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Good Friday Morning! Except for Gen Z., I had a true-blue “get off my lawn” moment this week. The New York Post had this headline this week: “Gen Z is glamorizing office culture after facing the isolation of remote work: ‘Like being in school again'” After spending eight years in an open office environment, I have no intention of going back. I need them to start glamorizing something else… literally anything else. Bring back ch-ch-ch-chia pets, not office work.
In unrelated dumb news, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear tried to take a jab at J.D. Vance this week. Beshear is getting talked up as a possible VP contender for Kamala Harris. Beshear tried mocking Vance’s affinity for Diet Mt. Dew. A day later, Beshear issued a public apology at a podium, complete with the patented “politician contrite face” for mocking drinkers of Diet Mt. Dew. As all top campaign officials know, you don’t anger the Mt. Dew voting bloc. They’re critical to winning.
You can’t make anything up about this election cycle.
Biden’s out, the biggest news of the week. We’ll dive into all the repercussions below. Links will follow.
Quick Hits:
- The Economist ran an important piece on how China is stockpiling various commodities like grain, natural gas, oil, rare earth minerals, and more. It’s The Economist’s view that China’s plans are aimed at an eventual war footing. Because China has so many reliances with other world powers on supplying itself, if war were to break out, complete with embargoes, China would face immediate problems – most notably feeding its own people. If Xi truly does view Taiwan as non-negotiable with war on the horizon, he has a limited time to get there with demographic collapse on the horizon. China is also eyeing the possibility of another Trump term. If Trump enters office and brings back the tariffs, it would cripple China’s ability to continue stockpiling what it needs. Biden has done little to slow China in this respect. COVID-19 is the only real deterrence China has faced. Putin spent many years stockpiling reserves of everything before launching a war in Ukraine. It’s time to view China as taking an early but eerily similar path with Taiwan as its target. The critical component, whoever is in office next, pushes China hard and prevents it from achieving these stockpiles.
- With Kamala Harris taking over the reins, streaming of the HBO series Veep surged 358%, as the ascent of Harris tracks closely with that comedy starring Julia Louis-Dreyfuss. You’re not living in an Aaron Sorkin “West Wing” episode. This is an episode of Veep. Here’s how unrealistic The West Wing is – the day Biden dropped out, The New York Times published an op-ed by Aaron Sorkin in which he told Democrats to kick Biden and Harris off the ticket and replace them with… Mitt Romney (he backtracked that in less than 24 hours). Fortunately, Americans are getting a real-life reminder: all American politics is like the comedy Veep, not The West Wing. We’re a comedy, not a 90s drama (Sorkin’s other monstrosity, The Newsroom, starring Jeff Bridges, is a larger pile of flaming garbage). The internet is already comparing Harris with Louis-Dreyfuss’s character giving us hilarious results.
- The implosion of Bud Light continues. The Anheuser-Busch InBev-owned beer is now the third-selling beer brand in the world. Modelo Especial remains in first place, followed by Michelob Ultra. The Dylan Mulvaney controversy tanked the brand in April of last year. It still hasn’t recovered, and sales are slipping. The marketing team tried to lean into sports after that with special promotions, but not even the NFL and everything else they threw in ads could save Bud Light’s fall from grace. Many Wall Street analysts have suggested that Bud Light lost an entire generation, which looks like an accurate assessment.
- A new study examines the impact of AI-based learning tools on human learning. ChatGPT rolled out some specific tutoring schools for schoolrooms. They compared three groups of children: one group had no AI tutor, one used the ChatGPT base model to learn, and the third used ChatGPT’s Tutor. They used math as the subject to test. The authors found substantial performance increases, but students performed worse when teachers removed the AI tool. Here’s the summary from the abstract: “[O]ur results show that access to GPT-4 significantly improves performance (48% improvement for GPT Base and 127% for GPT Tutor). However, we additionally find that when access is subsequently taken away, students actually perform worse than those who never had access (17% reduction for GPT Base). That is, access to GPT-4 can harm educational outcomes. These negative learning effects are largely mitigated by the safeguards included in GPT Tutor. Our results suggest that students attempt to use GPT-4 as a “crutch” during practice problem sessions, and when successful, perform worse on their own. Thus, to maintain long-term productivity, we must be cautious when deploying generative AI to ensure humans continue to learn critical skills.” More studies will be conducted, but this early result confirms many of my priors when looking at the subject.
Where you can find me this week
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Horse Race Ep. 006: Kamala Harris vs Donald Trump vs RFK. Jr. – Biden OUT | Election Map Projection
Where Is Joe Biden? America Needs Answers – Conservative Institute
Did Kamala Harris Reset The Race? Data Says No – Conservative Institute
Pro-Hamas Mobs Should Be Cleared Out By Force – Conservative Institute
Biden Out, Harris In, and Trump Unleashes the War Chest
Biden is out. He gave an 11-minute speech from the Oval Office saying he wasn’t running again. In that speech, he didn’t say why he was dropping out; he claimed to be pursuing an agenda that was impossible to fulfill in six months and painted Trump and Republicans as evil forces in America.
The only interesting thing he said in the speech was the following paragraph:
You know, in recent weeks, it’s become clear to me that I needed to unite my party in this critical endeavor. I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future all merited a second term, but nothing — nothing — can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition.
The “uniting the party” line is interesting because it describes the disarray we’ve all witnessed. He then goes on to say he deserves a second term. If true, he should still be running. But he isn’t, which says the only reason he’s dropping out, by his own admission, is that his party demands it.
It was a sad speech. Biden looked hollow and like he could barely make it through it. He stumbled through parts of it. It’s hard to look at Biden and think he’s well.
It’s striking to compare Biden’s limited speech with Lyndon Johnson’s in 1968, which lasted 40 minutes, or Ronald Reagan’s farewell address from the Oval Office in 1989, which lasted a little over 21 minutes. Biden looks even weaker in comparison to both men—and these are prepared remarks.
The DailyMail had a journalist in both the reporter pool and on Air Force One when it was suddenly announced last Wednesday that Biden had COVID and was headed back home to Delaware. It’s a strange piece. She describes him as “deathly pale,” and Secret Service rushing Biden out of Vegas and back home.
It is morbid to consider, but betting markets only give Biden a 70% chance to finish his term. We’re talking six months. During the Vegas reporting and his stepping-down speech, that dropped to 60% odds. Nate Silver said of this, “Polymarket traders think there’s a ~40% chance [Biden] doesn’t complete his term, IDK which side of that bet I’d take, but I don’t think they’re just going to be able to put this question to rest and that’s a risk factor for Democrats.”
It’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that Biden faces a high mortality rate from here on out because he’s lost everything. His party betrayed him, and every Democratic friend that he served with (absent a few) turned on him and viewed him as the enemy. Now they lie and claim he’s a hero. Biden has wanted the Presidency his entire life and watched it snatched away from him. These events are challenging for anyone, let alone a man at Biden’s age and health condition.
Moving on to Kamala Harris…
Last week, I highlighted Mark Halperin’s reporting:
BREAKING NEWS: Multiples sources outline the apparent state of play on Biden at this time:
* plans to announce withdrawal from nomination as early as this weekend, with Sunday most likely
* Jon Meacham polishing up remarks
* Biden with NOT resign the Presidency
* Biden will NOT endorse Harris
* open convention with Harris and about 3 others
* super delegates will not be allowed to vote on 1st ballot
* Harris is vetting at least four possible running mates, including Andy Beshear and possibly Shapiro
Here’s what happened: Biden dropped out Sunday, Jon Meacham DID help write Biden’s Oval Office remarks (CNN), Biden’s initial letter did not endorse Harris, and the Harris VP list includes Beshear and Shapiro, with others. Biden reversed the Harris endorsement in a follow-up tweet. The only thing I seriously questioned out of that reporting was the open convention and delegate rules. I doubted that was decided.
With Halperin being that accurate, it’s not believable that Biden only decided to drop out on Saturday, as most outlets have described. The decision was set well before that. Halperin also reported that Pelosi was exerting a tremendous pressure campaign against Biden to push him out, threatening that things would get much worse and more embarrassing if Biden got indecisive or stubborn after Sunday.
Halperin was most wrong on the convention angle. For weeks, I’d pointed out that Biden/the DNC was trying to push through the nomination earlier than necessary to settle it before the convention. Now, instead of doing that for Biden, they’re pushing the Harris nomination through via this process, not Biden. Those same people expect Harris to be the official nominee by August 7 instead of at the convention. The former Biden campaign team is whipping delegates into line for Harris.
There will be no open convention. Democrats are giving Harris a coronation and whipping the media into a frenzy over that. Kamala Harris, who has never received a vote in a Democratic presidential primary, is about to get a coronation from her party to replace Joe Biden. There is an assumption here that Democratic voters will fall in line. There’s scant evidence of that (and also why you’re watching liberal pundits blast anyone not falling in line behind Harris – because there was never a choice; people must be made to believe they’d have chosen Harris regardless).
From here, there is no plan. Harris took on Biden’s campaign team and is working on adding some major Obama-era players like David Plouffe. But they’ve got just over 100 days to get Harris into campaign-ready shape to take on Trump. The Harris campaign also has to reverse her numbers, get the Democratic base to fall in line, and fix the trajectory for Biden/Democrats this fall.
Trump, for his part, is wasting no time. Starting on Monday, the day after Biden announced he was stepping down, the Trump super-PAC launched a massive ad blitz against Kamala Harris. Trump’s team is currently outspending Harris/Democrats 25-1 on television and radio airwaves (Trump dropped $68 million to the Democrat’s $2.6 million).
Trump’s campaign has spent very little so far on the campaign – in fairness, he hasn’t had to. A Trump campaign memo leaked showed that his team started looking seriously at the prospects of Biden leaving the race in May. Trump effectively waited until Democrats decided on whether it would be Biden and then launched a full broadside once that question got answered. It was a brilliant move. This is the most disciplined campaign Trump has ever run, and it’s stunning to see after 2016 and 2020.
The two main avenues of attack on Harris are simple: 1) She helped cover up Biden’s decline (a recent YouGov poll found that 68% of voters said Harris held “a great deal” of blame for covering up Biden’s decline, 96% put blame of some kind on her; only 4% said she had none at all), and 2) She’s a San Francisco radical. Her stances on the border and more will be fair game. As Harris/Democrats are building the new campaign, Trump plans to ruthlessly define her on these terms so that Democrats will be severely behind by the time we hit Labor Day.
My expectations moving forward: I expect Harris to get a polling boost against Trump and her favorability rating to get a bump. Democrats will get a boost from nominating her, the VP pick, and the convention. After that, this halo period will fade, and we’ll move into the fall with gravity pulling Harris back down.
Looking at the RealClearPolitics average, Trump’s polling has had two recent dips: the State of the Union and the conviction news cycle. He bounced back from both. Trump’s polling always works its way back to 47%, and he’s recently been hitting 48% in the averages. If his support drifts up towards the end of the race like in 2016 and 2020, taking the popular vote is within reach.
To win, Harris needs to get closer to leading the national polls by four points and show a decisive shift towards Democrats in the battlegrounds. It’s early, but neither of those is really there. Harris is displaying similar numbers to Biden pre-debate—and Biden was losing pre-debate. Harris just doesn’t carry the immediate baggage of failing the debate and getting torn apart by her party in the aftermath.
Some of Trump’s advantage will likely wane, too. He’s undoubtedly enjoying a boost in favorability from the convention and the assassination attempt. But he was gaining a growing lead on Biden well before those events.
Switching out Biden for Harris increases the uncertainty in forecasting this race. This has never happened before; Democrats do not have a clear plan, and everyone involved is deeply unpopular by historical standards. Can Harris win? Yes. It’s unclear what her exact electoral path is. Still, Democrats have removed the albatross that was Biden’s slipping age and health.
The question is, can Democrats remove Biden entirely? If Biden deteriorates further or Harris’ role in covering up for Biden becomes a hot-button issue, Harris may have to deal with it herself. We may have a more uncertain path to November, but the outcome could still be the same. There’s a gravity to this race, and the fundamentals are pulling us towards a Trump advantage. Will it hold? TBD.
Links of the week
Republicans Should Expect Harris To Make It a Closer Race – Sean Trende, RealClearPolitics
We Have No Idea What Will Come Next – John Podhoretz, Commentary
Biden Answers One Question Amid Screaming Chaos As Reporters Ushered Out Of Oval Office – Mediaite
The Era of the Noble Lie: Why do we have a crisis of trust? Because the experts keep lying. Joe Biden is only the latest example. – Bari Weiss, The Free Press
The Illusion of Party Unity in the Democratic Party: Deference to the leadership of the Democratic Party has come at much too high a price – Norman Solomon, The Nation
The Democratic Party No Longer Does Democracy – Louis Conte, The Kennedy Beacon
If Kamala Harris Loses, Democrats Will Have To Answer Questions About Denying A Primary Process – Katie Hunt, CNN
Biden should have given this speech a year ago: The president’s Oval Office address was a patriotic rallying cry. But it would have been more impactful had he voluntarily decided not to seek re-election sooner. – Anthony Fisher, MSNBC
On Secret Service’s Watch, Palestinian Activists Release Maggots Into Bibi’s Hotel: Group behind attack at Watergate Hotel has alleged ties to Hamas – Washington Free Beacon
Democrat Lawmakers Receive Talking Points On How To Discuss Kamala Harris’ Role At The Border – Outkick
Pennsylvania Democrats give mixed response to idea of Harris as nominee – Salena Zito, Washington Examiner
Kamala Harris’s Michael Dukakis moment – James Piereson, The New Criterion
Obama doesn’t believe Kamala Harris can beat Trump, which is why he hasn’t endorsed her: sources – NYPost
Inside Kamala Harris’s Plan To Make Biden’s Unpopular EV Mandate Even More Aggressive: Swing-state voters disapprove of EV mandate policies by wide margins – The Washington Free Beacon
NBC’s Steve Kornacki: Idea That Kamala Harris Will Do Better Than Biden Is “Based More On Hope” Than Any Numbers – RealClearPolitics
Cost-of-Living Crisis Hits Sales of Food, Cars, Luxury Goods – Bloomberg
A $1 million starter home? It’s the norm in 237 cities – Yahoo Finance
Kids? A Growing Number of Americans Say, ‘No Thanks.’ – NYTimes
Local cops refusing to share info with FBI as agency suffers ‘crisis of confidence’ with DEI hires, damning whistleblower report reveals – Miranda Devine, NYPost
A Turning Point in the U.S.-Iran Shadow War? – Seth Mandel, Commentary
X/Twitter Thread(s) of the week
Neil Postman’s point on Huxley vs Orwell.
Meet Sir Indiana Bones, the cat that lives in a museum.
Sen. Chris Murphy backpedaling hard on defending antisemitic protesters.
Satire of the week
‘Really, Really, Really Happy For You, Kamala,’ Says Hillary Clinton, Not Letting Go Of Handshake – Onion
Kamala Harris Distances Herself From Kamala Harris – Babylon Bee
‘We Applaud Caesar For Doing The Right Thing And Stepping Down,’ Says Senator Holding Bloody Knife – Babylon Bee
Aides Struggling To Figure Out How To Break The News To Biden That He Dropped Out – Babylon Bee
‘I Practice Intermittent Fasting,’ Says Woman Who Ran Out of Her Favorite Snacks and Went to Bed Early – Reductress
Biden Touts Mental Acuity By Releasing Successfully Completed “Can You Spot The Difference?” Results From Highlights Magazine – The Hard Times
Kamala Harris Offers to Test Biden’s Mental Acuity by Having Him Play “A Simple Little Maze Game” – The Hard Drive
“Sorry, I Butt-Dialled The Emergency Shutdown Code” Microsoft CEO – Waterford Whispers News
Thanks for reading!