Delivery trumps ideas.

This is why Roger Ailes was so powerful. He realized politics was show business. Fox was exciting to watch, irrelevant of the content. He didn’t necessarily put on the best talent, but the talent that would interest and intrigue the viewers most. Megyn Kelly was a superstar on Fox, she was a failure on NBC. And speaking of show business, why in the hell was this debate so long? At the end, the only people watching were reporters. Who will then frame the issues for the public, oftentimes incorrectly.

Give Bernie Sanders credit for pushing back on the questioners. That’s right, they were taking Republican talking points, putting the candidates on the defensive. It’s time for Democrats to lead.

But first they must be stars.

Talk to any big time music exec. Talent is abundant, but is the act a STAR? Don’t forget they call it show BUSINESS, which means it’s all about selling, and if people don’t buy, you’re toast.

Like my buddy John Hickenlooper. His delivery was execrable, his speech was halting. Whereas Marianne Williamson evidenced some kind of weird charisma, you can see why she became a cult hero, not that her campaign will have any legs.

The process started with a presentation by Steve Bullock. He was totally together, he delivered the best introductory speech. But as the show, and it was a show, wore on, there was something off about him. His fake smile bugged me, but Felice nailed it, he was CONDESCENDING! You’ve got to be likable first and foremost.

Buttigieg hesitated, like he didn’t have his coffee. What he had to say was good, his closing speech was one of the best, but he never delivered that energy, he didn’t seem ready for prime time.

Bernie?

Bernie’s a rock star. The only problem is rock is dead. What are the odds that Bruce Springsteen will have a number one pop single today? NONEXISTENT! Times have changed, even if Springsteen has not. That’s always a question, whether you change with the times, but in music if you move towards what’s popular, you undercut your credibility, your hard core fans abandon you, you end up in purgatory, waiting for the next hit, which might never come.

Bernie’s act is not new. He broke in 2016. Like Elvis Costello. Someone unknown who arrived fully-formed selling a new and different product. Sure, Bernie was around forever, so maybe he’s more like the local band that makes it big, after thousands of gigs. This is why Buttigieg failed, he hasn’t been in the game long enough. And the system worked against Bernie in 2016, the DNC wanted Hillary. Bernie was FM when the DNC wanted AM.

But now everybody’s on FM. And this is what the DNC does not understand.

If Bernie is long in the tooth, if we’ve seen his act, Elizabeth Warren is totally new, it’s the first time around for her. If she doesn’t get the nomination and tries to run in 2024, it won’t work, timing is everything, and her time is NOW!

Forget about Kamala. She attacked Biden and when you got down to the nitty gritty of busing, it was complicated and it turned out Kamala and Biden were pretty much on the same page. Kamala is like Katy Perry. She can deliver someone else’s hits, she’s got the seasoning, but deep down inside there is NOTHING!

Of course I’m exaggerating, but never forget, this nomination battle is basically a cartoon, where you put forth an exaggerated image of yourself.

As for Biden… He’s like an oldies act from the fifties. Old people might be interested in reliving the past, young people don’t even know who he is!

Times have changed. And only Bernie and Elizabeth are acknowledging it with star power.

As for everybody else… Who cared what they had to say, it was delivered so poorly. Klobuchar’s act might work in Minnesota, but it’s not ready for prime time, not with a national audience. Ditto on Delaney, who inhabits a charisma-free zone. You want nothing to do with him. He resembles nothing so much as the fat cat businessmen making deals behind closed doors…WHICH HE USED TO BE!

So after delivery, after star power, it comes down to vision..

Bernie told us what was wrong, but his perspective was not cohesive, he’d attack the wrongdoers, but would he give us hope, would we be able to believe in him?

It always comes down to hope. I mention for the umpteenth time the movie “Milk.” Milk killed his opponent in the debate for state office, but his opponent wasn’t worried, he told Milk he would lose because he offered no hope!

Elizabeth Warren offers hope.

Yup, she’s won the nomination, it’s over.

Bernie and she are flip sides of the same coin. It’s just that she’s younger and fresher and can articulate her position better. She’s got experience fighting the bad guys, and she’s gonna do it again! Watching her you have no doubt she’s on your side.

Mayor Pete had one thing right…it’s about excitement. And we haven’t had that spirit here for a very long time.

It’s like the Dems in power don’t understand that new people are being born every day, they think they know everything and will rule forever, but this is patently untrue. The young ‘uns are ready for their seat at the table.

And the truth is all sides are sick of D.C. Not only the paralysis, but the business as usual, the belief that it’s a club for career politicos in cahoots with fat cat corporations. Unless you’re fighting this, you will get no traction.

What I loved about Warren, and Bernie too, is they did not back down. Oh, it’d be so easy, when wankers like Tom Friedman, married to a zillionaire himself, are worried about Medicare for All. Do you want to solve the problem or do you want to remain in the quagmire? That’s the question both Bernie and Elizabeth are asking.

Only the fat cats working their union jobs, those who have theirs already, are worried about Medicare for All. But the truth is there are no unions for gig workers. The Republicans eviscerated unions and then Bill Clinton moved right, especially on welfare, doing what was expedient as opposed to what was right, and that’s how we ended up here.

You’ve got to believe in something. Everybody does. But not in politicians.

That’s what Trump had right. He knew it was show business, he knew the game was rigged, and he promised to upset the apple cart. Forget the white supremacy, forget his faux pas as President, ASK WHAT GOT HIM ELECTED!

Trump reinvented the game, proffered a solution, and as a result the Democrats didn’t win.

Oh, don’t tell me that Hillary got more votes, who cares, it’s about the Electoral College!

You don’t beat Trump by tearing him down, but by putting forth an alternative path, a plan, which Warren has dozens of.

And their content is secondary to the fact that she’s done the hard work, she’s ready to go for it, she’s prepared, as opposed to Tim Ryan, who looked like he took the wrong door onto the stage! He was like a deer in the headlights, why in the hell did he think he could become President?

Stars are both born and made. But the ones who are born are always bigger. And if you start with someone with the raw material and then give them a push…the sky’s the limit!

But all the tried and true Democrats can do is tear Bernie and Elizabeth down. Like the wannabes hating online, they wish they were there instead, but they weren’t willing to do the hard work and lay it all on the line.

And the biggest, most successful musical stars are always those on the bleeding edge with rough edges. Come on, you’ve got to give Billie Eilish credit for wearing baggy clothing when every pop star has a fashion line. She doesn’t want to be categorized, looked at that way, and that resonates with the rank and file, and the rank and file are everything. Don’t forget the pundits and insiders only get one vote apiece, yours is just as powerful, and their main goal is to keep their jobs, that supersedes doing them. And once you’re in the club, it’s hard to get rid of you. So now we’ve got outsiders like Sanders and Warren and the club doesn’t like it, they’re bullying them!

But all opinion writers and pundits can do is point out flaws, they’re not in the vision business.

But Bernie and Elizabeth are, and that’s what the PUBLIC wants!

It’s not so difficult if you understand the game. All those experienced governors and congresspeople on stage… They did not even realize they weren’t ready for prime time, they didn’t even realize they weren’t stars. They were like the people moving to L.A. to make it and then finding out how hard that is. You’ve got to look good, make relationships, and when you get your chance, YOU DELIVER!

And only four people did that tonight.

There’s Bullock, who should have shut up after his opening number. He’s too fake, too old school, and that’s over. Middle of the road has no longevity.

And Williamson is just too far out there. She has no constituency.

So it comes down to Bernie and Elizabeth.

And it’s Elizabeth Warren’s time. She was emphatic, she was not mealy-mouthed, she owned her positions, she bit back… Remind you of someone? TRUMP! Only Warren’s style is more endearing and she’s more experienced and right.

Don’t tell me it’s about male and female. Once you’ve GOT the star power, it’s about the record, the substance. And if you don’t deliver a hit, fuhgeddaboudit.

Springsteen got no traction on his first two albums. But then he gained converts at concerts, he got buzz, and then he delivered…BORN TO RUN!

Warren is making hit records.

Everybody else is just resting on their laurels.

Never forget, you reinvent the game to work for you!

And losers don’t want this.

And the Republicans will poke holes and the Dems will shoot each other.

But if there’s one clear leader, who gets hearts and minds?

They can’t be beat.

Tune in today, Tuesday July 30th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: HearLefsetzLive

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: LefsetzLive

On a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert

“The Promised Land”
Bruce Springsteen

The speed limit’s 80.

When I used to drive from L.A. to Salt Lake, it was 55. This was long before Sammy Hagar decided he couldn’t drive that speed. But after getting a ticket in Nevada for going 70+, I never drove ten miles over the speed limit. And today everything’s computerized and they can track offenses.

You go through Vegas.

Oh, before that, we stopped in Baker, where I had to check out the World’s Tallest Thermometer. I thought it’d be like one of those thin glass tubes in the sixties, with mercury inside, but instead it was an advertisement for a gift shop, and every ten degrees there were LEDs. And Sunday it went all the way up to 113. Yes, you don’t have to go to France to encounter triple digit temperatures.

And searching online for the best place in Vegas for lunch, trying to avoid the Strip, we were steered to a place called Roma’s. Turns out it was much further than it looked on the map. About fifteen minutes from the freeway, an Italian deli and restaurant. I must say, the chicken parmigiana was not quite worth the trip, but the cookies Felice bought were.

And while we were driving through the neighborhoods in the extreme heat I couldn’t stop thinking of “The Goldfinch.” That’s the best part of the book, when they’re in Vegas.

And you wonder why people live there.

And then you realize there’s always something happening.

They were doing construction an hour or two past Vegas. And we sat in the car with the air conditioning on… You couldn’t do this in the seventies. I remember driving my BMW 2002 to the Palm Springs aerial tramway. Despite triple digit temps, I had to turn off the a/c and turn on the heat to cool down the engine. The temperature gauge was climbing into the red. But in Felice’s car, which her sister named Sylvie, we were cool as cucumbers.

Once we passed Vegas, we saw no Teslas. But before that, they were prevalent. We even saw a truck stacked with model 3s. And we also saw trucks with THREE trailers! And when they started to wiggle doing 80…

But just as they’ve perfected cars, they’re gonna disappear, at least the ones you drive. Oh, it’s coming. It’ll happen overnight. Like the internet killed CDs. And there will still be Luddites wanting to drive, but WHY?

And we’re driving along listening to Fox. That’s one of the virtues of Sirius XM, the news channels that are simulcast from TV. CNN and MSNBC were on weekend programming, I wanted to hear what the enemy had to say.

And then they start talking about Pelosi, and how she’s inside. And then Karl Rove weighs in and says AOC is outside, she speaks to social media, and she has power…and my eyes were popping out! I’d never ever heard that said before…they had go get it from…ME?

And shortly thereafter I got an e-mail from John Hummer, yeah, that Hummer, of Hummer Winblad, the financiers of Napster.

 

Subject: Karl Rove channels Bob Lefsetz

How’s that for a subject!

I had to laugh. Flipped on Chris Wallace Sunday show and Wallace was discussing the AOC /Pelosi kerfuffle, and essentially said, “well Pelosi controls the inside game.”

Rove had none of it and essentially said “bullshit, AOC controls the narrative and that’s all that matters.”

There you go, Bob. You’ve got Rove as as a convert!

 

And we’re driving past St. George on our way to Cedar City and I get it, why the people in the hinterlands vote Republican…LIFE IS HARD! You don’t want to see any money given away to slackers.

And in Cedar City we stayed at a Marriott Courtyard that had streaming services built into the TV. Never seen that before. You enter your credentials and…we pulled up “The Great Hack,” which everybody is texting me about, but then we had the dreaded bandwidth problem, it flaked out.

And one night in a hotel is so weird. You have to unpack to repack.

And then we were on the road again.

We left I-15 for I-70 and…

The landscape was totally unfamiliar.

I’d driven from Salt Lake to Aspen, to Keystone, to Denver…multiple times, but my memory did not serve me well.

Doing research, I found that that route was different. It probably still winds through the canyons by the river, with the train tracks alongside.

And the landscape got green, the desert was in the past, and we could see snow on the peaks in the distance and…

Suddenly, there were these formations. Let me try to describe it… Well maybe I’d say rocks out of “The Flintstones.” They were putty-like. And there was one round blob upon another. And oftentimes the top was flat and bigger than what was underneath it. And all research told me was I was in the Salt Wash. Oh, I found pictures online, but no description.

But this was not the case with the Ghost Rock and its brethren in the San Rafael Swell. These were buttes, stuck all over the landscape, as if you were on a completely different planet. I thought I’d seen it all, having driven cross-country multiple times in the seventies. But it turned out…

That was something you did back then. Flights were expensive. And unless you were 25 you could not rent a car. And when you were outside the metropolis…you were completely off of the grid.

As for cell service… You got phone almost everywhere. As for data?

So then we descend into Green River. Yup, just like the Creedence Clearwater song. I loved that, with its subtle change.

And the population is under a thousand. And we ate lunch at place literally on the river and wondered… Why did this town exist and who lived here?

Research told me it was a railroad junction. And then there was the guy who built a ferry and charged a toll. But now..?

So when we were done with lunch, we stopped to buy a melon, that’s what Green River is famous for. And the woman told us…

Living in Green River had its ups-and-downs. You could leave your car unlocked, but there was NOTHING to do. She kept on emphasizing this. To shop, to go to a movie, they had to drive over an hour. What did they do there before satellite TV?

Back on the road, we were driving through Fruita, and Wikipedia told me its nickname was “Home of Mike the Headless Chicken.”

Huh?

So I did more research and there was even a picture! It was real. And it turned out Mike was a sideshow attraction. He earned 4.5k a month, equivalent to 50.5k today! But then he choked on a kernel of corn and passed, I kid you not.

That’s what I do. Assuming there’s LTE, I look up the deets everywhere we go. It’s fascinating! Actually, I’d like to go slower, to check in at all the little museums along the way.

You can’t stop thinking about Death Valley and the Borax 20 Mule Team. Or a western. Has anybody even walked on all this land? Doesn’t look like it to me!

And in Glenwood Canyon, there are all these signs about falling rock.

When I first drove out west with my family in ’66, I thought it meant rock in the highway, I didn’t think about the rock actually falling on us!

And speaking of rock, because of global warming, Mont Blanc is heating up. The snow melts and turns to ice, and the rocks start to fall, and people are dying climbing it! And in Chamonix, at Mont Blanc’s base, the temperature rose more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit in the last century. And have you noticed the plethora of stories on global warming? Just like the stories on Trump’s behavior, they seem to get no traction, no one in the government is taking action, at least not in the United States.

And it’s hard to get used to driving this fast. Once you go 80…one false move and…

And if the speed limit’s 80, that means you have to drive..? I locked the cruise control at 85. Took me a while to build up to it. At first you feel this adrenaline rush, you get scared, you think of all the people who’ve died in the boonies…

And then you realize if you go slower than 80 people pass you and…

People in trucks go 90.

You get there faster, but do you miss something along the way?

I’m not sure. But just by being out there you see so much!

It’s too late baby
Now it’s too late

Carole King

Politics is show business for ugly people. And you’ve got to play by show business rules.

Show business is all about preparation, getting the act, song, movie, TV show, ready and then marketing it so people will be aware of it and buy it.

And you always want to be first, and you want to eliminate all chance.

You want an upward curve, even if you start low and slow.

You want no lulls. You want to keep people interested, by teasing them with new information on a regular basis.

You want to control the narrative.

And what is the narrative the Democrats are trying to sell?

Damned if I know. The only thing they can agree on is they hate Trump. I hate KISS, but that doesn’t keep them off the road, playing to empty arenas, their fans support them. And speaking of KISS, Gene Simmons is one of the greatest marketers of all time, a complete blowhard, but he’s making it work for himself and the band. Maybe he learned it all from Neil Bogart, who changed his name from “Bogatz,” to give the right “impression.” Bogart failed on his first attempt, trying to sell a record of Johnny Carson routines, it went instantly into the cut-out bin, but then he pivoted to disco and Donna Summer and KISS.

And Bogart was a showman, full of crap. Seemingly everything he said was inflated and wrong. Remember when there were four simultaneous KISS solo albums and Neil said they were instantly gold? The press bought it, even though all of them but Ace Frehley’s came back.

You see it’s all about perception. Sell the myth, not the facts.

It’s more important that Elizabeth Warren be seen as a fighter against the man than any specific policy position. People don’t go that deep. CONGRESS doesn’t go that deep! Did you read the “New Yorker” story on Al Franken? His accuser told boldfaced lies, there was history disputing her account, but she got out there first and what she said ruled, even though she was working for a pro-Trump radio station. Once again, the Democrats reacted, and now they’re doubling-down, can’t see why they were wrong. Kirsten Gillibrand, YOU’RE HISTORY!

The press said Trump was losing because he brought up the “i” word before the Democrats. But Trump knows you get ahead of the blowback, you make the first punch, and you load the media with so much b.s. that it can’t keep up.

Meanwhile, the public doesn’t know the difference between impeachment and conviction and Pelosi seems as old as she really is. She’s Perry Como after the Beatles. Doesn’t she realize THE RULES HAVE CHANGED?

Happens in entertainment all the time. Suddenly you can’t sell hair bands. Suddenly hip-hop is burgeoning. And if you fight the tide, you drown. Oh, little fish can still swim in their own private backwaters, but if you’re playing for everything, if you want to run the table, you’ve got to be looking to the future, not the past!

Trump speaks to the public. Pelosi speaks to insiders.

That’s why AOC gets so much traction, she speaks to the public-at-large, it’s less about legislation than attitude, which is move over you old farts and let the younger generation take the reins, you oldsters have no idea what is going on anymore!

But Team Pelosi says you’ve got to run to the center, because you’ve got to appeal to those districts that flipped for Democrats in 2016. That’s like making Aerosmith play acoustic, and refusing to let them play new material.

Of course, Aerosmith doesn’t play new material, and Chris Christie is a big Boss fan. It’s kinda like long hair. Once upon a time it symbolized something, you were either for us or against us, then it was just a fashion choice.

Anyone who plays to the rearguard is always disrupted. Didn’t you ever read Clayton Christensen? Everybody pooh-poohs the new, saying it’s not as good as the old, and then it becomes better and the old folds overnight. Christensen says to embrace the new, and then eliminate the old when the new gains traction. The DNC is being disrupted and their answer? Let’s go back to Good Ol’ Joe. That’s like asking your grandfather for music advice.

So what we’ve got is candidates who want to throw the baby out with the bathwater and the Democrats are freaking out, they can’t even get aligned on one position. Criticize the Republicans all you want, but after Trump they all got in line. That’s how you win, when you play like a team!

And if you try to appeal to everybody, you lose. The road is littered with middle of the road artists, who fail on the chart and play to a dwindling audience in Branson and clubs. You want to get people EXCITED! That’s what Warren and Harris and Bernie and Buttigieg are doing.

And what does the establishment say?

THEY’RE TOO FAR LEFT!

AC/DC was too heavy until suddenly they weren’t. “Back In Black” is still streaming prodigiously today, “You Shook Me All Night Long” is an American anthem! Of course Mutt Lange helped. The right has Karl Rove, who do we have on the left?

So the reason you wanted impeachment is so the whole world would watch, so Trump’s bad behavior, criminal or not, would infect the public. When the truth outs, it’s hard to deny.

But no, it was never time. Pelosi and her pals are like a Silicon Valley outfit that never releases its product. It’s so busy getting it right that it can never come out. Meanwhile, Facebook becomes so big by having a motto of “move fast and break things.” Forget that Zuckerberg is the enemy now, he’s on top of the pyramid, he controls the conversation more than not only Congress, but the mainstream media! Furthermore, he just pivoted, saying it was about private conversations, when the Democrats are still looking for that elusive consensus. Everything worth paying attention to starts off the radar, small, and then it blows up and BECOMES THE MAINSTREAM!

So Barr says Trump is innocent.

The Dems folded their tent.

Then Mueller sends his letter and they think…wow, maybe there’s something here. Like a band the label has stopped working that is suddenly selling tickets…the label is on to something else, it’s hard to get it restarted on your old product.

And then the Democrats placed all their hopes on Mueller testifying. That’s like taking someone with a great record, who’s never been on stage, and having them headline Coachella! No one would do that, the odds of failure are too high.

So Mueller didn’t deliver. Oh, don’t make it about Russia, the Dems thought Mueller was gonna blow a hole through the curtain, reveal that Trump was culpable and should be charged. Not only did Mueller not do this, he said as much after he delivered his report earlier…this was his final statement!

And the Dems are playing by old rules and crying to the nonexistent refs that the Republicans are cheating. No, Trump and his posse have invented new rules, like no one in the regime needs to testify. When they up the ante, so do you! You don’t say there’s no crying in baseball!

So now, on left wing radio, all the talk is about getting the transcripts from the grand jury. God, even in the NFL when you lose, you lose, no matter how heinous the call. Because without rules, you’ve got no game.

And that’s what’s happening now, WE’VE GOT NO GAME! Trump and his cronies are running ragged and the Dems and the media are so flummoxed, they do NOTHING!

Come on. Even the most lame influencer knows you’ve got to deliver product on a regular basis. You’ve got to hook the audience and deliver. That’s certainly what Trump has done, and all the left keeps saying is HE SHOULDN’T TWEET!

Meanwhile, these same wankers are posting to Instagram, the national pastime, and despite their constant disparagement of the internet and Twitter, Twitter is where the news happens, and if you’re not on it, you don’t know what’s going on.

So impeachment failed in the marketplace. It’s like Annapurna, Megan Ellison’s movie company. No matter how great the film, and she’s put out plenty, they never reach expectations. “Booksmart,” one of the best-reviewed movies this year, which appeals to oldsters and youngsters…dead. Product is only one part of the puzzle, you need the aforementioned marketing. The big studios may put out lame films, but they’re experts in marketing them.

When you fail, you write it off. Just look at the Fortune 500, that’s what they do. Did Bezos try to improve the Fire phone? No, he deleted it from the catalog. And today, your mistakes don’t haunt you as long as you continue to play and make noise. Once again, the game has changed, there’s so much noise that the biggest challenge is just reaching the public. And if you don’t, people forget what you were selling, they’re inundated with new messages.

And I’ve used a plethora of metaphors here, but now I’m gonna use one more. Pro football used to be a running game. Now running backs make a fraction of what they used to, all the emphasis is on passing and receiving! You change with the times!

Seems like everybody can change with the times but the Democrats.

So forget impeachment. This is the gang that can’t shoot straight, even if they have clear evidence that Trump needs to go, the right will spin it otherwise and rule the marketplace, i.e. public opinion. And just like a record, you don’t have to appeal to everybody to win. How come Trump knows this and the Democrats don’t?

Instead of clinging to the past, trying to rebuild the old edifice, it’s time to build a new one. And there are a number of candidates promising this. Safe rarely succeeds. Can you say Romney? Can you say Kerry! One of the reasons Obama won was because he HAD little history. There was little to nail him on and he promised hope.

Believe me, Ol’ Joe is not promising hope. He’s like a boomer musician waiting for Hilary Rosen to save them from streaming. But Hilary’s moved on from the RIAA, and streaming has already won, soon there won’t even be any hardware to play discs! Apple kills the iPod because the innards are no longer manufactured, and the Democrats keep trying to prop up oldsters, held together by baling wire. Bill Clinton had Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and her husband selling him, and despite baggage, he won anyway!

Who do the Democrats have?

Maybe it’s time to hire Bill Belichick.

Oh, that’s right, HE’S A TRUMPER!