Media can sure pick them

Sometimes these posts write themselves.

On July July 22, Politico reported, “With Biden out, Vance may be the wrong pick for Trump.

“The former president has an electability problem among women, and his pick for vice president only compounds it.”

Yes, because women dislike young, good-looking, blue-eyed men with trim beards and trim bodies.

The column also said, “Overall, women voters turned out at higher rates than men in 2022, with participation especially high in some key states like Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which are likely to determine the result of the 2024 presidential race as well. And that year, 12 states elected women governors — a record number.”

Ah, so 2024 is the Year of the Woman in politics as it has been every year since 1984 when Walter Mondale chose Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate.

On July 25, out of the people in the universe, Newsweek (and Fox News and CNN) chose Anthony Scaramucci to speak for the Republican Party.

He said, “This was a really bad decision for [Trump]. As an example, if he had gone with someone like Nikki Haley, that really would have helped him, vis-à-vis going up against Vice President Harris.”

Scaramucci is an expert on bad decisions.

On August 6, Perry Bacon Jr. of the Washington Post said, “Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is a great choice to be Vice President Harris’s running mate, bringing legislative and political acumen and a fresh perspective to the ticket. The only downside: It’s not clear that this move will help Harris that much electorally.”

By that, he meant Minnesota was a shoo-in for Kamala because it had gone Democrat in the last 12 presidential elections. That does not mean Bacon was wrong. Real Clear Politics listed it as a toss-up state then and a toss-up state now.

On the same day, ex-Senator Claire McCaskill now with MSNBC said, “Walz is not a coastal elite guy. He’s not an Ivy Leaguer. This is a guy who says things like, ‘You’d lose your hair, too, if you supervise a high school lunchroom for 20 years.’ This is a guy who can give you advice on how to fix your car. He's a guy who served more than two decades in the National Guard.”

His campaign released a three-minute video of his car maintenance tips. It consisted of Tampon Tim removing the air filter, checking the dipstick and bitching about Trump and Project 2025.

There were two dipsticks under the hood that day.

Bloomberg said, “Tim Walz Is a Regular Guy. That’s Exactly What Harris Needs. The Minnesota governor brings a proven legislative track record of getting things done.”

The selection of Walz was a fairy tale. A regular guy. A National Guardsman. A schoolteacher. A moderate. A fellow who put tampons in the boys’ room. A fellow who quit the National Guard rather than go to Iraq. A schoolteacher in Red China for a year. A friend of school shooters. A knucklehead.

Then there is the woman who picked him as her running mate — while she was sleep-deprived.

On September 9, Newsweek ran a column, “Kamala Harris Is the Best Choice to Represent Women.”

In it, Christian. F. Nunes, president of the National Organization for Women, wrote, “Women relate to Harris as an advocate for priorities like those, but also as a warm, genuine, relatable human being. When she talks about issues, she's not just ticking off boxes or following a script, she's connecting her own lived experiences to what we're experiencing ourselves.”

She is so warm, genuine and relatable that 92% of her staff left during her first three years as VP.

As attorney general, she made her staff stand and address her as general when she came in to work in the morning. Interns were forbidden to look her in the eyes.

I could find no columns in the Newsweek praising Trump for actually being warm, genuine and relatable even though he was born a millionaire and is now a billionaire.

I did find praise in 2016 when USA Today did a story about Jim Herman winning the Shell Houston Open.

10 years earlier, he was an assistant pro at Trump Bedminster in New Jersey. Trump golfed with him.

Trump told USA Today, “I’m a good golfer. I play with a lot of golfers who think they have the goods for the PGA Tour and I can tell after one hole that they don’t. But Jim was different.

“I said to him, ‘Why aren’t you trying to get on Tour? You are talented. He hits it long. Ball striking is incredible. So I gave him money and told him to give it a shot. Such an amazing story. I don’t say it often but Jim has a lot of talent.

“He got a late start because he had no money and he had to teach. So I staked him. I told him if you make it you’ll pay me back. If you don’t, don’t worry about it. You can still work for me.”

I have no idea why the media hates him so personally. The politics, I grok. The alcoholic ex-wife reaction astonishes me.

Then again, I never understood the media’s devotion to Hillary.

Who has Kamala ever helped? Has she ever left a $100 tip? Has she ever paid off a stranger’s mortgage out of gratitude?

The media wanted her. Fortune said when she replaced Biden, “Kamala Harris is the ‘perfect’ candidate to beat Trump, presidential historian says.”

That historian said, “She’s a woman of color with interesting heritage, with her dad coming from Jamaica and her mother coming from India, and her pulling herself up by her own bootstraps. That’s the American Dream story.”

That’s one way to describe the rise of Brown’s Sugar.

But on Saturday, Politico reported, “Democratic operatives, including some of Kamala Harris’ own staffers, are growing increasingly concerned about her relatively light campaign schedule, which has her holding fewer events than Donald Trump and avoiding unscripted interactions with voters and the press almost entirely.”

We know why. Every time she opens her mouth, she loses votes.

David Axelrod told Politico, “There’s a time at which you just have to barnstorm these battlegrounds. These races are decathlons, and there are a lot of events, and you have to do all of them because people want to test you.”

“It’s the most difficult oral exam on the planet for the most difficult job, and part of that is just that spontaneous — town halls, all kinds of interviews, and not just friendly interviews. Off the Roads where you interact in a substantive way with people, all of those things are valuable and I would be doing them if I were her.”

The media has convinced itself she is articulate.

Voters believe their ears, however, not the media.