Harris-Walz campaign goes on offense
August 27, 2024
Reporting on campaigns as if they were gladiator matches in which someone “wins” or “loses” each day is unhelpful and distracting. But something is going on that suggests a fundamental shift in the charmed existence of Donald Trump. Someone who specializes in keeping his opponents off balance is himself off-balance and careening from embarrassment to embarrassment as he tries to understand what happened to him when Democrats nominated Kamala Harris.
The Harris-Walz campaign is on the offensive in substance and strategy. That fact is making a difference in the effectiveness (or rather, lack thereof) of the Trump campaign. That is good news for the Democratic faithful who spent years bemoaning a seeming lack of crispness and aggression in Democratic messaging. Democrats no longer feel like they are on the defensive but are on offense, creating their own “good luck” by seizing opportunities that emerge from the scattershot responses of a dazed and confused Trump Campaign.
Let’s start with substance. The Trump campaign believed it would cruise to victory in November, so it under-invested in “ground game” field offices and state coordinators necessary to turn out Republican votes. At the same time, Kamala Harris is leaning heavily on Democratic members of Congress to act as campaign surrogates for her—in a marked change from the Biden campaign. See Axios, Harris builds an army of House surrogates in drastic break with Biden.
Per Axios,
The Harris campaign is casting a drastically wider net in recruiting House Democrats to stump for the presidential ticket, gauging the interest of almost every member, Axios has learned.
A senior House Democrat said the Harris campaign has "asked all members if they are interested in being surrogates," and those who agreed have been contacted each week about their availability to travel.
By relying on congressional surrogates, Kamala and Tim can expand their reach through representatives traveling to areas likely to affect the outcome in key states. Trump, meanwhile, doesn’t trust anyone else to do the campaigning—which can lead to a vacuum in the last 75 days of the campaign. (Who can blame Trump? JD Vance’s efforts to meet with voters have been disastrous.)
Worse, for Trump, his daughter-in-law's first action as the head of the RNC was to shutter many of Trump's local campaign offices. See Washington Monthly, Trump's Ground Operation Is Failing to Launch. Meanwhile, the Harris-Walz campaign continues to “flood the zone” in swing states like Georgia.
Does any of this matter? Fair question. We will get the answer on November 5, 2024, but the trends in polling show that the Harris-Walz campaign is increasing the “generic congressional ballot” advantage for Democrats.
The Harris-Walz campaign is also going on the offensive against Trump voter suppression tactics. As noted in previous newsletters, the Georgia State Elections Commission (controlled by Trumpists) adopted new regulations that permitted county-level election officials to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into the validity of the election results they certify. The new rule is illegal because the state statute mandates that the local officials certify the election results as a ministerial act—without conducting a “mini-audit.”
Rather than waiting to see if local Georgia election officials accept the unlawful invitation to audit the votes in their districts, the Harris-Walz campaign joined forces with local election officials and filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging the validity of the new rule. See Democracy Docket, DNC Sues Georgia Election Board For Passing Rules Delaying Certification of Results.
Per Democracy Docket
The DNC and the other plaintiffs asked the state court to declare that under Georgia law, the certification of election results is a mandatory duty and election superintendents don’t have discretion to delay certification or not to certify at all. Also, the Democrats urged the court to mandate that Nov. 5 election results must be certified by 5 p.m. on Nov. 12.
If the two rules mentioned in the lawsuit are not interpreted within the context of state law that makes certification mandatory, then the court should block the implementation of the rules and rule that they are “an invalid and unlawful exercise of [the board’s] authority,” the plaintiffs argued in the lawsuit.
The complaint is here: 2024-08-26-Petition.pdf (democracydocket.com)
The preemptive lawsuit could cut off multiple delaying actions by local state officials in Georgia after the election. Even better, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp asked the Georgia state attorney general if the governor can replace members of the rogue state election commission.
Good! An aggressive litigation strategy is appropriate since Trump is openly calling for local election officials to violate state laws requiring them to certify election results.
And then there is the psychological warfare campaign being waged directly against Trump by the Harris-Walz campaign. What might seem immature or petty is, in fact, a brilliant strategy. Trump is famously thin-skinned. He can be goaded into making mistakes or adopting positions out of spite that come back to hurt him.
The Harris-Walz campaign is using such tactics to secure a favorable debate format. Trump's campaign team wants microphones to be “muted” when the candidate isn’t speaking—to ensure that Trump doesn’t make “hot mic” comments that are rude, misogynistic, racist, or just plain stupid. The “muted mic” format help Trump tremendously during his debate with Biden. The Harris campaign doesn’t want a repeat of that dynamic.
So, the Harris-Walz campaign adopted two strategies to convince Trump to overrule his campaign staff and demand that mics remain unmuted at all times.
First, the Harris-Walz campaign released a social media ad showing Trump waffling on his commitment to the September 10 debate with the sounds of chicken clucking in the background. A childish taunt? You betcha! That’s the point. That is exactly the level at which Trump plays. Appealing to his inner schoolyard bully may force him to give up an advantage that served him well in his debate with Biden.
Second, the campaign sent out surrogates to tell cable news hosts that Trump's campaign managers were trying to avoid the “hot mic” scenario because they don’t trust Trump! That strategy may also nudge Trump into overruling his campaign managers and committing to a format that Kamala Harris believes will work to her advantage.
Taken together, the actions of the Harris-Walz campaign signal that they are “in it to win it.” They know time is short and they are swinging for the fences with hard-hitting moves designed to overwhelm the Trump campaign’s ability to respond. So far, the strategy is working.
Special counsel Jack Smith files appeal from Judge Cannon order dismissing defense secrets case
Special counsel Jack Smith appealed Judge Aileen Cannon’s dismissal of the national defense secrets case against Trump. See PBS News, Special counsel Jack Smith asks appeals court to reinstate classified documents case against Trump.
Cannon’s ruling “was so bad, it wasn’t even wrong.”
Per PBS,
Smith’s team said U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon made a grievous mistake by ruling that Smith was unlawfully appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland. That position, prosecutors wrote in a brief filed with the Atlanta-based appeals court, runs counter to rulings by judges across the country as well as “widespread and longstanding appointment practices in the Department of Justice and across the government.”
If allowed to stand, they warned, it could “jeopardize the longstanding operation of the Justice Department and call into question hundreds of appointments throughout the Executive Branch.”
Smith did not ask the Eleventh Circuit to remove Judge Cannon, although the appeals court can do so on its own.
More on this topic in subsequent editions of the newsletter.
The NYTimes is an “unserious” news outlet.
In one of her most devastating attacks on Trump in her acceptance speech, Kamala Harris said that Trump was “an unserious person.” The condemnation of Trump stung because of its brevity and truth. As of Monday, August 26, 2024, we can safely say that the NYTimes is an “unserious newspaper.”
The NYT’s Monday edition included a guest essay by Rich Lowry entitled, Trump Can Win on Character. (Accessible to all.) The headline suggests that Trump's character should allow him to win the 2024 presidential election. However, instead of addressing Trump’s character, the essay attacks Kamala Harris’s character by claiming that she is “too weak” to be president. Lowry writes,
Ms. Harris was too weak to win the Democratic primary contest that year. She was too weak to keep from telling the left practically everything it wanted to hear when she ran in 2019. . . . She has jettisoned myriad positions since 2019 and 2020 without explanation because she is a shape-shifting opportunist who can and will change on almost anything when politically convenient.
What Lowry describes are alleged political weaknesses—not character weaknesses. It is a silly argument. If Lowry doesn’t like Kamala Harris’s political positions, he can say so. But to claim those are “character” issues is beneath Lowry and the NYT.
What Lowry fails to mention in an essay asserting that Trump can “win on character” is that Trump has been civilly adjudicated to be a sexual abuser, that he has been convicted of 34 felony counts of fraud, that he led an attempted coup, that he tried to bribe Ukraine, that he cheated on all three of his wives, that he has been indicted for unlawfully retaining defense secret documents, and that Robert Mueller found evidence that Trump obstructed justice on numerous occasions (just to name a few of Trump's character issues).
So, in a guest essay that the Times promoted as being about Trump's “character,” the one thing the guest essayist did not address was Trump's character. That is the very definition of bad faith.
The Times is entitled to make its opinion pages available to a diversity of viewpoints—event those views held in bad faith, like Mr. Lowry’s. But when the Times opens its editorial pages to opinions that are objectively, demonstrably false and misleading, the Times should be viewed as approving of those opinions. No responsible editorial board would platform such views unless it believed they were held in good faith and belonged within the realm of public discourse.
The editors and publishers at the Times are apparently angry with Kamala Harris because she will not bend her knee to the NYT’s exalted view of its place in the media universe—just as the Times was angry at Joe Biden for the same perceived offense.
Having published an essay in the Times titled “Trump can win on character,” we can conclude without reservation that the Times is an unserious newspaper. In fact, it is a joke—and its reporting should be treated as such until its publisher and editors cease their irresponsible behavior.
Several months back, the spouse of a Times reporter wrote to me and pleaded with me to stop criticizing the Times, saying that my criticism hurt the entire news operation of the Times, which included deeply researched and thoughtfully written pieces like those authored by her husband. I wrote back to say that I was not the one bringing discredit to her husband’s work and that she should look to the publisher and editors who adopted a business model based on misleading headlines and biased stories intended to create false controversies without regard to the truth. Everyone who writes on a platform that values clickbait over truth is tarnished by association.
The Times is free to publish what it wants. It is a commercial enterprise, and its consumers are free to make personal judgments about whether the content of the Times is worth the effort to read or the cost to subscribe. In my view, the headline “Trump can win on character” and the substance of the article shows contempt for the readers of the Times and a reckless disregard for the truth—at a time when truth is one of the few remaining bulwarks of democracy.
Opportunities for reader engagement.
Calling All Concerned Grandparents, Aunts & Uncles (and everyone else, too)!
Join us in promoting and joining in on The Grand Connection!
RSVP HERE for one of these two 30-minute Zooms (or for both!)
Tuesday, August 27th, at 8pm ET or Thursday, September 5th, at 7pm ET
Please invite—maybe even push— the voting-age grandkids, nieces, nephews, and other young people in your life to join you on a 30-minute Zoom with 20-year-old Sam Schwartz. Or join us on your own! Here is a letter to grandparents that explains why one concerned Today’s Edition reader who is a grandparent came up with the idea for The Grand Connection!!
Sam Schwartz and some fellow travelers from this summer's Tour To Save Democracy will briefly talk about why they feel voting is so important that they went all over the country in a bus this summer talking to young people— and they will follow that with Q&A.Read more about Sam, the Tour, and view an 86-second video at the RSVP Link
Swing Left San Gabriel Valley Dessertathon!
You're invited to Swing Left San Gabriel Valley's Second Annual Dessertathon on Sunday, September 15 at 6 pm Pacific. In addition to an array of yummy desserts, you'll be treated to the wisdom, inspiration and guidance offered by our Dynamic Duo, Robert Hubbell and Jessica Craven. These two amazing leaders will help us prepare for the final leg of the 2024 election, when we WILL elect Kamala Harris President and Tim Walz Vice President of the United States!
SL SGV is asking for a small donation of your choosing to the Swing Left National Impact Fund, which targets the closest races up and down the ballot. Remember that fundraising is one of the most important — and strategic — things you can do to help Democrats win. Seating is limited to 100 people, so be sure to sign up soon, then click contribute to make your donation. We assure you that you will be very happy you did!
Force Multiplier event on August 29
Force Multiplier invites you to Zoom with leaders from America Votes and the leaders of selected, carefully vetted, grassroots groups in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania Thursday, August 29, 7:00- 8:00pm ET on Zoom. Donations will support turning out the sporadic voters in the "Blue Wall" states .Register and Donate Here. We look forward to seeing you
Concluding Thoughts
It would be difficult to write a believable Hollywood script that describes the tremendous progress of the Harris-Walz ticket over the last four weeks. The progress is real and the momentum is headed in the right direction.
Despite significant improvement in every swing state, the race remains within the margin of error in reputable polls. If we can continue the progress and momentum through September, we have every reason to believe that Kamala Harris will pull ahead of Trump in swing states by a margin that indicates an incontestable lead.
In other words, we have every reason to be hopeful but no reason to be complacent. We must sustain the intensity of the last month and follow-through on our personal commitments to help Kamala and Tim win!
Talk to you tomorrow!
+++++++++
I am going back to photos I have taken in the past two months and processing them with a new software program that removes stars to allow editing of the deep sky object without the stars. The first photo below is the final product of my effort to capture the Omega Nebula in late July.
The Omega Nebula is a massive star forming region 5,000 light years from Earth and is 40 light years in diameter.
The photo below shows the intermediate step of processing the Omega Nebula with the starfield removed. It is too cool not to share with you!
A reader noted today that if you click on the photos, you will see an enlarged view.
Among other notable parts of this letter I especially note your criticism of the NYT. It is well expressed and argued - and dead right!
Bravo for you. I wonder if the NYT will ever right itself?
"A senior House Democrat said the Harris campaign has "asked all members if they are interested in being surrogates," – really? What a strange approach. They should rather instill in the minds of each and every Democratic candidate (not just the incumbents) the notion that they are part of a joint effort to save democracy and to ensure that after a win in November Harris and Walz have a Congress to work with and to deliver.
Quite understandably so far all the attention has been concentrated on "the ticket" but now is the time to launch a true national campaign to strive for a victory on all levels. And congressional candidates, on the national as well as the state and local level, are not "surrogates", they are part of the team. Harris and Walz should make sure to include them in their campaign events as prominently as possible. And to repeat a comment I made several weeks ago, candidates for national office should coordinate with and include state and local candidates in their events and, where possible, their ads and campaign clips. That would help the efforts to ensure democratic down-ballot voting.