Spin cycle history: If Biden had dropped out earlier, Trump may have been defeated
By Gary Abernathy
Enough already: Kamala Harris did not lose because she didn’t have enough time to mount an effective campaign
After Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris for president, a myth developed that Harris simply did not have time to mount an effective campaign. This is what is called “rubbish,” and a perfect example of revisionist history.
By entering the race so late, Harris had every possible advantage. She didn’t need to mount a campaign at all. She stepped into the middle of a Joe Biden campaign well underway, and, as Biden’s vice president, had the advantage of being the perfect person to adopt the same messaging.
Remember all the boasting that went on about how much money came in after Biden dropped out and Harris stepped in? “Harris Sets Record for Biggest Fundraising Quarter Ever,” blared the New York Times.
And overnight, Harris erased the polling advantage Trump had enjoyed over Biden, moving ahead in most polls. In late September, NBC produced a poll showing Harris with a five-point lead and declared, “Newly popular Harris builds momentum, challenging Trump for the mantle of change.” The gloating from the left was palpable.
A myth was formulated that painted Biden as the patriotic president willing to sacrifice his own ego for the good of the country, gallantly stepping aside for Harris to step up. For her part, Harris was heralded as a fresh voice for a new generation, bravely willing to step in and take the reins to rescue us from Donald Trump.
But since her defeat, a convenient narrative has been spun painting Harris as trying her best, but it was just too little too late. Poor Kamala.
Just this week, the New York Times, in a story about Biden, spun it this way:
By the time he dropped out, the party had no time for a full competition to replace him as its nominee. Ms. Harris, who stepped up to take the nomination in part by default, had just 107 days to mount a general election campaign against Mr. Trump and fell short by 1.5 percentage points in the popular vote.
Without the revisionism, here are the facts:
After his debate with Trump, no one could argue anymore that Biden was capable of serving four more years. Panic ensued.
Biden faced intense pressure from donors and Democratic Party leaders to step aside, finally caving to the inevitable. He left kicking and screaming.
In his statement announcing his intention to forego reelection, Biden spitefully anointed Harris as his successor, giving party leaders little choice but to jump on board or risk being seen as anti-women or, worse, racist.
Harris clearly already had a plan in place, working the phones to Democratic officials across the country urging them to clear the way for her candidacy.
Trump haters everywhere prematurely celebrated, believing the election was now in the bag for Harris.
Far from seeing her late entry as a disadvantage, it was being hailed as a miraculous event, with CNN reporting in July, “How Kamala Harris’ warp-speed campaign launch has changed the 2024 race.”
The CNN story painted the rosiest possible picture, one shared by most mainstream analysts:
Bright green, pro-Harris memes have erupted across social media. Fundraising exploded, with Harris’ campaign saying she raised $126 million between Sunday afternoon and Tuesday evening. And Democrats were more eager to devote their own time to working to elect Harris: More than 100,000 people signed up to volunteer for her bid, and more than 2,000 applied for campaign jobs, Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a Wednesday memo. New polls show a race in which Trump had been ahead now having no clear leader.
It’s all made clear how desperate much of the Democratic Party was for a change at the top of the ticket – and how eager its donors and loyalists are to back a candidate who can take on Trump in a more consistent and aggressive way.
Michigan AFL-CIO President Ron Bieber described the energy in his state – one of November’s most important battlegrounds – as “electric.”
“I’ve never seen energy like this, this time in an election cycle,” he said.
Harris, in fact, was handed a dream scenario: All the momentum in the world with a friendly media ready to carry her across the finish line. Trump had to run a marathon; Harris was only asked to do a short sprint. She still lost.
After it all came crashing down on election night, the narrative began to be spun into what an uphill battle Harris always faced, how she barely stood a chance, how it all could have been so different if Biden had never sought reelection in the first place.
Reality (and fact) check: Americans were unhappy with the Democratic Party’s policies and focus. The Trump years looked preferable by comparison, and Trump had become “normalized” enough to give him another shot. Enough with trying to re-write history.
When did reporters become newsroom decision-makers?
I don’t know when it became standard operating procedure for reporters to think that they were in charge of newsrooms, but I know it’s a trend that contributes mightily to the loss of effectiveness by, and respect for, the far-left (formerly mainstream) media.
Uprisings by rank-and-file news employees about various actions by their bosses has become practically routine. CNN staffers revolted against management’s effort to make the network less liberal. MSNBC personnel pushed back against the decision by their bosses to hire former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel. The New York Times has faced numerous rebellions from newsroom personnel over various edicts. And the Washington Post can’t count how many internal uprisings it has had to contend with.
The latest brouhaha at the Post has to do with the resignation of an editorial cartoonist after her latest submission was rejected for publication. Cartoonist Ann Telnaes had submitted a cartoon showing various corporate bigshots, each “bending the knee” and holding moneybags at the foot of a statue of Donald Trump. One of the bigshots depicted was Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — who owns the Washington Post.
During his tenure as Post owner, Bezos has been pretty thick-skinned when it comes to his own paper writing critical stories about him or Amazon. But employees should be smart enough not to bite the hand that feeds them any more often than absolutely necessary. After her effort was rejected, Telnaes took her cartoon and went home, issuing a statement (of course) on social media to complain about having her idea rejected. Naturally, her cartoon was then immediately published on just about every online platform there is.
Two things struck me about the cartoon. Number one, as mentioned, it’s just unprofessional to take such blatant liberty in mocking the owner of the newspaper for which you work. Second, the cartoon wasn’t particularly clever. The best editorial cartoons have some subtlety or humor about them, rather than hitting you over the head with a blatant message. Telnaes’ cartoon was about as subtle as a brick.
Editorial page Editor David Shipley pushed back against Telnaes’ claim that her work was rejected because of its message. He said, "Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force. My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column – this one a satire – for publication. The only bias was against repetition."
Maybe. But I tend to believe that the cartoon’s rejection was due to Bezos’ recent efforts to make nice with Trump, and the common-sense position that ridiculing the person responsible for keeping you in business is simply not smart in the midst of an economic environment increasingly hostile to news media companies. How ‘bout, “Thanks, Mr. Bezos, for keeping the Post alive and its employees paid?” Where’s that cartoon?
I would have respected Ms. Telnaes more had she merely shrugged her shoulders and returned to her drawing board to come up with a different cartoon — if she would have said to herself, “Well, I disagree with that decision, but he’s the boss and I’m not, so I’ll come up with something different.”
Few think that way these days. But I do respect her decision to quit rather than to stand her ground, make a public stink about it, and ultimately force the Post to fire her as though she was a martyr.
When I was a reporter — or held any newsroom position other than the top editor — I understood the pecking order. I respected the fact that editors (or owners) make decisions and I followed orders. Yes, sometimes I pushed back against a decision not to pursue or publish a story or a column, or some edict to do a fluff piece on someone who was an advertiser (quite common at smaller papers). But I was never under any illusion that I had a voice equal to the decision-makers.
On those occasions when I found myself as the top editor (or publisher), I made my philosophy very easy to understand. One time, I succeeded an editor who routinely involved the staff in decision-making. I made it clear that was not how I operated. My philosophy was that of a benevolent dictatorship, like it or not. There were always some who did not like it at all. But by being the final word in newsroom decisions, I was also clearly where the buck stopped. If things went awry, there was no one else to blame.
I am aghast at stories describing newsroom uprisings, particularly when they are successful, which they nearly always are. The vast overhaul needed at most far-left (formerly mainstream) media outlets is virtually impossible to achieve when management buckles under the pressure of internal revolts. The very people who most likely need to be replaced are the people protecting their own jobs — and their outlet’s liberal prejudices — by publicly opposing all efforts to change the culture. It’s a Catch-22 that prevents pulling newsrooms out of their death spirals.
And now, random thoughts on this and that …
Many parts of the country, such as where I live in southern Ohio, got hit with a nice snowstorm Sunday through Monday, totaling nearly a foot of snow in many places. Those of us who lived through the snowstorms of January 1977 and January 1978 don’t get too excited about a foot of snow. Here’s a nice story from WCPO in Cincinnati recalling why those weather events in successive years were so devastating — and so much worse than the relatively mild snow event we had this week (hint: the Ohio River actually froze in 1977).
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Kudos to Vice President Kamala Harris for her professionalism in presiding over Monday’s official certification of the 2025 presidential election. Like Al Gore in 2000, Harris, as Senate president, found herself in the awkward position of having to formally declare her own defeat. She handled the ceremony with class and dignity. Very nice.
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Meta (formerly Facebook) CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this week that his platform will end the so-called “fact checking” system it adopted a few years ago in a new effort to foster more free speech, ala Elon Musk and X. That’s good news, but we are still dealing with the fall-out from social media companies appointing themselves “guardians of fact” to protect us from ourselves. It’s one of the most shameful chapters in American history — and one which should be embarrassing for any media company that advocated for or defended the practice.
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Regarding the passing of former president Jimmy Carter, I can only echo what most Americans probably believe — he was a poor president, but a generally excellent ex-president. Carter was the poster child for how not to run a White House — by micromanagement — but that hands-on philosophy worked well for his private endeavors ranging from election oversight in foreign countries to his dedication to the Habitat for Humanity organization. Rest in peace, President Carter.
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It was announced this week that Amy Acton will seek the Democratic nomination for governor of Ohio in the 2026 election. Acton is the former director of the Ohio Department of Health who recommended some of the most stringent restrictions of personal freedom in the U.S. during the covid pandemic. Acton probably, and understandably, thinks she already has experience as governor, since Gov. Mike DeWine — as well-meaning as he may have been — basically abdicated his responsibility and followed whatever recommendations Acton made, regardless of the degree to which they impeded or infringed on the economy or the rights of Ohioans to work, worship, or otherwise peaceably assemble. When the state legislature — dominated by DeWine’s fellow Republicans — passed a bill designed to build in checks and balances regarding the health department’s ability to infringe on freedoms, DeWine actually vetoed it. Prediction: Acton’s candidacy will be short-lived.
‘MAGA Republicans Are Already Normal’ — for yourself or for that friend or loved one confused about the election
“MAGA Republicans Are Already Normal — And Other Shocking Notions” is a great addition to the library of MAGA Trump supporters, or the perfect gift for friends and loved ones to help them make sense of the 2024 election results. It’s available on Amazon. Buy it here.
The book (actually much thicker than the illustrations above indicate — the hardcover and paperback are each 453 pages) is a compilation of many of the columns I wrote for The Washington Post from 2017 to 2023, and covers a variety of topics, but it particularly focuses on Trump’s rise to political prominence and helps explain his appeal.
Here’s a link to a website dedicated to the book.
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