LYNDON JOHNSON: The Not-So-Great Society. New video from Amity Shlaes at PragerU:

Related: Amity Shlaes’ Great Society: How Poverty Won America’s War on Poverty.

YOU MAY NOT BE INTERESTED IN POLITICS, BUT POLITICS IS INTERESTED IN YOU:

● US announces it’s sending troops to the Middle East and warns Americans to leave Lebanon.

—The London Daily Mail today.

● Ukrainian President Zelenskyy visits Scranton ammunition factory to thank workers and ask for more.

—WHYY, Philadelphia’s PBS affiliate, today.

Note how Zelenskyy was conveyed to the States for his contribution to the Harris-Walz campaign:

And it is a campaign contribution for Harris; the London Telegraph reports today that Zelensky has conveyed his thoughts on her opponents to the New Yorker: Zelensky: Trump doesn’t know how to end war and Vance is too radical.

Finally, if you missed it earlier from Steve: Here’s How Far Down the Road to WWIII Biden-Harris Has Taken Us.

Exit quote:

UPDATE:

(Classical allusion in headline.)

BYRON YORK: So many don’t want to know so much about Kamala Harris.

During the Sept. 10 debate with Trump, Harris stirred a lot of curiosity when she revealed she is a gun owner. Many observers didn’t know that and wanted to learn more. What kind of gun? How long has Harris had it? Does she shoot it? Has she ever used it? Neither Harris nor her staff offered any further details. Then, during her town hall with Oprah Winfrey, when Winfrey said she had not known that Harris owned a gun, Harris replied, “If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot, sorry,” and then broke into laughter. Harris added, “Probably should not have said that, but my staff will deal with that later.”

Then, on Friday, a member of Harris’s staff, campaign spokeswoman Adrienne Elrod, appeared on CNN. Anchor Jim Acosta had some basic questions about the gun. “You are on Kamala Harris’s staff — can you give us some more information?” Acosta said to Elrod. “I’m just curious from a biographical background, what do we know about this firearm that she owns and when did she get it?”

Elrod confirmed that Harris owns a gun and then said, “I can’t really comment more than that” beyond saying that Harris “staunchly supports the Second Amendment.”

After that, I posted that Harris “keeps saying she is a gun owner but won’t say anything about the gun or gun she owns. Her staff won’t, either.” The reaction on X was instant and hostile — and from another journalist. “What f***ing business is it of yours?” said the journalist Keith Olbermann. Then, from the longtime journalist and journalism professor Jeff Jarvis came the comment, “So f***ing what?” And then followed the X observers, who added things like “It’s none of your damn business” and “Who cares? It’s her business.”

The point of all this is to shed some light on Harris’s continuing refusal to reveal precisely where she stands on a number of issues important to voters. Why should she? She has a group of journalists on her side who actively do not want her to answer more questions, do not want her to be transparent on important issues, do not want her to undergo the scrutiny that until now has been routine for major party candidates. They are willing to defend her decision not to talk aggressively. When it comes to where Harris stands, they don’t want to know. And so far, she’s not telling them — or us.

Obama famously wrote in The Audacity of Hope that “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” It helped enormously that he was on his first presidential bid, and that he had the showmanship and chops to really sell what Obama biographer David Garrow called “the composite character” that Team Barry had carefully crafted. Kamala has run for the White House once already, and prior to that was a prominent California politician, making her an infinitely better-known quantity politically, and thus her party’s operatives with bylines are forced to play dumb to help get her over the finish line.

RIP: Michael Valentine, Who Saved 1,000s of Drivers from 1,000s of Tickets, Has Died. “We needed a hero, and Mike Valentine was it. No one could drive 55. Tickets were being spat out of police writing pads like winner’s receipts in SkeeBall. So Mike Valentine and wife Peg founded Cincinnati Microwave and started making radar detectors. Cincinnati Microwave became Escort, one of the biggest companies in the industry. The Valentines later left Escort and founded Valentine Research Inc. in 1983, and radar detection has been an industry ever since.”

OUT ON A LIMB: Kamala Harris Is Not an Ideas Candidate.

There’s a lot more pandering and pablum in Harris’ answers than any philosophizing about the structure of the economy.

The most obvious takeaway isn’t that Harris has some new-fangled approach to economic policy. Rather, it’s that she unexpectedly found herself at the top of the Democratic ticket and has been grasping for a policy agenda ever since.

In the rush to cobble that agenda together, she’s picked up on some relatively fresh ideas (help the private sector build more homes), some stale ones (homebuyer and small business subsidies), and a few already tried disasters (price controls).

But there’s no coherent idea connecting these policies. Columnists can do all the heavy lifting they want to try and find a connecting thread. But the fact is there is just no there there.

There are a few ideas that she appears to have, however:

Kamala Harris wants to flood the United States with illegal immigration. It is her explicit goal, and she accomplished it with flying colors as Vice President. https://t.co/rB8qzYl7eR

— JD Vance (@JDVance) September 23, 2024

Roll the tape…

Kamala Harris: "There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking."

Hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians would lose their jobs.#Debate2024 pic.twitter.com/AAtaP6Ycbb

— Daniel Turner (@DanielTurnerPTF) September 11, 2024

● Kamala Harris praised ‘defund the police’ movement in June 2020 radio interview.

And also during 2020:

THE ATLANTIC MORPHED INTO THE BABYLON BEE SO SLOWLY, I HARDLY EVEN NOTICED: Public-Health Officials Should Have Been Talking About Their Sex Parties the Whole Time.

In conversations caught on hidden camera, New York City’s former COVID czar said that he’d organized a pair of sex parties in the second half of 2020, as New Yorkers coped with peak pandemic social isolation. “The only way I could do this job for the city was if I had some way to blow off steam every now and then,” Jay Varma told an undercover reporter with whom he thought he was on a date. In a video compiled from several recordings taken this summer, the onetime senior public-health adviser to city hall describes the two events that took place in August and November of 2020. He also talked about his work promoting vaccination in the city by making it “very uncomfortable” for those who wanted to avoid the shots.

“I stand by my efforts to get New Yorkers vaccinated against COVID-19, and I reject dangerous extremist efforts to undermine the public’s confidence in the need for and effectiveness of vaccines,” Varma said in a statement to The Atlantic. He acknowledged having participated in “two private gatherings” during his time in government, and said he takes responsibility “for not using the best judgment at the time.” The statement also notes that the taped conversations were “secretly recorded, spliced, diced, and taken out of context.”

In New York City during 2020, everything was pretty much prohibited – unless you were firebombing police cars and looting in the name of George Floyd. Then-Mayor De Blasio became infamous for singling out “the Jewish community” by name in April of 2020:

“My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed. I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups. This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period.”

Playgrounds were closed and their doors welded shut. Families attending funerals were severely curtailed. Indoor dining was banned.

But hey, if only DeBlasio’s COVID czar had disclosed his sex parties; nobody who had seen their livelihoods throttled or their lives disrupted would have minded then. Go, have fun, blow off steam – you’ve earned it, big guy!

As Charles Cooke wrote in 2021, “Rule-Breaking Elites Let the Mask Slip on COVID Protocols. It turns out that all those onerous health-and-safety requirements were only for the regular people this whole time.”

UPDATE: At some point, the article’s subhead was changed to the one above from something much more ridiculous:

Because as Cooke noted above, there’s nothing more “relatable” than hypocrite elites who have one set of rules for themselves, and another for you.

BAN ALL THE THINGS! Newsom signs law banning all plastic shopping bags at grocery stores.

Banning, huh? But Newsom assured me that “California is the freedom state” when he toyed with replacing Biden in 2023, and thought that his chief competitor for the White House would likely be Ron DeSantis.

Flashback to 2016: “For these people, we are always eco-sinners in the hands of an angry Gaia.”

And to March 23rd, 2020, when everything was hitting the proverbial fan: Plastic Bag Bans Dangerous During Covid-19 Pandemic: “For that reason, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu issued an emergency order over the weekend prohibiting reusable shopping bags and requiring that stores use disposable plastic or paper bags instead.”

NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT: Nobody Was Ever Charged for the 2020 Antifa Attack on the White House.

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Joe Biden snaps at aides over press conference confusion.

Biden lost his temper during a press conference, seeming to snap at staffers because he did not know which world leader he was supposed to be introducing next.

The US president appeared on stage with the leaders of Japan, India and Australia on Saturday as part of a two-day summit of their Quad alliance.

But when he was meant to introduce Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, Mr Biden appeared to snap at his staffers and demanded to know: “Who’s next?”

“I want to thank you all for being here,” Mr Biden said from the stage in Wilmington, Delaware.

He added: “Now, who am I introducing next?”

Mr Biden then shouted: “Who’s next?” This was followed by several seconds of silence.

An announcer cut in to introduce Mr Modi, who approached Mr Biden and shook his hand.

* * * * * * * *

While Mr Biden, 81, has a history of embarrassing gaffes and forgetful moments, Saturday’s hiccup appeared to be due to technical issues rather than his mental acuity.

“By the way, he’s from a small country like ours. A small population like ours,” Mr Biden then said while embracing Mr  Modi, 74. “He’s become a good and decent man. A good friend.”

“He’s become a good decent man?” I’d say Biden’s declining mental acuity may be playing some role here.

🥴 ‘Who’s next?’ asks a confused Biden at a Quad press conference

“And now, who am I introducing next? Who's next?” the US President barked to the assembled crowd, apparently forgetting the order of speakers at the event. Biden was quickly interrupted by a member of his staff,… pic.twitter.com/GqRF6bKtnT

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) September 22, 2024

Biden malfunctions again, says- "He's from a small country like ours, with a small population"
"But he's become a good & decent man and a good friend"
Even PM Modi is embarrassed!#ModiBiden pic.twitter.com/nR1nFhOphN

— Be political (@be_political123) September 22, 2024

DEMOCRAT HAMTRAMCK MICHIGAN MAYOR ENDORSES TRUMP:

More at the Detroit News from Wednesday: Trump lobbied Hamtramck mayor for his endorsement in Flint meeting.

The Republican presidential candidate campaigned Tuesday night at the Dort Financial Center in Flint, and Ghalib said he and Trump met at the events center before Trump addressed the crowd.

“He knew a lot about me before the meeting,” Ghalib said Wednesday in a text message to The Detroit News.

“We talked about various topics including the debates, the polls updates, the statistics of votes in Michigan and Wayne County, the Arab American concerns and the Yemeni Americans in particular. We also talked about the situation in Yemen,” Ghalib added.

Ghalib is an immigrant from Yemen. In 2021, he ousted incumbent mayor Karen Majewski. He and other Muslim candidates for city council won in that election in Hamtramck, a roughly two-square mile city of 28,000 residents that surrounded by Detroit. U.S. Census data shows more than 40% of Hamtramck’s population now is foreign-born, including natives of Yemen.

Flashback to last year: Democrats Have a Muslim Problem in Michigan.

LGBTQ+ and transgender-supporting Democrats have a Muslim problem in Michigan as the conservative Muslim community pushes back against Democrat-supported LGBTQ legislation and policies.

In Hamtramck, the all-Muslim city council in the only Muslim-majority city in the United States, recently voted unanimously to institute a flag resolution called “Resolution to Maintain and Conform the Neutrality of the City of Hamtramck Towards its Residents.” In the resolution, they prohibit flags of any racial, ethnic, religious or sexual-oriented group on city property.

The LGBTQ+ community took offense to the resolution and showed up at the meeting to protest it on June 13th. Muslim Hassan Aoun was also at the meeting and said, “Don’t sit here and throw Pride Month, or being gay, down kids’ throat, my throat or anybody’s throat. You can be gay by yourself.”

After the vote was made concerning the flag resolution, a group of LGBTQ+ activists also protested in front of Hamtramck City Hall on June 24th. The protest included an appearance and speech by Attorney General Dana Nessel who compared their flag ban to being evil, homophobic and transphobic.

Hamtramck Mayor Amer Ghalib has said publicly that he considers the protesters to be a “militia” and the protesters were comprised of folks sent into his community, including elected officials, to put pressure on them and threaten them.

As I wrote at the time, FDR, who assembled a coalition of “Progressive” northerners and stone-cold racist southern New Dealers, smiles.

As recently as June of this year, Trump reportedly had “a Slight Edge On Biden in Swing State of Michigan, Post-Verdict Poll Shows,” the New York Post reported. So much of the Biden-Harris administration’s hatred of Israel has been driven by their efforts to win over  communities in Michigan with large Muslim-American populations such as Hamtramck. Losing the mayor’s endorsement to Trump will sting badly, but as always, eschew cockiness.

NOT YOUR FATHER’S REPUBLICAN GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: The predilections of Pastor Robinson.

But for true theater, nothing could quite match “the Mark Robinson story,” a saga so outré it might actually end up shifting the needle. Chekhov’s gun appeared on stage early Thursday when the conservative Carolina Journal reported that Pastor Robinson was under pressure to withdraw as Republican nominee for North Carolina governor due to “a damning news story looming.” Cockburn’s inbox was then stuffed with speculation from his fellow hacks: would it relate to his previously revealed penchant for pornography? Was there a transgender angle? Or could it be “Nazi stuff?”

Bang. Everyone was right. CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck revealed later Thursday that Robinson had been a prolific poster on the Nude Africa forum, “The Web’s Largest Source of Amateur Black Erotica.”

Robinson, as North Carolina lieutenant governor, gave a famous 2022 viral speech in church where he declared, “ain’t but two genders.” But years earlier, on Nude Africa, he wrote, “I like watching tranny on girl porn! That’s fucking hot! It takes the man out while leaving the man in!” Cockburn can’t fault the pastor’s logic, despite his apparent evolution on the issue at hand.

In other posts on the forum, Robinson declared, “I’m a black NAZI!”; referred to MLK as “Martin Luther Koon”; wrote that “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it (slavery) back. I would certainly buy a few” and said he’d “take Hitler” over President Obama. If you asked an artificial intelligence to generate a damaging political story about a Republican candidate, and gradually make it more extreme, this is what it would throw up.

“Robinson is a gigantic problem for the Tarheel State GOP,” Jim Geraghty adds. “Every news segment talking about his Nazi, slavery, and transsexual porn fetishes — a sequence of words I did not think I would ever write in this newsletter — is time that isn’t being spent talking about any other issue that would improve Republican odds in the state.”

UPDATE: Slew of Mark Robinson’s Top Campaign Staff Resign Amid ‘Black Nazi’ Porn Site Scandal.

OLD AND BUSTED: “Mind Your Own Damn Business.”

The New Hotness? Tim Walz: “I’ll often have people tell me, ‘I’m really not that into politics.’ Well too damn bad – politics is into you!”

The Democratic Party’s vice presidential nominee got married on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre,  promoted a research facility that partners with China’s Wuhan lab, looked the other way when Minneapolis was being destroyed in 2020, and his wife loved the smell of burning businesses. Is he now paraphrasing a quote regularly attributed to Leon Trotsky?

Flashback: Trump’s ‘Comrade Kamala’ Attack. Accurate, But Too Far?

No. Next question?

Related: Man who says he accompanied Walz on trip to China calls VP candidate ‘Maoist to the core.’

ELON MUSK ON THE BENEFITS OF FEDERALISM:

The only thing stopping the California government and overbearing regulatory agencies from being even worse is that people and companies can move out of state.

If the machine behind the Kamala puppet wins this election, the whole country will be far worse than California is… https://t.co/q7B9cbsLWv

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 22, 2024

MEGYN KELLY EXPLAINS WHY THE ‘DAYS OF OPRAH ARE OVER’ AFTER CRINGE KAMALA HARRIS TOWN HALL:

I used to love Oprah. I always took her little packages as gospel. I never even thought to question whether Oprah might be intentionally misleading me. And then I watched her town hall with Kamala Harris last night and it dawned on me: She is not a reporter. She is a propagandist trying to shove messaging down my throat about whatever she believes, not what is real.

Recent Work

Let’s just take a look back at the last few years. Remember when she did that ‘factual’ interview back in 2019 after the HBO ‘documentary’ of Michael Jackson that was so dishonest? She did not raise any of the serious and compromising facts with those accusers when she had them right there. Maybe they were telling the truth, maybe they were not. But as a journalist, you have to at least ask.

She then sat down with Meghan Markle in 2021, and that was another propaganda fest where she didn’t even try to pretend to be a journalist. She did not press any of her claims of racism in the Royal Family.

That all led to the debacle last night, which was the ultimate culmination of her journalistic fails. She had the potential next president of the United States in front of her and not only did she not ask her hard questions but the whole thing was an attempt to rehab and repackage her.

Along with plenty of help from Iowahawk’s fabled Teleprompter XD-235, apparently:

Kamala Harris had a teleprompter during her entire Oprah Interview?

pic.twitter.com/k6yF0bvNNH

— Drew Hernandez (@DrewHLive) September 22, 2024

CLIFTON DUNCAN ON DISNEY’S CANNON FODDER ACTRESSES:

The Critical Drinker has referred to how Hollywood loves to trash huge swatches of its fan base and attack them as racist in order to gin up hype for its latest (usually terrible) woke reboot, spinoff or sequel. But it’s worth remembering in an industry where unemployment is by far the norm, that the actors and actresses who sign up for such projects will likely be tarnished by their appearance in them as collateral damage. Or in the case of Gina Carano, blacklisted by the company that employed her.

Last year, John Nolte wrote, “Hollywood Forced to Admit the Movie Star Is Dead.” Tinseltown has a myriad of tactics, intentional and otherwise, that’s keeping a new crop from taking their places.

RIP: Mercury Morris, part of the Miami Dolphins’ two Super Bowl wins and their perfect season, dies at 77.

BOMB CANADA, THE CASE FOR WAR: Students attending protest told to ‘wear blue’ to mark them as ‘colonizers.’

KENTUCKY FRIED FRISCO: San Francisco Police Are Fighting Crime By Dressing up in Inflatable Chicken Costumes to Catch Drivers Speeding Through Crosswalks.

Look guys, San Francisco has to start somewhere. The homicide rate rose by 83% last year. Overall violent crime by 4%. The homeless population continues to skyrocket. Kale salads cost $32 a leaf. An earthquake is liable to decimate half the city at any moment. The city has seen better days.

There’s a lot of people who are critical of San Francisco and they way they handle… well, everything about their city. But at least they have somebody like Police Capt. Amy Hurwitz who’s taking logical, tangible steps to improve the safety of the Bay Area one harebrained scheme at a time.

NY Post – The San Francisco Police Department is dressing up in inflatable chicken costumes to catch drivers speeding past crosswalks in a new stunt.

SFGate reported Monday on San Francisco police Lt. Jonathan Ozol wearing the costume while walking down a crosswalk on Alemany Boulevard near the intersection of Rousseau Street. The idea, Capt. Amy Hurwitz explained, is for drivers to take notice and yield to pedestrians.

And before you say, “Wow, her big idea was to go out and buy an inflatable chicken costume and have an officer stand next to a crosswalk?” No. They’ve done more than that. They’ve bought multiple inflatable costumes, including a unicorn and a Big Bird (pictures unfortunately not available)

NEW: The San Francisco Police Department is dressing up as inflatable chickens to catch speeding drivers going through crosswalks.

The officers are giving out citations to those who don't stop for the chicken crossing the road.

The gig is paying off as the department has… pic.twitter.com/b9U7ekBZXP

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 21, 2024

Mister we could use a man like Dirty Harry again.

CRIES FOR HELP FROM THE FAR LEFT:

Tim Walz apparently forgot who's currently in office. https://t.co/QJVDNES7go

— Mr Reagan 🇺🇸 (@MrReaganUSA) September 22, 2024

Joe Biden agrees! Biden wears ‘Trump 2024’ hat at Pennsylvania fire station to promote unity.

Or as America’s Newspaper of Record reported the story on September 11th: In Brief Moment Of Lucidity, Biden Endorses Trump.

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE AND WILL ACCELERATE EXPONENTIALLY UNDER HARRIS-WALZ: Harris would fill her administration with anti-Israel radicals.

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: As His 100th Birthday Approaches, Concert Honors Jimmy Carter’s ‘Singular Achievements.’ Like What?

The performers showered him with praise. Michael Trotter Jr. “of the married duo the War and Treaty” called him “our forever president.” Carlene Carter added that Jimmy was a “mighty fine man.” Hannah Hooper of “the alternative rock band Grouplove” gushed that he was “an environmental god.” Musician Dave Matthews, addressing the hero of the night, who was not present, said: “You are most definitely the rock ’n’ roll president.” Chuck Leavell of the Allman Brothers band said: “We were so proud of his administration and all the accomplishments that he made.”

Accomplishments? During his one term as president, Carter fought the “energy crisis” by scolding Americans for using too much energy and overseeing a proliferation of government regulation in order to make Americans become more energy-conscious and less wasteful. But the whole endeavor was built on sand: there was actually no energy crisis. The world’s oil reserves did not run out in the 1980s, as had been predicted, and not because Carter saved the day by winning what he called the “moral equivalent of war.”

Carter only made the real problem worse: oil companies were so beset with restrictions and regulations that they couldn’t take adequate steps to find new oil supplies. Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, changed that, and the days of the energy crisis were over, at least until apocalyptic climate hysteria of a different kind became the centerpiece of later Democratic presidents’ efforts to assert even more federal control over the lives of Americans.

There’s no doubt that prior to the arrival of Obama and Biden-Harris, Carter was our worst, most feckless president in a very long time. But he did have one shining moment, which foreshadowed the success of the man who would replace him in 1980: When Democrats Loved Deregulation.

And speaking of concerts, perhaps the immense musical pressure on Carter was enough to momentarily awaken him from his torpor:

THE NOT READY FOR PRIMETIME CANDIDATE: Kamala Harris to skip Al Smith dinner, a traditional event for major presidential candidates.

NEWS YOU CAN USE:

Surely Cheney, the IRS, Putin and Iran endorsing Kamala can’t all be wrong! 😑 https://t.co/e4VjMnUwZO

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 21, 2024

Related: New York magazine, in between distancing themselves from Olivia Nuzzi and her digital dalliance with RFK Jr., note the strange turn 2024 has taken: Bush-Era Republican Supervillains Are Eager to Vote for Kamala Harris.

Green Day must be wondering how we’ve arrived at this moment in history:

TO SERVE MAN: The Kamala Cookbook.

Some of this incuriosity is no doubt the result of careful cultivation of the media by Harris in the last two years. As Semafor’s Max Tani reported in late July, Harris has “invited a parade of prominent television anchors and media executives to dine with her at the Naval Observatory, given personal tours of her garden to journalists from diverse backgrounds, and shaped trips to do media appearances with the outlets serving Democratic-leaning groups the White House refers to as ‘coalition media.’” Harris has fêted the hosts of Morning Joe over dinner, as well as Meet the Press’s Kristen Welker, and doesn’t discriminate between prestige and nontraditional media. As Semafor notes, “Staff from gossip site The Shade Room snagged an invite to her holiday party,” and off-the-record meetings included visits by the authors of “fairly niche abortion Substacks.”

Instead of running down the story themselves, media outlets have scolded Republicans who posited their own theories about Biden’s departure and its resemblance to a bloodless coup. In a piece that included charts and an extended note on its “methodology,” the New York Times decried the use of words such as “coup” and “cover-up” and claimed, “A vast majority of prominent Republicans have treated the development [Biden’s exit] with suspicion or scorn.” New York magazine declared such speculation “lurid,” stating, “This line of argument is as feeble as it is loud and insistent. If Biden could be brushed aside against his will, why did it take so long, and why did the alleged orchestrators of the ‘coup’ insist that Biden himself make the decision?”

A willing media have continued to serve as the Harris campaign’s boosters by avoiding asking difficult questions about her policy positions. As New York’s Gabriel Debenedetti wrote recently, a “popular media narrative” suggests that Harris should take clear policy positions on important issues, but “people close to Harris” say “her primary job now is to win an election and that most voters need to understand her values and priorities, not her white papers.”

In her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Harris said, “My entire career, I’ve only had once client: the people.” Is it a good idea to keep your client in the dark about not only how you got your job but also what your plans are for leading them, given that they ultimately decide whether you get that job and pay your salary? Harris is betting that it is. And given the media’s incuriosity about her résumé and rise to power, it’s a clever gamble. For the ever-more distrusted and increasingly unpopular and unprofitable mainstream press, however, it’s just another path of indignity leading to the industry’s grave.

Running out the clock with a subservient media in tow could very well work for Kamala, but there is certainly precedence for failure, and not just in 2016: Is Kamala setting herself up for a Dewey-versus-Truman defeat?

STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED THIS WEEK: Trump Fights On.