.facebook.com/NBCSports/videos/leslie-jones-and-katie-ledecky-have-breakfast/1028862958291214/
Change we deserve, change we need.
Chief Oshkosh
@cmorenc: Yep. Same thing with Republican strategist (and current “Never Trumper”) Mike Murphy. Incredibly skilled, but works for the wrong team. He’s a Never Trumper who willfully ignores how the Republican Party ever got within a country mile of Trump. Fuck ‘im, but he gave a great (and smarmy) interview on The Fully Charged Show about how to get RWNJ to buy EVs.
https://youtu.be/TCguBYiEVhY?si=yiuK2q_2Knr-TAUc
cain
@Manyakitty:
Vogue’s piece on Walz’s dog was precious. Including how Scout locked himself in the closet and Walz’s tweet ‘this damn dog..’ – haha – it’s so NORMAL.
BR
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch:
I’ve seen a lot of that kind of thing lately — folks who have to acknowledge the momentum of Harris but don’t want to give her credit, so they say “everyone just wanted to move on from Biden” or “the party [note: not Harris] was smart to pick Walz because he energized the base”. Fortunately I think most folks aren’t seeing it that way — they recognize that Walz really is a good hype man for Harris, and it’s what makes him a good VP pick.
cain
@Jeffro:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BinWA0EenDY [I’m Blue]
NO one You Know
@kwAwk: 100% agreement! Kamala talks to the voters. The press corps talks to itself and the disgruntled. And doesn’t even check its own work.
Kirk
@lamh47: Oh my. That’s a direct play to take over the GQP’s largest volunteer GOTV network. If not take over, certainly disrupt.
It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@UncleEbeneezer: i didn’t chime in on the other thread, but i gotta tell you, as a red-sea pedestrian, i am ASTONISHED that there are regular commenters at this blog jawing up and down the hamas/IDF, I/P, muslim/jew conflict, that have no goddamn idea what the zionist occupational government is.
like, i mean. why bother having proper context on an issue when there’s shit-talking to be had.
FFS
eta- and the fucking “free palestine” set jumped the fucking shark a while back, when they started going after random fucking jews in nyc. guess they too, make no difference between an israeli and a jew.
Chet Murthy
@Trollhattan: I of course thought of Leslie Jones, but maybe we need more than one? B/c there are just so, so, SOOOO many mediots to be put in their place. Not sure Ms. Jones can handle the workload yanno? Surely there are a bunch of other female comedians who could fit into a rotation?
And it’s not just anger, but also *scorn*. That look your grandma gives you when you really fucked up. So much room for comedic improvisation.
Kay
@Princess:
I watched the clip of her taking Tulsi Gabbard apart in the 2020 primary debate. I watched those debates and had forgotten that. Yikes.
She’s just not going to have any trouble with CNN hosts reciting Donald Trump’s insults at her and asking her to respond. She should be positive and calm and make them look hectoring and petty and grubby.
Baud
@BR:
I suppose savvy people can speculate about how well Harris is doing compared to some other replacement for Biden. But they’d mostly be pulling the analysis out of their asses based on pre-withdrawal polling.
BR
@Kirk:
@lamh47:
Wow, this is turning out to be a BIG tent.
Anonymous At Work
@Chet Murthy: Nah, hold a presser and say that anyone asking anything but a policy question will be ignored from there out, and then enforce it. Goes double for “TFG said X on Twitter, how do you respond?” questions. A few might understand but WaPo, NYT, CNN, and most broadcast reporters won’t.
Manyakitty
@cain: brilliant! Let’s see if he remembers who she is.
Manyakitty
@cain: exactly one hundred percent weird-free.
jonas
I can only assume he’s getting briefings from the FBI and other LEA’s about what they’re picking up on their surveillance of violent right-wing groups these days.
MisterForkbeard
@Chris: I think it helped quite a bit in 2020 during the campaign – Biden basically let the press bark and ignored the Very Online stuff and it worked pretty well. He did stuff and laid out policy and people paid attention.
It worked a lot less well when Trump wasn’t the direct contrast and there wasn’t an active campaign going. Press went after him for stories and Republican framing was unchallenged by the press, and that became accepted wisdom.
Turgidson
@UncleEbeneezer:
I think the thread makes a lot of good points about press coverage overall, but agreed that it didn’t quite describe the Biden dynamic accurately. I think it’s fairer to say that Biden relied *indirectly* on the press to accurately report out on the work he was doing. He didn’t try to *work with* the press or enlist them in a PR effort, but he did expect that his accomplishments, which were many, would be reported on, accurately, with some amount of proportion to the scale of his achievements. He thought his record would speak for itself; the missing part was that no one other than Jen Psaki, KJP, and occasionally people like Buttigieg, were doing that speaking. The media surely wasn’t. The Inflation Reduction Act is a good example. The process-related drama with Manchin and Sinema, bad faith GOP howls about sockulism and banning cheeseburgers and the like garnered exponentially more coverage than the contents of the IRA, what its effect on the country would be, and whether voters understood and/or approved of the bill’s substance. Similar dynamic with the Afghanistan withdrawal. It was pointed out from time to time that Trump’s shitty deal with the Taliban had tied Biden’s hands, but the one word that people remember from coverage of that event is “chaotic”. As if pulling scores of personnel, military hardware, and more out of a failed state being overrun by the Taliban freakshow would ever be anything but. And the pullout was actually quite a logistical feat. But. Chaotic.
Biden never figured out what to do about this, and before he had a chance to really start making the case for himself as a candidate, BIDEN OLD became, almost literally, the only thing the media cared about. And any attempt he made to change that narrative seemed to backfire.
But the thread’s discussion of how the Harris campaign is doing things differently rings true. It’s all happened (and continues to happen) so fast that I’m not even sure the campaign is even making deliberate choices about this. They have their hands full transitioning to a new candidate, lining up delegates, barnstorming the key states, and preparing the DNC for a new candidate. There’s only so many hours in a day and MVP can’t afford to spend all that many of them tending to Cillizza’s tender fee-fees.
Kirk
@Anonymous At Work:
“He’s lying. Next question?”
Scout211
Everyone is different and there is no one way that women go through peri-menopause and menopause. But for me, yes. The worst symptoms were in the peri-menopause stage. When you are one year past your last period, you are considered in menopause. For me, all symptoms stopped then. So it was like I was home free.
I just consider peri-menopause the first stage of menopause because that’s how we experience it. But doctors see them as separate.
Sorry if this is TMI for balloon-juice. No, actually, not sorry. 😉
M31
@Kay:
lol well there you go — DeSantis made the fatal mistake of actually campaigning, where everyone could see what a musty toenail fungus in human form he was
shoulda taken Elmo’s advice, my man
prostratedragon
@Baud: Yeah, what he here calls Biden ceding power to the press looked to me more like doing his very all-consuming job. Being out there on the stump all the time i a job in itself, one which Harris is fortunately able to do right now as Vice-President.
Wvng
A NYTimes economics reporter, a few months ago, posted on X how hilarious it was that his elite friends in NY, people with the Times bookmarked, had no idea about the many transformative legislative victories by Biden that were transforming our economy. When challenged that “isn’t it your job to report in this stuff” he dismissed that by saying “not my job to do PR for Biden.” Most Americans have no idea how successful Biden has been in large part because of “journalists” like this clown. FTFNYT.
NotMax
@KatKapCC
Lebensborn.
Baud
@Wvng:
“It’s my job to do PR for Trump!”
pacem appellant
Markos at the GOS weighs in. Unsurprisingly, he is more than comfortable with Harris ignoring the Beltway media, recommending that Harris stick to the campaign trail and local media. I am in agreement. When the Beltway media decides to behave, maybe they can get a scrape from the table.
jonas
Here’s the bargain Harris should drive with the MSM: tell the WaPo, FTFNYT, and CNN that she’ll do a 30-minute, sit-down interview — no holds barred, chock full of exciting, exclusive scoops and crucial policy reveals, like what kind of flowers she likes to get from Doug on Valentine’s Day — with the first network who matches or exceeds, *in the next 15 days*, the same word count or on-air minutes dedicated to Trump’s mental condition and fitness for office that they spent covering Biden’s age issues this past year. Ready..set…go!
SatanicPanic
lol, from WaPo:
Trump’s little “I’m gonna talk about the economy “ Trojan Horse caught fire? You don’t say
Poptartacus
lol Chris Cilliza? Fuck him in his goat smelling ass.
Baud
@SatanicPanic:
“He’ll do better next time, after the reset.”
UncleEbeneezer
@Turgidson: Exactly! Simply put: I think Kamala understands that Twitter, Tik Tok etc., can essentially be a direct-marketing, work-around (and a great opportunity) in a way that Biden didn’t. Wouldn’t count out the possibility of her doing a Red Table Talk interview with Jada Pinkett-Smith. Whereas Biden wouldn’t even know what that is, lol.
MisterForkbeard
@pacem appellant: I think most of us are entirely down with Harris doing interviews and discussions with local media. Kay’s “Flood the zone” approach is my personal favorite – start by doing three in a single day, then give a couple of local (non-nutcase) reporters a 15 minute interview whenever she stops for a rally.
Just don’t let the prestige media (and especially not the NYT) get involved until they start acting responsibly.
Chet Murthy
@Turgidson: A couple of friends and I have been remarking on the following two data-points:
Which made us wonder why Harris’ campaign -feels- so different from Biden’s. I chalk it up to direction from the top. Biden’s great, the best President of my lifetime. But I guess maybe he’s not as good a campaigner, and it shows in the direction he gave to his campaign via his senior staff. And maybe Harris is just giving different direction, and it shows in the ways that the same mid/low-level staffers are doing their jobs.
Idunno. Just spitballin’ here.
K-Mo
@Barbara: I think we’re on the same page re Cilizza and the press POV. I was trying to push back gently on the notion that Harris solved the problem with the simple tactical decision of cutting them out. I think handling the press and more generally running a campaign is a tricky and complex undertaking and she has done a bang up job so far. Somewhere under there I am noting that Biden was failing in this regard, no matter how great his actual record of governing is.
catclub
But the American People are glad we are out and happy to forget about the whole thing.
stinger
Sit-down interviews with big-name media mattered pre-Internet, pre-social media. Since no one can campaign in every town in every state, using CBS or Time or the FTFNYT got your face and your positions in front of large chunks of Americans. Now, her rallies are live on YouTube, where they can be watched later if you can’t catch them live, and her supporters make TikToks, and there have been probably dozens of “XXX for Kamala” zoom calls (I’ve been to two already), and there can’t be too many people who don’t know who Harris is and if they like her “policies”.
It’s a different world, Mainstream Media!
jonas
@Wvng: Conversely, it isn’t Harris’s job to do PR for the DC press by giving interviews to organizations who maintain an insanely unfair double standard when it comes to covering politics (namely that Democrats get scrutinized like actual grownups while Republicans are graded on a curve developed for spoiled toddlers).
Baud
@Chet Murthy:
Is it possible that the need for a different strategy is a reflection of the role Harris was very quickly thrust into, regardless of whether Biden should have done something differently?
UncleEbeneezer
@SatanicPanic: Yeah the official stuff didn’t really appeal to me either. I like the one with the chucks that says “she’s got next” but most of the others are far less interesting than stuff you can find on Etsy or Teepublic etc.
StringOnAStick
@Chet Murthy: Hey, you asked me a question last night when i’d left for awhile. If you’d like to go into more depth, the front pagers have my permission to give you my email address.
catclub
That was my view, also. She promptly hired a bunch of Obama pros… who Biden had failed to hire.
Baud
@stinger:
Eh, can ≠ will. She’ll choose a strategy based on where the voters she wants to reach are, and will not depend on voters seeking her out.
Jay
MVP Kamala Harris should only do interviews with “vetted” media.
The “vetting” is really easy to do, only one question to be answered.
Did the proposed Media outlet slobberly knob polish Sundowning 34 Felonies Rapist Pedo’s speeches at anytime to make him seem less insane?
Chet Murthy
@Baud: I have no idea, but I kinda feel like this moment was waiting for somebody like Harris to step into it, to take advantage of it. We’ve seen for the last few cycles that social media plays a bigger and bigger role. We’ve seen Biden’s admin reach out social media influencers, but ….. well, it felt a little stilted, a little artificial, a little “how do you do, fellow kids!” meme. Harris’ social media campaign and outreach feels ….. authentic.
I just had the thought: maybe this is the equivalent of the Kennedy-Nixon debate? One candidate knew how to use the new media, and the other simply …. didn’t?
Just spitballin’.
prostratedragon
@prostratedragon:
FDR in 1942 speaking about his fireside chats, of which he gave only 30 over nearly 150 months as President:
M31
lol it’s not as interesting as heading waaaay up the Amazon to find the elusive people who never heard a radio
I’m in mainstream classical music — but there’s tons of bad history there where its norms and conventions were assumed to be universal or applicable to all humans (people love to say “Music is a universal language” but that’s just not true!) so I am interested in what is leaned/absorbed convention and what is innate to humans.
It’s true that every human culture has some kind of music in it, and that humans have a unique ability to process sound in time — as in keeping a beat! Only a very few animals (a few birds, really, and not our close primate relatives, which is pretty weird) can keep a beat, and it’s interesting to ask why that is, or better, to what use did humans put it — and cultural cohesiveness through music/drumming/singing/dance/rhythmic play is actually pretty universal, and probably a key factor in creating social community which is a big factor in the success of our species, which is pretty cool
SatanicPanic
@Baud: “Have you tried turning him off and turning him on again?”
zhena gogolia
@Turgidson: Good comment.
Chet Murthy
@StringOnAStick: Hi, I live in SF, so maybe your experience in OR isn’t as useful? But if you think it might be, could you drop me a line at [email protected] ? That’s an address I use -only- for this sort of exchanging emails in public, so I’d reply to you from a different email.
jonas
@SatanicPanic: “Although Lucy had positioned the football properly and promised not to pull it away like she has in every instance previously, once again, this reporter has ended up on his back wondering where it all went wrong…”
Baud
@Chet Murthy:
Yeah, I don’t know. I wasn’t following campaign strategy closely. What you said sounds more like the whole “vibes” thing. She’s just a better messenger for a certain segment of voters that we need simply because of who she is and who they are.
zhena gogolia
@jonas: I love it.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Alles in ordnung
Trollhattan
@SatanicPanic: IMO Republicans have zeroed in on immigration, scary furriners, and those emptied asylums.
That’s their campaign.
Baud
Maybe Harris should have an Apprentice style audition where national reporters compete for the first interview.
jnfr
@Kelly:
This makes me smile a lot!
M31
@Baud: they could submit sample questions one by one:
“How do you respond to President Trump’s assertion that . . ”
ZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTT
“When will you have a full sit-down . . . .
ZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTT
“Isn’t it disrespectful to the Presidency to call Trump ‘weird’ . . .
ZZZZZZZZZTTTTT
“Trump said you were
ZZZZZZTTTTTT
“Trump
ZZZZZZZTTTTTT
“Tr
ZZZZZTTTTT
Trollhattan
@stinger: I remember when Obama traveled to Marc Maron’s home, garage I think, to do his WTF podcast. I expect the media betters are still butthurt over that.
Kamala has a vast set of options to choose from.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: A Survivor style contest would be more fitting.
Baud
@M31:
I’d pay good money to control the buzzer.
M31
@Baud: lol auction off the electroshock button, when Doucy or some NYT smarmhole gets up we could retire the national debt
M31
@schrodingers_cat: lol who says there has to be a survivor?
SatanicPanic
@jonas: I thought the reporter was fine. I’m sure these “watch the conference and write what’s happening “ live streams are just an opportunity to fuck around on the clock.
And I implied I thought this speech was a bait and switch but then again- Trump probably can’t stay on topic. So who knows
Baud
@SatanicPanic:
The quoted report is fine. The buildup to the speech was nuts given Trump’s history.
Jay
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2024/08/14/JD-Vance-New-Prince-Poornography/
Baud
@Jay:
Now I’m jaded. Next you’ll tell me that OzarkHillbilly doesn’t live in the Ozarks and is not a hillbilly.
Scout211
24 people showed up at JD Vance speech today. (Link goes to Twitter with photo).
catclub
@stinger:
How about “XYZ for Kamala”? Not sure if the adult film industry is what you had in mind. Although it would be great to have Stormy Daniels on the call.
“KKK for Kamala” would be interesting.
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
Dump is soooo old.
Disturbing photo from today (link)
Media won’t admit it, because its okay if you are republican.
KatKapCC
@Wvng: The fact that they view reporting on positive stories regarding Dems = “doing PR” for them kind of tells you all you need to know about these nudniks.
Baud
@Scout211:
How many weren’t reporters?
zhena gogolia
@M31: Love it!
Subsole
@rikyrah:
A sorrier ship never met a more worthy foundering…
zhena gogolia
@Jay: This is what I thought of Demon Copperfield after fifty people recommended it to me. I didn’t get past the Amazon sample.
I know, I know, Dickens did the same, but with greater artistry.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Oh, no, that is not true!
zhena gogolia
@Scout211: Love it!
zhena gogolia
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch: Gaaaah!
Baud
@Scout211:
Jesus. He’s heading into Mike Pence territory.
Scout211
In Asheville today, Trump continues to air his grievances. Every rally is Festivus for him.
KatKapCC
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch: Looks like he fell asleep in the tanning bed.
Subsole
@Kay:
I spent far more time on certain chanboards than I should have, many many moons ago.
Part of my borderline-unhealthy loathing of the modern right is because I know exactly what they are.
Also a large part of why I keep punching the goddamn hippies who threatened to hand us over to these people so they could feel important.
M31
@Jay: another terrible thing about Vance is that he’s been trying to blame drug addiction on immigrants and Mexican drug cartels, when his mother got her opioids by stealing them from patients.
So to deflect the blame from the Sacklers and lack of good addiction treatment and poor control measures of addictive substances in the medical setting to ‘the illegals’ is just grotesque, and of course isn’t going to help the many many opioid addicts in this country.
and it’s not like Vance has a good drug addiction policy to fall back on, like more treatment centers
prostratedragon
@M31: Or use a big hook like the Apollo talent shows.
Chief Oshkosh
@UncleEbeneezer:
Jayh-zus, but that Tim Walz is EVERYwhere.
Geminid
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch: The guy keeps looking rougher and rougher.
3Sice
DemDifference
The Democratic Difference
@DemDifference
Economy when Reagan-Bush ran Morning in America reelection ad:
• Inflation 4.3%; Unemployment 7.3%
Economy today under Biden-Harris Great American Comeback:
• Inflation 2.9%; Unemployment 4.3%
Jay
@M31:
He had a “
charity” grift to raise funds “aiding” Ohio with there opioid addiction problem, and spend all the money on political consulting for his campaigns.M31
@Jay: jesus, that is disgusting
no wonder he gravitated to Trump
3Sice
@Scout211:
He opened with pissing and moaning about his handlers wanting him to stay on approved attack lines.
He wanted to hammer the immigrant crime wave occuring in his mush brain.
3Sice
@KatKapCC:
I can’t not see the stubby fingers.
artem1s
@Kay:
I disagree. I think most normies would be insulted if a candidate played along with this game that they can only communicate with voters if some High Priest of Journalism interprets their positions and policies for them.
I’m a Protestant dammit. I don’t need a fucking priest to talk to God for me.
lowtechcyclist
@HumboldtBlue:
This. Any network, any newspaper, any other media outlet, could post a list of the major issues of the day, and put where the Dems stand on them in one column, and where the Rethugs stand on them in the other. Voting rights, women’s bodily autonomy, climate change, Ukraine, minimum wage, gun control, unions, you name it. They could summarize both parties’ positions without having to look anything up. (They’d probably soft-pedal the Rethug positions, but readers/viewers could call them out on it.)
Would MVP’s positions differ appreciably from the Dem positions in such a list? Not enough to remotely confuse them with the Rethug positions. If the Dem positions are Earth and the Rethug positions are Mars, Harris’ positions wouldn’t be any further out than the Moon’s orbit.
So they don’t need this sit-down with Harris, they know where she stands well enough on pretty much everything. They’re just upset that she’s not genuflecting to them, and not giving them a gold-plated opportunity to show her who’s boss.
Geminid
@M31: Trump endorsed Vance in the 2022 Ohio Senate primary and Vance still only won 32% of the vote. That was enough to win a crowded primary, but it was a weak showing.
Betsy
That was amazing. I’d never thought of the press “corpse” problems that way before, and now that I’ve seen this analysis, I can’t unsee it.
It nailed it.
Thank you for putting it here.
Albatrossity
If the MSM opinionators want to be considered an integral part of the political system, they need to do their job of communicating facts re policies, legislation, and other aspects of politics that affect our everyday lives. If they continue to treat this horse race as an excuse to talk about anything but facts re policies, etc, they can expect to be on the outside looking in. Poor sods.
Geminid
@3Sice: Trump hates to be constrained. That is a point of conflict between him and his campaign managers. There is a significant chance he’ll ditch them before too long I think, even though he knows he needs them.
Ed. Wiles and LaCivita have enemies and rivals among others in Trump’s circle, and these sycophants will egg Trump on to “shake things up.”
schrodingers_cat
@cain: Usha clerked for Roberts. I am sure her parents are pretty conservative too and right wing. She said grew up in an ultra religious family. Wouldn’t be surprised if they are Sangh supporters too.
Jeffro
@cain: awesome!
@BR: “Evangelicals for Harris” might just cause the Mango Menace to stroke right the fuck out. I approve.
Matt McIrvin
@BR: I was thinking a possible approach could be mutual assured destruction–get some officials lined up in Austin, Dallas, Orlando and Cleveland who are willing to retaliate by blocking red-state electoral votes if it comes to this.
Gretchen
Harris did talk to the press when she got off the plane last Friday. They asked 4 questions about what she thought of what Trump said the day before, and one about Willie Brown, whom she dated 30 years ago. She should talk to journalists when they act like journalists and not gossip columnists.
Manyakitty
@Trollhattan: I’d love to hear her on WTF. The Obama interview was beautiful. I listened to it repeatedly during the dark times, whenever I needed a good cry.
KatKapCC
@3Sice: I also see an ear that most definitely did not have a bullet tear through it a few weeks ago…
Gretchen
Did everyone see the Vance quote from a radio show a few years ago that the entire purpose of post-menopausal women is to take care of grandchildren? And that the hidden benefit of marrying an Indian woman is that her parents will take care of your kids? This guy could have been made in a lab for bad candidates.
Chief Oshkosh
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch: God, he DOES have tiny hands.
lamh47
Speaker roster for DNC:
https://x.com/BmbEmpower/status/1823754803450658917
Manyakitty
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch: ew.
Gretchen
I’m really rooting to see Harris on Hot Ones, where the guy does an interview with increasingly hot wings. The interviewer takes the interview part seriously, and she’d probably be good with the hot stuff. The one with Conan O’Brien was hilarious – he said he didn’t encounter spice until he was 50.
https://youtu.be/FALlhXl6CmA?si=ChEkMxs5FRZSebGE
Baud
@lamh47:
Excluded again.
UncleEbeneezer
@Manyakitty: Me too. Maron is a great interviewer.
Villago Delenda Est
Why, oh why, is Chris Cillizza still a thing?
zhena gogolia
@Gretchen: Do they ever ask him about what she says? I heard a clip today where I couldn’t hear the reporter, and I heard “FBI,” and I thought, wow, they’re asking him about the documents. No, it was about his “hack,” and he went on and on about how it was Iran because they don’t like him. No pushback.
KatKapCC
@Gretchen: It’s in this comment thread :D
Manyakitty
@UncleEbeneezer: plus, he channels my anxiety. His podcast is cathartic!
zhena gogolia
@lamh47: Nice looking people!
zhena gogolia
So what is it about podcasts that makes it impossible to listen to them? Someone here recommended a podcast that had Patton Oswalt as a guest, and I love Patton Oswalt, and it was on Youtube, so I put it on while I was doing postcards, but I just COULD NOT LISTEN TO IT. They just ramble and mumble and make jokes I don’t understand.
Geminid
@zhena gogolia: The Russians likely told the Iranians, “Why in the world would you hack the Trump campaign? We could have told you anything you wanted to know. All you had to do was ask!”
Chris Johnson
I do not buy that mainstream media is in any way good faith or honest, and I am a little shocked how deep the rot’s been revealed to go. Obviously I think I know why this is (Putin, manufacturing support for imperialism, using the same techniques by which he conquered the Republican Party), but I don’t know the details of any of it.
I just know that no good can come of giving these people any sort of opportunity to act as anything other than, it would appear, enemy soldiers tasked to defend the chances of Donald Trump. Because that’s what they’re going to do, whatever you might WANT them to do or wish they did or used to do.
I don’t know how to fix it. Villago delenda est. I don’t think it’s their fault, exactly. I think they’re hostages. With information bombs strapped to their chests. If they were able to be more coy about all this, they would, knowing their exposure and the risk of burning their credibility. Apparently there’s something more important than their own survival and well-being. I don’t think they’re all true believers and MAGAs, I think they’re under duress and trying to pretend everything is normal when it is very much not.
UncleEbeneezer
@catclub: This seems relevant (Magdi Jacobs again on Xitter):
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Gretchen: sean evans. it’s a great show, he’s a well-prepared, gifted interviewer.
Kay
@artem1s:
I know she does rallies and anyone can watch You Tube. But a lot of people watch ordinary news! They don’t delve into this that deeply where they’re considering the candidate’s relationship with the media or how that intersects with them. I don’t think we can tell them what they should be doing. Maybe they care about other things and just want the government to run in the background. That’s allowed. We want them – all of them. This isn’t an elaborate social commentary. It’s sales and marketing. We want people to see and hear her. It doesn’t matter at all who is sitting across from her, unless this is “payback” or some kind of round about way of “improving” media. She has enough to do without worrying about their stupid industry. Book a whole bunch, half hour each, over a 48 hour period and move on. No “exclusives”, no “specials”, just a series of low stakes opoortunities for her to use to her advantage, one after another.
Manyakitty
@zhena gogolia: I still don’t care for audiobooks, but there are a few podcasts I can listen to. WTF was my entry point, because I already liked Marc Maron’s comedy. He is audio only, if that makes a difference. I also listen to Jack, about the special counsel cases. Oh, and I’m about to start Books of All Time.
My recommendation is to go to wtfpod.com, find the Obama interview or anyone else who looks interesting and give it a try. He spends the first several minutes talking about his life, his cats, the news, etc, then gets down to it.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Come grumble by me. I don’t get the attraction either.
matt
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch: He’s probably resting that on Harris’ fairly neutral favorability polling (which is that way because of partisanship and high name recognition).
matt
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch: he’s looking a little like he had some polonium.
Captain C
@BR: Gonna be an interesting Thanksgiving table for that family this year.
catclub
@3Sice:HA! I was suggesting that ad three weeks ago! They did not give me credit! UNpossible that anyone else could think of that.
SW
Probably past time to start ignoring Twitter X.
Chris
@artem1s:
From a Catholic, please accept a hearty congratulations for your last two sentences. You win the thread.
Ksmiami
@Turgidson: from now on, the press team in a democratic wh needs to be messaging about the successful policies every damn day.
OzarkHillbilly
Folks, 30 points and there is MORE????
Look, if you haven’t done it in 3 or 4 posts, it’s done. You blew it.
Gloria DryGarden
@Jay: I grew up in a middle class family. My sister told me our mom told her we were poor. Too late to ask my mom about it. We always had food, a home, clothes dr visits, a car, vacation camping trips, separate bedrooms. I guess middle class folks are unaware there are people who don’t have that.
im intrigued by Portugal’s approach to drug addiction; they’ve decriminalized it. It’s more about getting people help and community connection.
meanwhile laws to control addictive pain meds have made it so a friend of mine can’t get the dosages he needs. It’s limited such that he can only get so much. In this case, it’s a bad fit; he is in an agony of serious chronic pain for a spine condition he has.
im pretty sure it has very little to do with “immigrants”
stinger
@Jeffro:
Or even just an extreme closeup of his ear so we can all see the scar.
K-Mo
@Jay: thanks- great link!
Shalimar
@UncleEbeneezer: Incels use “whore” as a slur for women who won’t fuck them. The woman doesn’t even have to be fucking anyone else. It’s hilariously stupid.
stinger
@Baud: Sure. I was just “telling” the MSM that they don’t matter much any more.
stinger
@Trollhattan: Obama did Between Two Ferns, as well.
stinger
@catclub:
Hah! I didn’t want to say “X for Kamala”, which would imply that Musk Melon is a supporter. Guess I didn’t think it through far enough!
“So-and-sos for Kamala”?
StringOnAStick
@M31: That’s even more interesting than you’re first intriguing comment! Music is a huge part of my life as a singer and musician, and one of the guys who lives behind us is a classical oboe player with many recordings to his name; as a teacher he’s gotten 5 kids into Julliard. The best part of retirement for me and my husband is we’ve found a musical community that rewards growth and improvisation, so we’re very happy with the place we moved to when we retired.
way2blue
If/when Kamala does interviews with journalists, I wonder whether sitting down with a couple well regarded reporters in a swing state (with topics tailored to that state) would be more effective than sparring with the horse-race crew. Then another swing state, and another…
Darkrose
@Jay: Really good article, and an interesting site. Thanks!
Ramona
@JML:
@KatKapCC:
@KatKapCC: Duloxetine => no hot flashes for me…
Darkrose
@zhena gogolia: I don’t like most podcasts that use a lot of music, or that run ads. I prefer two people; more than three and I have trouble telling who’s talking. I burned out of fiction serials early with Welcome to Night Vale; now I mostly listen to nonfiction deep dives into a specific topic.
And when I say listen, I mean “My wife and I can quote parts of episodes of Maintenance Phase and If Books Could Kill from memory. I frequently fall asleep to the dulcet tones of Michael Hobbes and Aubrey Gordon, or Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri. They’re smart and funny leftists who do their research–I have the “Methodology Queen” t-shirt from Maintenance Phase–who talk about interesting stuff in a way that I find very engaging. And I learn so much stuff, especially stuff that’s relevant to my job as an academic librarian.
Books did a Patreon episode about Chris Cillizza last year; I should go back and listed to it again.