Is Nancy Pelosi Nervous?

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's just if this is the…

— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) September 9, 2024

The release of the New York Timwes/Siena poll \yesterday showed the race is in the same position it was just after Joe dropped out at Nancy's behest:

The results are essentially identical to the last time the New York Times/Siena poll asked voters for their preference in the aftermath of President Biden dropping out of the race in late July, with that poll also showing Trump with a 48-47 lead.

In fact, it looks to me as though we're in precisely the same place we were after July 13, when Nancy renewed her effort to get Joe to "do the right thing" and urged his long-term advisers to show him the polls -- when Joe insisted it was a margin-of-error race and Nancy finally got tough, saying something along the line of doing it the hard way or doing it the easy way.

In fact, I've got to surmise that if Nancy had internal polls that showed Joe in a significantly worse position than public polls at that time, any internal polls taken now probably reflect the same relative disadvantage for the Harris campaign now. In other words, the big switcheroo did nobody any good.

As Jacqui Heinrich pointed out in her tweet, though, Harris simply inherited the Biden campaign apparatus, less Anita Dunn and Bob Bauer, who apparently were made the scapegoats for Joe's June 27 debacle. Biden's campaign chair, Jen O'Malley Dillon, an Obama plant, is still the Harris campaign chair in Wilmington. Brian Fallon, who is felt to be Kamala's chief handler, worked in the same position as Kamala's handler with the Biden-Harris campaign.

As I pointed out in this post, most of the key people in the Harris campaign were Biden hires, with a few Obama inserts like David Plouffe. And as I pointed out yesterday, Kamala's debate prep strategy -- sequester the candidate with a studio duplicate, mock debates with a Trump surrogate, and policy cram sessions -- is precisely the one they had for Joe.

So I guess if I were a lizard person, I'd be asking Nancy and Kamala's handlers whether they might be doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. And Nancy might be nervous -- but what options do the lizard people have? In a different time and place, the organs of state security would have effected a discreet disappearance for Nancy, with her image being subsequently airbrushed from official photos. But let's face it, the time to get Joe to drop out of the race was two years ago, not this past July.

Instead, we got a cockamamie lawfare strategy that utterly backfired and as the campaign has developed, turns out to have been completely irrelevant. Who greenlighted that? If only figuratively, some people are going to have to be airbrushed.

Kamala's Debate Prep Looks Just Like Joe's

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 tbhe accounts we had of Joe's, surrounding his disastrous June 27 performance. According to Reuters,

"It is my belief that he was over-coached, over-practiced. And I believe [senior aide] Anita Dunn... put him in a venue that was conducive for Trump and not for him,” said John Morgan, a Florida-based attorney and major Biden fundraiser.

Morgan said Dunn and her husband, Bob Bauer, the president’s attorney who played Trump in pre-debate rehearsals, should "be fired forever and never let back anywhere near the campaign."

Biden's debate strategy was signed off on by campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon, who helped him win in 2020 and was appointed in January to boost an uneven reelection campaign. Dunn, a longtime Biden aide and former Barack Obama campaign strategist, backed that strategy.

. . . Advisers set up a rigorous debate prep calendar, with Biden sequestered at Camp David for six days.

An inner circle, some close to Biden for decades, were involved: Ron Klain, his first White House chief of staff, Dunn, former White House counsel and long-time adviser Mike Donilon, as well as about a dozen other policy and political experts.

The best anyone can conclude is that having a Trump impersonator and a stage set up to mimic the conditions of the debate didn't work out, and the Anita Dunn-Bob Bauer power couple were in fact purged soon after June 27. According to the Reuters link,

As Biden and his aides settled in at Camp David six days before the debate, aides figured he had a lot to accomplish, more than his opponent. Trump could just complain about the present administration - and Biden would need the facts and some zingers at his fingertips.

They expected Trump would be far more disciplined and prepared than he had been in 2020 and believed that they would need to counter a string of rapid-fire lies.

In lengthy prep sessions, they peppered Biden with details, then followed them up with mock debates.

Various accounts suggest Joe didn't take well to the intense cram sessions, and he used cold symptoms to cancel many of them. It looks as though Kamala has responded to this regimen about as well as Joe did:

"What's the best part of debate prep for you?"

Kamala: "Being at the spice store!"pic.twitter.com/AoM29xdAXX

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 7, 2024

So although Anita Dunn and Bob Bauer were made the scapegoats for Joe's poor debate prep and left the White House afterward, it's hard for me to avoid thinking Kamala'a handlers are following exactly the same strategy. Jen O'Malley Dillon, after all, is still Kamala's campaign chair, even though she was the one who greenlighted the original Biden prep sessions, which included sequestering the candidate, mock debates, a faux studio, and intense cram sessions.

It looks like none of rhese things can fix a bad candidate, but it's also worth pondering what John Morgan, the Biden fundraiser quoted in the Reuters story, remarked: "Anita Dunn. . . put [Biden] in a venue that was conducive for Trump and not for him". That's turned out to be exactly the same venue that Kamala will now have, which her handlers tried and failed to change. Maybe they should have kept Anita Dunn and replaced Jen O'Malley Dillon -- or maybe the problem goes higher. Maybe they needed to replace Nancy Pelosi.

Hints Of Kamala's Debate Strategy

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.

Harris and her team — holed up in Pittsburgh for a multi-day debate camp — wanted unmuted microphones so that the vice president could lean on her prosecutorial background, confronting the former president in the same way she laced into some of Trump’s Supreme Court nominees and Cabinet members during Senate hearings.

Instead, four Harris campaign officials argued that she will be “handcuffed” by the rules, which were negotiated by President Joe Biden’s team earlier this summer.

What this suggests to me is that she wasn't so much intending to defeat Trump with ordinary argument -- after all, even US senators must speak when recognized by the chair and adhere to time limits -- but intended instead to use a prosecutorial strategy we occasionally saw in Trump's New York cases, whereby the prosecutor would continually interrupt the defense with rapid-fire objections -- "Objection, asked and answered!"

"Sustained!"

"Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence!"

"Sustained!"

"Objection! Argumentative!"

"Sustained!"

"Objection! Hearsay!"

"Sustained!"

And so forth. The intent is to keep the opponent from even finishing a sentence. If, as in New York, the prosecutor and the judge are in cahoots, this might work, especially if the jury is on the prosecution's side as well, and as long as the political machine doesn't give a flip about appearances, also as in New York. The problem for Kamala is that she simply isn't in court, she's working under a different set of rules where she can't just stop an argument with a legal objection.

Thus she needed a different set of rules that would allow her to keep breaking into Trump's presentation with shrieks. This would put her at an advantage, since on her own, she tends toward incoherent generalities. Another theory of the open mic strategy in the story is remarkably unobservant about Trump:

David Axelrod, who advised Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, was one of several Democratic operatives who noted that Harris’ complaints about the muted microphones also could serve to “get into Trump’s head.”

“What the [Harris] team is saying is that Trump’s campaign does not trust him to control himself,” Axelrod said. “I don’t think Trump likes to be depicted as someone being handled, so I do think there’s an element of trying to psych-out their side, too.”

But as we saw in the June 27 debate, Trump isn't just a politician, he's a successful entertainer who has a standup comic's sense of timing. He's fully capable of waiting for just the right moment to plant his responses, and attempts to bait him into destructicve outbursts never quite come off. A strategy aimed at trying to do this is a waste of time. Besides that, he's already been in so many debates and hostile interviews that it's difficult to imagine an attack that would throw him off balance and cause a spontaneous destructive outburst.

There's another subtle effect of the existing rules:

Trump says Kamala will not get a box to stand on 🤣 pic.twitter.com/UbK9rE94a9

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 7, 2024

As I posted a week ago,

Joe Biden is 6'0"; Trump is 6'3". As long as they aren't precisely side by side in a shot, this isn't noticeable. But if Kamala is 5'4" -- almost a full foot shorter than Trump -- and is standing behind a lectern identical to Trump's, this is going to be a problem. Even if she wears heels and stands on a box, it's going to be awkward. I'm sure this is why the Harris campaign is said to have tried to get ABC to change the rules to allow a seated debate -- but ABC didn't budge.

This may be a reason beyond the mutred mics that Trump insisted that the rules of the June 27 debate not be changed, although it looks like ABC will allow an audience -- but when the June 27 debate didn't have an audience, this was thought to favor Biden. But now, even if there's no long shot on both candidates that shows Kamala, even with heels, much shorter than Trump, she'll still be looking up at Trump when she addresses him, and he'll be looking down at her. The Kamala-in-the-kiddie-seat effect is still going to be a problem.

So why did ABC decide to continue with rules that clearly disadvantage Harris? Good question. I don't rule out that the lizard people know she's a loser.

Nobody Believes The Real Clear Politics Average

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, the top battlegrounds by 0.2, and the Electoral College 273 to 265. And nobody believes it, not even RCP. Yesterday it ran a piece by Byron York, a doyen of conventional wisdom, Key state polls: Another mess in the making?

The purpose of a polling average is to avoid some of the errors of individual polls by grouping a bunch of them together. So instead of looking at one or two particularly accurate or terrible polls, look at how the group performed. But some averages are better than others, and all can be wrong if the underlying polls they include are wrong.

. . . In [2020], according to the Brookings calculation, the combined RealClearPolitics average missed a state’s final result by an average of 1.1 points, while the combined FiveThirtyEight average missed the final result by 2.1 points.

. . . Now look at those numbers and apply them to today’s Harris-Trump race in the seven states. Almost all of the poll averages are closer than the average error even in the more accurate RealClearPolitics average and certainly in the less accurate FiveThirtyEight average. There’s just no safe way to say who is leading right now, much less who will win in November.

CNN's data analyst concluded the same thing last night, again without directly mentioning RCP:

CNN’s enthusiastic Senior Data Reporter Harry Enten said Friday that the presidential contest is historically tight and that the slightest shift in momentum could alter the outcome. Moreover, he added, if Donald Trump outperforms current polling by a mere point—which is certainly possible, if not likely, given recent presidential elections—he’ll be strolling into the Oval Office in January 2025.

Yesterday, Nate Silver posted an analysis whose subtext is that "the polls" aren't reflecting the real state of the race:

[T]he Electoral College is starting to look like a challenge for Kamala Harris. This was a problem for Democrats in 2016, of course, and also in 2020 — when Joe Biden won the popular vote by 4.5 points, but the tipping-point state, Wisconsin, went for Biden by only 0.6 points.

But wait -- doesn't RCP say this morning that Harris has the Electoral Col;ege by 273-265? Apparently Nate Silver doesn't believe this. He goes on farther down,

The problem for Harris is that Donald Trump has been gaining on her in our polling averages, too — at least in the most important Electoral College states. If, say, Harris had gained 1 point, when the convention bounce adjustment was expecting her to gain 2 points, that would look like more of a rounding error in the model. Instead, though, she’s actually losing ground since the start of the convention in swing state polls.

. . . Harris is ahead by 3.0 points nationally, a tick better than the 2.3-point lead she had coming into the convention. Although I’d note that this is down a bit, too. Her lead peaked at 4.3 points on August 23 in our last model run before Robert F. Kennedy dropped out and we removed him from our model. Still, her national polls are fine; it’s the state polls that are the big issue.

In fact, relative to the start of the DNC, Harris has lost ground in 6 of these 7 states.

. . . This remains an extremely winnable election for Harris, especially with the debate looming next week. But there’s now a 20 percent chance that she wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College.

Silver's latest projection, according to Newsweek:

gives Trump a 60.1 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, compared to Vice President Kamala Harris' 39.7 percent, with the former president taking 277 electoral votes to the vice president's 260.

The latest prediction gives Trump his highest chance of winning since July 30.

The model also shows that the Republicans have made a net gain of between 0.1 and 2 points in every swing state other than Georgia and Wisconsin in the past week. Meanwhile, Trump leads in every battleground state other than Michigan and Wisconsin, where the candidates are tied.

I've been highly skeptical of Real Clear Politics, both its poll aggregates and individual commentators like Sean Trende, all along. It's especially puzzling that "the polls" have consistently shown so little movement this year in the face of so many unprecedented developments.

Again, Where Are The Harris Surrogates?

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 Sanders was campaigning with her, even though Sanders had been a Joe Biden surrogate there just a year ago:

Joe Biden’s effort to strip New Hampshire of its first-in-the-nation primary could keep the sitting president from campaigning in the state in the run-up to the 2024 primaries.

But his allies can.

Onetime rival-turned-cheerleader Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont crossed state lines Saturday to deliver an economic policy speech — with plenty of praise for the Biden administration — at presidential pit-stop Saint Anselm College. California Rep. Ro Khanna headlined a major state Democratic Party fundraiser in May. And Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is keynoting New Hampshire Democrats’ annual convention next month.

So where's Ro Khanna now?

Progressive Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) warned Vice President Kamala Harris Wednesday against pursuing a tax on unrealized capital gains despite Harris signaling support for President Biden’s fiscal year 2025 budget proposal that would do just that.

“Let’s say you’re an entrepreneur, you create a company, it gets to $100 million or $200 million on paper. Now if you’re taxing that, you’re probably going to force that person to sell it,” Khanna, whose Silicon Valley-based district is the wealthiest in the US, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

“Do you really want the entrepreneurs to be forced to sell their companies to larger institutions and to decline in value? I don’t think that’s what you want for a startup ecosystem,” added Khanna, who did not mention his fellow Californian by name.

What about Josh Shapiro? In fhe wake of what appears to have benn a polite thanks-but-no-thanks to Kamala after his interview for running mate, he was full of brave words about how he was going to campaign for her nonetheless:

President Joe Biden says he and Gov. Josh Shapiro will travel around Pennsylvania this fall on behalf of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

Mr. Biden, who was born in Scranton, told CBS’ “Sunday Morning” in an interview that the two men would campaign for Ms. Harris in the nation’s most populous battleground state. Pennsylvania is all but a must-win state for the Democratic ticket this fall as most paths to the 270 electoral votes needed for victory involve winning the Keystone State.

Except now Joe says he won't be doing this, the Secret Service won't let him. The story goes on,

"I was talking to Governor Shapiro, who's a friend,” Mr. Biden said on CBS. “We have got to win Pennsylvania, my original home state. He and I are putting together a campaign tour in Pennsylvania. I'm going to be campaigning in other states as well. And I'm going to do whatever Kamala thinks I can do to help most."

Mr. Biden did not offer any further details. The Democrats hold their national convention in Chicago beginning Monday.

So far, nothing more has materialized from either Joe or Josh. But again, it may not be just the Secret Service who won't let Joe campaign for Kamala:

When Kamala Harris took to the stage during a Democratic primary debate before the 2020 election and implied that Joe Biden was racist, his wife, Jill's, response was crystal clear.

'Go f**k yourself,' the then-future first lady vented, as she allegedly admitted during a conference call with supporters.

And the relationship between the two women – that began badly enough during that contentious battle for the presidential nomination – has only gone downhill from there.

. . . According to one former Democrat operative in Jill's circle, the women's long-seated animosity is 'one hundred per cent' part of Jill's resistance to having her 81-year-old husband step aside.

Because the truth, according to a source who knows the First Couple well, is that Jill's is now the only voice to which the 46th president listens.

And as far as Jill, 73, is concerned, the only thing worse than her husband stepping down would be Kamala stepping up to replace him.

I get the feeling that if Dr Jill has anything to do with it, that campaign tour Joe was going to take with Shapiro in Pennsylvania isn't going to happen.

As for Shapiro, I'm just not sure how much enthusiasm there actually is among any Democrat insiders for either Kamala or her prospects. They're looking to 2028 already and don't want to be associated with a loser.

Kamala's New Hampshire Rally: What Problem Was She Trying To Solve?

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 couldn't even have been to influence or encourage New Hampahire voters.

I spent my whole working career in dysfunctional organizations, including one where the CEO went to federal prison for securities fraud, so I know a thing or two about organizational dysfunction. I keep going back to the question my former colleague Phil used to ask in staff meetings, "What problem are we trying to solve?" He asked it because the perceived problems always seemed so trivial yet so intractable, and the proposed solutions always seemed so irrelevant. There had to be a better use of everyone's time.

So let's apply that question to Kamala's New Hampshire rally and see if we can come up with whatever the real problem was that it was meant to solve, because among other things, the actual purpose of the rally wasn't clear, especially to analytically oriented observers like Mark Halperin.

It had nothing to do with New Hampshire voters, because the audience was imported from Massachusetts. But if it was meant to influence Massachusetts voters, why not hold the rally there instead of bussing them to New Hampshire? And Massachusetts's 11 electoral votes aren't in play; they're safely Democrat anyhow.

But let's say some Democrat power player, like maybe Nancy Pelosi, got a bee in her bonnet and told campaign head Jen O'Malley Dillon that she was worried about New Hampshire and demanded that Kamala hold a rally there irrespective of the real situation on the ground. That still doesn't explain why the campaign had to charter 27 buses to bring in a phony crowd from Massachusetts -- the Kamala campaign could have just gone through the motions without spending all the extra money for the buses (and probably the people, too).

Here's where the subtext of my former colleague Phil's question offers some help. Whether Phil even understood this or not, the main problem any staff meeting is actually meant to solve is the need to reinforce the grandiosity of the bosses -- and that goes as well to any solution such a meeting comes up with. The problem makes the bosses seem important, and the solution makes them seem indispensable. But that's the way it often works with or without a staff meeting; the bosses create the problems the bosses pretend to solve, but if anyone actually solved those problems, they wouldn't need those bosses.

Thus I think we can surmise that the problem the Kamala campaign is trying to solve is that the bosses need to look important. But important to whom? I've already posted on the disorganization in the Harris-Biden-Walz campaign, with Biden holdovers in the Wilmington headquarters, Obama inserts like David Plouffe adventitious in the new org chart, and Kamala's own people like Doug Emhoff, her brother-in-law Tony West, and her sister, Maya. At this stage, I'm not sure who in the campaign benefits from a boodoggle like the New Hampahire rally -- actually, I'm not sure if it benefits anyone, except that whoever followed arbitrary orders and set it up gets to keep their jobs.

But it does solve one problem, which I postulate will always be related to reinforcing someone's grandiosity. In this case, the only real beneficiary I can see is Kamala herself, along with her inner circle. Kamala is able to look like she's solving a problem. Exactly what the problem is, smart guys like Mark Halperin are unable to figure out, but she's solving it, and the best I can tell is that so far, she's convincing people like Jen O'Malley Dillon and David Plouffe that she's solving it, or at least she looks like she's solving it. Apparently it has something to do with New Hampshire, anyhow.

But here's the payoff: her yes people assemble a fair-sized crowd that reassures Kamala and whomever else that she's still got momentum, and this feeds her grandiosity, which I think is the main point. There may be a subsidiary benefit in that it keeps Kamala away from debate prep for one more day, and it's understood that she disdains things like briefings or preparation for meetings and then blames her staff for not prepping her.

The only comment I would make is that this sounds like a really, really dysfunctional organization, and on the whole, these do not survive. I also wonder if people like Jen O'Malley Dillon, David Plouffe, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi are really being fooled. Frankly, I wouldn't bet on it.

More Puzzling Questions About The Harris Campaign

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 Trump, will be able to govern next year.

The mention of down-ballot races -- which I also thought was a factor in yesterday's visits to states thought to be safe -- brought to mind again Nancy Pelosi's strategy in pushing Joe out of the race:

. . . Pelosi, in a July 10 interview, declined to directly answer when asked if Biden had her support in his reelection bid after his ruinous debate performance.

"It's up to the president to decide if he is going to run," Pelosi told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" co-host Jonathan Lemire. "We're all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short."

. . . Her comments blunted any progress Biden was trying to make persuading congressional Democrats that he was up for the job. And Pelosi's ambiguous public comments instead created space for rank-and-file Democrats to pressure the president to drop out.

She and other leading members of the Democratic Party raised concerns that his staying in the race could have a negative impact on Democratic candidates down-ballot.

But this again feeds my thinking about the missing surrogates. The closest thing Kamala's had to a new surrogate lately has bwen Joe Biden, but after appearing with Kamala at a Pittsburgh Labor Day event, he made it plain that this wouldn't be a regular thing:

President Biden lamented late Monday that his Secret Service protective detail doesn’t let him get up close and personal with audience members at events — despite him having the authority to overrule their advice.

Biden, 81, who has a lengthy history of accusing his handlers and security of getting in his way, made the complaint to reporters as he returned from campaigning with Vice President Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania on Labor Day.

“Feels good,” the president told a reporter who asked how it felt to be on the stump again, “except I’m not able to go out into crowds anymore, the Secret Service doesn’t let me.”

But it appears that Joe would be of little help in any case:

Say what you will about Joe Biden, the man is a great communicator. Because I would absolutely agree we are the greatest alsbnzittnkssnsd… manufac….. jakahn ndkfnfm.. county…. Aaaljdnddmmmmmmmmm… state…. Hahajs mmmm.. city in world world. You tell em Joe. pic.twitter.com/azUmr57STO

— Jay (@jaysonica) September 2, 2024

But this still leaves open the question of why, although they made token appearances at the Chicago convention, neither the Clintons nor Obama seem eager to campaign for Kamala. And where's Bernie Sanders, or for that matter Elizabeth Warren or AOC? This comes as Democrats behind the scenes are scaling back expectations. In a memo to staff over the weekend, Harris campaign chair Jen O'Mally Dillon said Democrats are "the clear underdogs":

[M]ake no mistake: we head into the final stretch of this race as the clear underdogs. Donald Trump has a motivated base of support, with more support and higher favorability than he has had at any point since 2020." In nine days, "Vice President Harris will face Trump on the debate stage, where we expect him to be a formidable opponent. In 2020, the election came down to about 40,000 votes across the battleground states. This November, we anticipate margins to be similarly razor-thin."

David Plouffe, an Obama strategist sent to beef up the Harris campaign, has a similar take:

“There’s not a scenario here that’s easy,” Harris senior adviser David Plouffe told the Associated Press. “The pathway to beating Donald Trump, the pathway to 270 electoral votes for Kamala Harris is exceedingly hard but doable. And that’s just a reality.”

I'm continuing to think that 1972 is the closest parallel we have to this year's environment for Democrats. So far, for instance, although Michigan Gov Gretchen Whitmer is co-chair of the Harris campaign, we don't seem to be seeing her campaigning on Harris's behalf in Michigan, a key state -- and she withdrew from consideration as a Harris running mate. The same seems to be true of Pennsylvania Gov Josh Shapiro -- Joe Biden made a token appearance in Pittsburgh on Labor Day, but Shapiro wasn't around. He also appears to have withdrawn as a potential running mate after a bad final interview with Harris.

And where's Gavin Newsom? I'm wondering if, as in 1972, prominent Democrats don't want to be closely associated with the candidate, because their instancts are telling them to stay away.