In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

I posted yesterday about the lack of Harris surrogates, which seems tro be forcing the campaign to send its top candidates plus the Second Dude to put out seemingly minor fires in New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Virginia. I'm still scratching my head about this -- but now there's a piece in Politico that has other commentators puzzled: Kamala Harris’ campaign and the Democratic National Committee said Tuesday they are sending nearly $25 million to support down-ballot Democrats — an earlier investment and far more money than the top of the ticket has sent in past election years. The funding in part reflects the Harris operation’s ability to spread money around after record fundraising over the past six weeks. But it is also a recognition of the importance of this year’s down-ballot races — which overlap with many of the swaths of the country that could decide the presidential election, and whose outcomes will substantially affect how Harris, or former President Donald ...

In this morning's news , In the coming days, Kamala Harris and surrogates for her campaign are doing events in blue states that are supposedly safe for her. Well and good -- but then I said, "Surrogetes? She has surrogates? Who are they?" The story quotes Breitbart , which says, The campaign is sending Harris and her top surrogates — ticket mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and husband Doug Emhoff — to blue states after a weekend of planned swing state visits. So her top surrogates are a couple of cheesy old white guys, especially Doug Emhoff , whom the press has called a sex symbol. So I asked myself off the top of my head who Trump's surrogates are, and I answered J D Vance, RFK Jr, Tulsi Gabbard, Byron Donalds, Don Jr, Eric, Lara, the 13 Gold Star families in the Arlington controversy, Rep Elise Stefanik, Gov Kristi Noem -- the list keeps getting longer. Why does Kamala have so few surrogates? But the main story at the links above has to do with Kama...

Here's an example of the pickle Tim Walz is in. Via ABC News, Republicans want voters to think Walz lied about his dog. False GOP claims could cause real damage : Republicans turned Tim Walz’s outing at a dog park nearly three years ago into an attack on the Democratic vice presidential nominee this week, working on a false online narrative to paint Walz as a liar. The intended takeaway was that Walz somehow lied about the identity of his dog, Scout, by describing two different dogs as his beloved pet in separate X posts. Social media users shared screenshots of the posts as alleged proof that the Minnesota governor exhibits a pattern of deceit, garnering thousands of likes, shares and reactions across platforms. In one post, from June 2022, Walz is pictured hugging a black dog. The caption reads, “Sending a special birthday shoutout to our favorite pup, Scout.” The other, posted in October 2022, showed Walz beside a brown and white dog with the caption: “Couldn’t think...

Back in June, I noted that Joe's episodes on his trips to Europe early in the month amounted to a "permission slip" that allowed polite opinion to address openly the issue of Joe's increasingly apparent cognitive decline that had been on everyone's mind, but nobody up to then had been allowed to discuss. What I noted at the time was that Gutfeld had begun to incorporate Biden poopy-pants jokes into almost every night's routine -- and even a comic needs permission for this sort of thing. But just last night, Gutfeld said, Some people dispute the claim thatt Kamala Harris worked at McDonald's in the past. Meanwhile McDonald's claims their records show just one clown working here. He ran a acreen shot of Ronald McDonald. Even a comic needs permission for this sort of thing. The extent of the damage from Kamala's CNN interview slowly began to be visible only over the course of yesterday. For instance, at The National Review, Nation...

I was a little worried before Kamala's big interview that it would turn out like Joe Biden's first debate against Trump in 2020: he exceeded expectations by giving a mediocre performance that nevertheless had no obvious gaffes. This was a major hurdle, and he got over it. What if Kamala had an equivalent performance? It turns out I didn't need to worry. The first thing that struck me was something a lot of people noticed, but nobody really followed through: Did they put Kamala in the kiddie chair I had to sit in when I went to talk to the kindergarten teachers about my children? — John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) August 30, 2024 Well, it turns out that Kamala is 5'4". Walz is 6'2". But Dana Bash is 5'2", so this doesn't explain why Kamala appears to be so much shorter between both Walz and Bash in the photo. When I looked more carefully, I saw that both Walz and Bash are in ordinary dining room style chairs, which force both into upright...

I was intrigued by the mention in an Axios story I linked yesterday of "tension" among staff in the Harris campaign: BRIAN FALLON, the campaign’s senior adviser for communications, is generally considered the key person. But the interview has to be coordinated with Harris’s official office, where the communications director is KIRSTEN ALLEN. We hear there are some tensions. Although there';s general confusion about who's actually running the show, at least some people think it's this same Brian Fallon : Brian Fallon is managing and hiding Kamala Harris, because Fallon and the rest of her handlers know there is very solid reasoning for why Kamala Harris was never considered a viable alternative to Biden before. So who is Brian Fallon? According to Wikipedia , Brian Edward Fallon Jr. (born 1981 or 1982) is an American political operative. He was the national press secretary for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, a role h...

I want to keep looking at yesterdy's main topic, the dispute over the September 10 debate rules and whether the Harris campaign wanted to change them. My big question yesterday was, "why did the Harris campaign spend a whole day on this, which only focused attention on Harris's perceived weakness in debate?" I asked it before the dispute was resolved later in the day, at least in the eyes of the Trump campaign, when Trump himself posted , The Rules will be the same as the last CNN Debate, which seemed to work out well for everyone except, perhaps, Crooked Joe Biden. The Debate will be “stand up,” and Candidates cannot bring notes, or “cheat sheets." Throughout yesterday, the Harris campaign denied the initial Trump claim that they'd insisted on a seated debate with opening statements and notes, focusing on the question of whether the mics will be open or muted, which was a trivial issue on which Trump himself saId he had no preference. CNN confirm...