Harris 46, Trump 43
Plus: RFK Jr.'s insane story about staging the death of a bear cub.
“Ron DeSantis still wants to be president,” Politico reports:
[JD Vance’s] elevation as former President Donald Trump’s running mate complicates DeSantis’ political future, should the GOP ticket win in November and Vance inherit the support of the Trump wing of the GOP . . . But allies of the governor say he is undeterred. “JD Vance being vice president does not change Ron DeSantis’ calculus for 2028 one way or the other,” said a Republican consultant and DeSantis supporter who was granted anonymity to speak freely.
A DeSantis v. Vance primary in 2028! Who’s excited for the Charisma Olympics? Happy Monday.
We’re Not Tired of Winning. Pick Shapiro.
—William Kristol
Two weeks ago, after Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race, veteran Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik remarked that the next month until the Democratic convention would be crucial. Vice President Kamala Harris was relatively undefined in the minds of many voters. Who would prevail in the fierce race to define her?
We’re now halfway through those four weeks, and Harris is winning the race to define. She and her campaign have over-performed in almost every respect while Donald Trump and JD Vance have gotten in their own way—or simply reminded us who they really are.
And Harris has gained ground. The polling team at UMass Amherst is releasing their latest national presidential survey this morning. It has Harris leading Trump nationally by three points, 46 percent to 43 percent—compared to a four point lead for Trump over Biden in their January poll. Not surprisingly, Harris does better on who would handle traditional Democratic issues like reproductive rights and health care, while Trump prevails on more traditional Republican issues. But Trump has only small margins on those issues—53 percent to 47 percent in handling both crime and immigration, for example. The Trump campaign would certainly wish those margins to be much higher.
Similarly, Harris leads Trump on personal characteristics like honesty and likability, but keeps the contest closer than one might have expected on traits that might have been thought big winners for Trump, like strength (only 54 percent to 46 percent) and patriotism (only 52 percent to 48 percent). And by 57 percent to 43 percent, voters think that Harris is more moderate than Trump, an indicator that the effort to define Harris as radical isn’t working—so far.
Which brings us to the vice presidential decision, the next defining moment of the campaign.
I’m struck by how many Harris supporters, in their public comments, are being polite and well-behaved. They say that all the possible choices are excellent, that they’ll support any pick the vice president makes, and that they trust her to make the right call.
I’ll be more honest and less deferential than all the well-mannered Harris stans: The fact is that most of the choices are decent but not excellent. And it really should not be a close call.
As Chris Christie, a Republican who won the type of voters in New Jersey that Kamala Harris has to win in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, said yesterday on ABC: “It should be Josh Shapiro. I don’t think this is a hard choice. He’s a very talented politician. He’s extraordinarily popular—65 percent job approval—in a state she needs to win.”
Christie is, of course, correct. Consider the following:
Pennsylvania is the key state. Gov. Shapiro won it by more than 14 points less than two years ago, and has a 61 percent approval rating.
One of Harris’s greatest vulnerabilities is the multitude of leftist positions she foolishly took in the 2019 campaign. A Shapiro selection unambiguously moves the ticket to the center.
Shapiro has shown political and governing talent, most recently in his remarks after the assassination attempt against former president Trump, and in his rebuilding of I-95.
And if Harris pulls back from Shapiro after the campaign against him from the left, it will look weak.
Trump and Vance have taken to claiming the vice presidential picks never matter. It’s understandable that both of them would now say that. But in truth George H.W. Bush helped Reagan in 1980 by reassuring moderate types that they should support a candidate accused of being extreme. In 1992, Al Gore helped Bill Clinton double down on the message of generational change and Democratic moderation. Mike Pence gave evangelicals a permission structure to vote for Trump.
Harris could still win without Shapiro. But to not take Shapiro would be Harris’s first unforced error of her campaign. It could stall her momentum when she needs to sustain it for the next two weeks—to say nothing of the next three months.
Harris has a real chance to win the presidency this November. But she still needs a very good campaign to pull it off. She’s run one so far. This is no time to falter.
This is no time for you to falter either . . . on finally taking the plunge on that Bulwark+ subscription! Sign up to get this newsletter free, or get 20 percent off an annual subscription this week:
One Guy Who Won’t Be Getting the VP Pick
—Andrew Egger
It’d be easier to enjoy the RFK Jr. sideshow this year if it weren’t for the non-zero chance that his campaign swings the 2024 election by siphoning away moonbat voters in unpredictable ways. And yet it would take a heart of stone not to laugh at the video he posted yesterday trying to get ahead of a New Yorker story about him planting a dead bear cub in Central Park a decade ago.
You’ve really got to watch this thing. There’s just so much here. To hit the major plot points:
In 2014, Kennedy was en route to go falconing with some buddies upstate when a van in front of him struck and killed a bear cub.
Thinking fast, Kennedy pulled over and put the bear in his van, so he could skin it and butcher it for meat later. This is totally legal, he hastens to add.
Alas, the day got away from them: They were having too much fun falconing, and afterward, too much fun eating at Peter Luger Steak House. Suddenly Kennedy realized he had to catch a flight—no time to get the carcass home!
Thinking fast again, Kennedy suddenly remembered: Bike crashes had been in the New York news! So why not dump the bear in Central Park and stage it as a bike crash? “I wasn’t drinking, of course,” he said, “but people were drinking with me who thought this was a good idea.”
It’s very common for a politician to try to get in front of a damaging story by releasing their spin on it ahead of publication. Even so, it’s hard to imagine how anybody thought this would deflate the story. In fact, the video amplifies the weirdness of the story itself in a multitude of ways.
Why is it filmed over the remnants of a huge barbeque meal? Why is it presented as a definitely-totally-candid conversation with—of all people—Roseanne Barr? Why is the video cut so as to heighten the lunatic story beats, zooming in on Kennedy or cutting to Barr for deadpan reaction? Why did one of America’s most notable bluebloods describe his decision to frame the killing as a bike crash as “a bit of the redneck in me”?
But maybe that’s a lot of questions to ask a guy with a worm in his brain.
Did the brain worm make RFK Jr. decide to drop a dead bear cub in Central Park, or did RFK Jr. get his brain worm from the bear? Let us know what you make of this wild story in the comments:
Quick Hits
1. Pelosi’s daggers
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi continues to do the media rounds in advance of her new book, The Art of Power. And she continues to drop some breadcrumbs about the role she played in persuading Joe Biden to exit the presidential race. Here’s some nuggets from an appearance on Good Morning America, per ABC’s Rick Klein: “I wasn’t asking him to step down. I was asking for a campaign that can win. And I wasn’t seeing that on the horizon.” And: “I have the greatest respect for the president. I think Joe Biden will be viewed as one of the most consequential presidents in our country . . . So we just wanted him to make the decision, how he best preserves that legacy.”
“The only person that I spoke to about this was the president.”
2. It was just a phase
—Marc Caputo
As Kamala Harris’s only Jewish VP shortlister, Gov. Shapiro has had his views on Israel closely scrutinized (which, in turn, has ignited a national discussion about antisemitism in politics). Here’s one aspect of his bio the press has so far missed: Shapiro worked in the Israeli embassy’s public affairs department, known as the Hasbara division, from April 1996 until September 1996. That part of his resume was confirmed by a Shapiro spokesperson who noted it was “in between jobs working for members of Congress . . . to get foreign policy experience. His job largely involved educating the public about Israel by visiting local schools and hosting open houses for the public at the Embassy.” Shapiro would work there for less than six months before moving on to a job with Rep. Peter Deutch.
3. The markets, not good
A fair bit of concern is setting in this morning that the Fed missed the moment with a rate cut, as Japan’s benchmark stock index plunged 12.4 percent on Monday. We take all our financial advice from Tim Miller’s TikTok page. But if that’s not for you, we recommend going with the Stalwart’s 10-point-observation thread here.
4. Israel braces for Iranian response
Over at his Substack, Will Selber has the latest on the strategic positioning in the Middle East, where Iran is preparing to strike back at Israel despite an increased U.S. presence in the region:
Although the New York Times reports that Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered his forces to strike Israel directly, it’s anyone’s guess as to the length, duration, and lethality of Iran’s retaliatory strike. But, Iran’s response is unlikely to mirror its April salvo. During that attack, Iran and its proxies throughout the region launched over 300 missiles and drones that Israel, CENTCOM, and other Western allies swatted away.
Iran launched April’s attack in retaliation for an Israeli strike that killed two Iranian generals in Syria. Iranian generals are expendable, especially when they’re out on the battlefield. But killing a trusted Iranian ally (Haniyeh) in Tehran hours after the inauguration of the new Iranian president is far more humiliating for the Iranian regime. And they will seek to restore some vestige of their honor in its forthcoming attack . . .
Should the US, Israel, and its Western and Arab allies successfully block another Iranian salvo, President Biden is likely to tell Prime Minister Bibi to “take the win” again. Perhaps Bibi will then succumb to pressure from the IDF and his allies to take the temporary ceasefire deal. However, if Iran succeeds and kills enough Israeli citizens, then Biden will struggle mightily to restrain Bibi, as Bib’s right flank will insist on a tough response.
Whatever comes next could determine the course of the next few months.
Cheap Shots
So an overprivileged blueblood does an ugly stupid thing and describes it as his "redneck" side. Personally I think that's about as despicable as you can get. The rednecks themselves will probably be more forgiving.
The photo in the New Yorker of RFK Jr. mugging for the camera with his hand in the dead baby bear's mouth is hard to square with the idea of him as an environmentalist hero and animal lover.
Creepy dude. These toxic men and their vanity campaigns!
“Ron DeSantis still wants to be president,” Politico reports
And people in hell want ice water.