Who Set Biden Up To Fail? I'll Tell You Right Here
Written on Facebook two days ago-- The sabotage of Anita Dunn and Bob Bauer
This morning's “Politico” lead story confirms this author's three year long assessment that White House adviser Anita Dunn has played a destructive and corrupting role in Biden's West Wing and campaign organization. It was the main subject of discussion at the family conference at Camp David after the debate catastrophe.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/30/biden-camp-david-family-debate-00165970
[“Among the family’s complaints about the debate practice: that Biden was not prepared to pivot more to go on the attack; that he was bogged down too much on defending his record rather than outlining a vision for a second term; and that he was over-worked and not well-rested.
The blame was cast widely on staffers, including: Anita Dunn, the senior adviser who frequently has the president’s ear; her husband, Bob Bauer, the president’s attorney who played Trump in rehearsals at Camp David; and Ron Klain, the former chief of staff who ran point on the debate prep and previous cycles’ sessions.”]
I've been spotlighting Biden's leading campaign communications advisor Anita Dunn for three years now, and emphasized that her corrupt corporate centrism has had the most destructive effect on Biden's messaging, the most divisive impact on the Democratic Party due to her antagonistic exclusion of the progressive wing, and the delusional White House attempts at bipartisan cooperation with the fascist party of insurrection, MAGA.
There are nearly ten separate articles and lengthy post comments in which I've warned specifically about the myriad ways that Dunn was sabotaging Biden's program, destroying his popularity with younger voters, as well as minorities and most recently opponents of Israel's conduct of the Gaza war, from which Biden has unfortunately not yet untangled himself.
I also warned that her strategy of orienting Biden's campaign toward so-called Republican moderates in order to split Trump's vote would backfire and demoralize Democratic constituencies and activists, because it depended upon two things; one was focusing narrowly on one single issue, abortion, to the near exclusion of everything else, and the second was to downplay attacks on MAGA and Trump so as not to antagonize them. "Focus on your accomplishments and good economic news, job reports and the rise in the NASDAQ" Biden was told. Dunn also tried to sell Biden on the idea there were two MAGAs, one moderate which could be dealt with, and the other which should be labeled as "Ultra-MAGA" extremists. I have denounced this thinking as incompetent. There is no "moderate MAGA," and never was.
I also published a list of Anita Dunn's corporate lobbying clients from her firm, SKDK, (Squier Knapp Dunn Knickerbocker) many of which were big donors to anti-Obama groups, who also funded the right-wing think tank ALEC, (American Legislative Exchange Council) and opposed Biden's climate and infrastructure package. She was notorious for playing both sides in her political dealings even before she was exposed for lobbying against Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign as First Lady, and was consequently ousted as a White House consultant. Dunn was confronted on potential ethics issues and conflict of interest because of her investments while serving as a Biden White House adviser.
Dunn also antagonized women's groups by providing PR services and consultation for convicted serial rapist Harvey Weinstein while he was facing indictment. And Dunn has a reputation for making unhinged statements. For example, she claimed that covid elected Joe Biden president, not her campaign strategy. She praised as her two favorite philosophers Mother Theresa and Mao Tse Dong. She advised Biden to never talk about healthcare or Obamacare during the campaign, or he would "get lost in the weeds." And at the Democratic Convention of 2020, she successfully prevented Hispanic Caucus leader Julian Castro from speaking, and tried to exclude AOC from the speakers list as well. She got one minute, despite Dunn's efforts to keep her off the stage. She almost blew the Hispanic vote with her operations.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/11/anita-dunn-biden-adviser/617185/
The Camp David debate prep team that worked with Biden for five days was led by White House former Chief of Staff Ron Klain. Dunn was there supervising communications and Biden's rehearsals. The person picked to stand in as Trump for the mock debates was Biden's personal White House counsel, Bob Bauer. Guess whose husband Bob Bauer is? Yep, you've got it.
So there you have it. The DC power couple from Hell were running the debate prep, and they were behind the strategy of having Biden talk about his economic accomplishments to excess, which was too much for him to handle while simultaneously under assault by Trump's torrent of lying hot Monkey poo. And it is why Biden never effectively went for the jugular on Trump's criminality, indictments and conviction. "Don't lose the GOP middle," was the messaging they likely gave him. This has been their program all along, and I have no reason to believe they changed a thing for the debate prep.
In my "Open Letter To President Biden" of three months ago, I called for her removal, and an about face on arming Netanyahu. Under the influence of Biden's "Iagos," (reference Othello by Shakespeare) he did neither, and consequently his refusal to see the Bauers as the corporate owned shills that they are, is what led to him being walked into this setup of a debate so badly misprepared to deal with a lying maniac who has no interest in discussing the presidency or its role.
The President has a blind spot, and these two are at the center of it. He trusts them, believes in them, and up until now has enabled them. It is his worst flaw, because centrism and bipartisanship is the core of his political identity, how he was historically most successful in his Senate career, and he believes that they are his most loyal and dedicated advisers. He does not want to see their incompetence or corrupted view of the political landscape as it is.
So, thanks to Dunn and Bauer, Joe walked into a gunfight with a pickle, not even a knife.
I needed confirmation first to write this, and it is what I saw coming even before the debate. What I did write this morning about the collective failure of the DNC, media, and deluded citizens who have been spectators cheerleading for prosecutors instead of building a political juggernaut, still holds. Our inaction and self-induced blindness did in fact open the door to a potential fascist takeover. But I also knew that Biden was set up to fail, and suspected right away without evidence who was responsible. So, after a little digging, I found this New York Times piece on the debate prep team that operated out of Camp David before the event. Here is a quote:
["Bob Bauer, Mr. Biden’s personal attorney, has played the role of Mr. Trump in mock debates at Camp David, just as he did in 2020.
In his book, “The Unraveling,” Mr. Bauer said he studied hours of tapes of Mr. Trump as a businessman, candidate and president before the 2020 debates. He wrote that he did not try to portray a “Saturday Night Live” version of Mr. Trump, with makeup and costumes. Instead, he wrote, “I used as much of the language he did on the topics that would come up in a debate.”]
Great job Bob. I'm sure you made your wife happy with this pile of polite, rules-based and programmatic brain salad. Why not just show Joe how to climb into the wood chipper sitting onstage next to him, if getting him shredded was the goal? The point is that the Saturday Night Live version of this Nazi clown IS a far more accurate version than the stylized debate antagonist that Bauer was portraying. Prepping Joe to debate a Trump who is a "businessman, candidate, and president," meaning all of the things he has faked doing throughout his malignant parasitical lifespan, was the stupidest imaginable strategy I could conceive of.
People needed to hear Joe Biden rip apart Trump's fake personna and lies, but they rehearsed him to do the opposite of that, in fact to treat him as a legitimate debate opponent and argue over ideas and policies. Uhhhh, one problem Bob, Trump has no ideas or policies to argue with. He is a psychopathic orange rageball with a ketchup bottle ever ready to spew all over the walls at any given moment. He just needed to be squeezed and then we'd watch him spurt. Biden never got him to blow. Trump was a virtual Captain Queeg sitting there on the witness stand, (Caine Mutiny) and no one thought to bring up the stolen strawberries? Instead, the plan was to try and have a normal debate with this lunatic.
So, now you have a glimpse at what went wrong last night. Joe isn't the one who needs to step away from the campaign. It's the "Natural Born Killer" power couple in their corporate suits that need to get lost. And they can take Ron Klain with them.
My archive of articles exposing Anita Dunn, each of which are thoroughly sourced for some of the super-anal retentive fact-checkers around these parts who live in perpetual search of the "missing links," will be in comments as soon as I get settled and dig them out.
Thanks for your patience. This is the article I really wanted to write this morning, but needed time to pull together.
Excellent!