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Dueling military narratives: Vance versus Walz — 61 Comments

1. It’s probably only significant in that the Kamala Harris campaign won’t be able to credibly use Walz’s military record to appeal to persuadable moderate voters in critical swing districts in an attempt to make him (and by association, Kamala) look like more of a mainstream/moderate person who served his country in a military capacity. As we all know, this fight isn’t over the ride-or-die supporters of one candiate or the other. The fight is over these impressionable LIVs in specific swing districts in swing states.

2. They lie ‘its like breathing for them’ they despise the military

3. Isn’t this the stuff intended as filler in the (unmentioned) vacuum or absence of direct unscripted questions being asked of and answers being given by the Democrat candidate for the Presidency, namely, Kamala Hauk Tuah Harris 2024?

   Garbage in, garbage out

4. This is a distraction I wish they’d avoid. Hammer at the border. Hammer at vote fraud. Hammer at the Afghanistan humiliation. Hammer at DEI. Hammer at pushing genital mutilation.
   ==
   One reason to avoid it is that you get sucked into mounting a defense of Donald Trump’s service record, which partisan Democrats misrepresent as they misrepresent everything. (Stupid Republicans do so as well).
   ==
   It was modal for college-bound youth during the period running from 1948 to 1964 to attend school first and then enlist in the service on graduation. John Kerry and Robert Kerrey did just this, as did George Bush the Elder’s younger brothers. Donald Trump was granted a student deferment in 1964 when he enrolled at Fordham. It was renewed periodically while he was in school and lapsed when he graduated. In June of 1968, he was granted a I-Y disqualification for a medical issue manifest in an x-ray. In the idiom of partisan Democrats, this is rendered ‘five deferments’. A nearly identical locution was used to refer to Richard Cheney’s student deferment, renewed and re-instated several times during the period running from 1959 to 1966. (The locution was never used for Michael Dukakis, his four years in college during the Korean War notwithstanding). A year and a half after receiving the I-Y disqualification, the draft lottery was instituted. Trump’s lottery number was high enough to preclude him ever being called in. NB, more than 1/4 of the male cohorts of the era received a student deferment at one time or another and about 1/4 received a medical disqualification, about 1/.2 categorical (IV-F) and 1/2 contingent (I-Y). There wasn’t any privilege associated with such classifications; those were the statutory and administrative sorting categories which applied to everyone.
   ==
   You can explain this and you can explain that a ‘draft dodger’ is properly understood as someone who engaged in chicanery or was able to locate a string to pull. Draft dodgers are unusual in presidential politics and the only true examples are Bernie Sanders (who hired a lawyer to press a bogus claim for conscientious objector status to his draft board and one so many continuances that he ran the clock out on his eligibility) and Bill Clinton, who scammed an Army colonel into arranging an exception for him which allowed him to shirk his ROTC service obligations.
   ==
   It’s just whack a mole with this stuff. Keep in mind that in 1992 an actual draft-dodger defeated a combat veteran. The public is insensitive to these bits of personal history, at least if the media is not manufacturing sh!tstorms. You might persuade Walz’s press agents to shut up about his Guard service, which is a small benefit. (Not my trade, but I’m not understanding why Walz was not compelled to separate from the service due to a deficit of physical fitness).

5. Maybe you should make yourself aware of a brief paragraph level bio of you opponents before you make a fool of yourself on national television.

6. One can walk and chew gum at the same gum yes he wants a wide open border the abolition of guns gender and every thing else

7. @nonapod:The fight is over these impressionable LIVs in specific swing districts in swing states.

   Those “low-information” voters in those districts will not know or care for whom their ballots were marked nor who dropped them off. It’s not 1980, and elections aren’t decided by persuading voters to show up at the polls, but by selectively counting ballots that got in by hook or by crook.

   Neither of the VP candidates heard a shot fired in anger during their times in the military as far as I can tell; most who served haven’t. That’s the nature of modern warfare, that for every one shot at, there’s ten or twenty who support that person who aren’t.

   The media will tell whatever story they have decided to tell about these candidates regardless of the facts. Neither is a household name and so people have no other information. Unlike Trump, who for good or ill has been in the public eye for forty years and the media does not have full power to define him for the public any way they wish.

   Walz is a signal to the foot soldiers of the Left ensconced in government in blue states and precincts, to gin up the Fortification because you’re getting what you want if you do. It has sweet FA to do with persuading voters of anything.

8. It has sweet FA to do with persuading voters of anything.

   If there’s no point, then why are they going through the motions at all?

9. Josh green apparently started this ball rolling in 2005

10. I disagree that raising the issue of Walz resigning rather than deploying won’t have an effect. It won’t be huge, but the Trump-Vance strategy is peeling small cohorts of voters from the Democrats. Raising the issue of Harris opportunistically using her race is another example.

    This will matter to the blue collar worker in MI-WI-PA. Vance will continue to use the issue when he is speaking to that segment, but it’s a side issue– just as Kamala’s opportunism is. It’s the media that will try and magnify it.

    Will voters realize they are being played and use their clickers to get their news from channels that focus on policy issues? Hey, miracles do happen.

11. Walz is a coward and Stolen Valor liar.

    What else is new?

12. @Nonapod:If there’s no point, then why are they going through the motions at all?

    They need to keep up the pretense so that middle-class people continue to work, follow rules, and pay taxes. They have to keep us thinking that if we just vote a little harder we might win next time. You can’t fleece a country full of people who act like Black Lives Matter activists and anti-Israel protestors, they don’t have anything to tax and they don’t produce anything. They need us to behave ourselves and pay up when it’s demanded.

    But in 2025 there will be another article bragging about the Fortification, just like in 2021.

13. They both have more time than the majority of Americans these days.

14. The people I know who will vote for Harris are so virulently anti-Trump that nothing about Walz (or Harris, for that matter) could dissuade them. Then again, I don’t think I know any swing voters, to whom this sort of thing might matter.
    _______
    The 2nd sentence is the one that matters. This is a function of where one lives, and whom one associates with. I know some people of both sorts, but since retiring to NC, far more who are friendly to us. And of course, where they live is a big deal for the presidency.

    MY worry is that Walz may end up being another Eagleton. But in this case, replacing him may make the ticket stronger.

15. No fan of Waltz, but the whole time he was in the Guard there was a possibility of a call up he couldn’t get out of.

    People who never put their name the dotted line have no business calling either Vance or Waltz a coward.

    Over twenty years of war many soldiers retired or got out before or between deployments when their unit was not under stop gap.

16. Jon baker.
    True, except for Bush The Younger. Nope, not for him,unlike all the others. In 69, we remained for Southeast Asia, but you can believe we had one eye on the Elbe. And there would be the Guard.

17. And yet the party of Willie Brown’s paramour, Ed Asner’s illegitimate son, and tampon machines in the boys bathrooms at elementary schools will continue to call J.D. Vance “weird.”

18. “Neither of the VP candidates heard a shot fired in anger during their times in the military as far as I can tell; ” that is just so stupid. Did he go on patrol, don’t know, but there was a lot of stuff poping off everywhere.
    I agree, when you sign on the dotted line, you go where they tell you. Could be anywhere, doing anything.

19. @SHIREHOME: Did he go on patrol, don’t know, but there was a lot of stuff poping off everywhere.

    If you have a source that says Vance heard “a shot fired in anger”, I’m delighted to update my views here. I haven’t read Vance’s book or every possible fact about his life, just aware of his statement “I was lucky to escape any real fighting.”

    He went to Iraq when told and he didn’t know if he would be shot at or not. It certainly doesn’t seem he tried to get out of anything. He’s not obligated to try to get shot at. But like I said, if he was shot at I haven’t seen the source, that’s all.

    From Stars and Stripes:

    He spent his service working in public affairs, writing about Marines and taking photographs of their work, escorting civilian news reporters and speaking about happenings on base.

    In Iraq, he embedded with different units to get a sense of their daily routines and wrote a story about a crew keeping KC-130J tankers in the air. He also waded into unprotected Iraqi territory with a civil affairs unit to meet with locals.

    “I was lucky to escape any real fighting,” Vance wrote of his deployment.

    In his last nine months in service, Vance said he unexpectedly became a media relations officer at Cherry Point — a position typically reserved for the most senior Marines. The job involved liaising with news media, considered the “holy grail” of Marine Corps public affairs with the “biggest audience and the highest stakes.”

20. The Bloomberg News article arguing that Walz is the “normal” VP option is still up. The writer links to a story in The Atlantic that he wrote in 2005, which he referred to Walz’s service “overseas in Operation Enduring Freedom,” adding, “Southern Minnesota is home to a large Guard contingent that includes Walz’s unit, the First 125th Field Artillery Battalion, so the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are naturally a pressing local concern.” The clear impression is that Walz served overseas in Iraq or Afghanistan.

    But the new Bloomberg article has been re-edited, so it now reads:

    “He stood out as Command Sergeant Major Walz, a 24-year veteran of the Army National Guard, recently returned from serving in Italy as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.”

    Far down at the bottom of the page, there’s a difficult-to-find correction note that says:

    (Corrects to remove reference to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in fifth paragraph; an earlier version of this story corrected where Walz served overseas in the third paragraph.)

    So the Bloomberg News story has been altered twice since it was posted yesterday, apparently to correct facts about Walz’s military record that the writer was led to believe, and has continued to believe, since interviewing him 20 years ago.

21. Not surprisingly there is a concerted campaign to present Walz in a certain light; a light that will counter some of Harris’s negatives.

    High school teacher, coach, military veteran, a man with rural values.

    It is important to peel away the narrative, and show that Walz is as far out as Harris. By choosing Walz she doubled down and people should understand that.

    The respective bases get the attention; and they are pretty well solidified. I still believe that a great swath of Americans are moderates. Harris-Walz can not be allowed to posture themselves as moderates.

22. joshua green is rather incurious then, he repeated narratives about the huntress in 2008-9, misgauged the trump polling outfit in 2016, and he got a book contract out of it, about steve bannon, its remarkable how you fail upwards for getting a story wrong, and you get Pulitzers for repeating lies, funny how that works

    Doomberg often gets things wrong and some years ago they bought Businessweek, that was remarkably not good at relating the truth about business,

    ah Eagleton in retrospect, might have been the most honest one in the bunch Sargeant Shriver didn’t help very much in the final analysis did it,

23. I have to disagree with you on one point, Neo. I think Smith likely didn’t know about Vance’s service; or, in any case, forgot.

    Something I’ve noticed about many Democrat politicians over the last decade or so: more and more of them seem to be rather dim. They increasingly live and work in a very tightly controlled bubble and seem to heavily rely on staff for talking points. So Smith might have heard of Vance’s service at some point, but long forgot it, and her aides either forgot too or didn’t think it was important to remind her.

    Smith in particular doesn’t seem very bright. She was appointed to her position because Me Too took down Al Franken and a woman HAD to replace him.

    Last winter when Slo Jo visited Duluth-Superior (with the backwards hard hat photo), there was a video circling of Walz, Smith and Klobuchar all giggling and taking selfies while Brandon waited for their attention (to his credit, Governor Evers of Wisconsin was respectfully waiting, as well). That encapsulated nicely how vapid and superficial they are, as are an increasing number of Democrat politicians (and a few Republicans as well).

24. yes even jim Acosta, not the smartest squirrel on deck, had to remind her, are they ignorant or devious yes, it was a best selling book and a Ntflix film after all,

    so when it w they made a big fuss about the wooden al gore’s exciting tour, in part to counter act Clinton’s obvious skullduggery
    the arrogant reprimand to Colonel Holmes,
    a Bataan march survivor, then John Kerry who was very skillfull in defaming his countrymen, suggesting that Mylai was SOP, in the whole Winter Soldier Fracas,
    Despite the fact he lost in 2004, which the Dems rather strenously denied, he still ended up as Obama’s Secretary of State, and probably violated the Logan act in the last administration, and subsequently grovels to China as the last Climate Czar,

25. jon baker:

    You glossed over key facts regarding Waltz.

    He was a senior enlisted leader in his unit, which was then called up for mobilization.

    Instead of mobilizing with his unit, and leading his troops down range, he elected to retire.

    Us fellow NCOs have a name for that line of stripe-wearer: Coward.

    There’s other names, of course, but I won’t sully Neo’s blog with them.

26. “kind”, not line. Apologies.

27. So the facts have now been established that Walz was a coward and ran out on his unit just before they were to be deployed. But will it matter?

28. @TR:So the Bloomberg News story has been altered twice since it was posted yesterday, apparently to correct facts about Walz’s military record that the writer was led to believe, and has continued to believe, since interviewing him 20 years ago.

    They’re trying out different versions of the standard media ploy of reciting a string of facts in such as way as to create a misleading impression. Their first attempt was to say that Walz was part of a unit that returned from Iraq. Walz had been part of that unit; that unit had gone to Iraq, but Walz did not go to Iraq with that unit. The sentence was literally true but misleading.

    Likewise they mentioned Walz’s unit in the same sentence as Iraq and Afghanistan to create an impression that Walz and his unit went to Iraq and Afghanistan but did not say that he actually did, which would be false.

29. Ackler:

    I never said she knew. I asked a question: is she ignorant or is she lying? I never answered the question because I don’t know the answer.

    So you actually don’t disagree with me.

    This is what I wrote:

    That’s a US senator speaking. I ask the same old question that I’ve asked about so many others: is she that ignorant or was she merely lying and didn’t think she’d be called out on it? If the latter, she can be forgiven for believing that Acosta wouldn’t correct her; after all, the MSM lets most Democrat lies pass.

    The larger point, way beyond Tina Smith, is that many Democrats will purposely lie …

30. Pelosi calls it the wrap-up smear. Harry Reid says it worked didn’t it when he lied about Romney’s taxes I think it was. Unless Sen Smith has been living under a rock the last month, she knew the truth = she didn’t care – the only thing that mattered to her is winning.

    I’m glad Vance called Walz out on his BS. Fish tales and bar stories are one thing but when you embellish your service with easily proven falsehoods that your own unit has been calling you out on for years it’s entirely another. False in one, false in all.

31. Everyone who served in the military deserves accolades, but Trump has been shot at more times as a presidential candidate than most of them ever were while serving.

32. Tim Walz is a coward.

33. Don’t forget this issue first came to light at least 6 years ago. This isn’t a ginned up campaign charge. Minnesota media just ignored the fact he resigned rather than deploy and was demoted in the process.

    From Just the News:

    The Minnesota National Guard confirmed Wednesday that Gov. Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’ vice presidential running mate, was demoted and did not retire as a command sergeant major like he has claimed for years, including on his official gubernatorial biography.
    While Walz temporarily held the title of command sergeant major he “retired as a master sergeant in 2005 for benefit purposes because he did not complete additional coursework at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy,” Army Lt. Col. Kristen Augé, the Minnesota National Guard’s State Public Affairs Officer, told Just the News.

    The statement reignited a controversy that began during his 2018 election for governor in which National Guardsman claimed on social media and in a paid ad that Walz declined to deploy to Iraq for combat duty in 2005 and forfeited his title of command sergeant major. Walz chose to run for Congress that year.

    This is way more than “dueling military narratives”. It is about fraud.

    And it’s about lying to advance his political career.

34. In the land of gubernatorial putzes, Tampon Tim Walz is the Command Sergeant Putz.

    Neo, you have often written about how you recognized that Joe Biden wasn’t a good man; he was mean, spiteful and utterly mendacious.

    One had to look beyond the Star Tribune and the TV stations to find the stories, but Walz was not liked in the Guard. He was disliked by officers and enlisted. But he knew how to play the system and eventually stayed long enough to get his top rung. Which he immediately abandoned.

    To me, not part of the Guard environment, he struck me as one of those guys who would do whatever it took to win, and especially willing to bend the truth, confident he wouldn’t be challenged. No better example than the 2022 reelection campaign. He promised debates, but after the first went badly, he simply didn’t show up for the rest. He promised to return a pending surplus to taxpayers; instead he spent it all and raised taxes to boot. Not on one-time projects, but programs needing ongoing funding.

    I can go on and on. The prince of putzs.

35. Vance went on a few “community outreach” missions. Even for a non combatant, these can get hairy. Read “Into The Fire” about one such that was an ambush.

36. Oh, and even if you had a desk job in Iraq, you were at risk from shelling, IEDs and infiltrators. It was not like base security in Italy.

37. I do wonder if his entire battalion was being called up or had it been piecemealed out?

    I was in Kosovo in 2004 with a Brigade which had a lot of Minnesota National Guardsmen in it. I was actually one of a about a company of Texan National Guardsmen that had been attached to round out the Unit. Myself and an officer were from one Battalion and most of the Texans were from another Texas unit.
    We got back mid 2004 after about six months in Kosovo plus a number of weeks in Germany and CONUS for train up.

    Myself and that officer were some of the first to be deployed overseas after 9-11 from our battalion. When we got back, much of our old company was gone, having been caught up in another deployment while were gone.

    Such were things in the Guard.

38. I was listening to a debate on Newsmax where it distorted the real issue– arguing whether Vance was really in a war zone, even though he said he was in a role of combat.

    It confuses the real issue. Walz’s political career was framed as a combat veteran who was a Command Sergeant Major– which is in his Governor’s autobiography, according to Just the News.

    It’s a lie. He served in Italy, not Iraq and he was demoted to a Master Sergeant since he didn’t complete the training due to his resignation from the National Guard.

    I don’t know if it rises to a Stolen Valor charge, as some are making, but it certainly highlights that he is an opportunist that will lie about his record, if it will advance his personal agenda.

39. I’m getting old . I said we had several weeks of training. It was several months of pre deployment training for a six month mission. Less than a year and a half after I got back from Kosovo, I was back there again. By that time, the mission was a year rotation. Made more sense that way from a cost analysis pov.
    Somewhere along the way, the National Guard was given the lead on the US portion of UNMIK . It was one National Guard unit after another rotating thru.

40. Jon Baker, thanks for reminding people the NG didn’t just sit around and drink coffee. Many do not know the NG was incorporated into the US Army in WWII.
    And, many do not know that the Coast Guard provided most of the Boat Coxswains at Normandy

41. YouGov has the early poll on public reaction to Kamala naming Walz her Veep.

    A majority say that Walz is either a bad choice or do not know enough to answer.

    It’s early days, but this is about what I hoped for. Furthermore, it suggests that those commenting at the top and claim that it doesn’t matter could well be mistaken.

    There is room to shape perceptions about Sargent Walz. And veterans everywhere are key opinion leaders in such matters — civilians will often defer to them.

42. In re “was Vance really in combat” or not, given that he was in a support role in Iraq.

    Via Not the Bee, see this tweet (unvetted, but some more data may surface):
    https://x.com/CullenYossarian/status/1821248435476902284
    Cullen Tiernan ? @CullenYossarian
    I served with JD. He has integrity & never lied about his service.

    When we first landed in Iraq, there was a rocket attack at our base Al-Asad, which is in al-Anbar, not the green zone in Baghdad. We put our lives on the line everyday, and Al-Asad is *still under attack today.*
    12:13 PM · Aug 7, 2024

    The NTB post covers most of the same reporting as Neo, but is the only report I have seen today with a claim supporting Vance.
    https://notthebee.com/article/bloomberg-stealth-edits-article-after-bombshell-report-that-tim-walz-launched-political-career-on-false-claim-as-combat-veteran

43. @ michaelt > “Everyone who served in the military deserves accolades, but Trump has been shot at more times as a presidential candidate than most of them ever were while serving.”

    Something that needs repeating.

44. @ Niketas, from Stars & Stripes > “In his last nine months in service, Vance said he unexpectedly became a media relations officer at Cherry Point — a position typically reserved for the most senior Marines.”

    From Wikipedia: “After graduating from Middletown High School in 2003,Vance enlisted in the US Marine Corps, served in Iraq as a combat correspondent for six months in late 2005, and served a total of 4 years.”

    How in the world did a HS grad get that plum assignment after only 3+ years in service??

    He didn’t have any political or money strings to pull.
    Did the Marines actually work as a meritocracy back then, and was Vance really just that good at his job?

    Looks like he might have been.

    Wiki again: “Using the G.I. Bill, Vance attended Ohio State University from September 2007 to August 2009, graduating summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and philosophy. He finished his undergraduate studies in less than two years. During his first year in college, he worked for Republican state senator Bob Schuler.

    After graduating from Ohio State, Vance attended Yale Law School, beginning in the fall of 2010, on a nearly full-ride scholarship for his first year.”

45. WILL GOV. WALZ be given the Sen. Thomas Eagleton treatment before the DCCC Convention in Chicago?

    This fate strikes me as increasingly probable, as I’ve seen news reports evolve today with more and more alarming and possibly toxic barriers to his his candidacy emerge.

    In the 1972 presidential campaign, leftist South Dakota Senator George McGovern first chose the Missouri Sen. Thomas Eagleton to be his VP. Thislasted a mere 18 days, as scrutiny made him look increased weak as a future president. The ultimate objection was his psychiatric treatment for depression involving electro-shock therapy, as well as including taking a prescription anti-psychotic.
    Would a people who’d with Essex the Cuban Missile Crisis trust a man such as this to have control over the nuke button? This, he became a liability and had to be jettisoned.

    For Sargent Walz, the first is the inaccuracy of his final rank and the fact that he was demoted prior to retirement for failure to complete obligatory training. Second, there’s the Stolen Valor offence to military service veterans. And third, there is the fact recorded on C-Span video of Walz falsely claiming service in Iraq!
    https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/08/will-tim-walz-make-it-to-convention-as-stolen-valor-scandal-grows-reader-flash-poll/

    LI: “ Tim Walz ‘Stolen Valor’ problem is growing by the hour. More is coming out. More people are coming forward.

    “It’s being revealed that people have been complaining about it and this has been a known problem that he has managed to evade for at least several years prior to being selected by Kamala Harris….”

    Then there his radical neglect of public safety in fomenting the Minneapolis riots in the summer of 2020.

    Then there is yesterday’s disclosure of Walz use of an Email alias name, “Tim Mankato”, in order to avoid FOIA-ing or other outsider disclosures while in public office. You see, accountability is purely optional for Democrats.
    https://twitchy.com/amy-curtis/2024/08/07/tim-walz-used-fake-emails-to-avoid-open-records-requests-n2399342

    I could go on. But the latest one’s doozy and painfully recent:

    HEADLINE: “Kamala VP pick Tim Walz proudly posed with mastermind behind pro-Hamas riots on American campuses following Oct. 7 massacre of Israelis and Americans.” MORE including a photo of Walz with this CAIR approved agitator.
    https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4257044/posts

    It seems this snowball is gonna get bigger. The fact is that Democrats who’ve had practically eight years of media Pretorian Guard protection from factual scrutiny makes our enemy very vulnerable to this kind of coming Eagleton crisis.

    This is the curse of every authoritarian ruler, especially when there’s speech censorship involved, as the UK’s new PM Keir Starmer is discovering.

46. I think I’m with Art Deco on this one (sorry Art Deco!) – The issue demonstrates that Walz is a sleazebucket but it probably doesn’t move the needle much overall, especially when the candidate at the top of the GOP ticket is a draft dodger.

    The most interesting thing about this episode to me, though, is to see Vance do the basic “stay on message” thing that Trump is woefully unwilling or unable to do. In the video that neo provided, Vance is asked about an attack. He answers the attack. Then he immediately turns the question back to a discussion of the weaknesses of the Harris/Walz ticket. (Vance is actually pretty good at it making the whole thing sound natural instead of stilted and robotic, although admittedly the Harris/Walz ticket makes the task quite a bit easier.) Compare and contrast with Trump last week, who spent half of his answer whining and calling the questioner rude and the other half questioning whether Kamala is actually black.

    Face it folks, Trump just isn’t very good at politics. The GOP has screwed itself, and the country, royally.

47. Addendum – Trump is a master of media manipulation. It looks to me as though a large part of his act involves playing the heel. He’s very good at it. If the goal of the campaign was to get as many people as possible talking about Trump, his strategy would be genius. It was genius when he was in reality TV. The people who tune in just to see what the crazy host does next count just as much in the Nielson ratings as those who watch because they love Trump. In politics, not so much. The first group count, but for the other team.

    2016 was a perfect storm for Trump where the GOP was rotted and ready to fall, Democrat-aligned media gave him a billion dollars worth of media exposure during the GOP primaries, and the Democrats nominated a dud candidate at the end of an exhausting 2-term Democratic presidency.In that environment, (barely) enough voters were willing to take a chance on the heel. Unfortunately for the GOP and the country, a critical mass of the GOP base have since either become enamored of the heel act or have blindly convinced themselves that it is actually brilliant politics.

48. Being a neverTrumper is practically a religion here in Arizona among the McCain wing of the GOP. The Arizona Republic did a drooling feature on three Rs who are not only voting for Kamala, but against Kari Lake for the open US Senate seat. One is Mesa mayor Dave Giles, who is term-limited out from running again. At my first visit to a precinct meeting, the precinct committeemen voted to censure Giles, back in 2022.

    There really is an off-putting smugness about such people. Another is Maricopa County Recorder Richter, who lost in the primary to a critic.

    Lots of folks believe that Kari Lake’s criticism of the McCaniacs is what cost her the governor’s race in 2022. It’s said they simply didn’t vote in the governor’s race. I don’t know the state that well yet. I’ve been told that the soggiest faction in the GOP are “Scottsdale Moms.”

    As Victor Davis Hanson has pointed out, Trump appeals to the working class Republicans because they believe him to be authentic, and that he cares about them. The Bush/Romney/McCain people hate Trump with a white hot passion. Many will still vote for him. They’re not fond of DeSantis, either.

49. Trump isn’t good at politics?? He’s secured three consecutive GOP nominations, in the face of relentless opposition from the existing political establishment and media, won they presidency once, arguably lost the second time through extreme game-rigging, is favored to win in 2024, has performed a complete reset of his party’s agenda, survived two impeachments and numerous indictments and lawsuits, and the list goes on.

    Who of Trump’s generation do you think is BETTER at politics? Bill Clinton is the only name that comes to mind for me as a possibility. But did Clinton have the same level of impact, or was he mostly about his own personal success in the game?

50. Not being black, I can only guess from the outside. Is Harris’ being black as convenient selling among blacks? I’d guess Trump’ s mention of it was a better than average shot.
    And pointing out rudeness, instead of trying to apologize one’s way through it, is not whining.

51. Scrape – Trump is very good at wooing a big chunk of GOP primary voters, albeit with huge assists from Democrat-aligned media interests (2016) and Democrat-implemented lawfare (2024). That’s it. He’s an abysmal general election candidate. He’s never won so much as a plurality in a general election. It says here that he never will.

    And don’t get too far ahead of yourself with the “survived . . . numerous indictments and lawsuits.” If he loses this election, which he might well do, the Harris administration will ensure that he spends the rest of his life in jail. They’ll find at least one charge that sticks on appeal.

    And that will be great politics for them. Brutal, destructive, Machiavellian politics, but brilliant nonetheless. Trump’s approval rating will tank even further, but the GOP base will continue to be inflamed. Every elected Republican will have to continue genuflecting to Trump and defending him for another two, four, or more years. (Appeals take a long time.) Maybe they’ll even nominate an 82-year-old Donald Trump for a fourth consecutive time from prison so we can have a second Harris/Walz administration.

    Right now, the era of Trump has resulted in Democrats controlling the White House for 12 of the last 16 years, which may be about to become 16 of the past 20. Yeah, Trump has had an impact, just not the one that you think.

52. Mccain sold out his fellow prisoners like day risner read the interview in counterpoint et al he walked on his wife after she stood by him to get kemper marleys associates in the bargain and we wont relate how this parallels hoe he behaved in 2008

53. Face it folks, The Orange Hobbit stole CC™’s checked pants.

54. Look at the barbershop reception that cnn reporter got no they arent down with
    heels up

    The consequences of allowing this fraud have been rather stark a worthless dolor a depleted strategic reserve 13 dead in afghanistan a shambles in the air and on the ground

55. Walz is a coward and Stolen Valor liar.
    ==
    He may be a coward. He’s only a stolen valor liar if he made false claims about his service or countenanced false claims made by others. IMO, his age and level of physical fitness in 2005 should have precluded additional service, but that’s not how the National Guard rolls. IMO, there’s not much upside in hammering at this and there is an opportunity cost from not putting the spotlight on the border, the vote fraud, the trans lunacy &c.

56. Art Deco – He said that he carried a weapon in war. He quit his Guard unit before it was deployed to Iraq. His defenders are throwing up a smoke screen to create uncertainty about whether the unit was technically deployed before or after Walz quit. They are also arguing that he was, at one time, deployed to Italy in support of Afghanistan. Maybe that hyper-technically qualifies “carrying a weapon in war” in that he was carrying a weapon in while deployed (in Italy). Maybe people who are inclined to do so give him the benefit of the doubt that he misspoke on the tape.

    I don’t think it’s wrong for Vance to use this to parry attacks from Walz, but totally agree that this shouldn’t be the main narrative from Trump/Vance.

57. he was putting up a brave front against the invading armies of st Bernards,

    Tien an men tim, lies without any reservation, hes against the Border war, he let his city burn, his daughter gave antifa, the heads up, how much ‘time they would have to destroy’ he despises the First Amendment, and probably the 3rd, if he would lock you up for violating curfew, he would surely use troops to do it,

58. Something I’ve noticed about many Democrat politicians over the last decade or so: more and more of them seem to be rather dim. They increasingly live and work in a very tightly controlled bubble and seem to heavily rely on staff for talking points.
    ==
    Walz is the issue of state teachers’ colleges and all of his degrees are in some variant of ‘education’. He spent 20 years as a high school ‘social studies’ teacher, a position which does not (in the clown world of public education) require an actual subject degree in history or geography. Keep in mind that the sort of people who devote time and money to Democratic campaigns and lefoid advocacy groups are drawn abnormally from the ranks of the education apparat and social services apparat and are commonly union members. He’s who they are and they’re likely to get their back up if you point out that there are about 50 million adult Americans with a higher IQ than he has.
    ==
    KH passed the California bar exam, so she’s likely sharper than he is at baseline. The trouble with her we can glean is that she does not prepare and she treats her staff like manure.
    ==
    Over the last 50 years, the Democratic Party has nominated 13 men and three women for a spot on their national ticket. Now run down the occupations each followed before they got involved in electoral politics or in the interstices between stints in politics. Twelve were lawyers, one was a newspaper reporter, one a schoolteacher, one in the insurance business, and one went from an engineering position in the Navy to agribusiness. Of the lawyers, seven worked in a common-and-garden practice or government office for a short run of years; one’s practice was limited to a few years in a mid-law firm between stints in public office; two had lucrative but scandal-ridden careers of some duration (one in a mid-law partnership she landed due to her husband’s position, the other in a solo ambulance-chaser practice), one had an extended period of time as a prosecutor (under the protection of influential patrons), and one worked in a mid-law firm for about 15 years during which he was granted a partnership. The two men with a business background were Jimmy Carter and Lloyd Bentsen; neither man as he was would be welcome in the Democratic Party of today. The mid-law partner was Joseph Lieberman, whose last election to Congress was fought and won as a non-partisan candidate against the official Democratic candidate.

59. Well. The CPUSA has endorsed Kamala – Walz. So have the Socialist Democrat Party, and VT Senator Bernie Sanders.

    At least the far Left is consistent and has no equal to the McCaniac or Romney traitors of the American Revolution and Liberty.

60. The Harris-Walz ticket has this constituency in its pocket.
    (Tweets and screencaps omitted.)

    https://notthebee.com/article/this-columbia-student-group-is-saying-the-quiet-part-out-loud

    Remember when the Hamas kids took over Columbia University back in the spring?

    Those were the days, right?

    Well, here’s one of the groups responsible for the anti-Israel takeover. Notice that it’s not really about Israel anymore (never was), it’s just a broad get-rid-of-Western-civilization movement.
    “… fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.”
    “Revolution must continue.”
    This is what our leftist youth are fighting for, people.
    The reason they want to get rid of Western civilization is because they’re Marxist, and Western values are standing in their way.

61. But here’s my question: will any of this matter? The people I know who will vote for Harris are so virulently anti-Trump that nothing about Walz (or Harris, for that matter) could dissuade them. Then again, I don’t think I know any swing voters, to whom this sort of thing might matter.

    And wouldn’t a lot of people these days think that not serving in Iraq is a badge of honor?

    neo:

    I understand the anger about Walz, but I doubt this will matter much in the campaign for the reasons you list.

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