On Sunday’s episode CNN’s “State of the Union,” co-hosted by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, regular contributor Scott Jennings absolutely destroyed former Kamala Harris communications director Jamal Simmons’s narrative of where he sees the Harris presidential campaign, in a matter of seconds.
It was not only a beautiful thing to see; it was also a textbook example of how to take it to Harris over the next roughly 100 days before the November 5 election.
The festivities kicked off with Tapper asking the now-CNN commentator Simmons to weigh in on where he thought “we” (the Harris campaign) are right now. That exchange went like this:
TAPPER: Where are we right now?
SIMMONS: Yes.
TAPPER:100 days.
SIMMONS: 100 days out. Listen, the campaign has got a lot to do.
TAPPER: She says she’s the underdog. Is she?
Simmons jumped all over the “Kamala is the underdog” notion like a pig on an acorn.
I do— of course she’s the underdog. First of all, she’s— Donald Trump is still polling a couple of points ahead of her and in most polls is in the 48-49 range. She’s in the 47-48 range. The campaign is literally building. Someone said this earlier. They’re still using Joe Biden dot com email addresses over there, right? They’re still figuring out how to get the talking points with the right language. So they’ve got, like, a lot of work to do to make this whole thing come together.
But the plane’s already in the air and the good news is that the people are sort of powering this thing. So you see, you know, 44,000 black women come out and then you see 170,000, almost, white women come out on another phone call and then you see African-American men and Latino— like, this thing is growing in a kind of organic way that I don’t think many of us who were watching it expected that kind of energy.
There were multiple things going on in and behind Simmons’s comments. Let’s decipher.
First, the obvious. Simmons said “of course she’s the underdog” not only as a message to the Harris faithful that they must work hard to overcome Trump’s lead, but also with the knowledge of Biden’s failed policies–and that a substantial percentage of the country views those failed policies as Biden-Harris, not just Biden. In other words, Harris is inextricably linked to those failed policies.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA.) is among that “substantial percentage.” Last Tuesday, Scalise took it a step further, calling Harris “the architect of Biden’s failures”:
Now, it begs the question, let’s look at Kamala Harris’ record as vice president. She’s still the sitting vice president, but she’s also been the architect of many of President Biden’s worst failures, not the least of which is her main responsibility that she’s been given in three and a half years: that is the job of border czar.
[…]
She said many times that the border is secure. Everybody in America knows that’s a lie. Kamala Harris has been responsible for this epic failure. In fact, she’s called for open borders. What else has she called 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, including Harris’ pledge to ban fracking, “raising money for the Minnesota Freedom Fund when radicals were out, protesting and ultimately getting arrested, attacking cops, doing other things,” and “embracing the defund police movement.
With all of the above in mind, this takes us to Scott Jennings blowing up Simmons’s narrative in an instant:
They’re still using Joe Biden dot com emails because there’s still using Joe Biden dot com policies over there. 65% of the American people disapprove of these policies. She’s never going to be able to shake off Joe Biden dot com whether they have the emails or not, and the only thing you’re celebrating this week is some amount of base consolidation. But if you look at where Donald Trump is today versus where he was in 2020: underdog? Yeah, that’s one way to look at it.
Game over. Jennings with the blowout.
Kamala Harris enters the race, between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, she talks often about how proud she is of Joe Biden and working closely with him on his (their) “accomplishments.”
On the other hand, Harris and her campaign staff know she must also work to separate herself from what most voters view as Biden’s miserably failed policies, not only the illegal alien crisis but also Bidenomics, Bidenflation, stubbornly high prices, and a host of issues.
Those other issues include writing blank checks to Ukraine, and throwing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu under the bus as the Jewish state continues its war against Hamas.
As I suggested earlier, if Donald Trump and the Republican Party do what Scott Jennings did to Jamal Simmons, and keep Harris on her heels, November 5 might be “a beautiful thing,” as Trump likes to say.
