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As most of you know, I’ve been in the marketing business for over four decades. Insofar as politics is concerned, there’s always been a marketing element. There has to be with 161.42 million registered voters. The broad swath of voters cannot personally know a candidate even on a local level, much less a national level.
Marketing helped Roosevelt win and Hoover lose, Truman had “Give ’em hell, Harry,” it certainly helped Kennedy win, and it vaulted Reagan to two presidential terms. Reagan, miscast by some as a political rube when he was actually an experienced, knowledgeable politician (his dad was a ward boss, Reagan was student body president, president of SAG, Gov of California, etc.) really knew the value of marketing to extend his brand.
One-term president George H. W. Bush was not an instinctive marketer, and he privately derided what he viewed as political amateurs elected through marketing. Four years later, one of the best presidential marketers, Slick Willie Clinton rode his professional marketing expertise as a fresh, young, 46 year old presidential candidate compared to Bush and Perot.
Interesting, Bush (68) and Perot (62) were the doddering old farts during the 1992 race. Today, 60-year old Kamala Harris (as of Election Day) is the “fresh, young voice”. If you say so.
Right when Trump first announced, prominent Democrats to a person ridiculed Trump as an NYC R/E billionaire with no political expertise and no chance in the Republican primaries. Supermarketer Bill Clinton, on the other hand, when he was asked his impression of Trump replied “he’s a really strong marketer.”
Indeed he was. He knows what buttons to push, including buttons long forgotten by political professionals who never saw Trump coming. Remember when Obama laughed and laughed at a public dinner with Trump in attendance, promising tghe audience that Trump would never be President? Ho, ho, ho.
The best marketer in national politics today, bar none and with no question is Kamala Harris. In two years, she will be eligible for social security…yet she is marketed as the fresh young face. She is representative of a regime that introduced the highest, sustained inflation for three years since Jimmy Carter two generations ago. Her regime had fundamentally open borders. She is not just representative of a failing state, but was DA for a fundamentally lawless city that has lost an extraordinary number of businesses with a filthy downtown and other excesses. She has supported mandatory gun buybacks, has supported defunding the police, is against fracking, has not only publicly condemned saying “Merry Christmas” but has said “How dare you say Merry Christmas”, and unaccountably, picked a ridiculous VP candidate over plentiful more conventional choices. GovTrack listed Kamala Harris and Walz as the two most liberal Senators in their last years as senators, and Harris has opportunistically walked back some of her more liberal positions.
Harris is a superb marketer in a general sense. But speaking as someone whose business is dominated by personal networking, her truly breathtaking skill is her ability to network. Her personal marketing profile, and ability to co-opt supporters was in full view during the ten hours between Biden giving up the nomination and Harris sewing up the nomination.
Within a week, Harris erased Trump’s polling lead. Kamala’s got the Obama vibe and momentum, and until she actually opens her mouth during a debate or a challenging interview, she’ll continue to have it.
Trump’s reaction, that of a spoiled, petulant child who didn’t get his way, was illuminating. He had Biden beat, no question. Not surprisingly, Pelosi and Obama engineered a coup (yes, that’s what it was), but I don’t think they thought Harris would be the candidate, I think they were expecting a mini-primary. They hadn’t reckoned with Harris’ marketing skills, both interpersonal and broad, coupled with Biden’s demi-Schadenfreude moment where he publicly backed Harris.
Trump should have pivoted quickly and easily. Instead, he’s preparing ground for protesting what he thinks will be a losing vote. Too bad. If he focused on the issues and hers and Biden’s track record, he could jump out to the lead again, especially given her appeal to independents, which is better than Biden’s. Trump needs to make a logical argument, an “Are you better off now than you were four years ago” type of argument.
The Reintroduction of Kamala Harris | TIME
Why Kamala Harris’s Politics Are So Hard to Pin Down – The Atlantic (archive.ph)
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Meh. It wasn’t a coup. Obviously it wasn’t really a very democratic process. There was no redo of the primary process or some version of that. But Biden had the delegates (and Harris was on the ticket when they won the delegates) and it was ultimately up to him. At most he was pressured, but was not forced to step away from the campaign.
Many Democrats, like myself, were terribly concerned he wouldn’t quit the race. Many others were hoping he would stay in the race and argued passionately with me when I said he needed to step aside.
Regardless, Biden knew he didn’t have to step away and apparently pushed back against the idea quite strongly for several weeks. I think he thought he wasn’t doing quite as badly as others did. And I think he was concerned Harris or any other candidate might have trouble beating Trump. And after the debate he wanted to try to bounce back and show the country it was just one bad night and that he still had what it took. But obviously he did not.
It took some time for the polls and poll averages to catch up, and Biden didn’t lose as much support as many, like myself, expected right away. So insiders (e.g., Pelosi) had to show him a lot of polling and other data to c0nvince him it was a hopeless case. They eventually convinced him, but it was never a sure thing and certainly not a coup.
I’m sure after the election is over Frontline or some other venue will do a documentary about it and I suspect it will show that Biden came very close to staying in.
NO MALARKEY
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What a way to pick a president. And yes, it was a coup. Sadly, Pelosi et al have lost so much tough with reality, they discounted Giggles. With the media in full throat behind her, it was fait accompli. And the county is stuck with her. Barack is crying in his corn flakes that Michelle didn’t get a shot, giving him another 8 years.
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You buy into the conspiracy that Michelle Obama was going to replace Biden? The only person I heard touting that was Rosanne Barr.
The rumor was that Barack HUSSEIN Obama probably wanted another candidate or at least some Kind of quick open primary. But Michelle Obama famously hates politics. There was no way she would have entertained anything like that.
Harris would not have been my first choice. Quite low on my list, actually. But still far preferable to both Biden and the deranged Republican candidate.
NO MALARKEY
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Here’s the Merriam-Webster definition of a coup:
a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics and especially the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group : coup d’état
It was sudden. It was decisive. It was an exercise of force. It was an alteration of a future government, based upon the existing government.
Was it violent? Not that I know of, and it depends on how you define/defend violence. Biden was threatened with the 25th amendment, we know this. No one was going to hit, stab or shoot him, they were just going to eliminate him from the role that he earned and the nomination that he earned.
I would also throw in that Biden was profoundly unwilling to give up the nomination and succumbed to the multiple pressures upon him.
Let’s not be as dishonest as Trump can certainly be (and other politicians, including Biden). It was a coup.
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You’re really trying to stretch the definition of a coup.
A coup typically involves the illegal or forceful removal of a government or leader, often through military action or other coercive means. Political pressure, on the other hand, may lead a candidate to withdraw voluntarily, but it does not involve the illegitimate seizure of power that defines a coup. Political pressures happen all the time in democracies.
A more appropriate use of the term “coup” would be applied to Trump’s fake elector scheme, when he tried to fraudulently send fake electors from several swing states in for certification. Trump tried to replace Biden as the winner and seize power for another four years through illegal means. Mike Pence didn’t go along with it, fortunately, but that was the most recent attempted coup in modern U.S. history.
NO MALARKEY
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Joe Biden, recipient of 14 million votes in legitimately conducted Democratic primaries, was running against Donald Trump for the second time.
Democratic kingmakers Pelosi, Obama, Clinton, Schumer and Jeffries decided they didn’t want Biden, so they circumvented the will of 14 million voters to coronate fringe leftist Kamala Harris, recipient of a grand total 129 votes in the 2020 presidential primaries, a little more than 81 million shy of Joe Biden.
So well-heeled Democrats, responding to wealthy Power Democrats (Hollyweird, Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Academia) put on a full-court press, threatening Biden with a 25th Amendment removal. Biden “volunteered” to step down in favor of an individual (who literally didn’t receive a single 2024 Presidential vote) in the same way that I “volunteered” to give up my wallet to a man who stuck a gun in my face.
Or, as non-Republican Maureen Dowd of the New York Times put it in her headline:
The Dems are Delighted, but a Coup is Still a Coup
Opinion | The Dems Are Delighted. But a Coup Is Still a Coup. – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
If Biden is so out of it that he can’t run for President, then why is he allowed to stay in office for six months? Why is he speaking at the convention?
It was a forceful elimination of a duly elected candidate for a major political party who was forced to step down in favor of an individual with literally zero votes by a very small cabal of powerful politicians.
It. Was. A. Coup.
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Party leaders whitewashed the coup by ornately extolling Biden.
After Biden Bloodletting, Dems Just Want to Have Fun! – DNyuz
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You’re seriously reaching Mick. Nobody took that Dowd commentary seriously.
The Democratic Party is a private organization that can determine who they want to run for President. They (along with the Republican Party) spent decades choosing candidates in smoke filled rooms. They can award delegates however they see fit. In any case, to reiterate, the did not force Biden to step down. He did it voluntarily. If he felt it was a coup he can surely speak up and say so. But instead he has offered his support for Harris and is going to be speaking at the convention.
Have some intellectual honesty and consistency. You all keep clamoring how Biden is unfit. So he finally steps aside and now you’re claiming it’s a coup. Which is it? If he’s unfit, then he shouldn’t be running. And as I said in another comment, I am not going to argue with you guys if you want to claim he’s unfit. Fine. Maybe he should step down as President too. WTF do I care. Either way it’s not a coup. Biden stepped away from the campaign voluntarily; the other potential candidates endorsed Harris; nobody else decided to run against her; the delegates decided to support Harris; Biden supported Harris.
The only reason to pretend it’s a coup is to take away from the actual coup from 2020 committed by Trump. It’s projection as usual. Trump literally tried to fraudulently subvert the will of the entire American voting public — 160M people or something like that — and not a peep out of any of you about it in four years (did I miss it?). The fake outrage over Biden is unbelievable. You want me to believe you’re so concerned about how Democrats treated Biden because it was unfair to the voters or some horse-sh!t, but Trump sending fake electors from seven states — pretending they were the lawful representatives of their states — doesn’t even elicit a comment, when in fact it is disqualifying. Some of you are still going to vote for that traitor (maybe not you Mick; I assume you have more sense than that).
NO MALARKEY
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Well, this is clearly trolling, but it is pretty funny. I do long for the days when the media would put out stories saying, “Taylor Swift’s silence is deafening.” Journalists are pack animals, demanding intellectual conformity and validation of their own beliefs.
https://x.com/KonstantinKisin/status/1825904943418503596
I have a theory that journalists are mostly failed lawyers and people who couldn’t hack the “rigors” of political science. They appeal to authority in a way that validates their points, or engage in and repeat mind reading, while ignoring actual evidence.
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Trump A.I.’d it.
I agree rogpodge. Even I don’t think Trump is dumb enough (though, just barely) to believe he was endorsed by Swift. But some of his cult members do believe it.
Funny that he keeps retweeting A.I. images, though, after claiming the use of A.I. images is disqualifying and a form of “cheating”:
“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d it,‘” the former president wrote in a furious Truth Social post. “She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!”
Projection, as usual. I should have known he would be posting A.I. images as soon as he wrote that. My bad.
NO MALARKEY
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