They're Selling A Fantasy. Is It Working?

The Trump-Biden polling was uniform for at least eight months since last fall -- the Real Clear Politics aggregates were predictable, the pro-Trump and pro-Biden polls balanced out, with Trump generally running from 0.5 to 3 points ahead. And no event affected this -- there were no bounces or craters resuiting from the New York civil judgments, the State of the Union, the collapse of the Fulton County case, Trump's conviction in the New York hush money case, Hunter's conviction in Delaware, Biden's visible decline from the D-Day commmoration onward, or even the June 27 debate.

Yet even though the polls never really moved during all these events -- and Biden himself pointed this out repeatedly -- the people who really made the decisions, viz, the people who tell Obama and Pelosi what to do, decided by early July that it was time for Joe to go, he couldn't win in November. What does this say about the polls? UPDATE: Biden's former top adviser Anita Dunn agrees.

Then Biden dropped out, Kamala was named the nominee at the behest of whomever it is that tells Obama and Pelosi what to do, and suddenly evearything has changed. Here's Byron York, a peer of Sean Trende in the cohort of conventional obtuseness, on August 5:

[S]o far, the Biden gambit, the sudden switch forced on the president by powerful Democratic Party insiders, appears to be working. In early July, before the wild series of events that rocked the race — Trump assassination attempt, GOP convention, J.D. Vance, Biden withdrawal, rushed delegate vote for Harris — Trump had a lead of slightly more than 3 points over Biden in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls. Now, two weeks after the Biden/Harris swap, Trump’s lead over Harris is less than a point.

But I'm still left with the same question: what does all this say about the polls? For whatever reason, the people who tell Obama and Pelosi what to do were looking at something besides the polls when they told them to make Joe skedaddle. On the other hand, the polls do seem to be something they can control when they want to, which is what seems to be happening now. And this puts us up against another puzzle, as David Harsanyi puts it at The Federalist,

[N]ot one journalist in the corporate or legacy media has explained how Biden’s obvious senility could turn from a democracy-corroding MAGA misinformation operation into an accepted reality in a single day.

If they were fooled for three years, how can we trust them? If they weren’t fooled, and they didn’t tell us, how can we trust them?

All we know at this point is that people who aren't elected officials are making consequential decisions, and those decisions include who is eligible to be an elected official. He goes on,

The Democrats’ new presidential candidate, who’s never won a single primary vote, might have been crowned but hasn’t given a real interview or even an extemporaneous political statement since Democrat bigwigs pushed Biden aside. In a functioning liberal ‘democracy,’ this would be pretty big news.

However, these people aren't infallible. Trump has lately been giving Biden credit for some level of insight into the current situation,

"The presidency was taken away from Joe Biden, and I’m no Biden fan," Trump said. "From a constitutional standpoint, from any standpoint you look at, they took the presidency away, and people are saying he lost after the debate and he couldn’t win."

. . . "But just to take it away from him like he was a child?" Trump said, adding that Biden is "a very angry man right now."

"I can tell you that he’s not happy with Obama, and he’s not happy with Nancy Pelosi," Trump said. "He’s not happy with any of the people that told him ‘you’ve got to leave.’ He’s very unhappy, very angry."

The problem is that the lizard people aren't infallible. Now and then it's gotten out that Biden resents Obama's decision to promote Hillary's candidacy in 2016, which delayed Joe's run to 2020, which in turn resulted in Joe being in less of a condition to function in office than he might have been four years earlier. This also leaves out the question of how Joe, once he promised Rep Clyburn he'd choose a black woman running mate, was induced to pick Kamala. The word at the time was that she was Obama's choice:

Joe Biden's firm belief in the experience and his extensive discussions with many friends, including former President Barack Obama who served as "a sounding board" over the last three months, helped the Democratic presidential nominee zero-in on Indian-origin Senator Kamala Harris as his vice-presidential running mate.

. . . Barack Obama, the first Black American President, said Kamala Harris "is more than prepared for the job," adding that it is, "a good day for our country".

So it's arguable that Obama, who put Kamala onto Joe's 2020 ticket and appears to have been a principal figure in pushing Joe out in favor of Kamala in 2024, is the architect of the current dilemma -- which itself is beginning to look like Joe redux:

I am starting to think that Kamala Harriss's cognitive health is an issue. She can't complete sentences, is mostly incoherent, and her party/media/campaign are hiding her and treating her as if she is Joe Biden aka a veal calf.

— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) August 6, 2024

So it looks like the lizard people are back to the same project they've had since 2020, covering up for a puppet who basically isn't all there -- except, as I think Trump correctly observes, Kamala isn't even as smart as Joe. We'll have to see how it goes.