In the political world, we have spin, we have gaslighting, and then we have open micturition on our heads while calling it precipitation. In her appearance on The View today, Nancy Pelosi offers co-host Ana Navarro not one but two deluges of the latter in attempting to distance herself from a historic putsch against an incumbent president and elected nominee.
First, Pelosi attempts to claim that the Bidens got her all wrong two months ago. Pelosi didn't want Biden to withdraw at all, she now claims. She only wanted Biden to revamp his campaign after his disastrous debate performance ... as though his campaign looked like it suffered from middle-stage dementia on June 27.
And as for the "open process" Pelosi publicly demanded, Democrats had one, she now claims:
Pelosi on 'The View': Biden made the decision to step down, and Harris earned the nomination through an "open process."
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 9, 2024
Sure, Pelosi. pic.twitter.com/41gka5ixjs
PELOSI: "My point was we need a better campaign, as I said, a decision to win. I didn't see us on a path to victory. So it wasn't about him not running. It's just if this is the case, we have to run in a different way."
That quick transcription comes from Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich, who also observes that the campaign hasn't been run "in a different way" at all. First, Harris simply absorbed Biden's campaign, while adding more members of the same establishment that backed Biden's rope-a-dope strategy before the debate. And ever since, Harris has played rope-a-dope herself, only perhaps heavier on the "dope":
Kinda interesting as Harris inherited Biden's campaign apparatus - which has largely continued the Biden-era insular media strategy - albeit with different results given the new ticket
Those results are starting to look less different too these days. Now that the novelty has worn off, Harris isn't situated much better than Biden had been. Her polling gains were mainly the result of a burst of enthusiasm from her base, and that seems to be dissipating now that we have turned the corner into Labor Day, as Duane wrote earlier.
As for the "open process," come on, man. Democrats had a great opportunity to employ the representative democracy they keep insisting that is at risk by opening the convention and having candidates compete for the nomination. Pelosi and other Dump Biden activists talked openly about the need to do that before Biden actually agreed to withdraw. Instead, Joe Biden short-circuited that by announcing his endorsement of Kamala Harris, forcing everyone to play along. Rather than have a short campaign for delegates to choose the best nominee possible, the party elite discouraged anyone from entering the race by quickly issuing their own endorsements and anointing a candidate who got exactly zero votes for president in any cycle.
That's as closed a process for a nomination by a major party than America has seen in a century or more. It's the epitome of the smoke-filled back room and the machinations of the unaccountable. To call that an "open process" is an exercise in Newspeak.
Pelosi's lying through her teeth, and what's more, obviously so. Ask yourselves this: If Pelosi didn't push Biden to withdraw from the race, why won't the Bidens speak to her now? Why would they hold this kind of grudge after five decades of friendship if all she requested was a campaign shake-up? Too bad Navarro didn't bother to ask.
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