Vee

It's not exactly the first time.

I think she has a very good shot. Right now I think she is on track to win. But that's me. I think when the press gets bored and there's not enough news (and the race isn't close enough) they manufacture this stuff, but I do think very online Dem neuroses is real. Too many people on our side are going to always angst over 2016 (or '04, or '84) if you leave them to their own devices, but the reality is we are ahead. I have never doubted the ground/turnout game myself.

This from Colbert tonight is great. The earlier segment in this appearance where she again kind of bobs and weaves around the 'how would you govern differently from Biden' question is not as rough as the gotcha corps online are making it out to be, as she does eventually pivot to some of her own previously stated policies fairly well. I just think, as I said above, that Harris is in an impossible position due to her intense loyalty to Joe where she cannot and will not totally turn her back on him and their (very strong) overall policy record, but the media (who deeply resent Biden) and the GOP want to chain her to him. And if she talks about the obvious new element - a female POTUS zeroing in on women's rights in a new way - she risks alienating men. That said, I think it was overall a very strong appearance and this clip will go viral and be winning material for her.

The irony of course being that Frank is openly gay. But yes, he threw the gays under the bus long ago IMO, starting at OLTL in 2010.

I do think Harris' stuff on The View is really quite good overall - particularly the longer story about the morning she got the call from Joe and then calling her pastor. I can't fault her for her loyalty to Joe re: answers on delineating herself from his choices in his term. It is a tricky tightrope she has to walk til November, probably the first candidate to ever do so in these circumstances and she has been very loyal to him on the trail. But of course the Beltway is mad she didn't give them something on a gotcha question re: throwing Joe under the bus. Anyway, I feel her answers, particularly on the hurricane disasters, will resonate with voters. She was awfully good. I find that when she is live (on the stump, on The View, at a debate, etc.) she always is.

I do think Lucas may have been added back (along with quick returns for Terry and Brad) to get the heat off them re: the mess with Natalia, etc. But I also think it dovetails with preexisting plans re: JJ and Whether that Spencer rebuild in turn came about after collapsing ratings who knows, but I do believe they are committed to that because they have to be. You also don't hire not one but two major marquee soap performers as the Spencer kids unless you intend to play them. Frank can't autopilot it. (For an example of the opposite, look at him quickly removing Josh Kelly from the role of Joey Buchanan on OLTL, a character he had no investment in, and creating a new role for him while passing the role of Joey off to an actor who got very little to do instead.)

Per some of what we discussed in the PT:

I didn't love the 60 Minutes interview either. Harris is admittedly not perfect as an interview subject unless it's more casual (which is to somewhat be expected after being kept often in reserve for four years, and only having two months to pull this whole thing off up to now which has been remarkable) and I find she too often leans on canned answers in those more buttoned-up settings, whereas I do think she thrives and excels in debates or live on the stump, or with more unconventional or less Beltway-centric outlets. I do think with more time she'd do much better in this kind of format, but we haven't had any and regardless it hasn't hurt her favorables which keep going up. But I also felt Bill Whitaker's performance on 60 Minutes was lousy. It was the classic old-school TV interview of brief soundbites, too much editing down, too much voice-over by the anchor and not enough substantive discussion, and most of his questions were merely gotcha framing shots out of the old GOP playbook (Trump says this/what do you say, how are you going to pay for it, etc). So in that sense I think it only proved Harris' team right for going to Stern, to Call Her Daddy, to The View, to NABJ etc. And I think those will all work well.

I probably said some of that, sure, though it's more insightful than me, but I think I said that I feel part of it also has to do with her 'drama club kid' teenage complex, seeing the world as self-obsessed theater, and of course losing her father. It's a toxic mix but either way I wanted Diana gone quickly lol. I do need to get back to the show - I stopped a third of the way through S7 at ep 10 (Joshua's death) so I could try to catch up on Dallas' Dream Season which I intend to watch in tandem, and I've been preoccupied IRL and with movies, etc. I will be back on it soon.

Since part of that seems unavoidably paywalled, you can find more here. Since NBC is now facing internal pressure from their own stars over this as well as Errol Morris, hopefully if Trump fails to acquiesce to a debate by the Thursday deadline they'll be forced to run it.

Thompson, who seems to have a visceral distaste for Harris (and Biden), nonetheless posts this poll which seems to bear out what we've been seeing for some time:

Nah, I think he's great.

And yes, this and the COVID test stuff is the key headline all major Beltway media are running with:

A typically dishy piece, but the biggest takeaway is Trump secretly sending Putin COVID tests before the American people. I don't always agree with Beutler on many things, but I generally agree with this. Like him, my growing concern is after the election. The race is pretty stable, and as of today's polls Harris remains considerably up both nationally and in most key states including MI: Sorry for the funky order.

This is the way this derailing should always be handled.

February sweeps is not that far away, lol. I wouldn't see any point in a triangle with Sam, Dante and Lulu without a strong fourth side for Sam, and I already considered her a spent character (unlike Dante or Lulu). Sam and Dante was always a C-pairing to park the characters somewhere.

He's still behind and has been for maybe a month. Which is why they're trying to amp up the horserace. I'm not seeing many major media calling his Butler rally anything but repugnant and/or strange. Unless we're pointing to Luntz, Cenk Uygur or the dead end left on Twitter, which really don't hold much sway over actual new voters (or Democrats). I'm reasonably confident we'll win though it is important to remain very vigilant. It's not the winning that concerns me most atm. It is the fallout from what happens after. Trump has primed his cult far worse than 2020 this time.

A series of good Harris polls today, but the Beltway media remains very pissed she's doing little people media (and y'know, also 60 Minutes, Univision, The View, etc):

There isn't any depth in Frank's preferred GH, based on ideal scene length. I can't fault the actors for that. I thought both Jonathan and the twunk did a good job.

They used to have Tim Stickney (R.J. Gannon) and to a certain extent Erika Slezak doing some quiet day to day rewriting on OLTL under the table, IIRC. Both discussed it openly in the oral history. The conflict of interest was cited to them so they simply didn't take pay for it (unfairly, IMO). Something similar happened decades before with Ellen Holly, who at least once or twice pitched long story (like the Jack Scott saga) that they used but gave her no pay for for the same reasons.

That's because it generally wasn't, at the time at those other shows. Nobody at GH was issuing a press release saying Guza was overwriting Culliton material without his name on it, for example, but it was clear onscreen and later cast and crew did confirm it. It simply quietly happened, and it got out after the fact in most cases. But in early 2003 at OLTL the soap journalists (not the show) were being very open about it on background in SOD or SOW. It's simply been a quiet, common practice for a number of incoming writing teams for many decades.