"Trump and allies have primed supporters to falsely believe he has no chance of losing."

That's the headline at NPR for a piece by political reporter Stephen Fowler.

What does "primed" even mean? It seems to admit that Trump never said he has "no chance of losing," but he said something that has caused a belief. And then what's the evidence that Trump supporters believe that? No chance of losing — who believes that? And then to ding these people for "falsely" believing this thing Trump never said... well, the "falsely" ought to be appended to this NPR article: NPR political reporter falsely believes Trump somehow caused his supporters to believe he has no chance of losing.

Am I being unfair to Fowler? As Shakespeare put it: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air."

Okay, let's hover. Fowler writes:

Republicans pounce... on Peanut.

I'm reading "How the Death of a Celebrity Squirrel Became a Republican Rallying Cry/After P’Nut and a raccoon named Fred were taken by wildlife agents and euthanized, Donald Trump and local candidates accused New York Democrats of 'state overreach'" (NYT).

In the frantic last days of an election when candidates are scrabbling for any edge, the death of P’Nut (who also went by Peanut) has been pounced on by some Republicans as something of a fur-covered November surprise.... 

"Ms. Harris’s lack of stature, unreadiness for prime time, and content-confused narrative are why voters will opt for a former president with a proven record over an untested swimmer without a life vest."

Writes Kenneth L. Khachigian, who was chief speechwriter to Ronald Reagan and an aide to Richard Nixon, quoted in "The Three Reasons Harris Will Lose the Election/Traditional Democrats are deserting the party, she was unprepared, and she has no clear message" (Wall Street Journal)(no subscription needed).

The vice president had nearly four years to rise to levels of national and international prominence.... She squandered that opportunity.... She isn’t the person who matches the moment.... [W]hile she promotes her career path as a tough prosecutor, when it came to time to face the national jury, she abdicated to the teleprompter and friendly interviewers....

Either she couldn’t find a way to escape her baked-in California Bay Area political culture, or she was flummoxed by her own slippery evasions from left-wing orthodoxy. Nevertheless, there is an empty hole where potential leaders of the free world must have a strong message. She has filled it with the bizarre notion that if she loses, Mr. Trump would establish fascism in America.....

"I have been working in politics since 1980, and in every single presidential election, at this point in the campaign, I had a clear sense of the winner. (OK, I got it wrong in 2016.)"

"Heading into the final weekend of the race, it is not clear which candidate will win. Given Mr. Trump’s resiliency and his advantages in the Sun Belt states, I believe he has a more plausible path to winning the Electoral College than Ms. Harris does. Still, I would not count Ms. Harris out, because of the potency of the issue of abortion, her superior ground game and the fact that a majority of Americans do not want four more years of Mr. Trump as president...."

Says Doug Sosnik, in "How Harris or Trump Could Win This Deadlocked Presidential Race, in 19 Maps" (NYT).

It sounds as though he has "a clear sense of the winner" this time too, but also has a clear sense of what is wanted from him right now. 

The top-rated comment over there — by a lot — is "Harris/Walz will win Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. And they have a good chance of winning Arizona and Georgia. Stay positive, it helps."

The simple point that's made in the article — despite all the fancy map-graphics — is that Harris needs to win all 3 "blue wall" states and Trump only needs to win one.

"And the postmortems after a Trump victory would not focus primarily on any ill-considered, easily weaponized remarks, such as a comment Biden made on Tuesday..."

"... that seemed to refer to Trump’s supporters as 'garbage.' They’d emphasize and dwell on the unanswered questions surrounding the primary that never happened. They’d be postmortems like no others, because Trump is such a dire threat. That was the proposition of Biden’s 2020 campaign — he came out of quasi-retirement in his late 70s because, he told us, stopping Trump demanded it.... There’d be recognizable elements of that reaction, such as a hindsight-is-20-20 analysis of the losing candidate’s strategic decisions and strengths and weaknesses. What if Harris had chosen a different running mate? What if she’d more quickly, squarely and eloquently articulated the changes in her positions? What if she’d done more probing media interviews sooner, to beat back any suggestion of excessive caution?... What if that incumbent hadn’t held on so tightly for so long? That’s no doubt part of why Biden has reportedly itched to get out on the campaign trail on behalf of Harris.... And that’s the millionth reason I’m fervently hoping and desperately praying that Harris prevails. I believe Biden to be a good man who has done much good for us. That can rise to the surface if we don’t sink to the bottom."

That's Frank Bruni, over at the NYT, with his pre-postmortem, in a piece called "Biden’s Stake in This Election Is Like Nobody Else’s."

"That can rise to the surface if we don’t sink to the bottom" — What can can rise to the surface if we don’t sink to the bottom? The goodness of Biden and the good that he's done for us, I guess. Absurdly, this is the second day in a row that I'm musing over a confusing metaphor of something that seems to be floating on water. Of all the things worth getting fervent and desperate about, Biden's feelings are low on the list. I think the American people should be quite angry at Biden for what he did to the procedure of choosing a President this time around. Too damned bad if he's sad about it.

Pre-postmortem, Part 2: "Democrats start to point fingers even as they hope for Harris win."

A headline at The Hill.

“People are nervous and they’re trying to cover their ass and get a little ahead of Election Day,” one Democratic strategist said of the sniping. “It’s based on anxiety, stakes and the unique nature of this cycle."

“We didn’t have a traditional process for this election. We didn’t have a primary. People just had to fall in line,” the strategist added, saying “it’s not surprising to me” that some of the blame game is happening even before Election Day....

“[Harris] is going to look real silly for not picking Shapiro,” one former aide in the Obama White House said....

[E]ven before Garbage-gate, there were whispers that Biden would be responsible for a Harris defeat....

For Pre-postmortem, Part 1, see the previous post. 

"This is pre-postmortem. They know it's lost."

I say from across the room, as Meade plays today's episode of the NYT Daily, "Black Voters and the Democratic Party: One Family’s Story."

In our reporting, we called dozens of black men across Georgia and heard story after story like this of people who are frustrated with their prospects right now, especially their place in the economy....

You can listen to the whole thing. I'll just say this is what prompted my remark, from a man talking about how his mother would be disappointed to know he hesitated to vote for Harris:

"I'm someone who has been raised with understanding the importance of voting, with understanding how many people sacrifice for us to have this right. To participate in the process. And so to give that vote away, to use that vote in a way that could possibly hurt a candidate like Kamala Harris, you know, it, it kind of goes against what my people have decided. Majority of my people have decided that this is, you know, what we're doing. And for me to vote against Harris would be a little bit of a betrayal."

I've only used the word "pre-postmortem" once before on this blog, but I've been thinking it a lot in the last couple weeks. The prior usage was on October 14th, in a post titled "When Joe Biden called Kamala Harris on the morning of Sunday, July 21st, she was... wearing sweatpants and a hoodie..."

I chose this article to blog first this morning, but it was one of the many headlines I saw that made me want to create a new tag, something like "pre-postmortem."

"When Joe Biden called Kamala Harris on the morning of Sunday, July 21st, she was... wearing sweatpants and a hoodie..."

"By the time Biden announced his withdrawal, that Sunday afternoon, a scramble was already under way, largely out of public view. Bakari Sellers, a former South Carolina state representative who helped Harris secure the nomination, told me... 'We weren’t going to do this bullshit that other people were asking for,' he said. In his view, an open convention was a way to 'skip over Kamala.' After Biden’s call, Harris had summoned aides to her house, and a dozen or so people gathered around a table.... In the hours that followed, her team undertook an operation that was less an improvisation than a culmination of years spent cultivating allies.... Harris never had time to change out of her sweats. By the following morning... she had endorsements from a majority of Democrats in Congress, two large unions, and a growing number of state delegations.... David Axelrod, who was the chief strategist for both of Obama’s Presidential campaigns, told me, 'There was an argument that she would be strengthened by a competition, but she showed a mastery of the internal politics, which is one test of a potential candidate. People respond to competence, and that was a very competent operation.' He compared it to a rapid military strike. 'She didn’t get handed this nomination,' he said. 'She took it.'... By gaining the nomination so late, Harris spared herself the obligation of courting the orthodox wing of her party in primaries. But a short run has risks; it left her little time to explain what she believes and what she would do in office... "

Writes Evan Osnos, in "Kamala Harris’s Hundred-Day Campaign/Three months ago, the Vice-President was fighting for respect in Washington. Can she defy her doubters—and end the Trump era?" (The New Yorker).

Little time to explain what she believes? Little time to arrive at beliefs.

ADDED: I chose this article to blog first this morning, but it was one of the many headlines I saw that made me want to create a new tag, something like "pre-postmortem." Real Clear Politics cues up these headlines: