Thursday, August 15, 2024

I'm sure there's a "You Can't Go Home Again" joke in there somewhere

I'm not going to talk about crowd sizes as an indicator of support or campaign momentum. Commentators and analysts have spent too much time on that already, but Donald Trump's recent North Carolina speech does nicely dovetail with a couple of at work ongoing threads.

As we observed earlier, the Trump campaign has been making some truly bizarre decisions given where we are in the election. From my post a couple of days ago:

Is there any precedent for a non-incumbent candidate, slightly behind in the polls and badly outfunded, deciding to scale back campaigning to a trickle? Trump's "explanation" was two transparent lies with a nonsensical statement in the middle. Assuming "letting their convention go through" means minimal campaign appearances, what strategic reason could he have in mind?
Yesterday's hastily called rally might have been an attempt to quell the controversy, but it may have ended up raising more questions.

Laura Hackett writing for Blue Ridge Public Radio:

The City of Asheville confirmed receipt of a $82,247.60 payment from the Trump campaign, ahead of the former president’s Wednesday campaign event in Asheville.

The deposit will cover a two-day rental of the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium, a city-owned building that’s part of the Harrah’s Cherokee Center complex in downtown Asheville. The auditorium is the smaller of the complex’s two venues, with a maximum seating capacity of 2,431, according to the venue website.

...

The Trump campaign first contacted the venue on August 8, Miller said. The contract was drawn up the next day. Because of the “last minute” nature of the request, the venue required organizers to provide payment in full prior to the event, per the Harrah’s Cherokee Center’s booking policy.

Trump campaign officials did not respond immediately to multiple requests for comment.

...

In other cities, including El Paso, Texas, Conway, South Carolina and several places in Montana, the Trump campaign has outstanding invoices. The City of El Paso has one of the largest outstanding invoices, alleging that the Trump campaign owes them more than $500,000 in public safety, maintenance and transit costs associated with a 2019 campaign visit, KTSM reported.


The issue here isn't crowd size itself. We'll never know how many people showed up since the event apparently sold out. The question this rally raises is why choose such a small venue, particularly in a reddish swing state where supporters should be easy to find? There is already plenty of speculation online – – I'm not going to add to it – – but it is definitely odd behavior and it is consistent with the curious scaled-back approach we've been talking about.




 

On a related note, why have most of JD Vance's speaking appearances been so small and badly organized? Vance is a historically unpopular vice presidential nominee, but he's not that unpopular. There is a significant slice of this country that is very much in agreement with his positions and which actually likes the man. Events like we have been seeing suggest there's something seriously wrong with this campaign.



Per year.



The North Carolina rally also fits in with our ongoing thread about how the establishment press in general and the New York Times in particular have been framing the Trump campaign. Even such sober and nonpartisan journalists as Kai Ryssdal have been rolling their eyes at these headlines.



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Wednesday, August 14, 2024

The New York Time's Point Shaving Scheme

  It all comes down to that 93%.


I wrote this (or at least the first draft of this) back in May with the intention of getting around to it one of these days. This seems to be an appropriate time.

Back in 2018 Amy Chozick wrote an essential article on the press's handling of the Clinton email leak. It was also, as far as I can tell, the only example of anyone from the New York Times taking any responsibility for what went wrong.

I figured that if anyone knew whom Mrs. Clinton was referring to with that insidious “they” that, like some invisible army of adversaries (real and imagined), [I'd say more real than imagined. -- MP] wielded its collective power and caused her to lose the most winnable presidential election in modern history, it was me.

They were the vast-right wing conspiracy. They were the patriarchy that could never let an ambitious former first lady finally shatter “that highest, hardest glass ceiling.” They were the people of Wisconsin and James Comey. They were white suburban women who would rather vote for a man who bragged about sexual assault than a woman who seemed an affront to who they were.

And yes, they were political reporters (“big egos and no brains,” she called us) hounding her about her emails and transfixed by the spectacle of the first reality TV show candidate.

It’s dizzying to realize that without even knowing it, you’ve ended up on the wrong side of history. Months after the election, every time I heard the words “Russia” and “collude,” this realization swirled in my head, enveloping everything.

 ...

 Editors and reporters huddled to discuss how to handle the emails. Everyone agreed that since the emails were already out there — and of importance to voters — it was The Times’s job to “confirm” and “contextualize” them. I didn’t argue that it appeared the emails were stolen by a hostile foreign government that had staged an attack on our electoral system. I didn’t push to hold off on publishing them until we could have a less harried discussion. I didn’t raise the possibility that we’d become puppets in Vladimir Putin’s master plan. I chose the byline.

...

A few weeks before Election Day, I was stuck in my cubicle poring over John Podesta’s emails. I wanted to be on the road. “I just feel like the election isn’t happening in my cubicle,” I said. “But it’s over,” an editor replied, reminding me that the Times’s Upshot election model gave Mrs. Clinton a 93 percent chance of winning. The ominous “they” who would keep the glass ceiling intact didn’t look that powerful then.

In addition to Amy Chozick's article, I've read accounts of the NYT's handling of 2016 from the former executive editor, the current executive editor, the former opinion editor, and the publisher. Out of all of these it appears that Chozick was the only one who came out of this with the big takeaway that it was a mistake to knowingly help the Russian government influence a presidential election. All of the rest, sometimes in very much these words, came away with the conclusion that they looked bad for underestimating Trump, and that the most important thing going forward was to avoid the appearance of anti-Republican bias.

The essential background here is the relationship between Hillary Clinton and the national press corps in general and with the New York Times in particular. I was living in Arkansas for almost all of the 90s and had the opportunity to observe the whole ugly affair up close. Driven by class bigotry, regional prejudice, and a then still common desire to balance the scales by going after a major Democratic scandal the way the press had gone after Watergate and Iran contra (based on public comments and a private conversation I had with a journalist who was there, this was very much a thing in newsrooms and editorial meetings of the 90s and early 2000s).

The resulting coverage was uniformly ugly and often blatantly unprofessional and much of the press corps never got past the idea of poor white trash in the White House, but Bill Clinton's charm and popularity tended to blunt the criticism. (It didn't hurt that the man was fun to cover.) The real viciousness was saved for Al Gore and, thanks to a generous helping of misogyny, Hillary. To give you an idea of the tone, Spy magazine published issues with one mock-up photo of her as a dominatrix and another where she appeared to have a penis and it was all dismissed as good clean fun.

Hillary's response to this was, under the circumstances, amazingly civil and professional, but there was always an understandable element of distance and distrust. To their credit, an increasing number of these critics came to question their own roles in the bullying, but it wasn't until the advent of Donald Trump that the majority stepped back and took a hard look at their own biases.

The notable holdout was the New York Times.  While papers like the Washington Post loudly and publicly called for a re-examination of past practices, especially regarding Hillary Clinton, the NYT not only refused to admit the possibility that anything they'd done in the past had been wrong; they actually doubled down.

This is where the point shaving analogy comes into play. In sports and politics, the general public mainly cares about wins and losses. It is only a relatively small group that cares about the specific score. Throwing a game will make more people upset and will attract more scrutiny than will simply keeping the lead down a little. You can get away with missing a few shots if you know you are still going to win.

The New York Times had an opportunity to indulge its worst impulses because everyone knew Hillary  was going to win. (Well, not everybody. Nate Silver actually predicted a real possibility of a Trump victory, but unfortunately the editors of the NYT were listening to the wrong Nate.) The paper could pay back longtime personal grudges and give its institutional misogyny free reign and no one would care. It could bury two out of every three Trump scandals, run ominous non-stories about Hillary, even knowingly play along with an obvious Russian scheme to influence the election, and as long as their own forecasts were correct, they would not only avoid any consequences; they would be able to puff out their chest and brag about speaking truth to power.

They thought they had a 93% chance of getting away clean. They were wrong. We can debate whether it would have made a difference. If the New York Times had vigorously investigated Trump, given proportional treatment to negative stories about Clinton without the ominous clouds and shadows framing, not published dubious Steve Bannon funded "research," or given heavy coverage to what they knew at the time to be a Russian effort to influence the election, would the outcome have been different? We can never know for certain. All we can say is that the paper of record put us at risk and something bad did happen and as long as they continue to do so, we need to hold them responsible.

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Tuesday, August 13, 2024

The New York Times goes to its happy (Trumpless) place

Looks like I was a bit premature suggesting that the Overton window was moving at the New York Times.

We've already established that New York Times and the considerable segment of the establishment press that follows its lead would rather not talk about Donald Trump at all, so it's not that surprising to see his name omitted from the front page of Monday's paper and largely absent from the website.



Instead, the big stories are a deep dive into Tim Walz's relationship with China and a borderline nonstory about African-American men supporting Kamala Harris. Both are the sort of articles you would expect to see on the proverbial slow news day, which is strange since the weekend was rather eventful on the political front.

There is certainly more say about Trump's press conference and its aftermath, including the fact that he threatened to sue the New York Times for pointing out one of his fabrications. Surely the GOP nominee for president averaging over two and a half misstatements, exaggerations and outright lies per minute is newsworthy.


 

Then there are radical, offensive, and just plain crazy statements Trump made over the weekend. Normally, a candidate suggesting that he would abolish Fed independence would make the front page.




Of course, in terms of shock value, that pails next to the accusation that the Harris campaign with the apparent cooperation of dozens in the press mounted a massive conspiracy to fake a rally attended by thousands of supporters. This one was so unhinged that even Nicholas Kristof suggested it was time to start discussing Trump's mental health.





The weekend also saw major breaking news about project 2025. How was that not more important than the mystery of black men supporting Harris?



And there was a hacking scandal:








Perhaps the biggest news of the campaign was Trump's "quiet quitting."

And remember, that appearance was in Montana. You'd have to go all the way back to Atlanta to find him campaigning in a swing state.




Is there any precedent for a non-incumbent candidate, slightly behind in the polls and badly outfunded, deciding to scale back campaigning to a trickle? Trump's "explanation" was two transparent lies with a nonsensical statement in the middle. Assuming "letting their convention go through" means minimal campaign appearances, what strategic reason could he have in mind? 

Even the far right cable channel the Blaze was talking about this.

 

Not, however, the New York Times.

The NYT has never shown any reluctance to speculate in the absence of facts, and all too often present those speculations as facts. This continues to make up a large part of discussion of Biden and Harris. How can they not do the same when faced with far more bizarre behaviors and credibility-straining explanations of this suspension of conventional campaigning? Is he not physically up to the strain of more than one appearance a week? Is he afraid of dwindling crowds and embarrassing comparisons to Harris? Are his handlers trying to keep him from doing damage? Is his history of stiffing cities for the bill catching up with him? Does anyone have any other ideas?

If would be great if the paper of record did some actual reporting on this (something even I will admit is still their real strength), but simply acknowledging something strange was going on would be a step forward.

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Monday, August 12, 2024

I got really annoyed at Ross Douthat this weekend and things got a little heated (and went a bit viral)

There are subtle but definite signs that the internal Overton window at the New York Times may be shifting. A news piece over the weekend almost addressed some of Donald Trump's more erratic behavior and Nicholas Kristof (one of the well-established old guard), in reaction to a particularly unhinged statement, actually suggested it was time to start discussing Donald Trump's cognitive fitness.

I feel a bit sorry for Ross Douthat, who appears to have been a bit slow to pick up on the shift in the wind coming from the editorial offices. When this hit me, I thought about John Kerry's line about being the last casualty of a mistake. Fortunately, in this case, it's a failed narrative and not a failed war, and the wounds are all reputational.



For an example of Douthat making an ass of himself on this, here's a case in point we discussed previously.

[Emphasis added]

Ross Douthat: It’s a mistake to go all in on Harris, obviously, because she’s still the exceptionally weak candidate whose weaknesses made President Biden so loath to quit the field for her. [Anyone who thinks Ross Douthat has special insights into these decision making processes please raise your hand and slap yourself with it. -- MP] Potential rivals like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan are throwing away an unusual opportunity because they imagine some future opening for themselves — in 2028 and beyond — that may never materialize. And the party clearly has an interest in having a better-situated nominee: A swing-state governor who isn’t tied directly to an unpopular administration would be a much, much better choice for a high-stakes but still winnable race than a liberal Californian machine politician with zero track record of winning over moderate to conservative voters.

[Side note:Despite the impressions of Nate Silver the the NYT editorial board, Harris overperformed in all of her California races and won all but one Republican districts in her senate run, including those held by Kevin McCarthy and Devin Nunes which gives you some idea of the research Douthat puts into his work.]



I'm not going to get down in the weeds of the piece, but I do want to throw in a little context here.

Learning after the fact of some kind of diminished capacity of a president is not unusual at all. You have FDR and LBJ's health issues, JFK's pain pills, Nixon's drinking, Reagan's cognitive decline, George W. Bush's issues with focus, and Donald Trump's... Hell, we don't have that much time.

Also remember that Washington is a gossipy and petty town, particularly when the first thing you do is to piss off a powerful faction in the government and in some cases in your own party by making the painful but necessary decision of following through with the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Never underestimate the blob.






The New York Times still employs some excellent reporters, but it has been losing relevance for the last 30 years. On some level I think the people at the paper know this and it's driving them a little crazy. For someone like Douthat whose reputation relies almost entirely on his association with the NYT this has to suck.


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Friday, August 9, 2024

1964, 1968, 1980, and now apparently 2004 – – the ever-growing list of historical analogies for this election

From Josh Marshall.

The Post’s and the Times‘ pieces on Tim Walz service record are more egregious and spurious than you’re probably able to imagine. The accusations come from two members of his unit who are clearly MAGA partisans and who floated them during his 2022 reelection campaign for Minnesota governor in coordination with Walz’s Republican opponent. The attacks aren’t just “like” the Swift Boat attacks from 2004. They’re literally the work of the same guy. Chris LaCivita was the strategist who ran the Swift Boat attacks in 2004 and cut the commercials. He’s now the co-manager of the Trump campaign. He started this and then handed it off to Vance. As David noted, even Politico headlined it as a “Swift Boat” attack. Politico!

The accusation, such as it is, is that Walz retired from service just before his unit was deployed to Iraq.

The first thing to note here is that career military people can retire. (Walz served for 24 years.) That’s how it works. If you’re needed, there’s something called stop-loss orders, which the Pentagon issues during periods of acute need; they not only prevent retirements but can involuntarily extend people’s period of enlistment. These were issued repeatedly during the Iraq War and in the years of active U.S. military involvement in Iraq. But the accusations break a lot further than this narrow point on any close inspection.

Walz served for 24 years in the Minnesota National Guard. He was never in combat but had multiple overseas deployments. He actually retired at 20 years but returned to service after 9/11 when he re-enlisted for an additional four years. (Presumably, if he were looking to get out of foreign or war zone deployments, he wouldn’t have done that.) The Trump campaign and the two accusers from Minnesota make it like Walz put in his papers just in advance of deployment. That’s not true. Walz successfully ran for Congress in 2006 and there’s abundant evidence that at least from early 2005 he was discussing with confidants in his unit whether or not to retire to run for Congress. His newly announced campaign put out a press release in March 2005 which said that it was possible that “all or a portion of Walz’s battalion could be mobilized to serve in Iraq within the next two years.” Walz officially retired in May 2005 and his unit got initial call up orders in July 2005. They were eventually deployed to Iraq in March 2006.

The similarities are striking – – the same game plan executed by the same operative and probably partially financed by the same cartoonishly evil billionaire – – but the differences may be more substantial. The big three are this is not 2004, the object of the smear is not at the top of the ticket, and Walz is not Kerry.

It would be wrong to say the press definitely won't fall for this again, but it might do a better job this time. Memories of the original Swiftboating are still fairly fresh in the minds of most political journalists and while the New York Times and the Washington Post may have "learned nothing and forgotten nothing," a number of prominent voices and publications seem to have a firmer grasp on history. It is too early to protect how this will play out, but there is reason for optimism.


[This is a tweet that the Trump campaign put out, but if you listen to the audio, it actually works better as a Harris ad. These guys aren't very good at this.]



More importantly, the NYT and WP don't have the control over the narrative that they did 20 years ago. The Harris phenomenon (and I think we reach the point where we can safely use that word without hyperbole) happened almost entirely in spite of the narrative laid down by the New York Times and Associates. According to the version we were reading in the paper of record, Kamala Harris was a terrible politician and going directly with her without any kind of mini-primary or open convention would lead to disaster. Everything that has happened since Joe Biden stepped down suggests that these once respected institutions have lost their relevancy.


There will no doubt be stumbles over the next 90 days, but at the moment, Harris momentum is remarkably strong and for a scandal involving not her but her VP pick to be substantial enough to derail the campaign, it would have to be nothing short of a career ending. Vance has been implying that Walz would soon drop out, but unless there is another heavily weighted shoe yet to drop, that would seem to be nothing but wishful thinking on the part of the Trump camp.

The attack itself is far less suited for its target this time around. When you list what people associate with Walz, military man maybe breaks the top four after dad, high school coach/teacher, and cheerful but aggressive campaigner. I think I've seen as many pictures of him bird hunting as I have of him in uniform, so soldier might come in at number five. By comparison, John Kerry was the war hero turned war protester. That was his story, that was his persona, and that was the argument for making him the Democratic nominee in 2004. He even showed up in multiple early Doonesbury when the strip talked about the antiwar movement.

He had a great number of other impressive accomplishments, but it was the biography that people remembered. The argument for nominating the man was that his unique experiences made him the perfect candidate to take on George W. Bush while the country was still dealing with the shock of 9/11. If these attacks made people question his standing as a war hero or, as Josh Marshall often points out, simply made him look weak for not being able to defend himself, the case for John Kerry as president took a serious blow.

There's one other key difference between 20 years ago and today, one that could make the attacks more effective but which also greatly increase their risks to the Trump campaign. In 2004 the Bush campaign kept the Swiftboaters at arm's length. They got the benefit but none of the blowback. This time is different. Vance is the face of Swiftboating 2024. Having the VP pick actually making these charges gives papers like the NYT and the WP an excuse to play the story up, but if there's a backlash, it won't be directed at a third party.





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Thursday, August 8, 2024

With Procrustean editing, the headline always fits the narrative

The only way I'm going to get free of this thread is to stop looking at the New York Times.


Remember a few days ago when the New York Times was called out for a grossly misleading headline about the election? Well, here we go again. This example is quite as egregious and it has prompted nowhere near the response, but in some ways it is just as distorted and factually inaccurate.


 There are big political stories coming out of the Midwest this week, but the picture you get from this headline and its martial language is completely at odds with what's actually happening, and the subtitle is just plain wrong, period. Harris and Walz are not set to appear in the same cities as Trump and Vance because Donald Trump will not be anywhere in the Midwest this week.

In a week when the other side is barnstorming their way through multiple swing states, Trump has only one appearance scheduled, in Montana of all places. Having a candidate in a hotly contested race essentially stop making public appearances for a week without any explanation would normally be newsworthy. Especially if the statements the candidate was releasing were erratic bordering on delusional.

Other organizations such as CNN apparently felt Trump's absence was worth noting..


 

 

 

The main point of the headline about the battle for the Midwest, while perhaps not demonstrably incorrect, was arguably even more misleading. The dramatic talk of battles and especially dueling events suggests, if not evenly matched forces, then at least both sides playing roughly the same game. If Harris was having rallies and Vance was having rallies even if they were much smaller, you might then talk about dueling events, but while the Democrats were having massive gatherings...



From Josh Marshall:

Last Thursday the Harris campaign began offering tickets for a campaign rally in Detroit the following Wednesday (tomorrow, August 7th). Over the first 24 hours they received 47,000 requests for tickets. 47,000. That spurred a multi-day search for a Detroit area venue that could handle the demand to see the Vice President. As Donald Trump never grasped, there’s no straight-line connection between rally attendance and votes. But at that scale they signal enthusiasm and energy that neither campaign (Trump or Biden) has seen at any time in this cycle. They demonstrate a purchase into the larger popular culture that President Biden never had and Donald Trump, for all his greater currency on social media, doesn’t either.


By comparison, Vance is holding what could best be described as press appearances.




And though it's a bit off topic, this one needs to be shared. "What makes you smile? What makes you happy?" may be the ultimate softball question. It's almost impossible for a politician to screw it up.


Almost...

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Wednesday, August 7, 2024

Congratulations everyone who chose door number one. You have two months to get your bets in for our next round.

When Elon Musk promised a big robotaxi reveal, we broke our no predictions rule and suggested the following possibilities:

To be blunt, the industry is nowhere near the level of self-driving functionality and Tesla in nowhere near being the leader in this field. Assuming we do not witness the company leapfrog the competition and unveil a major breakthrough in level 4 autonomy, what are we likely to see on August 8th?

1. Nothing. Elon Musk will announce that the big reveal has been pushed back to make the product even more spectacular.

2. An Optimus Style non demonstration where Elon will haul out a barely functional prototype years behind the competition in terms of sophistication and will spend the rest of the time talking about how incredible the next iteration will eventually be.

3. Low level fake. A painstakingly choreographed drive-through of carefully mapped course with selective editing to cover the remaining glitches. (see Optimus.)

4. High level fake. Everything in the low level fake plus a Mechanical Turk actually at the controls. Check out the right side of this video which was released to great fanfare.

 

From Bloomberg:

Tesla will now unveil robotaxis on Oct. 10, and the cars shown will only be prototypes. More affordable models that could juice sales won’t go into production until the first half of next year, at the earliest. A planned factory in Mexico is on pause until after the US presidential election in November, and a humanoid robot that Musk predicts will send Tesla’s valuation soaring won’t start selling until sometime in 2026.

 Here's the rest of our original announcement.

Monday, April 8, 2024

If I had a slightly cynical attitude toward Elon Musk, I might be a bit suspicious of a couple of things here

 First of all, there's the timing of this.


 

The surprise Robo Taxi announcement certainly came at a fortuitous moment for Musk. Before the news broke, Tesla was having a really bad, awful, totally nogood year ...

 

 

 

... followed by a really bad, awful, totally nogood day thanks to the release of a Reuters story about the company ever so quietly canceling its plans for a low-cost EV. This was on top of tons of bad news about the companies inventory and other problems, not to mention the cybertruck managing to edge out the Ford Edsel as the ultimate cautionary tale of why not to overhype a new automobile. 

 At 4:49 in the afternoon, less than an hour after the stock dropped another 3.63%...

 

 And one minute later...


 


Longtime readers will be familiar with Musk's history of announcing incredible breakthroughs, often just as one of his companies is about to go over a cliff.

From May 25, 2022

About seven or eight years ago, Musk's promises started becoming unmoored not just from what his engineers were working on, but from what was even possible. As best I can tell, this started with the hyperloop.

[And before the rumbling starts again, though you have heard about hundreds of millions of dollars going into hyperloop companies, absolutely none of that money is going into Elon Musk s air cushion idea. Every proposal and protype you've seen has been for maglev. Companies like Virgin scrapped his concept but kept the name.]*

Part of the reason for these increasingly delusional boasts may just have been Musk getting high on his own supply.** Take someone with messianic tendencies, give them a full-bore cult of personality, and have even the most respectable journalists refer to him as a real life Tony Stark. You know it's going to go to a guy's head.

But these fantastic claims also served his financial interest. The huge run up in the stock of Tesla came after the narrative had shifted to over-the-top fantasy.

Maintaining his current fortune requires Musk to keep these fantasies vivid in the minds of fans and investors. People have to believe that the Tesla model after next will be a flying exoskeleton that can blow shit up.

To be blunt, the industry is nowhere near the level of self-driving functionality and Tesla in nowhere near being the leader in this field. Assuming we do not witness the company leapfrog the competition and unveil a major breakthrough in level 4 autonomy, what are we likely to see on August 8th?

1. Nothing. Elon Musk will announce that the big reveal has been pushed back to make the product even more spectacular.

2. An Optimus Style non demonstration where Elon will haul out a barely functional prototype years behind the competition in terms of sophistication and will spend the rest of the time talking about how incredible the next iteration will eventually be.

3. Low level fake. A painstakingly choreographed drive-through of carefully mapped course with selective editing to cover the remaining glitches. (see Optimus.)

4. High level fake. Everything in the low level fake plus a Mechanical Turk actually at the controls. Check out the right side of this video which was released to great fanfare.

 

Musk later added a note that the robot was not actually operating autonomously but of course, he wasn't trying to mislead anyone. 

* In the two years since this post, those hundreds of millions have been long been burned through with the biggest and best financed Hyperloop One/Virgin Hyperloop finally shuttering its airlock last year. 

** And we now know getting high on a lot of other things as well.


 

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