In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

I keep saying that the election cycle this year is closest to 1972, and another parallel is Joe's big farewell speech, which was pushed back almost to midnight Eastern time, reminiscent of McGovern in 1972 : The convention, which has been described as "a disastrous start to the general election campaign", . . . with sessions beginning in the early evening and lasting until sunrise the next morning. . . . A protracted vice presidential nominating process delayed McGovern's acceptance speech (which he considered "the best speech of his life") until 2:48 a.m.—after most television viewers had gone to bed. Last night, As the speakers leading up to Biden on the schedule began dragging on and on, speculation swirled about how and why the president had been shoved aside to speak when many Americans would already be asleep. “This is awful. He literally set up a campaign and handed it over to them — do they have to cut him out of prime time...

As I noted yesterday, although the Trump campaign focused attention early Sunday on the possibility that Kamala is impaired at many of her public events, the suggestion isn't new. I did a web search on "Kamala drunk" this morning, and I came up with the image above on Amazon, which was advertising this as just the tote bag you might want for this past July 4th. In fact, this could maybe make the right ladies look hip on the beach out in the Hamptons. The story hasn't hit all the alt aggregtators yet, but this one at Hot Air draws a reasonble inference : Is Kamala drunk most of the time? If you watch her talk with that possibility in mind, so much makes sense all of a sudden. All those word salads, the occasional slurring, the inappropriate laughs... These are all tells that her brain is fogged by something, and it may not be stupidity. Newsweek is already on the case : As Donald Trump grapples to combat the surge of support for Kamala Harris...

Kamala is an alcoholic? pic.twitter.com/Lwc0suHgZW — JKash 🍊MAGA Queen (@JKash000) August 15, 2024 Yesterday I noted that Kamala's scripted public appearances were nevertheless nasal and hyperactive, with a lot of over-the-top excitement. I embedded a longer video that included ther brief vignette above, which has bothered me from the first time I saw it. On August 7, Megyn Kelly said in an interview that there could be additional “negative reporting” about US Vice President Kamala Harris’ history which the public has yet to see. “She’s never been vetted, why would anybody vet her – she was put on the ticket by Joe Biden just to check a box,” she told Sky News host Paul Murray. “Done. It was over. Nobody had any interest in vetting her, and they knew she wasn’t a serious pick. “I think there’s going to be more coming out about her.” But over a week later, no more has come out, and Megyn herself has had nothing else to say. Just yesterday, it was being tea...

Over the past couple of weeks, we've begun to see public appearances from Kamala, however scripted and closely controlled, as well as joint events with Tampon Tim. What we still haven't seen is a good comedy impression of these performances, but I've got to think one is on the way -- in fact, Trump himself, whose standup talents are acknowledged, could well begin to imitate either one at his rallies, as he had been doing with Joe. One thing that's become plain is that neither Kamala nor Tim is comfortable with a national campaign. Walz has been a state-and-local-level politician throughout his career, and the photo at the top of this post shows how stiff and uncomfortable he seems on a national stage. It's also plain that Harris, despite a campaign for vice president in 2020 and four years in office, has never actually had to compete -- she's been a California machine politician who checked the right boxes, and her electoral contests were just pro forma. Thu...

Chris Queen asks at PJ Media this morning: Is it just me, or is Kamala Harris acting like she doesn't want to win the presidential election? Nothing her campaign has done comes across as the tactics of a team that wants to get across the finish line. He cites yesterday's case of the video she made with Walz that consists entirely of giggly small talk about white guy tacos and such, and he links to Matt Margolis: As Vance has said, "Kamala Harris isn't running a presidential campaign, she's producing a movie." But let's go to her choice of Walz as her running mate. What's peculiar is that one of Trump's senior campaign advisers, Chris LaCivita, who is a longtime Republican operative, in 2004 engineered the Bush campaign's use of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against John Kerry, which proved to be highly effective. Walz, as it turned out, had misstated his military record much as Kerry had, and LaC...

I've pointed out recently that, up to Kamala's replacing Joe on the ticket, the polls had been unchanged since last fall, with Trump's lead in the Real Clear Politics aggregate national vote fluctuating from about 0.5 point to 3 points, depending on the most recent poll they ran through their model. Trump's felony conviction in New York, for example, changed nothing. Joe's very public brain freezes in June changed nothing. His loss in the June 27 debate, the clearest and most indisputable loss in any presidential debate, ever, changed nothing. The assassination attempt on Trump on July 13 changed nothing. All of a sudden, the emergence of Kamala as the new Democrat turned everything upside down, or at least this is the story. I've been deeply suspicious of the unchanging polls all year, especially when the consensus simply acknowledges that the poll aggregtes underestimated Trump's vote totals in both 2016 and 2020, but for some reason, nobody seems to w...

Over the past winter and spring, I linked pretty frequently to Nate Silver's Substacks, especially the February essay where he listed a series of tasks Joe Biden needed to undertake to turn his electoral prospects around. Back then, he was especially worried that Joe wasn't doing interviews: This is bad, folks. Biden’s doing a lot fewer interviews than even the media-hostile Trump. And when he does them, his performance is still just mediocre. That’s why something like turning down a Super Bowl interview ought to be highly concerning. His prescription: Over the course of the next several weeks, Biden should do four lengthy sitdown interviews with “non-friendly” sources. “Non-friendly” doesn't mean hostile: nonpartisan reporters with a track record of asking tough questions would work great. A complete recording of the interviews should be made public. The interviews ought to include a mix of different media (e.g. television and print) and journa...