Garbage in, Garbage Out

Last night in Washington, DC, Kamala Harris (and 72,000 guests) returned to the scene of Donald’s Trump’s Jan 6 crime, where she delivered her closing argument in the case for the 2024 election. You can watch the whole speech here. Broadly, the vibe is captured by this line: “Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at my table. And I pledge to be a president for all Americans. To always put country above party and above self.” If you missed the speech in real time, you may have missed it altogether. That’s because by this morning, most above the fold election news was focused not on Kamala’s speech, but rather on an obvious (and quickly corrected) gaffe by Joe Biden. The coverage is captured in headlines like these from NPR: Harris urged unity in her closing argument. Biden’s ‘garbage’ line undercut that, Reuters: Harris vows to serve ‘all Americans,’ trying to limit damage from Biden comment, and AP: Harris promises to ‘represent all Americans’ after Biden’s remark on Trump supporters and ‘garbage.’ These headlines are representative of what I saw across the internet this morning. I’m not leading with this because I think Biden’s gaffe is remotely important. Nor do I think the mainstream media’s fixation on his slip will matter at the polls (at this point in the election cycle, I’m not convinced anything in this campaign, or life, matters). I’m leading with it because it is a clear example of what I’ve been seeing across my tabs since 2015: A media seemingly incapable of covering the Trump era in a reasonable way and that has shown little if any improvement during that timeframe. I’m also leading with this as a reminder of the inanity and insanity of most of our political coverage. For your mental health, you might want to skip all of it—including mine—for the next week. When Michelle Obama encouraged you to “do something,” she didn’t mean to refresh tabs and drive yourself crazy on your living room couch. Don’t be like me. I refreshed a few tabs between that last sentence and this one.

+ If anything matters at this point in the election, it’s probably the good old fashioned ground game. Dana Milbank in WaPo: So, what did you think of Harris’s October surprise? “It’s all a reminder of the timeless maxim: Campaigns matter. Many Harris supporters are biting their nails as polls show a dead heat just a week from Election Day. But one thing the polls can’t reflect is that the Harris campaign has a field operation that is beyond anything seen before in presidential elections, while the Trump effort is subpar. This is no guarantee of victory, but in a close election, it can make the difference.”