The deal with the debates

YouTuber Devory Darkins sums up the situation with the debates quite well. My first thought about the debates was a gotcha for the Democrats: if the debate terms were good for Let's Go Brandon, why are they not good for Harris? 

Were the Democrats trying to kneecap Let's Go Brandon and they set themselves up into a situation that is now a trap for Cowardly Kamala Harris as well?  Why else would she want to change the terms of the debate?

Here's more:

I've been saying this since they agreed to debates

I didn't think they will replace Let's Go Brandon back during the early primaries. I think they wanted to do so, but couldn't.  But as soon as he agreed to debate Trump, I immediately 'wondered' why they would agree to let everyone watch Let's Go Brandon get his butt kicked on the debate stage, more than once.  To me it's deliberate bad advice in order to torpedo Let's Go Brandon's candidacy.  They know he's an absolute dud as a candidate. We know he's a dud as president.

I don't think he has a shot at looking good here. He's toast.  Vivek Ramaswamy makes a good point about these debates being awfully early in the election season, which lends a lot of credence to the notion that they are deliberately setting Let's Go Brandon up for failure with enough time to replace him.

Don't debate in the debates!

From debate spaces to safe spaces.  I heard a great discussion about this on the Patriot channel on Sirius/XM earlier today.  High school debate judges who are bringing their literal Marxist view into judging debates and automatically disqualifying those who argue pro-capitalism stances, among other values or views (such as using the term illegal immigration), is disgusting.  But apparently, it's...acceptable? 

Debate judges who not only bring their bias to the front, but don't actually want real debate. They want a safe space for their own views.  As judges no less. The insanity of that is that they are allowed to be in those judge roles.

Lot's to love here

And Ted Cruz is 100% right on the debate questions:


What's not to love about that?

So now Fiorina's going to implode? No.

This via Politico indicates that Carly Fiorina's time in the GOP race upper echelon have come to an end:

Carly Fiorina's time near the top of the Republican polls may have come to an end, as another national CNN/ORC poll out Tuesday suggests. Just 4 percent of Republican or Republican-leaning voters said they would cast their votes for her in a primary election, down from 15 percent in September...

Fiorina's poor showing comes a day after she finished in sixth place with 7 percent in a similar NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll of national Republicans.

A few bad polls and you are out? If she quit based on that, then she's not fit to be president. She's surged, after a debate as a matter of fact, and she can do it again. She needs more visibility, and that means another debate because she's not getting the coverage of a Trump or Clinton, and in a crowded field, you need visibility.

But don't expect her to fold.  It's still way too early for that unless your name is Walker or Perry.

Romney, Santorum torpedo Gingrich

More debates? No. Did I mention I don't care about the very rich or poor?

How do you ensure that Newt Gingrich can't compete and won't see another surge in voter support?  Easy - take away his greatest advantage - debates.

CNN canceled its March 1 Republican presidential debate on Thursday after three of four candidates declined to participate, citing busy campaign schedules leading to Super Tuesday on March 6.

"Mitt Romney and Ron Paul told the Georgia Republican Party, Ohio Republican Party, and CNN Thursday that they will not participate in the March 1 Republican presidential primary debate," CNN said in a statement. "Without full participation of all four candidates, CNN will not move forward with the Super Tuesday debate."

Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum also said he would not participate, leaving only former House Speaker Newt Gingrich committed to attending.

Let's have 50 or 60 presidential primary debates

Starting in the spring (2011) the Republicans are having their first candidates debate at the behest of Nancy Reagan's invite. That's a full 18+ months prior to the next presidential election, and that's an awfully long lead time. Beyond being unnecessary, even to political junkies, how meaningful could this actually be?

The litany of McCain errors - Part 3

Previously I have looked at how the McCain campaign failed to deliver both in terms of money and demographics. Today I want to review some of the strategic errors the campaign committed.


Strategy


This is by no means comprehensive, but here's a list of some obvious mistakes the campaign made (in no particular order at this point):


(1) Pennsylvania McCain spent time and money in Pennsylvania. It was a desperation move and it showed. Was he taking for granted Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Virginia? Was he hoping the polls were wrong and hoping for a miracle? Only he and his team know which. But in the Real Clear Politics average of polls Obama was leading in Pennsylvania by over 7% and won by 10.4%. It was clearly not a contestable state.




It might have made sense if he'd started that effort back in July or August or June when he was busier raising money than campaigning because he opted into federal funding. By the time Pennsylvania became a must win, it was over.

(2) Decentralization The decentralized approach to campaign administration didn't make sense. According to Politico,

McCain will lean heavily on the well-funded Republican National
Committee. He will merge key functions of his campaign hierarchy with the RNC
while also relying on an unconventional structure of 10 regional campaign
mangers.

How can you farm out operations and have a message get through consistently. If 'All politics is local' and messages are localized, you've lost on branding and message before you've even started.

For all of Obama's 'change' he ran a traditional Democrat campaign - primary left, general election center. Pick the target states and focus the message and marketing efforts. Whether McCain eschewing that was out of financial necessity or planning, there's a reason it gets used - it works.

(3) Using Character The decision to stay hands-off on Wright was a tactical error. The same is true for Ayers. The decision to stay of Rezko was a tactical error (especially in hindsight with the Blagojevich scandal fermenting today). There are many including in the McCain camp who have argued that this is gutter politics. They're right. But this is the big leagues and gutter politics is part of the game.

The timing of these questions was wrong. This message was never released, but rather than questions like this trickling out in October, this should have been the beginning of a narrative that started in June and carried on until hit sunk in and the narrative could move on to other issues with this as the tie-in.




The reason to hammer this issue home is because when you talk about other issues later - oil, the economy, the sub-prime mortgages it plays to 2 big points; (i) Can you trust McCain to try to do the right things on these issues? (ii) Can you trust Obama to have your best interests at heart when addressing these issues?



If you think of the election cycle as a narrative then it needs a story line. You can't hop all over the place and expect the diverse set of sound bytes to have a common thread and therefore stick. You've got to make the point that Obama's biggest concern was and is Obama and McCain's biggest concern was the nation.


(4) Misusing Palin The decision to start Palin twice off on unwelcome ground without some form of editorial control or input was a major tactical error. No, a blunder. According to an article with an interview with Couric on the topic;

Couric also goes in-depth about her now-infamous Sarah Palin interviews. The
interviews were the first serious “vetting” Gov. Palin had received from the
mainstream media. Post-election, some of the gossip coming out of the McCain
campaign suggested that Couric was selected for Gov. Palin’s first media
roll-out because the McCain campaign viewed a female journalist as being more
sympathetic (i.e. “softer”) to Gov. Palin.

If that doesn't show a lack of detailed thinking I don't know what does. Clearly the McCain camp felt the need to play gender politics on the issue. They also seemed to think that would outweigh any political bias Couric or ABC might feel.

The decision to 'handle' Palin rather than let her be herself was a tactical error. The decision to not allow her to stick to her strong points was a mistake. It was misuse of his greatest asset.




Andrea Tantaros had an column about it. Newt Gingrich spoke about it.


(5) Debate Prep At the point of the first debate, McCain needed momentum. He was far too soft in both the first and second debates, allowing Obama to come off as being of Presidential timber. He should have tried much harder to keep Obama off balance and on the defensive. Instead he came across as legislative.





This shouldn't have been what the late night talk shows were talking about. McCain should have come out armed with facts, armed with a debate strategy to get Obama off balance from the beginning and keep him on the ropes. That's easier said than done, but the strategy to talk issues and sound knowledgeable did nothing for McCain, nor should it have been expected to do it.

The only other way he could have made a difference was to take the approach that it seems like only Reagan could successfully take;






(6) Suspending his campaign In order to deal with the bailout issue, McCain suspended his campaign. It was a serious error in a number of respects. Firstly optics - it looked feeble, it looked desperate and it looked confused. It had a negative effect on public perception. Further by signing on to a an unpopular idea (the bailout), McCain's brand was further tarnished by his association with it. Obama came off as cooler, more focused, more sensible.

(7) Complaining about the press like Lanny Davis did, did nothing to help, but not having a workaround to get the message out was the real problem. This is not McCain specific, it is a problem for the entire GOP and conservatives in general. Bypassing the MSM is crucial to future GOP success. The press has shown that they can become more liberal, less impartial and less thorough than we previously thought possible. It's only going to get worse. The Obama victory only served to reinforce their sense of self-importance and is only going to embolden them for more next time. It's going to get uglier. And complaining about it at a minimum antagonizes them, but worse, it distracts us from our own goals - educating the people of America on the real substance behind the issues the country faces.



Next, in Part 4 I'll take a look at the branding issues McCain had with his campaign.