Debating

The Kamala Harris campaign team apparently based their debate strategy assuming that ABC News would prove as pliable and willing as the rest of the media toward their efforts, expecting that the rules requiring muted mics between answers would be thrown out. They assumed wrong, and now they are reportedly “scrambling” for a new plan, describing Kamala’s position as “handcuffed” by the rules agreed to when Joe Biden was the Democratic candidate: Trump’s worst moments in the debates are when he gets upset and snaps,” said an aide to Harris in her 2020 presidential campaign, granted anonymity to speak freely. “And they have neutered that.

The American media is in a credibility crisis following President Biden’s car-crash debate performance last week. How is it that so many reporters and pundits failed to reveal the depth of the commander-in-chief’s decline? Public trust in the media is in the basement — but it’s been tailing off since 2008, when the legacy media landscape in the United States fundamentally shifted.   Before 2008, the legacy media — while always leaning to the political left — had maintained a patina of objectivity. When Bill Clinton lied to the American people about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, they belatedly pounced. When John Kerry’s campaign began to crater, they reluctantly covered it. They were, to be sure, oriented against Republican candidates and policies.

It's that time of year again: Hillary Clinton has surfaced from her Chappaqua estate to weigh in on politics with vindictive fury. This time she’s billing herself as the expert for Thursday’s presidential debate in a New York Times op-ed. Since Clinton is the only person to have debated both candidates — Joe Biden during the 2008 Democratic primary and Donald Trump during the 2016 election — she reasons she has the unique credentials to analyze the match. Given that she failed to win both races, however, Cockburn thinks it’s a bit rich for Clinton to be offering advice. Ever the ruling class elite trying to seem relatable, Clinton began her op-ed recounting the “time of her life” she had at the Tony Awards last week.