In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

At the end of yesterday's post, I speculated idly about the lizard people possibly replacing Nancy Pelosi -- I don't think she gives the ultimate orders any more than Barack Obama, and certainly nobody believes that about either Joe or Kamala. A few hours later, I saw that this isn't just a vain fancy . In an appearance on The View recounted by Ed Morrissey, Pelosi attempts to claim that the Bidens got her all wrong two months ago. Pelosi didn't want Biden to withdraw at all, she now claims. She only wanted Biden to revamp his campaign after his disastrous debate performance . . .as though his campaign looked like it suffered from middle-stage dementia on June 27. He cites a tweet by Jacqui Heinrich: Pelosi on The View denies she wanted Biden to drop out, but says his campaign needed to change. PELOSI: "My point was we need a better campaign, as I said, a decision to win. I didn't see us on a path to victory. So it wasn't about him not running. It...

We've had a couple of articles on Kamala's debate prep. What strikes me is that they really don't seem to differ from what we learned about Joe's debate prep before June 27. For instance, Vice President Kamala Harris is holed up for five days in a Pittsburgh hotel, doing highly choreographed debate practice sessions before Tuesday night’s clash. There’s a stage and replica TV lighting and an adviser in full Lee Strasberg method-acting mode, not just playing Donald Trump but inhabiting him, wearing a boxy suit and a long tie. In addition, On Saturday, Fox News reporter Bryan Llenas revealed the extreme lengths Harris’s team is going to ahead of the debate. “We know that Vice President Kamala Harris is in her hotel in Pittsburgh. They’ve got the lights as if it’s in a studio. They’ve got the stage. They’ve even brought in somebody who’s dressed and acting like the former President,” Llenas told GOP strategist Pete Seat. This debate prep strategy mirrors...

As I've already noted here, I was puzzled that the Harris campaign had chosen to die on the hill of unmuted mics in trying to renegotiate the rules for the September debate, since Trump's record in debates is that he wins them whether or not mics are open (the second Hillary debate in 2016) or muted (the June 27 debate this year). Most commentators thought Kamala's handlers were pinning their hopes on the slim chance that Trump would embarrass himself trying to interrupt Kamala, giving her the opening to scold him with "I'm speaking!" Big whoop, huh? It turns out, at least based on this story in Politico, that they actually had something else in mind : Kamala Harris had planned to object, fact-check and directly question Donald Trump while he was speaking during their debate next week. But now, with rules just finalized to mute the candidates when their opponents speaks, campaign officials said Harris advisers are scrambling to rewrite their playbook....

Here's the conundrum leading up to the debate, from David Strom at Hot Air : Kamala could appear on stage drunk out of her mind, vomit on the moderators, and do a striptease revealing she is a lizard person, and her poll numbers would only drop by 3 points. Everybody anticipates this, because it's what happened after Joe Biden's disastrous June 27 -- his performance was so outlandishly bad that Nancy Pelosi had him off the Democrat ticket within a month -- but the polls didn't shift a bit in the wake of the debate. In fact, this was the basis of Joe's own argument for why he should stay, the polls hadn't changed, the race was still within the margin of error. Nancy Pelosi didn't believe it, and the rest is history. I think it's also understood that by "the polls", people mean the Real Clear Politics average , but nobody will quite come out and say this. And as of this morning, it has Harris leading the notional popular vote by 1.8, ...

Joe Biden, back from vacation, was out and about yesterday, but it had nothing to do with Kamala, whom he at least nominally supports. Via the New York Post: President Joe Biden visited a small town in western Wisconsin Thursday to talk up his infrastructure and energy spending in the swing state at a local electrical supply company. The visit to the Dairy State, his first since stepping out of the presidential race, was on official presidential business and unconnected to the Harris-Walz campaign — but that didn’t stop Biden from mentioning his “predecessor” Donald Trump several times during his twenty-five-minute speech. according to CNN, this is fine: Harris’ political momentum and her chances in November hinge partly on her success in painting herself as a fresh option for voters and dispelling any notion she’s pitching for the second term of the unpopular president, Joe Biden. But Kamala was in New Hampshire Wednesday, and none of the usual suspects like Bernie ...

I guess they showed up. 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/LVx7cGEqVr — Faith In America (@NWIPatriots) September 4, 2024 Mark Halperin (for instance, here ) has been among the few observers trying to figure out, as I have, why Kamala had a rally in New Hampshire yesterday. Some of the questions include whether New Hampshire is in play, as was thought possible before Joe left the race -- but if it is, the race is effecively over, so why go to all the trouble of holding a rally there? But if New Hampshire isn't in play, the same question applies: New Hampshire has 4 electoral votes. Wouldn't the time and money be better spent in Pennsylvania? On top of that, the September 10 debate is coming up on Tuesday. The New Hampshire rally took one day away from debate prep, something Kamala badly needs. But beyond that, the rally, ostensibly in New Hampshire, imported people from Massachusetts in 27 buses, according to the count by one bystander , so that the operative purpose of the rally could...

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 ...