NY Mag: David Plouffe on the state of play for his boss, Kamala Harris, and what he thinks of the "bed-wetters."

[Dennis Donovan]

NY Mag - ( archived: https://archive.ph/zOLr6 )‘This Is Going To Be Too Close for Comfort’

David Plouffe on the state of play for his boss, Kamala Harris, and what he thinks of the “bed-wetters.”

By Gabriel Debenedetti
5:00 A.M.

When Kamala Harris took over Joe Biden’s ailing campaign this summer, she went looking for help. Donald Trump had a commanding lead in the polls, threatening to make competitive Democratic strongholds like Virginia, and she had barely 100 days to turn the race around. The vice president needed a senior operative independent of the president and his loyalists that stocked the top ranks of her campaign. She quickly landed on David Plouffe, the strategist who’d run Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and advised his reelection effort.

If Plouffe is known for anything besides his work with Obama, with whom he’s still close, it’s for labeling Democratic anxiety as “bed-wetting.” Since 2008, when he first used the term, he has occasionally emerged in the final stretch of presidential races to try and redirect liberal worries, often to good effect — but not always. In 2016, he repeatedly and confidently predicted a Hillary Clinton victory over Trump.

Since he started advising Harris, Plouffe has shied away from commenting publicly on the 2024 election, but with nervousness rising after a battery of new polls this week showed Trump eliminating Harris’s lead nationally and in several must-win swing states, I figured he might want to weigh in once again. On Sunday, we spoke about how the Harris campaign sees the state of the race: Why it’s tied, what he makes of her sliding numbers among Black and Latino men, Trump’s lingering strengths and under-appreciated weaknesses, and why, in the end, he remains confident.

/snip

This put a pit in my stomach...

[Lovie777]

1. He's confident that she will win....

[Chin music]

2. We are being yanked around by bought and paid for polls.

We make great gains. Signs everywhere. Great stories on crowds etc....and then 'polls' drag us back w no evidence other than...they say so.

[bigtree]

3. NY Mag is gaslighting us

...it would be slightly more credible if David Plouffe had actually written this.

[Kid Berwyn]

4. Plouffe so far has erased Kamala's lead.

Wasn’t he hired to do the opposite?

Asking for Bedwetters everywhere.

[Thrill]

5. They have nobody to blame

But themselves for not hitting back on those highly effective Transgender Surgery ads. Not sure why they think it’s smart to not hit back on this

[Bleacher Creature]

6. All he did was state the obvious.

This is going to be ridiculously close, both candidates have a floor in the mid to upper 40s, and Harris has a slightly higher ceiling.

Turnout will win this election. It sucks that more people don't recognize the danger that Trump presents, but the fundamentals of this race aren't changing in 22 days.

[BlueInPhilly]

7. He said he'd rather be Kamala than Trump

If you read the article, it is quite comforting, even though the interviewer kept pushing the narrative that "polls tied is bad for Harris".