Shitbirds gonna Shitbird: Bill Kristol

As they slide ever more into irrelevance (they've already converted all the "gettable" R's) outlets like The Bulwark really jones to go back to the glory days of their past at The Weekly Standard

bill kristol eating a shit sandwich in a bathroom with donald trump

At times, you can sympathize with them, they are trying to eject Trump and his minions into oblivion, hopefully never to be seen again.

But they, like much of the mainstream media, continue to hold Kamala Harris to the old standards for comportment as a candidate. That the media needs to interview and vet the candidates for the electorate, and “inform” the electorate of who they feel are worthy of being elected.

And if you go back 20 years, there was some validity to this. Social media didn’t exist. Independent news sources were few, and stodgy. The majors (NY Times, WaPo, WSJ, BBC, NBC, CBS) were where people got their news pablum spoon-fed to them by “trusted” sources.

Then Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and all the socials arrived, and news consumption irreversibly changed. Algorithms, peer groups, curated feeds, and a plethora of independent sources popped up. Politico, The Hill, Politicus, and others emerged, and people’s news consumption changed forever.

But for the dinosaurs of the old order, they lament the loss of their place in the pecking order, their perch of authority.

Yesterday, I saw a person I follow on Notes repost something by Chris Cilizza¹, where he did his usual rant about Harris’ dodging the media, and how her “flippant” responses were to Dana Bash, and how that didn't count.

Today, one of the people I follow reposted the Friday “Morning Shots” from The Bulwark. I was a subscriber to them for two and a half years before I realized they were not really helping, instead they were trying to coerce the Democrats to be “Republicans-lite”, moving past the center into the right half of the column.

In this episode, titled: “Did Kamala Do What She Had to?²”. In it, Bill Kristol once again hedges against Kamala Harris. He thinks she needs to give more details, more detailed policy plans, more context. Is she just Joe Biden II³?

Uh dude, what the actual fuck. She’s running against Trump, the man who can’t keep a cogent thought in his head, who rambles on (sorry, “weaves”) about Hannibal Lector, windmills causing cancer, and how more CO2 in the atmosphere means more beachfront property, among a litany of bullshit and fabrications.

From Kristol:

For an incumbent vice president running on “change” and “turning the page” and “moving forward,” it was always going to be a challenge to balance that message with having to defend the policies of the current administration of which she is a part.

Yesterday’s interview with CNN’s Dana Bash showed that this remains a challenge. And it raised the question: In the first stage of this contest, Harris seized the mantle of change from Trump. Can she keep it?

We’ll see. But for now, I very much doubt that last night changed the dynamics of the race one way or the other. Sometimes a cable news interview is just a cable news interview. (Bill Kristol)

What, you expected her to whip out a 700 page policy document that is collated, cross referenced, and backed up with data?

Why the fuck should she? As Rick Wilson artfully put it, when he was a Republican operative, they grabbed those position papers, and hung them around the candidate’s neck. It was disarming to have page 72, 3rd paragraph and details tossed at the candidates. Harris is smart for not having that level of detail. Because she is running against the tangerine hippopotamus, policy and positions are far less important than building a winning coalition.

He continues with:

So here we are: coming up to Labor Day, with a race that’s very much up for grabs.

Which makes me just a bit nervous about last night’s sighs of relief. The judgment that “she did what she had to do” is usually offered about a candidate who has a lead and does nothing to endanger it. But Harris isn’t a candidate with a significant lead. She can’t just play defense and run out the clock. What she has to do is stay on offense and play to win.

Oh Bill, you’re nervous? That she’s just going to play defense?

Fuck you, fuck your cronies at The Bulwark, and why don’t you and Chris Cilizza, the NY Times, the WaPo, and others go play spit the biscuit (warning: DO NOT LOOK THIS UP), because Harris is working the system.

I do not see her slacking off, she’s doing the hard work to barnstorm through swing states, her rapid response team is flensing Trump’s corpulent carcass of blubber for the renderers, JD Vance continues to be a waste of skin, and for once, a bad news cycle for Trump seems to be hanging around (turns out when you take a giant shit on our armed forces and our veterans at Arlington National Cemetery, that shit doesn’t blow over).

No, I think she’s doing fine. There are 8 weeks remaining, and she’s going to be busy. And if she doesn’t do any more long-form press interviews, I doubt it will affect her.

I mean, I guess you could write in Edmund Burke, or just go full Anti-Anti and vote for Trump. It is a free country after all.

1. I was a subscriber, and a paid subscriber, but his horribleness between the June 27th debate and the retirement of Biden made me unsubscribe, abandon the 6+ months of my paid subscription left to his ‘Stack, and block him both on Substack and on YouTube. He is worse than an access journalist, he is a wanna-be opinion writer, but his opinions *suck*, and he works hard to bring Harris down to Trump’s level.

2. Read this at your own peril. I will not be responsible if you through your phone through a window…

3. I would be thrilled if she just continued Biden’s agenda.

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