On Sunday’s episode of CNN’s “State of the Union,” co-hosted by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, regular commentator Scott Jennings, in a matter of seconds, completely destroyed former Kamala Harris communications director Jamal Simmons’ account of his assessment of Harris’ presidential campaign.
Not only was it nice to see, but it was also a prime example of how to get your opinion across to Harris in the next 100 days or so before the November 5 election.
The Celebrations began with Tapper asking today’s CNN commentator Simmons to comment on where he thinks “we” (the Harris campaign) stand at the moment. The exchange went like this:
TAPPER: Where are we now?
SIMMONS: Yes.
TAPPER: 100 days.
SIMMONS: 100 days to go. Look, there’s a lot of campaign work to do.
TAPPER: She says she’s the outsider. Is she?
Simmons pounced on the notion of “Kamala is the underdog” like a pig on an acorn.
I know – of course she’s the underdog. First of all, she’s – Donald Trump is still a few points ahead of her in the polls and is in the 48-49 range in most polls. She’s in the 47-48 range. The campaign is literally building. Someone said this before. They’re still using Joe Biden dot com email addresses there, right? They’re still figuring out how to get the talking points across with the right language. So they’ve got a lot of work to do to bring the whole thing together.
But the plane is already in the air and the good news is that people are kind of fueling this thing. So you see 44,000 black women come and then you see almost 170,000 white women come on another call and then you see African Americans and Latinos – this thing is growing in a kind of organic way and I don’t think many of us who have been watching it would have expected this kind of energy.
There were several things in and behind Simmons’ comments. Let’s decode them.
First, the obvious. Simmons said “of course she is the underdog” not only as a message to Harris supporters that they must work strenuous to catch up to Trump’s lead, but also in the knowledge of Biden’s failed policies – and that a significant portion of the country sees these failed policies as Biden-Harris, not just Biden. In other words, Harris is inextricably linked to these failed policies.
This “significant percentage” includes Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (LA). Last Tuesday, Scalise went a step further and called Harris “the architect of Biden’s failure“:
Now the question is: Let’s look at Kamala Harris’ record as vice president. While she is still the sitting vice president, she was also the architect of many of President Biden’s worst failures, not least of which was the main responsibility she was given for three and a half years: the office of border agent.
[…]
She has often claimed the border is secure. Everyone in America knows that is a lie. Kamala Harris is responsible for this epic failure. In fact, she called for open borders. What else did she call for?
Scalise, joined by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Congressman Nick Langworthy (R-N.Y.), continued speaking, talking about, among other things, Harris’s promises to ban fracking, “raising money for the Minnesota Freedom Fund when radicals were out protesting and ultimately getting arrested, attacking police officers and doing other things” and “supporting the movement to defund the police.”
Taking all this into account, we come to Scott Jennings Debunking Simmons’ story in a moment:
They’re still using Joe Biden dot com email because they’re still using Joe Biden dot com policies. 65% of Americans disapprove of those policies. They’re never going to be able to get rid of Joe Biden dot com whether they have the emails or not, and the only thing you’re celebrating this week is some consolidation of the base. But if you look at where Donald Trump is today compared to 2020: underdog? Yes, that’s one way to look at it.
Game over. Jennings with the blowout.
Kamala Harris is entering the race between a rock and a strenuous place. On the one hand, she often talks about how proud she is of Joe Biden and how closely she is working with him on his (her) “achievements.”
On the other hand, Harris and her campaign team are also clear that she must distance herself from what most voters see as Biden’s miserably failed policies. This includes not only the illegal immigration crisis, but also Bidenomics, Bidenflation, stubbornly high prices and a host of other problems.
These other issues include issuing blank checks to Ukraine and blaming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the Jewish state continues its war against Hamas.
As I noted before, if Donald Trump and the Republican Party do what Scott Jennings did with Jamal Simmons and keep Harris in check, November 5 could be, as Trump likes to say, “a wonderful thing.”
