"Last week, the Democratic National Committee and Kamala Harris’s campaign did something never done before by a Democratic presidential campaign."

"They released a 30-second TV ad attacking a third-party candidate, specifically the Green Party nominee.... The ad mentions the Green Party nominee by name. I’m not—because she should be ignored, not paid attention with an ad buy or a Washington Monthly bounce in Google algorithms...."

Writes Bill Scher, in "Hey, Democrats: Ignore Green Party Presidential Candidate J**l St**n/The perennial third-party presidential aspirant can’t be a spoiler if voters don’t know she exists and they barely do" (Washington Monthly).

"... Democrats have evidence that confronting third-party candidates works after throttling the independent presidential bid of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.... But Kennedy, coasting on his famous name, began his independent bid with unusually high poll numbers and outsized media attention, warranting a muscular effort to drive him out of the race....  I hear you screaming, But! But! But! The battleground states are dead even!... Sure, but when a third-party candidate is polling between zero and one, you can’t assume many of those voters are even available to either major party candidate.... Despite what the new Democratic Party ad asserts, the evidence does not support the claim that the Greens played a spoiler role in 2016.... The case is much stronger that Nader did play a spoiler role in 2000.... Of course, infinitesimal margins could always happen again—especially when polls are so tight.... But the current Green candidate has been suffocating from a lack of media oxygen—unlike Nader, who was a household name—until the Democrats ran an ad about her!..."

Today the DNC is releasing its first-ever ad focused on third-party candidates.

Trump “likes” that Jill Stein is in this race—because Jill Stein can’t win, but she can help Trump win. pic.twitter.com/93FK6pGIkz

— Jaime Harrison (@harrisonjaime) October 11, 2024

"Acyn Torabi... posted a video clip of the 'bloodbath' quote, shorn of most of the surrounding verbiage, garnering 22 million views..."

"... on X.com. ... Joe Biden’s campaign posted a similar clip soon after Torabi did, implying Trump was fomenting violence. By Sunday morning, Republicans on the news-making talk shows were asked about Trump’s comment. They responded by arguing Trump was just talking about the economy and Democrats were taking the word 'bloodbath' out of context. Ever since we have been subjected to a semantic debate over 'what did Trump really mean.' Such chin-stroking works to Trump’s advantage, dulling the potential for mass outrage when he makes outrageous statements. How can we avoid this semantic trap?... [We need to connect] Trump’s rhetoric to his presidency without burdening Trump’s critics to prove a remark was intended to provoke violence. It doesn’t matter what he meant by any particular riff.... If the Biden team deploys this narrative... then future instances of Trump’s explosive asides tossed in convoluted word salads can be easily prosecuted without a linguistics seminar on what he meant."

Writes Bill Scher, in "No More 'Bloodbaths' or How to Avoid Stupid Debates Over Trump’s Semantics/Forget parsing his words. Democrats should connect Trump’s past rhetoric to the street violence and Capitol insurrection of his last year in office" (Washington Monthly).

Yes, be more substantive. Stop relying on quirks of language to get attention. And speaking of quirks of language, stop saying "garner." 

I'm collecting old headlines like "Biden Will Win. Republicans Should Understand Why."

That, by Bill Scher, was published at Real Clear Politics the day before Election Day. In the light of the morning after Election Day, let's see how that reads now: 

Joe Biden is going to win. 

I have been wrong before. I will be wrong again. And maybe I’m wrong today. But we do not have any significant data to suggest Donald Trump was ever in a position to win reelection, or that he is closing the campaign with any sort of momentum needed for a come-from-behind victory.

We were patronizingly informed that we need to understand this news from the future. How biased was the information we were fed? The polls? The elite media? We knew they were biased, but they seem to have been far more biased this time around. 

Four years ago, we did have such data. In the RealClearPolitics national polling average, Hillary Clinton’s lead shrunk nearly six percentage points between Oct. 18 and Nov. 3, before ticking up a bit at the end....

Were the polls more wrong this time? With so much pressure to get it right after failing last time, the polls were even more wrong, and the commentators leaned into lecturing us about how Trump is toast, rejected forever, by a new America that wasn't going to stomach that nasty Trumpism anymore. 

"Trump’s Best Shutdown Move Is to Fold Now/It’s time for the president to quit while he’s behind."

So says Bill Scher at Politico. He calls the shutdown "boring."

Here we are in Day Whateverteenth of the shutdown, and it’s much like the day before. Congressional leaders meet and get nowhere. Democrats insist Trump will never get his wall. Trump treats “steel slats” over concrete as a magnanimous gesture of compromise....

Trump is losing this shutdown—which is why his best strategy is to fold without demanding any concessions from Democrats. He needs to move his presidency onto another subject before it gets canceled in 2020....

"Half of America Is About to Get Gut-Punched."

There's a good headline. From Bill Scher.

Democratic Hillary Clinton supporters, while congenitally skittish, are incredulous that an immigrant-bashing, misogynistic blowhard could even make this presidential race competitive, and are taking to the bank the poll lead Clinton has held essentially all year.

Republican Donald Trump’s superfans... believe America is on the verge of a “Brexit” moment, in which a silent nationalist majority outperforms the polls and humiliates the Establishment....

Neither side is going into Election Day expecting to lose. Whichever party ends up being shocked by the results will have a protracted, painful, but perhaps rejuvenating, period of soul-searching ahead.

It's going to be painful either way. Sometimes I stop and wonder which way will it be more painful, but it's not as though my deciding would get us to the less painful option. There will be pain, and we will never know what would have happened in the alternative reality.

And I'm maintaining my cruel neutrality to the end. So don't blame me. I may have voted for the loser.

"In the shock scenario where Hillary bows out, the Democratic establishment would be initially stunned and directionless."

Says Bill Scher (at Politico), seeming to argue that some sort of order would emerge from the chaos, but — and I've read the whole thing — I'm really not sure what. Key passage:

As of now, says [Democratic consultant Chris] Lapetina. “there really isn’t any enthusiasm” for the non-Hillary Democrats already flirting with a run—Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb—meaning no one would instantly lay claim to the Clintons’ vast network of donors.

Still, the Democratic bench is hardly shallow. Among other possible candidates who might suddenly find a fire in their belly: Gov. Andrew Cuomo, former Gov. Deval Patrick, former Gov. Brian Schweitzer and Sens. Sanders, Mark Warner and Kirsten Gillibrand. Lapetina believes pressure would build for a few really big names to enter, such as Al Gore.

And then there’s Elizabeth....

Bill Scher does not accept that it was a lie to say "if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it."

IN THE COMMENTS, pm317 said: "If you like your plan Video montage from NYMag. What did that Scher guy say -- Obama didn't say it like it was some talking point and that he said it because he was asked about it? How dumb can he be?"

McCain is "implicitly attacking Obama for basking in self-glory, when the Obama campaign is very much predicated on 'we' and not 'I.'"

Bill Scher perceives irony in McCain's ad — which depicts his life story, including his service in Vietnam — because it is "very much about 'I.'" Scher thinks the ad says: "Look at the heroic life that I have had. You can trust me to manage this war, et cetera."

Scher is the liberal in a Bloggingheads episode, and his interlocutor, Conn Carroll of the Heritage Foundation, makes a different point about McCain's use of biography in his new ads: There are "ways" to use this material and other "kind of more unAmerican, I guess, ways to do it," Carroll says, noting "that might be a bad phrase."

He's... talking about his family going all the way back to George Washington, you know, served on George Washington's staff.... He's got an airbase named after him. And he's establishing this, like, almost royal pedigree, and, you know, this is not a country built on royalty. We're a country about, you know, not caring what your parents did. We're a country about, you know, what do you, what did you do, you know, how have you built your story. And it just was very, you know, not very American to go out there and say I've got this long, royal lineage that you all should respect, you know, please vote for me, as opposed to Barack Obama's message of, you know, I created my own identity out of the American image and, you know, I am you, let's go forward. It's, it's grating on many conservative ears.

So, let's see. McCain took up a family tradition of service and gave of himself, profoundly, and that's not as good, and not as conservative, as having "built your story" and "created" your "identity." It's more American to build and create stories and identities? I don't get it. I mean, I understand the American love of the self-made individual who came out of nowhere. And there is something very American — not in the loftiest sense — about inventing a marketable character for yourself. (I'm thinking of Buffalo Bill Cody, Madonna, etc.) But I don't see the conservative problem with situating the individual in a historical tradition. (McCain had a brilliant ad in early March that I thought expressed profound conservative values exactly this way.)

And Barack Obama isn't a self-made man in the rags-to-riches sense. He has lived a distinctly privileged life — going to all the best schools — and has had to take steps as an adult to put together a more marketable persona. Now, he's done that wonderfully effectively — but we need to see it for what it is.

But let's get back to Scher's perspective, that Obama's "we" is better than McCain's "I." Seeing yourself as a part of a tradition and accepting service and sacrifice within that tradition — that's not "we"? Devising a magnificent, marketable political persona — that's not "I"?