To paraphrase The Poet:
In politics, an 800-pound gorilla traveling at 800 miles per hour is moving too fast for opponents to slow down (let alone stop), unless acted upon by an outside force.
This true truism applies beyond politics, of course. It’s also spot-on when it comes to business, sports, entertainment, tenant-landlord relations, etc.
And right now, this axiom explains more about what’s going on in American politics than anything else.
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Thursday night, when the producers of my regular focus groups and I finished a gathering with eight Trump voters from around the country, I said to them that I felt our work on these sessions might be giving us more insight into Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ extraordinary standing with Republicans around the country than anyone else has.
Week after week, conservative participants in these focus groups display an affinity for the Sunshine State topper that is not quite like anything else I recall seeing at this point in a presidential cycle in my more than thirty years covering national politics.
These voters have surprisingly high and deep levels of political attraction to DeSantis, typically aware in granular detail of what he is doing week to week, and highly appreciative of his accomplishments and style.
Last night, the group consisted of folks from Missouri, Pennsylvania , Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, Alabama, California, and Texas.
I asked them to pick their top choice on a range of factors, selecting from DeSantis, former South Carolina Governor and United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, and former Vice President Mike Pence.
The traits included:
Strong leader
Cares about people like you
Charismatic
Shares your values
Would be toughest on China as president
Most like Donald Trump
I urge you to watch the whole mind-boggling three-minute clip here:
Now, all of this is in the context of Donald Trump not seeking another term; the former (future?) president clearly still enjoys the strongest support within the party.
And I’m not predicting that DeSantis will eventually be the nominee. It’s far too early to render such a judgment.
But there is no doubt in my mind that this guy is currently the intellectual and emotional favorite for many in the Redlands.
He has captured hearts and minds for many reasons, but I would put at the top of the list that he is the quintessential 362.874-kiligram monkey going 1,287,475.2 meters per hour (a/k/a, to my American readers, an 800-pound gorilla going 800 miles per hour).
From his rat-tat-tat executive actions, to his bam-bam-bam press conferences, to his boom-boom-boom cable news hits, to his badda-bing-badda-boom denunciations of the media, to his now-you-suddenly-see-’em lawsuits, to his lickety-split reactions to the pandemic – this is a man in a hurry and with apparent purpose.
The New York Times seems to be missing a lot of the picture and to be overstating part of the case when it claims that
… Gov. Ron DeSantis is emerging as presidential timber, almost entirely because he has weaponized news coverage critical of his handling of the coronavirus.
So far, Florida Democrats can’t slow him down; nor can a skeptical Dominant Media (including the grandparent of them all, “60 Minutes”); nor can his fledgling GOP rivals.
And DeSantis’ flash act is winning accolades from Republicans of all stripes, with fans including both Donald Trump and Jeb Bush, which, when you think about it, is remarkable in and of itself.
Part of what makes DeSantis look so speedy is that Trump himself is progressing at a different pace than before.
Semi-retired from public life, the FPOTUS in some moments does indeed move at a rapid clip.
But his general practice now is to go from zero to 800 and back to zero within the same news cycle.
When Mr. Trump moves fast now, he moves real fast, but on most occasions these days, he is going so slow he isn’t visible to the naked eye, which makes the whizzing DeSantis seem even faster as he laps the kingmaker who made him the emerging king with his endorsement.
In 1997, Team Al Gore saw that George W. Bush was himself going 800 miles per hour as he headed towards reelection as Texas’ governor and, then, towards a possible 2000 general election showdown with the then-vice president. Gore’s folks tried various means to put some road blocks (or, at least, some speed bumps) in W’s path, but history records they miserably failed, leading to the eventual restoration of the House of Bush.
Part of the reason for the failure was the Team Gore did not fully understand the nature of the appeal of George W. Bush, just as Democrats (and the New York Times) don’t seem to get why DeSantis is so popular nationally now.
It isn’t inevitable, but the story of our national politics over the next few years could be written in part by the question of who (or what) can put the brakes on the DeSantis rocket.
(Regardless of your political affiliation, if you would like to participate in an upcoming focus group I will conduct by Zoom, please send an email to mhfg@walkingduck.com and let us know of your interest.)
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You know who else is moving 800 miles an hour right now?
The 78-year-old president of the United States.
Sure, he seems to be in great physical shape for a man his age, but let’s deconstruct and code break to explain how Team Biden has their man so revved up that he’s got solid poll numbers and the capacity to speed like a butterfly and sting like bee during these challenging times.
Vaccine distribution?
Lightning fast.
The economic recovery?
Like the Kyoto-to-Tokyo bullet train.
The passage of the pandemic+ relief bill?
Record speed per dollar of spending.
The proposed schedule for the infrastructure+ package?
Supersonic speedy.
The clean little secrets that make this all possible?
* The previously discussed tight coordination and sharedsense among the members of Team Biden-Harris-Klain-Pelosi-Schumer.
* The media’s distracting focus on Joe Manchin and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez notwithstanding, the undercovered reality of 90%+ general agreement among Democratic members of Congress and their allies in and out of government (including in the Dominant Media) about what the possible/desired outcomes are.
* Ron Klain’s very clever sequencing of legislative and PR priorities to ACTUALLY move quickly on the things that can and must move quickly (everything related to the pandemic and the economy and the revolutionary liberal taxing and spending dreams) – and to create the APPEARANCE of moving quickly on everything else (guns, immigration, China, Russia, voting rights, police reform, Big Tech regulation, etc) via executive action, announcements, appointments, etc.
So the Redland citizens can laugh all they want to at Mr. Biden’s alleged infirmities, but the story of our present is defined by the inability of any national Republican to move anywhere near as speedily as the president – or to find any way to meaningfully slow his Big Mo.
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The Wide World of News scale JUGS Gun™, by the way, clock Mitch McConnell as a 500-pounder going 200 mph and Kevin McCarthy as a 350-pounder going 300 mph.
Decent figures, to be sure, but not in Mr. Biden’s league.
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Two fellows who used to be in the 800/800 club but are no longer, because they are very much being acted on by outside forces: Andrew Cuomo and Matt Gaetz.
Iron rule: There is no more powerful outside force than a determined prosecutor with subpoena power and cooperating witnesses.
CUOMO:
GAETZ:
ORLANDO, Fla. — The legal peril Rep. Matt Gaetz is facing appeared to increase sharply Thursday after a court hearing indicated that one of Gaetz’s close friends, former Seminole County, Fla., tax collector Joel Greenberg, is likely cooperating with federal prosecutors. (Politico)
*
Federal investigators are looking into a Bahamas trip Matt Gaetz allegedly took in late 2018 or early 2019 as part of an inquiry into whether the Florida representative violated sex trafficking laws, multiple sources told CBS News.
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If you would like to enjoy or support the work of Mr. Mark Halperin, there are now more ways to do those things than ever before.
Experts estimate Halperin is now going about 600 miles per hour (at a weight they are unable to guestimate), but source say he would like to go even faster.
Here’s your menu of options:
1. Halperin is available to conduct a public or private focus group for your organization or business. Sessions are quick turnaround, reasonably priced, and available on any topic.
Send an email to focusgroup@walkingduck.com and ask for details.
2. Have Mark speak to your group, company, or meeting in person or virtually on politics, media, government, metaphors, or whatever else you would like.
Send an email to markhalperintalk@gmail.com to set up an event.
3. Become a voluntary paying subscriber to support the independent journalism of Wide World of News today.
4. Become a voluntary contributor to support that same independent journalism by emailing me at markhalperintalk@gmail.com and arranging to give any amount of your choice.
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Mirage or game change?
Only time will tell.
The New York Times says there is
a huge caveat in Mr. Biden’s willingness to negotiate that Republicans say could scuttle any deal: The president wants to be the one to set the terms of how large the problems are, and of whether the proposed solutions are sufficient.
Behind the scenes, his team is working to soften the ground for bipartisan work. Administration officials are considering carving off some parts of Mr. Biden’s economic agenda into smaller pieces that could attract 10 or more Republican votes each, starting with a bill focused on supply chains and competition with China that the Senate is set to take up next week. They have discussed postponing Mr. Biden’s proposed tax increases on corporations, which Republican oppose, if doing so would get Republicans on board with a spending bill. And they have considered financing the spending through any means acceptable to a critical mass of Republicans, including borrowing, as long as they do not raise taxes on people earning less than $400,000 a year….
Some Democrats worry that such compromises could sap momentum for the rest of Mr. Biden’s agenda, including forthcoming proposals for education, child care and more. Others say the opposite: that a few deals would give Mr. Biden and his party traction with voters, and fuel to pass a large spending bill, funded by tax increases, later this year with only Democratic votes.
HALPERIN SAYS: Mark me down as an interested skeptic.
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ESSENTIAL READING/VIEWING
* David Ignatius snagged an important interview with Secretary of State Blinken, whose phrase ““humility and confidence” is as good an encapsulation of Team Biden’s foreign policy orientation as you will find.
* Shocking but not surprising, via the Washington Post:
The Biden administration appears to be spending at least $60 million per week to care for the more than 16,000 migrant teenagers and children in shelters operated by the Department of Health and Human Services, and those costs are expected to rise significantly over the coming months, according to an analysis of government data obtained by The Washington Post.
* Incredible interview with Dick van Dyke pegged to his upcoming Kennedy Center Honor, with fantastic details galore, including this:
van Dyke is known for being a song and dance man, a leading man, a movie and TV star. But he was almost something else. For around a year in 1956, he co-hosted what was then The CBS Morning News with none other than Walter Cronkite. America’s Most Trusted News Man was involved in two or three shows at the time. Dick was doing feature stories. “One day I had an Alaskan sled in with the dogs and the driver and they turned the studio over!”
* When Peggy Noonan and Kim Strassel write about the same topic on the same day, attention must be paid. In this case, the matter at hand is the present and future of the Republican Party. PN says it is all about principles and ideas, while KS focuses on fundraising off of the opposition to the agenda of Team Biden. If you only have time to read one, go with Ms. Noonan.
* The Washington Post tick tocks the long road President Biden took from his baseball All-Star game comments to his Masters dodge.
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