I've already noted my "rope a dope" theory regarding how the DEMs would stymie the GOP around the RNC Convention by not making any final decision on Biden staying on the ticket until after the GOP locked in Trump as their guy and then pick their own VP candidate; I was right that they let the GOP write their own plan for failure and the DEMs have been quick to capitalize on the GOP missteps; what I didn't expect was the really genius way the announcement of Biden's departure from the race was carried out; it has long been a sort of tradition in DC politics that if there was something you wanted to reveal that was potentially embarrassing or controversial, you did it at the very end of the week on very late Friday afternoon or evening, thus bypassing the normal week's news cycle; all the networks' news division would already have closed up shop for the weekend and the remaining staff would be mainly second stringers not up to the task of handling a major breaking story with anything near approaching the more polished presentation and analysis of the star journalists; the Biden goodbye was announced on a Sunday afternoon and it was an even further genius stroke than the usual 'Friday Night Surprise' ploy; on a Sunday, not only are the networks expecting any sort of major decision from the pols in DC, they are even less equipped to deal with a full analysis of a major breaking story because almost none of even their second stringers are available after the Sunday morning news shows have aired (Meet The Press, Face The Nation, Fox News Sunday, etc.); by making the Biden announcement after the talking head news shows were done, the DEMs assured there would be very little of the sort of 'in depth' reportage one would see if a story broke out in midweek; I don't know about elsewhere, but here, in Los Angeles, only two networks preempted their usual Sunday fare of sports, etc., to give any extensive reportage of the Biden decision; CBS and FOX in LA carried several hours of coverage, with CBS having to make do without their high power news anchors and FOX tried to make do with rehashing old Biden news stories and other such filler since they appeared to not have any idea what was happening; the ABC and NBC network LA affiliates didn't even bother to try to cover the story, instead continuing to show sports programs they had already scheduled (NBC aired a NASCAR race with not even a chyron crawl noting the breaking news); by making the announcement on that Sunday late afternoon, the DEMs got maximum impact with very little of the pushback that would have accompanied a midweek announcement; it also put the Trump camp back on its heels since there were virtually none of the usually available outlets for them to comment/respond to the news; I was very, very surprised by the DEM move and wonder what else they might have up their sleeves...
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