Pulling Punches and Pivoting

Steve M has a good post this morning on this:

Republicans do better in the poll on 7 of 11 issue areas. Steve thinks that the reason is that DC Democrats, when asked about any issue, just pivot to healthcare. So there’s no Democratic messaging getting out on other issues.

Read the whole piece for his take. I’ll add one thing: Democrats are the party of doing things, and Republicans are the party of doing nothing (but tax cuts), so when you see the Corruption and Respect for Democracy numbers above, where “neither” was probably 1/3 of all responses, Republicans are still winning even if Democrats are a hair more trusted than them. Cynicism about politics is overall a good thing for the Republican Party.

This brings me to Kamala Harris’ ongoing excuse and recrimination tour. I really have no idea what she’s trying to accomplish, and who she’s trying to address. A couple of examples. First, Gaza, and my sarcastic comment on that:

Second, Scott sent this one in — I pulled it out of a Twitter thread:

“Walden” is Dana Walden, Co-Chair of Disney.

It’s almost as if Harris’ goal is to remind us how terribly weak the Democrats were on Gaza, and to emphasize that Democrats rely on corporate donors as much as Republicans, even though Trump is able to make those corporations bend the knee at will. In other words, her appearances remind the people who believe that there’s not much difference between the two parties that, yep, their view is right.

Harris’ husband’s law firm also was one of the first to cut a deal with Trump, which is looking really stupid now, and looked very craven then.

So either Harris is putting on a display of her poor political skills, or she’s listening to consultants who are telling her that her weak sauce Gaza statements, her “I wanted X but I did Y” explanations on her VP pick, and her embrace of a form of incredibly naive corporatism is what the people want to hear at this point in our history. I guess it really doesn’t matter if it’s her or the consultants, the result is the same.

Similarly, Jeffries and the rest of the DC Dems who pivot to healthcare and vote to valorize Charlie Kirk might be listening to consultants, but they picked those consultants, probably because they knew those consultants would tell them what they like to hear.