Nothing changed. Trump spoke English, as he sometimes does, and did a reasonable job of hitting his marks. And that’s all it was—his marks. His relative fluency will make for horse race-type speculation but he only repeated what he’s done for six months and more.
Biden was sharper than the town hall, and as I said, did a good job of knowing when to talk to the camera for brass tacks: “You’re poor, you’re sick, I’m here for you.” It sounds simplistic but he was for the popular things and spoke of them in reasonable detail.
Trump sneering at Biden when he talked of the kitchen table will come back again.
Besides the issue with Trump’s own family, addressed earlier, the problem with the Hunter Biden thing is it isn’t the Mrs. Clinton thing, which was easy to understand. The air went dead when he discussed it. It was boring.
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Brooks Robinson in the ‘70 World Series is the single greatest all-around performance by a third baseman ever. Fifty years later, anyone who saw it gets reduced to stammering.
Robinson was the MVP. He won a car. Pete Rose said, “If I’d known he wanted a car that badly, I’d have bought him one.”
There have been other great players at third since, but to play like Robinson did, and Schmidt too, they did all the stuff with numbers and probabilities they do now, but in their heads. There’s good and great, but playing like a ghost is another thing entirely.
Harris did her job. She’s lockstep with Biden and often did better at explaining his positions than he does. The main thing is she did nothing to become the story.
Pence hitched himself to Trump tight on his own, but in complete sentences and with a plastic preacher sort of warmth. Harris hit him best when she broke the stitches of his words and exposed the Trump original underneath.
Women will hate Pence running his mouth—note the look in his eyes as he was admonished. Don’t mistake his relative fluency for success. The goals have moved. He spoke too often in stock phrases where Harris went for the kitchen table.
There was some question about the reaction to Boris Johnson's diagnosis. We answered it but perhaps it's better to do so for everyone. Namely, Johnson's diagnosis resulted in goodwill which he then turned into political advantage. I doubt that will happen here.
First, Johnson had not ground the country down over years as Trump has. Second, Johnson is, if you squint, and in a way only they are familiar with, likable. It's the only reason why he's in the job at all.
And perhaps most important, they were clear on the diagnosis. He spoke to the country at length. He quarantined. He went to the hospital when necessary, and clear, if discreet, updates were given from there.
I've said it before but I think in the coming years Albert Speer is someone who will be more relevant than he's been in a long time. The Gitta Sereny book.
If you don't know, Gitta Sereny came to know Speer after his release. She liked him. Because of this she, through a series of interviews and research, proceeded to destroy beyond a shadow of a doubt all his claims of innocence.
Her book seeks to understand how a man can become "not just amoral, but morally extinguished."
An abomination. Embarrassing and unedifying in every way. In particular Wallace should be ashamed of himself.
Difficult as it was to watch, Biden hit his marks. That’s how he got through the primary; often it wasn’t pretty but he pushed the right buttons. If anything he has a simpler task now; tell them over and over, “I understand you’re in trouble. I can help.” He did that.
Don’t mistake Trump swinging his arms for Biden on the ropes. A good two-thirds of their campaign is letting Trump be a hostile witness.
In the 1980s President Nixon met and corresponded with many people who he felt could facilitate his return to public life. This is the practice of politics. The article, to its credit, points out the relationship was transactional and no significance should be attached. - RZ
At the time Mr. Trump was at his first peak of media influence, and President Nixon worked in and around New York City, as he continues to do. To encounter Mr. Trump was inevitable, and to fail to cultivate the relationship, to a point, would be malpractice. - RZ