“Radio is that wonderful invention by which I can reach millions of people … who fortunately can’t reach me.” – Milton Berle
The chaos during our last two presidential elections and the choices made by Democrats to run “one-trick pony candidates” in each one made for a frustrated electorate. People ended up voting party, taken in by hate language and untruths. They voted for candidates they knew little about.
Yet that is nothing new. The Golden Age of Radio began in the 1920s, lasting through the 1950s until television superseded radio as the medium of choice for scripted programming. A 1947 C. E. Hooper survey found 91% of people listened to formats and genres created specifically for radio. Fearing TV in the 1950s, networks invested thousands in programs to compete with television.
One of the best shows of the era was CBS Mystery Theater, produced by EG Marshall, who had a passion for drama, politics and mystery. “The Absentee Candidate” is remembered as an obvious way to lose an election when your candidate is hidden from campaign war rooms and media.
An election takes place and “the party” can’t find a non-corrupt candidate to run anyplace. After searching under every rock on Capitol Hill, they uncovered the unblemished Henry Mills, a voter registration clerk. Mills fights demons most of the show about running or not. The saving grace for Mills, not his party, is impatient citizens decide to vote for “a write-in reform” party candidate.
In essence, this is what happened to Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democrats. Although Donald Trump was not a “write-in for the GOP,” he was a reformer for those who had voted for Biden-Harris in 2020. Not only hiding Harris from voters exposed her ineptitude, voters looking for change looked elsewhere.
Aware of the media’s love affair with former President Barack Obama, the left felt they could own the keys to the political universe if they could put a Black woman in the White House. Knowing Harris’ checkered past, and buckets of left coast cash, their plan was to sneak her through the back door as vice president. They felt President Joe Biden could help rewrite her resume and have her ready for prime time by 2024.
“O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!” – Walter Scott
Biden had been an absentee candidate in the 2020 election so the left felt he’d be the perfect mentor for Harris. But since Biden liked his job too much after reading his phony press clippings, that caused more in party problems than it solved when he decided that he would run again.
Harris had many of the same problems Mills had, but Mill’s fate was not sealed by the party since he was rescued by a reform party candidate. Kamala Harris was on a roll as long as nobody knew what she stood for. Her initial campaign appearances fired up Democrats and built momentum for her campaign. Early polls showed once-skeptical independents were taking a look at a candidate they had written off as unviable to lead a national ticket. This momentum explains her handlers’ reluctance to sit her down for serious media interviews or news conferences outside the controlled partisan rallies and scripted sound bites. Why mess with something that seems to be working?
Yet, it didn’t take long for the center right media and the Trump-Vance campaign to turn the narrative of Harris’ bunker campaign into a major issue. The closer people got to pulling the lever on Election Day, they looked for real answers to real questions Harris didn’t know or have.
Last election the Democrats and liberal media were able to sell voters a bill of goods by running a hate Trump campaign for Biden, “another last minute stand-in candidate.” And they elected someone unfit to serve, which was a disservice to our nation, which we are paying dearly for.
Every day the Democrats continued the urgency of dispelling the “hidden Harris narrative” further enhanced mistrust for a candidate worming out of a protective cocoon built to shield the decaying armor of unpopular Joe Biden. Steering clear of real interviews, as Biden got away with for too long, was a bad reflection on his vice president, who was chosen by the beltway left to replace him.
The drama that the Democrats made when they threw Biden under the bus just months before the election proved fatal for Harris. It was vital that Harris stepped forward and made a statement, whether she was aware of the president’s clear cognitive decline. Was she part of the inner circle that effectively hid Biden’s health issues from the public until it was shuffled completely naked into the public’s face during that disastrous June presidential debate?
Democrats knew that would undoubtedly be an uncomfortable interview hurdle, but it was highly necessary if she wanted to put the issue behind her and blaze her own path to the White House.
Another hot election issue was border security. With immigration reform the number one or two concern for U.S. citizens, and with Harris the border czar, Harris just sat back and did nothing to fend off attacks against her incompetence. This allowed her opponents to blame her for the border crisis, which gave Biden and other Democrats a free pass. Therefore, Harris was expendable.
It was a very unwise move for Democrats, considering the failures of Biden, for the left and Harris to do everything possible to hide her failed past presidential campaign from voters. Even in staged interviews with liberal giants like CNN with Dana Bash, Harris was given a green light to explain her radical past, but she blew every opportunity, claiming her “values had not changed.”
When Harris first revealed her blanket agenda to the public, Democratic strategist David Axelrod said she had not mentioned how much this will cost or how it will be financed. He cautioned Harris if she did not address these monetary issues soon, voters would run away from her. As it turned out, this was her Waterloo on Election Day.
Democrats ran a successful hate campaign in 2020 against Trump and won. Yet it only took a few months for their voters to realize they made a huge mistake as they watched Biden and Harris turn back the hands of time on Trump’s successful economic machine.
Back in 1955, EG Marshall showed us what can happen if a political party can’t decide on who they want as a candidate. Even worse. if they try to hide a candidate too long from the public they can easily end up losing the election to the other party. The Democrat’s strategy might have worked with an unpopular Biden, but when the rubber met the road this election, it proved their voters will only sacrifice their future for the party so long before they realize they are being led down the political path to the Land of Oz.
“The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers.” – Thomas Sowell
