Please join Republican strategist Gail Gitcho, former governor and presidential candidate Scott Walker, Sean Spicer, and me tomorrow (Wednesday) and Thursday at 9am ET for two separate 30-minute Zoom sessions connected to Wednesday night’s third Republican president debate. Both sessions are free for members of the Wide World of News community. We will tell you what is what before and after the debate, with insights and analysis that is not dumbed down – and includes your questions. To sign up for Wednesday, November 8 at 9am ET, click here. To sign up for Thursday, November 9 at 9am ET, click here. To reserve a slot at one or both sessions – and get the Zoom link(s), you must RSVP using the links above. See you there! AND REMEMBER, MARIOS: NOVEMBER’S SALON CONVERSATON IS ON *THURSDAY* THIS WEEK, NOT THE USUAL TUESDAY. Now, on with the FAKE Ron Klain memo! **** TO: JRB FROM: Ron Klain DATE: 11/7/23 RE: One year out…. We are winning on Twitter, we are winning on the Hill, we are winning with Bibi, winning in Ukraine, and winning in large portions of Philly. Where we are not winning right now is in America’s greenrooms. F*ck Axelrod, truly. Propriety prevents me from saying the same thing about his boss. But, c’mon, man. Mr. President, you should continue to restrict your communications with certain categories of Democrats for the time being, including but not limited to donors, members of Congress, pollsters, Hollywood powerbrokers, Wall Street titans, and anyone from Michigan (especially Debbie). These are the people I talk to all day long. Trust me, you and these folks have no business to transact right now. Also, don’t talk to any Jews or Muslims who don’t work for you. In fact, don’t talk to too many who do work for you. Those are some of the most pissed off ones. In the short term, we have three related political challenges. First, the diplomatic corps, the left on the Hill, and the progressive intelligentsia are all going to grow only more openly hostile to your support for Bibi. And, as you know better than even I do, drifting away from Bibi only adds to your list of enemies; it satisfies no one. Second, those New York Times battleground state polls have freaked everybody out. Third, our insularity, which prevents leaks and bad decision making, has finally come acropper, turning the consultant class against us. We can laugh at the New York Post “consultant” roundup, in which Dick Morris declares you politically kaput, but it is harder to ignore this blind quote from the Balz piece in the Bezos Post:
That cuts to the quick; these are my people turning against me. We will find out who uttered every blind quote in that friggin’ piece and have a word with them. If they want DNC contracts and holiday party invites, well, they best get with the program. One person I definitely need to call today is Joe Klein. He needs to mosey back onto the reservation. He wrote last night,
Being called “smug” by Joe is like being called “smug” by David Axelrod. But Joe also said you shouldn’t run, then said if you didn’t run – and I might have misread this – that Senators Sanders or Warren might end up the nominee and he would consider voting for Trump. Or something. The point is, we do indeed have a problem with the panicky commentariat right now. Even Ruth Marcus is openly afraid. We have to differentiate between our real problems and the ones made up for cable news and Twitter. Here are some real longer-range problems that concern me (even though I am projecting confidence and optimism everywhere I go!): 1. The four-front war over there. David Sanger finally figured it out. You are battling Putin, Hamas, Zelensky, and Bibi, all at the same time. The terrible irony here is that our two “allies” are, in their own way, just as confounding and difficult to leverage as our enemies. 2. The war at home. It isn’t just the Squad and it isn’t just the troublemakers in the Red media – this is a real concern. My touchstone here is the op-ed page of the Journal, where the columnists are right about the future, where the Chicago convention in ’24 could make Chicago ’68 look like Los Angeles ’00, where the most controversial moment was when Tipper and Al kissed a bit long. 3. The coalition. As Alex Burns points out, both Rashida Tlaib and Dean Phillips represent problems for us in and of themselves, but they also represent the reality that large segments of our base are hugely alienated from your leadership and incredulous that you would be renominated. This problem is currently not getting better, and might get worse. And if you really try to cut an immigration deal with Republicans on the fly, you are going to see the left rebel even more. 4. Trump. As Jeff Greenfield points out, the successful Clinton-over-Dole, W-over-Kerry, and Obama-over-Romney strategy might not work for us, for two reasons. First Trump is less tabula rasa and more tabula conferta. It is going to be hard to define the guy on our terms when voters already know him so well. Second, with all due respect, sir, you are not the political athlete Trump is – or your three successful predecessors were. It's uncomfortable to remind you, but you are an accidental president, barely winning on your third try at an advanced age because of a strange confluence of Bernie Sanders, a pandemic, and Trump failure. In 1988, when you were almost exactly the age that Bill Clinton was when he was elected president four years later, you did worse than Paul Simon (the senator with the bow tie, not the rock star). In 2008, you were four years older than Barack is now, and you did worse in than Bill Richardson, which, well, is not as bad as losing to Dennis Rodman. If there is good news today, it is we have actually beat back the notion that anyone serious is going to run against you within 48 hours of the release of the Times polls. We have been quietly pointing all the donors to the New York Times’ own piece making it clear that it is logistically and politically impossible to take you on now, what with filing deadlines, endorsements, and money. Plus, do you think after the organized hit we did on Dean Phillips that any Democrat in her right mind would take you on? And we’ve let everyone know that that wasn’t 1/10th of the oppo we have on him. The governors of Michigan, California, Illinois, and New Jersey all know the score. Look, in the next news cycle, we have two big opportunities to erase the Times data even more from the conversation so we can go back to work. Trump’s New York testimony is still exciting MSNBC primetime, surely rallying our base. And tonight’s elections could go our way. If Youngkin loses, Beshear wins, and abortion rights come out on top in Ohio, we can go back to telling our donors and the press that reproductive freedom and MAGA extremism are what is on the ballot in ’24, and we like our chances. Of course, if those races don’t all go our way……we will have to reconvene with Mike and Anita for some shaping. The most important thing for your head is to not get drawn into any conversations about why you are currently losing to Trump. We all agree that that is no more productive a discussion than what would happen if we replaced Vice President Harris on the ticket. We need to deal in the real world. In the real world, you are going to be the nominee and you are going to beat Donald Trump again, whether he’s been convicted of felonies or not. You are going to beat him because you are the incumbent president with an incredible record of accomplishment both at home and overseas – and he is a threat to our democracy and a woman’s right to choose. Everything else is just noise. And Axe looking for attention. Have a great workout and I will check in with you later for your thoughts on all of this. **** ESSENTIAL READING* The Des Moines Register gives big play to what was probably one of the best events of the entire DeSantis campaign – his rousing rally endorsement Monday night from all-in Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds. Step One could not have gone any better – now let’s track to see if Team DeSantis can use the symbolism and substance of the nod to build a prairie fire of Big Mo.
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Ron Klain & the New York Times Polls
November 07, 2023
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