HAIL MARY FALLS FLAT
We are at that point in the calendar when Election Day 2024 can be counted in days, not weeks (23 days to be exact).
One of the most strident complaints about Dem nominee Kamala Harris since she replaced Joe Biden was her ducking and dodging of media interviews.
Just this past week, we witnessed why Dem strategists were so reluctant to let her face questions that forced her to think on her feet.
Harris appeared on a blitz of programs — 60 Minutes, The View, Stephen Colbert, Howard Stern, all soft landing spots with fawning hosts and sympathetic inquisitors.
She failed miserably.
Producers on 60 Minutes did the best they could to edit Harris into looking competent, but couldn’t remove all clumsy exchanges.
On “The View,” Harris could not provide an answer to a softball question (I mean, it’s “The View” for crying out loud) about what she would do different as President.
Later that evening, appearing on Colbert, with hours to re-think her answer on “The View,” all she could conjure up was “I’m not Donald Trump.”
(But she did “crack open” a beer with the insufferably annoying Colbert. Just regular folk, that Miss Kamala.)
That’s kind of been the Dem platform since the convention. So in that sense, Harris stayed on point. But her handlers would not have exposed her to free-form interviews (in the case of “The View,” Colbert and Howard Stern they were live) if they didn’t need more out of Harris at this late date in the campaign. But she couldn’t do it.
Of course, she couldn’t do it. There’s nothing there. Political analyst Newt Gingrich said it best this week:
“You’re watching somebody who should be in a high school play and she’s on national TV as a candidate. She can’t move at the speed and knowledge you’d expect.”
Polling is trending towards Trump. The Wall Street Journal ran a story this week that in internal polling, Harris is trailing by three points in Wisconsin. The article states how Harris is failing to connect “with non-college educated men” in that state and others. A Quinnipiac poll that came out this week has all three “blue wall” states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — as “too close to call.” A few weeks ago, Harris held leads in Pennsylvania and Michigan.
If those leads had widened or even held, you would never have seen her media tour this week. Trump is wise to stay away from legacy media sit-downs and treat the corporate press as the opposition group they are.
As I’ve written in this space, I don’t know how much of this matters to how large a section of the voting public. There may be enough that simply don’t care that Harris can’t string a coherent thought together and have made up their minds to vote for her or Donald Duck or a spotted owl.
Her campaign threw out a Hail Mary this week. And even the adoring East Coast press corps couldn’t prevent Lucy from yanking the football away.
THE SIX
*As if we need more evidence of the corrupt D.C. press…we got more from CBS News. An interview with former Obama confidant and card-carrying race hustler Ta-Nehisi Coates has turned into a crisis at CBS because the host doing the interview, Tony Dokoupil, had the audacity to ask real questions the audience wants asked. The Free Press reports on the fall out and embarrassment at the network of Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace.
*Staying on things that are embarrassing…the leadership in the city of Chicago. Mayor Brandon Johnson’s latest clownish acts — and calling anyone racist for questioning his decisions — has gotten to the point where allies are pushing back. Even the friendly press corps is starting to turn on Johnson. John Kass, the former Tribune columnist and last old school Chicago newspaper guy who held our political leaders accountable, pens this well-timed takedown of Johnson who quite simply, “can’t handle the job.”
*Imagine waking and seeing this deposit in your bank account: on February 28, 2023, the United States Treasury Department reported in its daily balance sheet that it got a $7 billion estate or gift tax payment. This is, needless to say, incredibly odd. Before then, the highest receipt was a $1 billion payment in 2017, and the kind of person who would need to die to necessitate that size of a bill would be worth between $17.5 billion and $40 billion. Thing is, we usually know who these people are, as that’d easily get them on Forbes or Bloomberg. Even more so, that kind of wealthy person will often opt for some maneuvers to soften that estate tax blow by sequestering the money in trusts and using other tax-friendly tactics. So, who was it? This writer for Sherwood News goes on the hunt.
*Neighborhood-based retail small corner stores accessible by foot rather than hauling by car to a central shopping district are making a comeback. According to this article via Bloomberg, Covid lockdown policies had something to do with it but mostly it’s changes in local zoning regulations in several cities that are making it possible to open up small shops and restaurants in residential neighborhoods. Bringin’ the old 5-and-dimes and soda fountains back to the ‘hood.
*I really enjoyed this piece via Vanity Fair. Wednesday would have been the 84th birthday of John Lennon. What would have happened if he lived? The author pens a speculative fiction story that includes Lennon having an early 1980s midlife crisis and losing Yoko. There’s stuff about Lennon’s solo career from the 80s-on being weird and less than the sum of its parts and reunion (Live Aid) with his former bandmates and emailing with Paul McCartney. Oh, and the author has Lennon living on a hog farm in upstate New York.
*Finally, it was a rough couple of weeks for folks in the Atlantic and Southeastern Florida. Out of disaster, though, come profiles in courage and small acts of humanity. This one emerges from the wreckage of Hurricane Milton, when a news photographer rescues a cat. Great stuff.
Have a suggestion for The Kerr Report? Send email to jonjkerr@gmail.com.