Mostly Monday Reads: We Stand with Her

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

It’s Deja Vú, All Over Again!  President Biden withdrew his name as the Democratic candidate for President in 2024 after a series of bad days and calls by many in the media, donors, and pols to quit the race.  Enthusiasm for the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris is on the rise. Once again, we can hope for leadership that reflects this country and its needs.  I’ve been waiting for her first speech as the candidate since these events over the weekend. She is set to speak at the White House on NCAA Sports Day to 1000s of student-athletes shortly.

NCAA Sports Day brings championship teams from the National Collegiate Athletic Association to the White House. Harris also spoke at the event in 2023, which saw more than 1,000 student athletes from nearly 50 teams, according to Harris’ remarks.

Shortly after Biden announced he will not seek reelection Sunday, he threw his support behind Harris as his successor for the Democratic Party’s nominee. Harris said in a statement on X, “I am honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination.”

President Joe Biden has been one of the most consequential American Presidents in History.  I am not a Noble Laureate, nor did I attend anything but Public Universities in two States, and I have only taught in public higher institutions and secondary schools.  His economic policy record is beyond anything we’ve seen since the policies to end the Great Depression. The good thing is that we’ve learned a lot since then, and we have the computers, statistical chops, and data to determine what works and what doesn’t.  He’s heeded these lessons. This analysis is from Jonathan V. Last writing at The Bulwark. “Joe Biden Is Our Greatest Living President. On the most unlikely great president in modern history.”

A president gets, at most, two lines above the fold on his Wikipedia page. That’s it. That’s how history judges them.

Here is Joe Biden’s legacy: He beat back America’s first authoritarian attempt. And when he realized that he could not do it a second time, he stepped away so someone else could.

This is enough to make him—already, today, on July 21, 2024—our greatest living president.

Biden’s presidency was unexpected. Prior to 2020, there had been nothing in his 47-year career to suggest that he was more than a pleasant, ambitious, Irish pol from central casting. He had been a senator, and a man running for president, over the course of four decades. His selection as Barack Obama’s running mate in 2008 seemed like a nice capstone for a rather average career in national politics.

For the first two years of Trump’s presidency, no one expected Biden to challenge him.

But the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville became a hinge-point in which this ordinary politician found his moment.

…

Biden’s administration was not perfect, but was largely successful.

He passed several significant pieces of bipartisan legislation. He fixed the COVID vaccine rollout (which Trump botched) and drove a stake through the heart of the pandemic. He achieved the kind of soft landing on inflation that economists dream about. His handling of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was the single most effective management of a foreign crisis since the end of the Cold War.

But Wikipedia doesn’t care about your CHIPS Act, or your Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan, or your Inflation Reduction Act. It doesn’t care about NATO expansion.

Again, you can feel the mounting support for Vice President Kamala Harris.  The money is pouring in, and Donald is likely throwing ketchup everywhere. This is from Newsweek.  “Nikki Haley Voters PAC Announces Support for Kamala Harris.”

A coalition of former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley voters pledged their support for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris‘ presidential bid on Sunday, hours after President Joe Biden announced that he was dropping out of the race.

Biden announced on Sunday afternoon in a letter that he will not be seeking a second term in this year’s presidential election and threw his support behind Harris. The president’s decision follows weeks of mounting pressure from people within his own party and from key Democratic donors urging him to step aside for the sake of the party’s future after a disastrous debate performance last month against former President Donald Trump.

The political action committee (PAC), previously known as Haley Voters for Biden, which now features Harris’ name, seeks to amplify the voices of former Haley voters in support of Harris’ White House bid.

Craig Snyder, the group’s director, told Newsweek in an email on Sunday afternoon that the organization believes Harris “is best suited to defeat Donald Trump in November.”

“A tough former prosecutor, the Vice President comes from the centrist wing of the Democratic Party, not it’s left most fringe…For Haley voters, all of this puts the Vice President in a sweet spot for them to register their ongoing opposition to [former] President Trump,” he said.

“Voto Latino pledges $44M to support Harris.” This is published by The Hill and reported by Rafael Bernal.

Voto Latino is endorsing Vice President Harris on Monday in her bid for the White House, pledging its entire 2024 campaign budget to her cause.

The civic engagement group, a key player in Latino campaign politics, supported President Biden’s reelection efforts and is a fierce opponent of former President Trump.

“As far right extremists seek to demonize immigrants, shatter our democracy, and curtail our rights at every turn, Vice President Kamala Harris has led the defense of our multicultural democracy. Her long-standing support for working Americans, voting rights, DACA, and for women’s rights have done so much good for our country and the Latino community — and it has never been more important,” said María Teresa Kumar, president of Voto Latino.

Voto Latino’s campaign in 2024 is hitting the road, after a mostly-digital 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“In 2020, Voto Latino endorsed Joe Biden in the face of an unprecedented threat to our community and our country. His exceptional term has earned our admiration and respect,” Kumar said in a statement Sunday, following Biden’s announcement that he would no longer seek reelection.

“Now more than ever we must unite our efforts to make sure Trump is not elected in November. The stakes have never been higher. If Trump returns to the White House, he’ll execute his anti-democracy and extreme platform. He will continue dehumanizing immigrants and will deploy our military to round-up people who they deem look undocumented. Trump also will expand the cottage industry of detention centers across the nation where no one is safe — U.S. citizens or not,” Kumar said Sunday.

Kumar told The Hill last month that Voto Latino is on track to raise and spend $44 million, up from $36 million four years ago.

The group plans to focus on young Hispanic voters with anti-disinformation, registration and mobilization campaigns in Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

Politico has this headline this morning. “Kamala Harris clears the path to the nomination as potential challengers fall in line. The rapid demonstration of support was a show of force — and unity — after weeks of unrest and anxiety.”  I admit that I feel better already.

It took less than 24 hours for Kamala Harris to all but clear the Democratic presidential field.

Endorsements from a series of governors Monday morning — JB Pritzker of Illinois, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Wes Moore of Maryland and Andy Beshear of Kentucky — effectively ended talk of a serious contest for the party’s nomination after President Joe Biden’s sudden decision Sunday to drop out of the race. Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.), who also briefly flirted with challenging Harris, also said Monday morning that he wouldn’t seek the nomination.

“I am proud to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president of the United States,” Pritzker said in a statement.

“Today, I am fired up to endorse Kamala Harris for President of the United States,” Whitmer wrote in her own statement.

“She is the fighter we need at this moment to realize the full promise of our nation,” Moore said.

The rapid demonstration of support was a show of force — and unity — after weeks of unrest and anxiety over whether the president would agree to step aside after his disastrous debate performance in late June.

Again, Donald and his campaign of hate are now in more chaos than usual.  Sean Hannity was thrown off his game and had this shocking (not really) headline covered by HuffPo. “MAGA Rages That Kamala Harris Is A Threat To Plastic Straws.  Sean Hannity grasped at the argument while alleging Harris will “be the single most radical major party candidate to run for election.”  Mediocre white men are fall to pieces when threatened.  Maybe he needs a sippy cup like my 3 year old granddaughters use.

Signe cartoon
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Kamala Harris

That has to be one of the most ridiculous displays of white male privilege I’ve ever seen.  This is from The Atlantic. “This Is Exactly What the Trump Team Feared. A campaign that had been optimized to beat Joe Biden must now be reinvented.”  It’s reported by Tim Alberta.  How will they have enough time to teach the Reality Star and Crisis Actor his lines?  Perhaps all we will hear about is his fear of sharks and obsession with Hannibal Lecter.

In many ways, the convention scene was one of a party peaking too early. Campaigns are marathons measured by changes in momentum and narrative, and Republicans in Milwaukee reveled in what felt like a three-week winning streak, dating back to the debate, in which the daily churn of insider gossip focused ever more on Democratic fatalism and Trump’s seeming inevitability. No Republican I spoke with could remember a longer stretch of uninterrupted forward propulsion. And with Biden appearing to dig in, they left Milwaukee believing that this run of luck might never end.

The president’s abrupt exit dashed any such fantasy. Suddenly, Republicans who had boasted last week about expanding the electoral map—pushing into Minnesota and Virginia and other decidedly blue areas—were fretting about the possibility of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro or Arizona Senator Mark Kelly joining the Democratic ticket, partnering with Harris to put back into play key battlegrounds that just 24 hours earlier seemed to be out of reach.

Given the historic volatility of this campaign—Trump survived an assassination attempt just last weekend—there’s no guarantee that Harris will ultimately succeed Biden atop the ticket. The Trump campaign certainly believes she will—understandably so, given the rapid consolidation of Democratic officials around her following Biden’s announcement—and blasted out a statement Sunday afternoon that tied Harris to her unpopular boss. “Kamala Harris is just as much of [a] joke as Biden is,” Wiles and LaCivita said in a statement. “Harris will be even WORSE for the people of our Nation than Joe Biden. Harris has been the Enabler in Chief for Crooked Joe this entire time. They own each other’s records, and there is no distance between the two.”

This is the essence of what Trump’s campaign believes—that any Democrat who picks up the party’s banner will inherit the baggage that made Biden unelectable. Republicans will point to historic inflation, millions of illegal border crossings, and geopolitical chaos from Eastern Europe to the Middle East as evidence that the entire Democratic Party has failed the American people. “We’ve talked about strength versus weakness, success versus failure,” LaCivita told me before the convention, summarizing the campaign’s strategic vision for the race. “The great thing about that messaging is that it’s not just unique to Joe Biden.”

In other words, they’ll continue to lie about issues at the border, dismiss that Trump told Republicans not to vote for a Republican-written Immigration reformer bill. They’ll cover up his murderous Covid-19 performance and the rest of the stuff.  Also, they support dictators so Biden’s success with NATO will never be mentioned.  They know that many people question what happened on that day at Butler Farms where one man died and two others were critical wounded.  Trump continues to wear his Ear Kotex while not delivering evidence there’s anything in it.  Photographs, as we have shared here, suggest it was likely a bit of glass.  The campaign is mostly using it as a amarketing tool to extract money from the Cult.  And, it is a cult.

I especially like this article and lede in The Guardian. “The post-Biden era may be uncertain for the Democrats, but for Trump it will be utterly dismaying. Whoever is nominated, a fresh choice will be on offer – a far better one than a grudge match between two grumpy old men.” It’s penned by Simon Tisdall.

The unforgiving deadline is 19 August, when the Democratic party national convention opens in Chicago. Thursday 22 August is the day the successful nominee must make her or his acceptance speech. After that, there’s no going back, no time for second thoughts. From then until election day on 5 November, it will be all-out war, a fight to the political death with an extremist Republican ticket in arguably the most consequential election since John F Kennedy narrowly defeated Richard Nixon in 1960.

Will Harris get her party’s nod, or face a damaging internal competition? She has big advantages. The vice-president since 2021, she can count on nationwide name recognition – unlike Trump’s far-right white nationalist running mate, the deservedly obscure JD Vance. She has black and Asian-American roots, a potential plus with minority voters. She is the first ever woman to hold the vice-presidency. And at 59, she is definitely not Joe Biden.

Before joining the White House, Harris was a well regarded prosecutor and senator from California. In office, she has earned a reputation, among those who care to look, for championing women’s rights, education and climate action – and for fighting Republican voter-suppression schemes. She is underestimated and mocked by opponents, as vice-presidents typically are. But she has taken hard knocks and kept going. And she could inherit the $100m Biden-Harris campaign war chest.

For the US’s independent and undecided voters, Harris, crucially, is also not Donald Trump. Instead of a grudge match between two grumpy old men, battering each other bloody like cranky Monty Python knights, a fresh choice may soon be on offer – in terms of personality, energy, policy, tone, trustworthiness and moral integrity. It’s a choice that could bring a generational leap. Come January next year, it’s possible a new, younger morning in the US may dawn.

Indeed, I hope we can finely rid ourselves of Donald and his cult.

I have to say that I am so happy to see so many of our Hillary friends are here again.  JJ explained that we’ve been fighting the WordPress AI goblin, which is somehow mistreating comments.  I even have trouble commenting on my posts, so don’t despair.  If you download the Jetpack app, you can sometimes comment more easily there.  Also, we know that some of your comments are going to SPAM, so we’re all on the watch for it!  Nothing like getting the old gang back together again!!  I am so glad you’re here.

We know what’s at stake.  They’ve already taken so many rights away that it’s time we elect people at all levels to stop this.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?