The New Lexicon
By Mitch Berg
“Grassroots”: When a candidate who has never earned a primary vote, and only run one seriously contested election in her life, gets installed by the troika of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama after defenestrating the current President for being unfit to run a campaign (although apparently not to be President of the United States).
Example:
Hope this resolves any confusion.
October 14th, 2024 at 7:47 am
Who could possibly be the target audience for that TNR article? Is it to reassure their readers? Why would they need to be? Anyway, funny how Roger Kimball doesn’t agree
https://amgreatness.com/2024/10/13/fake-crowds-fake-ads-real-ridicule-a-week-of-failures-for-harris-walz/
An “audience-for-hire company”? Yep. I am not sure exactly which company team Harris employed, but it turns out that such initiatives are a booming business. Consider, for example, the company Crowds on Demand. Their website advertises “PROTESTS • RALLIES • ADVOCACY” and goes on to boast that
Whether your organization is lobbying to gain approval of a project, move forward a legislative initiative, bring additional pressure within complex litigation or trying to see swift and effective action in another way, we can set-up protests, rallies, demonstrations, alternatives to litigation or business disputes, coordinate phone-banking initiatives and even create non-profit organizations to advance your agenda.
October 14th, 2024 at 7:59 am
Thought I’d ask. I had read that when he was forced out, Biden took revenge and threw sand in the plans of the Schumer-Pelosi-Obama troika by selecting Harris before they could announce their preferred candidate (whomever that might’ve been). Does that sound plausible?
October 14th, 2024 at 9:00 am
JDM,
I’d heard that rumor that Biden picked Harris as revenge against the Troika too. I think it’s wish casting by Republicans to think that, though it’s fun to do so and imagine Joe has been trying to sabotage her campaign as revenge for being pushed out. He’s petty and vindictive enough to do so, but I don’t think that’s happening.
After the political class got finished trying to get Biden to dump Harris as this year’s VP candidate and they started to actually worry that Joe was crapping the electoral bed this year, plenty of those politicos were proactively suggesting Joe step aside and promote Harris to Presidential Candidate for only one reason. Money. While Biden’s fundraising had dried up, he did have a substantial war chest that couldn’t be transferred to another candidate besides Harris (and that’s still a debate but I don’t know if anyone has sued over it yet). The theory being that because Harris’ name was already on the campaign paperwork and bank accounts, she could assume control of everything existing giving her a major advantage over any other Democrat hopeful. The DNC power brokers jumped on the theory, twisted a few arms, and declared Harris THE CANDIDATE, and then got the Delegates in line, and viola, GRASSROOTS!!
As to the target of the article, I’ve seen multiple places today that the Media is trying to convince Democrat voters to ignore the polls and vote anyways. Heck, last week, Obama was out there trying to shame “The Brothers” who aren’t voting for Harris. Democrats are scared $#!+less right now.
October 14th, 2024 at 10:16 am
I have a question as to whether or not hiring mobs of activists is a violation of campaign finance laws.
Smith, to your comment, I know that the head person at the FEC, put up a hard line over that transfer of funds from Joe to Kamala. Of course, the left wing mob excoriated him, but he did push back and highlighted the fact that, as usual, the DNC were trying to change the rules to benefit them. We all know that had this type of scenario played out for the GOP, i. e. Trump backs out and “installs” Vance as candidate, the same people would be screaming foul, despite the fact that it was exactly what the Dems did.
October 14th, 2024 at 10:43 am
Boss,
We’ll see what the FEC actually does, and of course, the Dems will cry foul if the rules are enforced against Harris under a Trump Administration.
There were several different campaign “experts” that were publicly advising the DNC and Biden to just suck it up, pay off the Campaign’s bills and transfer the remainder to the DNC, which is clearly legal, and then fundraise, fundraise, fundraise while using the starting from scratch to motivate donors to give more. Ironically, Harris’ fundraising numbers have been good enough that she didn’t need the Biden leftovers.
Another thing it’ll be interesting to see is if any donors violated the maximum allowed amounts when combining their total donations to Biden and Harris. If that happens, I’m sure they’ll argue “different candidates, separate legal maximums” despite taking over Biden’s coffers that the previous donations went into. It’ll take years to straighten out the Democrats’ donations mess from this cycle. If the FEC chooses to enforce the laws.
October 14th, 2024 at 11:48 am
Smith;
Yea, it’s amazing how much the usual suspects, both individuals and PACs, donate to the Dems. Many of them are getting a good percentage of their income from GOP aligned patrons. I’m very conscious of those things. For instance, I don’t use Google, I’ve dumped FB and LinkedIn, I’m buying my razor blades from Jeremy’s after the founder of Harry’s said that he didn’t want conservatives buying his stuff. He did see a drop in his business, but hasn’t retracted. When I was shopping for new car insurance, I shut down the Progressive agents, because, the founder of that organization, used his views as the name of his company.
October 15th, 2024 at 1:59 pm
I think the word here is “Gasroots”.