We got poles
WASHINGTON, Aug 29 (Reuters) - Democrat Kamala Harris leads Republican Donald Trump 45% to 41% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Thursday that showed the vice president sparking new enthusiasm among voters and shaking up the race ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
Democrat Kamala Harris has surged ahead of Republican Donald Trump, 48%-43%, in a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll found.
The findings reflect an eight-point turnaround in the presidential race from late June
This is why she should tell them all to fuck off and pound sand
https://x.com/natesilver538/status/1828970943827366274?s=46&t=XGja5BtSraUljl_WWUrIUg
Doing the interview seems dumb when you are crushing. Literally no one cares whether she does an interview or not outside of the people who are never voting for her.
The counter argument is âbut theyâll keep pounding her about it.â WHO FUCKING CARES. Theyâre going to do that anyway! Go on offense and say fuck the media, literally everyone hates them
What the fuck does that even mean? âTrump aides âapparently believeâ sheâll flunk questions?â You can just tell what they believe by looking at their appearance? Maybe they believe this but itâs unclear? What did they actually say? And why would their opinion even be newsworthy, of course theyâre going to say shit about their opponent if you ask them!
Itâs just transparently laundering opinion as a news item.
Right, and you donât even have to be disingenuous about it. Just hammer the media for how ineffectively theyâve handled Trump over the last 8 years.
Alternatively. She gets to dominate the cycle for a few more days.
Trump needs air. Donât give him any.
Shrug. Iâm not really worried that the interview goes badly. A major-party ticket being interviewed in tandem at around this point is generally a thing that happens, albeit usually on 60 Minutes. I know, given the relentless drumbeat by the media demanding this very thing, that it looks to some like caving to that drumbeat. But Iâd think that more likely sheâs just following a conventional step in a campaign, one that she doesnât feel like making an active choice to flout.
If we were still having to hope against hope that Biden could find a way to hang on and win re-election, performance in this interview is the type of thing that would be worth worrying about. With Harris I just donât. Could she still be subject to unfair scrutiny about some small thing that happens during? Sure. But that also just applies generally to being out on the campaign trail as much as she is. Seems to me she can handle it.
The interview will be objectively fine, Kamala will misspeak or have a minor xanny mom moment and thatâs all CNN will talk about for days as the Trump campaign gets into fights at cemeteries and shits on decorated veterans and whatnot.
We are seeing the natural consequence of media going all
In on a click-bait SEO optimization business model, they have made themselves irrelevant in most peopleâs eyes.
So the process for writing articles for Hard Drive/Hard Times starts with pitching headlines on Slack. I just pitched this in the âtopical/breakingâ news pitch channel. I have to be allowed to write this, right?
âTrump Camp Confident Kamala Harris Will Blow CNN Interview, Interviewerâ
I only post it here because I will never get the green light for this. I donât get the green light for most of my pitches, so WHATEVER.
JD Vance just casually lying about Trump physically bullying an Arlington Cemetery staffer in order to make an illegal campaign ad, obviously another big hurdle for the Harris campaign.
For the life of me I donât get why people keep pretending that sheâs crushing. Sheâs marginally ahead.
Vibes
I think some feel she is crushing because she has made up so much ground. But that is meeting diminishing returns at this point and as you said she is only marginally ahead at best.
She stay has to play ball to a degree. The media is already twisting every trump story into being bad for Harris no matter what it is.
I think the joint interview is a good idea and will go fine. Having Walz there takes some of the pressure off Harris.
I think it comes down to whatâs better for the âvibesâ movement. The headlines and narrative around the campaign being âafraidâ of a sit down interview is at some level bad vibes. So we donât want that. But we also donât want to risk giving the Trump team more ammo to also bring the vibes down.
I say take a play out of Trumps book on this one. Do the sit down, pick an interviewer who is going to lob softballs and not ask any difficult follow ups, and mostly forget that the interviewer is there and just get out the talking points you want to get out. No actual news will break, no one will give a shit if she dodges and pivots around tough questions, and she can say she did the interview and move on to other shit.
No one will actually care if she dodges a Gaza question or gives a non answer. Just keep it simple and donât fuck up.
Unless sheâs going to run a 2020 basement campaign - which would be inadvisable - sheâs out there exposing herself to whatever the coverage might want to pick on anyway. Give her enough time on the campaign trail and sheâll have some kind of flub, and she certainly wonât get a pass on it from the press.
Doing a national interview is higher risk/higher reward, but unlike smaller campaign events where the gains are mostly marginal gains localized to the regions sheâs in, this is something where sheâll get a fair number of eyeballs from everywhere, so thereâs a reasonable expectation of making incremental gains with something like this rather than just being a situation where we are left to desperately hope that she doesnât lose ground. Of course, there is still nonnegligible risk in this, but sheâs also doing a debate in 12 days, so some level of risk is already baked in. Sheâs not just going to be able to coast across the finish line of this thing in bubble wrap. Not yet, at least. Not with this narrow of a lead and not with 67 full days left.
I think the national interview is actually a good idea. I think her and Walz think fast on their feet and are smart enough to present themselves well. And theyâre immensely likeable, they should be getting as much free air time as they can.
Yeah, the interview does have some risk, but they canât safely run for president and let Trump keep trying to set the narrative. Their campaign has shown itself to be more than capable of spinning a flub.
