New York Times: “Catchy debate lines alone rarely determine the outcome of a race. But there is a skill to landing the perfect zinger, the kind of quick remark that can reinvigorate a campaign, boost fund-raising, allay concerns about a candidate or even sink an opponent.”
“Ahead of the CNN/New York Times debate, here is a guide to the art of the zinger, from veterans of the practice.”
Jack Shafer: “You needn’t believe the hype about President Trump being a 21st-century media wizard to concede he has a special talent for powershifting through the gears of the news cycle to blow past whatever current event might threaten his presidency. Whether it’s a function of Trump’s volatility or a measure of his craft, he has a knack for freezing out damaging news by creating his own news storms that transfix the press. He fires members of his Cabinet and staff, over-reaches with executive orders, picks fights with a Gold Star mother and football players, engages in ad hominem, and insults entire friendly countries.”
“In recent days as bad news has swelled around him, Trump has taken to screaming ‘treason’ and ‘coup’ at full volume to divert the news flow. But this time Trump’s hydraulics don’t seem to be working. Instead of Trump flooding the news cycle, the news cycle has begun to flood Trump. His special talents—if they really exist—have begun to fail him, and he seems to know it.”
Boston Globe: “Though almost all the presidential candidates take photos with potential voters, Warren has become famous for her ‘selfie’ lines, which can last hours and involve hundreds or even thousands of people. She has said that if she wins the nomination, she will continue to do them. But right now, with Warren climbing in the Democratic primary polls, these photo lines have a kind of intimate, now-or-never feeling to them, like meeting Taylor Swift when she was still strumming her guitar at a bar in Nashville.”
“Warren’s campaign sees the photos as a form of grass-roots canvassing, offering individuals a chance to talk to their candidate face-to-face. They also, of course, offer Warren the opportunity to appear in potential voters’ Snapchat stories and Instagram feeds without paying a cent. The ritual showcases the 70-year-old candidate’s stamina, too: She really will stay until the last person who wants one gets a photo. Recently, after a rally of 20,000 people in Manhattan, Warren snapped selfies for four hours.”
Also interesting: “Far from the existential despair and rage that one usually encounters among people who are waiting in a very long line, the people sticking around to meet Warren at Keene State were eager, rule-abiding, optimistic — matching almost perfectly the tone of the event. Occasionally, shouts of spontaneous joy would erupt.”
Philip Bump: “In the first phase, he does or says something that any unbiased observer would categorize as controversial. This is generally something geared toward embarrassing or undermining a perceived political opponent.”
“In the second phase, he tells media outlets that they’re misunderstanding his true intent, which was something less objectionable. Sometimes doing so demands stuffing some awfully big claims into some awfully small boxes, but Trump and his supporters are generally content if he at least gives it a shot.”
“This tactic is well-designed for leveraging the media. With decades of inculcated assumptions about the good faith of the president, reporters find themselves forced into declaring that, while most people would agree that the president’s statement was problematic, he insists that it is actually not problematic for whatever reason. His supporters embrace the original intent and meaning of what Trump does, and the media has to leave it there. Works great, at least for him.”
Washington Post: “From straws to wind turbines to socially conservative issues, Trump is deliberately amplifying public tensions by seizing on divisive topics to energize his base, according to campaign aides and White House advisers. The president is following much the same strategy that he pursued in 2016 — inserting himself into the issues his supporters are already discussing, and using blunt us-against-them language without regard to nuance or political correctness.”
“As Democrats debate policy, Trump has sought to force his potential rivals to defend the most far-reaching cultural ideas circulating within their party.”
“While Trump’s campaign aides have proactively pushed his politically incorrect message with creative and at times tongue-in-cheek marketing, the president has caught some of his advisers off guard by crudely inflaming culture wars on heavier topics such as race, abortion and immigration.”
Nigel Farage described President Trump’s “go back” comments aimed at four congresswomen of color as “genius,” The Guardian reports.
Said Farage: “You realise, 48 hours on, it was genius because what’s happened is the Democrats gather round the Squad, which allows him to say, ‘Oh look, the Squad are the centre of the Democratic party.'”
He added: “He’s remarkably good at what he does. He does things his way. But he is a remarkably effective operator.”
Monkey Cage: “Candidates for the Democratic Party nomination will square off Wednesday night in the first of two televised debates. Pundits will focus on what the candidates say. But how politicians speak can be just as important. If you watch, keep your eyes on the candidates’ mannerisms — from hand gestures to vocal inflections. Why? Because politicians’ nonverbal behaviors give us clues about which issues are especially important to them.”
Washington Post: “After Washington Gov. Jay Inslee released a $9 trillion climate plan last month, his staffers noticed the plan had been parodied twice in one week by the Onion, a popular satirical website. They began brainstorming a ‘clever and self-deprecating’ response in case it happened again.”
“Sure enough, a week later the Onion again poked fun at Inslee, parodying his youth-friendly message by saying he had decided to run for president only after five teenagers ‘pressed enchanted rings together to call him into existence.’ Inslee responded quickly with a deadpan tweet: ‘That was supposed to be off the record.’ It instantly became one of Inslee’s most popular Twitter posts; aides followed it up with a fundraising appeal, which helped push the candidate across the 65,000-donor threshold to qualify for the first Democratic debates.”
Joshua Spivak: “In the general election, it is not clear that a vice presidential pick ever helps or even hurts the candidate. Studies have found that voters do not take running mates into account. Richard Nixon, who was on the Republican national ticket five times, believed that the vice presidential choice could serve only to damage the president. While the VP has occasionally seemed to provide momentum to the ticket, there is no evidence of a VP making a different in the race—with the possible exception of Lyndon Johnson in 1960.”
CNN: “If there are any emerging design trends among the initial 2020 campaign logos, it’s the use of words over symbols, and the embrace of color outside of the traditional red, white, and blue. Gone are the patriotic single-letter presidential logos popularized over the past decade.”
Nancy Gibbs: “Elections have consequences; so do campaigns, and Trump’s never actually stopped. Unlike his predecessors, he saw no need to shift from running to serving, never moved past the performance art of his massive rallies where he could repeat the same outlandish promises over and over, thrilling the crowds, appalling the fact checkers, confounding his adversaries. The universe of political discourse swelled, crashing through boundaries of truth, tradition and at times decency.”
“It will be telling to see how people use every new tool and tactic that technology, and even Trump, has delivered unto us—not to divert and divide, but to shape a more honest, more subtle, more substantial campaign than the last one. We know how easily we can be distracted; I’m counting on the candidates who show us how we can be healed.”
“The concerted effort by Republicans in Washington and Florida to discredit the state’s recount as illegitimate and potentially rife with fraud reflects a cold political calculation: Treat the recount as the next phase of a campaign to secure the party’s majority and agenda in the Senate,” the New York Times reports.
“That imperative — described by Republican lawyers, strategists and advisers involved in the effort — reflects the G.O.P.’s determination to tighten its hold on power in the narrowly divided Senate. The outcome of the Florida race will decide whether the party controls as many as 53 seats and has a freer hand to confirm Republican-backed judges with the vote of the man at the center of the recount, Gov. Rick Scott, who is trying to oust a three-term Democrat, Bill Nelson.”
New York Times: “The race for Kentucky’s Sixth Congressional District between the Republican incumbent, Andy Barr, and his Democratic challenger, Amy McGrath, has featured one of the highest concentration of political ads in the country — almost 7,000 airings — in one of the most fiercely fought races.”
“But there is a twist. The contest also has one of the most lopsided ratios of negative-to-positive ads, with Mr. Barr and aligned Republican groups spending more than $3 million in the relatively inexpensive Lexington media market in the past six weeks, overwhelmingly on spots attacking Ms. McGrath.”
“Ms. McGrath, so far, has not run attack ads against Mr. Barr, an approach that makes this contest a laboratory to test the long-held proposition that while voters find negative ads distasteful, candidates use them because they work.”
New York Times: “In 2016, before the presidential election, state-backed Russian operatives exploited Facebook and Twitter to sway voters in the United States with divisive messages. Now, weeks before from the midterm elections on Nov. 6, such influence campaigns are increasingly a domestic phenomenon fomented by Americans on the left and the right.”
“Politics has always involved shadings of the truth via whisper campaigns, direct-mail operations and negative ads bordering on untrue. What is different this time is how domestic sites are directly emulating the Russian playbook of 2016 by aggressively creating networks of Facebook pages and accounts — many of them fake — that make it appear as if the ideas they are promoting enjoy widespread popularity, researchers said. The activity is also happening on Twitter.”
Washington Post: “Facebook said on Thursday it has purged more than 800 U.S publishers and accounts for flooding users with politically-oriented content that violated the company’s spam policies, a move that could reignite accusations of political censorship.”
“It boomerangs. He goes in the other direction, so that’s not effective. The pissing match doesn’t work.”
— Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), quoted by the New York Times, on why he’s not publicly critical of President Trump.
Rep. Tom Reed’s (R-NY) campaign placed an electronic tracking device inside the lawmaker’s campaign signs, which was used to track down a sign allegedly stolen by a liberal activist, the Ithaca Journal reports.
Ron Brownstein: “Almost halfway through Donald Trump’s tempestuous first term, Democrats are divided between two visions of how they can dislodge the Republican dominance of Washington and most state governments. One camp believes the party’s best chance will come from targeting mostly white, Republican-leaning voters who are recoiling from Trump on personal, more so than policy, grounds. The other camp believes the biggest opportunity is to turn out more voters from the groups most intensely hostile to Trump, in terms of both his style and agenda: Millennials, non-whites, and white women who are college-educated or unmarried. One camp bets mostly on persuading swing voters, the other on mobilizing base voters.”
“In practice, Democrats inevitably will need to do some of both… But in the selection of their 2020 presidential nominee, Democrats will face a genuine crossroads. Few, if any, potential candidates would be equally effective at both energizing the party base and reassuring swing voters.”
“If I was a millennial, I’d delete everything I said and did online. Jon Ossoff forgot to do that.”
— Congressional Leadership Fund executive director Corry Bliss, quoted by Politico, on millennial candidates.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
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