Josh Marshall
I got another note from TPM Reader NS this morning. He expresses rightful frustration with the way that elite media continues to focus on Trump’s recent antics as an extended tantrum or flawed strategy when it is much more appropriately seen as a mental and cognitive state which is manifestly unfit for holding public office. Trump is also not morally fit for office. But that’s different, and that’s always been the case. The normal rejoinder is that Trump’s mental fitness is sort of irrelevant since most of us already know that and his supporters don’t care. Those conclusions are mostly true as far as it goes. But it represents a failure of journalistic logic which is remarkably widespread in media today. Put simply, that reasoning is mainly above the pay grade of journalism. It’s not the job of journalism to adjust the editorial choices or insights of daily news coverage based on driving electoral or public opinion outcomes. It’s to cover the news. There’s no single way to cover the news and no single, objective version of what constitutes the news. But that reasoning about impact is not an appropriate one and it is deeply damaging to journalism in myriad ways.
Here’s NS …
Read MoreI got an email last night from a reporter doing a piece on Ezra Klein and his prominence in Democratic politics. They asked me how I felt my own piece criticizing his Thunderdome primary proposal held up given recent events and whether I saw Klein’s arguments differently now. It was an interesting question. So I thought I’d share with you what I wrote. I’m not identifying the journalist or the publication. Because I’m not trying to get a jump on them or get in the way of their piece. I’m doing it because it’s a good and interesting question. I took some time to write out a response and I thought you might be interested in seeing it.
Here it is.
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Political Media’s Faux-Wonk Heel Turn 
They probably would have gotten to it on their own. But I think TPM Reader NR is right about the trajectory here.
Read MoreThere’s an added component to your piece today on the media’s call for Harris to do interviews and put forward policies — the demand was a Republican demand first, and the media picked it up. Reporters didn’t come to this in some collective epiphany that they wanted more from the Harris campaign, but instead heard Trump and Vance and their surrogates claiming Harrs was too weak or unprepared or stupid to handle a presser. It is, once again, the media being led around by the right wing on what’s important and not important.
Kamala, A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside an Enigma, Many People are Saying
TPM Reader KJ sent me this in response to yesterday’s Backchannel. At first I thought these might be made up headlines. But they’re each real. I linked them.
It’s fun to split screen this email with today’s headlines:
The New York Times: Harris Is Set to Lay Out an Economic Message Light on Detail
The Hill: Harris is trying to run a no-substance campaign. Does she believe in anything?
The Washington Post: Opinion | Does Harris need a serious policy agenda? Only if she wants to win.
I’ve come at this debate in my head from a bunch different directions over the last few days. I gave my overarching view in yesterday’s Backchannel. But there are so many different dimensions to it. Kate and I knocked several of them around in today’s podcast. I actually got in a minor spat today with a reporter who I’d dinged for an article description which presented Harris as a sort mystery candidate verging on a Manchurian Candidate, with unknown views and barely detailed ambitions. Are we kidding with all of this?
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What To Make of the Polls
This is a post not so much focused on the news of the moment but one in response to a question I get a lot. It’s also a post I’ve wanted to do because I’ll be able to refer back to it as we go forward through the final sprint of the campaign. The question is a really basic one: Given what happened in 2016 and 2020, how much confidence can we have that the current polls are giving us an accurate or realistic picture of the current campaign?
Let me deal briefly with what are important but mostly obvious caveats. Polls, or really poll averages, are almost never exactly right and not infrequently they suffer from systemic error. So can we rely on them? No. That would be silly. Most of the time they are fairly accurate predictors of election outcomes. But in close races, a “normal” polling miss of a point or two can change the result. But what people who ask me this question are really asking is whether we should expect that polls are underestimating Trump’s strength as they did in 2016 and 2020.
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Harris’ Campaign Is Working—Get Used to It
I’m reading through a Puck newsletter, sent out under the heading “The Vibes Election.” Some of this is similar to what I discussed in yesterday’s Backchannel — Happy v. Mad, etc. But most of it zeroes in on the idea that Harris’ campaign is all vibes and no substance, a sugar high, something that can’t last. Will it be enough to carry her to Election Day? Here’s one snippet.
Read MorePut another way: Vibes, baby! Harris has not outlined any specific economic agenda, speaking only in generic terms about corporate greed, standing with labor unions, protecting Social Security and Obamacare, and fighting for the middle class. She is framing the election simply as “the choice about what direction this country will go in”—conveying an agreeable set of center-left values against Trump rather than a 10-point plan for this or a white paper for that.
Team Happy vs Team Mad
I’m not the first to note this. I saw a headline somewhere over the weekend that the campaign had reset to one between the Happy Tribe and the Angry Tribe. It’s always reductive to try to capture the vast complexity of two national campaigns in a simple catch phrase or binary opposition. But those broad descriptions can capture realities that transcend the details; they are often the takeaway for those watching only at a distance.
It doesn’t take much imagination to think of Trump and the MAGA movement as the Angry Tribe. I mean, they’ve always been Team Angry, or maybe Team Grievance or Team Vengeance. But what about the Harris campaign and the earlier Biden campaign? The Biden campaign, which I supported greatly, was not a happy tribe. I don’t mean that as a criticism. Happy isn’t the only or most important part of a political campaign. Especially when there’s quite a lot not to be happy about.
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