Writer/commentator Jonah Goldberg does not like Donald Trump. But, despite his dislike for Trump, Goldberg’s latest piece for the (Trump-despising) Los Angeles Times, though it focuses more on Kamala Harris, provides him with an excellent blueprint for the rest of the presidential campaign.
Here are the key segments:
The Harris campaign’s decision to avoid sitting down with an aggressive or even particularly curious reporter is not necessarily a sign that it lacks confidence in her (as many critics insist). Even if she were a fantastic off-the-cuff political communicator — which she is not — keeping her on script for a while makes sense. The longer she can be all things to all people — or at least to all persuadable voters — the better off she is. Answering hard questions runs the risk of disabusing some voters of who they think or hope she is.
When people’s attention is focused on Trump, they don’t like what they see. And Biden’s withdrawal has provoked an eruption of ad hominem Trumpiness from the former president.
Last week, Trump railed against Harris’ identification as a Black woman and then spent a sizable chunk of his rally in Atlanta attacking Brian Kemp, Georgia’s deservedly popular Republican governor. Why would Democrats want to distract anyone from that?
Less consequential but more outrageous is the press’ collective complicity in Harris’ strategy. The vice president’s campaign has wisely flip-flopped on many of the fatally left-wing positions she took during her ill-fated first presidential campaign — against fracking, in favor of Medicare for all, sympathetic to calls to cut funding to police departments and so on. But the press shouldn’t let her get away with it so easily.
Willingly enabling a campaign strategy is not the Fourth Estate’s proper role, but even if you think it is, protecting Harris from scrutiny could eventually do more harm than good. Hiding the full extent of Biden’s decline worked well for a time. But when the reality was revealed, it came as such a shock that he was forced to drop out of the race. Shielding Harris from scrutiny could also have serious consequences when, unprotected by a teleprompter or a pliable press corps, she produces one of her signature word salads.
I don’t like the press’ sudden love affair with Harris. But even if I did, I would counsel some tough love sooner rather than later.
My only major dispute with Goldberg’s analysis is his evaluation of media complicity as “less consequential but more outrageous”. Media’s free pass to Kamala Harris is enormously consequential; it is the one and only reason she is the Democrat nominee. If the voting public were fully apprised of her positions on those issues her approval rating would be so much lower that, it seems to me, Democrat kingmakers (in this case queenmakers) would have been forced to find a different candidate.
But that is water under the bridge. She is the candidate. And Goldberg’s subsequent point about the potential impact of voters learning the truth about Harris during the campaign – which I do agree with – makes prospects for her candidacy even worse than they already look.
If Republicans are smart enough, savvy enough to hold back on how completely fraudulent Kamala Harris’s positions are -how completely different from what they have always been – until after the Democrat convention, when it is too late to replace her, they can pull the rug right out from her candidacy.
Are Republicans that smart? That savvy? And even if they are, is Donald Trump capable of shutting that monumentally big mouth of his until the right time? I wouldn’t bet on it.
But if they are, he does, and this strategy is successfully employed, Trump will almost certainly win back the presidency for a second time (not a third time as he bloviates about, but a second time).
We’ll see…..
