CAMPAIGN: O'Donnell turns to the Taylor Swift card!

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2024

Police officers beaten in Gotham: Yesterday morning, we started with some unwelcome polling figures.

This morning, new data look good. As of now, the new national survey is very much an outlier—but the new survey says this:

Biden Opens Up Lead Over Trump In Head-To-Head, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds

As signs point to the 2024 presidential election being a repeat of the 2020 race between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Biden holds a lead over Trump 50 - 44 percent among registered voters in a hypothetical general election matchup, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll of registered voters released today.

Dear God! Let some form of traditional electoral sanity prevail, one analyst lustily cried.

As of now, this new survey is an outlier. And of course, there' a very long way to go, and this is going to be a year without any known precedent.

But so it stood, within one survey, as dawn's rosy fingers extended. With regard to the way the campaign will be played, we'll begin today with Lawrence O'Donnell at the start of last evening's Last Word.

"I just can't take it any more," O'Donnell told Alex Wagner. "I have to unburden myself on Republicans, the NFL and Taylor Swift. It's time. It's time."

Wagner responded in kind. "Listen, I unburdened myself last night," she said. "But we almost took another pass at it today because it's so absolutely bonkers, the whole thing."

Lawrence said he was going to offer warnings about "the dangerous spread of this insanity." To watch this exchange, just start here.

So goes the entertainment / reinforcement branch of cable news, or so our assessment would tell you. In fairness, when Lawrence began to unburden himself, he was honest enough to restrict himself to a ludicrous tweet by a man named Mike Crispi, who once ran for Congress in New Jersey and lost in the GOP primary by just over twenty points.

Crispi is a very minor Republican player. To his credit, O'Donnell didn't misstate what's being said about this matter by much bigger players on Fox.

In all honesty, O'Donnell did overstate what Vivek Ramaswamy said in a posting of his own. Mainly, though, Lawrence built his complaint about "the madness" found in this ludicrous Crispi tweet:

Mike Crispi tweet:

The NFL is totally RIGGED for the Kansas City Chiefs, Taylor Swift, Mr. Pfizer (Travis Kelce).

“All to spread DEMOCRAT PROPAGANDA. 

Calling it now: KC wins, goes to Super Bowl, Swift comes out at the halftime show and ‘endorses’ Joe Biden with Kelce at midfield.

It's been an op since day one. 

If Crispi believes any part of that lunacy, then of course he's insane. That said, to build a prime time "cable news" segment around so minor a player strikes us as an impulse coming from the outskirts of crazy too.

In our view, the Crispi tweet became a bit of a sweet-tasting Krispie Treat within the candygram realm of partisan "cable news." As he continued, O'Donnell discussed "the madness loose in the land, and no one fuels that madness more than Donald Trump."

To his credit, O'Donnell is one of the very few mainstream journalists who has been willing to discuss Donald Trump's mental state within the context of modern medical / psychiatric science.  He's done so only on rare occasions, but few others have done that at all.

But as O'Donnell continued—and he didn't fail to name Adolph Hitler—it seemed to us that he was still providing a type of feel-good service to his blue tribe viewers. When we have to build our urburdenings around such minor figures as Crispi, are we really creating a line of argument and attack which could make's today's poll numbers stand?

O'Donnell unburdened himself regarding Swift—and Swift is great for eyeballs, ratings and clicks, as every news org knows. He unburdened himself in the 10 p.m. hour—but earlier, during the 5 p.m. hour, horrible videotape shown on The Five helped define the kinds of struggles our own Candidate Biden will face.

This morning, Morning Joe played the same videotape. The panel then discussed the tape at length during the program's first half hour.

Alas! The tape showed a pair of New York City police officers being viciously assaulted by a group of roughly eight teenaged asylum seekers.

The tape is awful; the facts get worse. Three of the assailants were arrested. In apparent accord with New York City law, the vicious assailants were then quickly released without bail.

At this site, we feel sorry for any individual who reached the state of such viciousness while still in his teens. That said, we advise you to look at that videotape, while remembering that the eight young assailants in question represent only themselves.

Yesterday afternoon, the videotape was heavily featured at the start of The Five. At 10 p.m., it was also heavily featured on Gutfeld!

On Gutfeld!, a bit of possible expertise actually came into play. A former heavyweight "professional wrestling" champion said this about what he saw:

TYRUS (1/31/24): While we're looking at the video, just so you know, these guys weren't trying to fight. They were trying to kick them in the head—kill shot. It is a kill shot. They were trying to line them up and kick them in the head. 

They weren't holding them. They weren't even punching them. Every one of them was trying to kick the police officers in the head, because when you kick somebody in the head, it's lights out, and then once they're lights out, then the stomping comes and everything else. We're just lucky that the police officers kept moving and kept evading, even though they were dealing with one guy, they—

So again, you're also—the mayor has the power to do something with the district attorney, who is just letting them go... 

Plainly, that's what the tape looks like. We're not sure about the powers of Gotham's mayor, but the three assailants who were arrested were immediately released on bail.

Is it possible that our own blue tribe has allowed itself to be overtaken by an array of bad political judgments? If you want to understand the sorts of problems Candidate Biden is going to face, we'll advise you to watch the opening segment of yesterday's The Five (link below).

In that segment, the videotape and the facts are so bad that no one had to embellish a single point to score a straight 5-0 vote among the program's panelists.

Eight teenaged asylum seekers savaged a pair of cops. Three of the assailants were arrested, then they were quickly released.

That gruesome video drove The Five—but it was also featured in the first half hour of today's Morning Joe. Just so you'll know what it's safe to say, Al Sharpton was there on the panel, and he joined Joe Scarborough and everyone else in saying that this ugly event is not what bail reform was ever supposed to be about.

Other panelists called for deportation. Saying that the black community gets the worst of this, Reverend Sharpton seemed to agree.

Our view? As he unburdened himself last night, Lawrence was hunting, deep in the woods, with a very tiny and very small pop gun. That said, also this:

Five hours earlier, all five panelists on The Five had helped define the parameters of the disputed term, "Woke."

Our frequently silly and self-impressed tribe keeps insisting there's no such thing! In such ways, we make it conceivable that a disordered figure like Donald J. Trump could sneak through to the White House again.

Our own blue tribe is deeply flawed. We often show very poor judgment.

It's also true that corporate "cable news" stars are on the air to please us. They're on the air to generate ratings, along with the profits which ensue. In that way, their pleasing behaviors keep their (undisclosed) multimillion dollar corporate salaries up.

Roughly one week ago, Candidate Donald J. Trump said "Haley" instead of "Pelosi." Last night and again this morning, our stars were still running with that.

That strikes us as a very small cup of a very weak tea. But if you watch that first segment from The Five, you're starting down the barrel of the types of errors Candidate Biden will be forced to run against. 

How strong a candidate will he turn out to be? We have no idea.

Reverend Sharpton agreed with The Five. So did everyone else on today's Morning Joe panel.

Meanwhile, Wagner had almost unburdened herself once again. Along the way, she hadn't asked her blue tribe viewers to watch, and then to think about, the meaning of that videotape. 

O'Donnell disappeared it as well.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our own blue tribe, like all human tribes, is frequently saddled with very poor judgment. As is true with all human tribes, many members of our own tribe have a hard time grasping that fact.

Reverend Sharpton agreed with The Five! Are we self-impressed souls over here on the left able to wrap our minds around what events like yesterday's catch and release will mean as Candidate Biden tries to campaign in the face of our tribe's self-imposed blindness? 

This morning, it's just like Ben Franklin said. Our candidate is sporting a six-point lead, but only if we can keep it.

This afternoon: The New York Times, clowning around about Swift

Opening segment of The Five: We advise you to ponder the tale of that tape. To watch the opening segment of The Five, start by clicking right here.

You'll see what the five Fox News panelists said. Thirteen hours later, on Morning Joe, Reverend Sharpton made it six.