Finally Friday Reads: We Understand the Assignment

“Ketchup is flying.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

While the Wall Street Journal and the other “big” newspapers were busy writing about how President Biden looked so old and tired and ignoring the insane things Dotard DonOld was saying at his rallies, President Biden was busy negotiating a complex deal with multiple countries to get a WSJ writer and other hostages released from Russian Prison.  There are so many amazing things about this series of negotiations that it’s hard to list. Still, one of the many amazing things was that there were no leaks of any ongoing processes, that included other countries, the CIA, the State Department, the Vice President, and other U.S. officials.

The Wall Street Journal is even being gracious today with its news and headlines about their freed reporter Evan Gershkovich, who is now in San Antonio for medical exams and has been reunited with his mother. They have even acknowledged the role Vice President Harris played in the Swap.

Vice President Kamala Harris played a role in negotiations with allies to secure the prisoner-swap deal. Harris met with both German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob separately in intimate settings during the Munich Security Conference in February to urge both leaders to push the deal through, according to a White House official.

Harris’s meeting with Scholz was particularly critical to securing the exchange because releasing Krasikov was a key Russian demand. The two first had a normal bilateral meeting before Harris asked Scholz to stay back for a “restricted bilateral,” the official said. Harris asked everyone to leave except Scholz and one aide on each side.

“They had a back and forth about how to best move forward about that, but ultimately, she was pressing Scholz to take action on this,” the official said.

Harris has met Scholz previously on several occasions and had a “good working relationship with him,” the official said. That is “part of the reason why she was able to have a really good, frank conversation with him.”

Harris had never met Golob before the conference. Their meeting was the highest-level U.S. engagement at the time with the Slovenian government, which was holding two Russian nationals Moscow wanted released. That meeting was also restricted to just Harris, Golob and two aides.

Separately, Harris spoke to Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Alexey Navalny, on Thursday, according to a White House official. Russian political prisoners who had worked with Navalny were released as part of the swap.

The German Chancellor and the Slovenian Prime Minister were key to the deal.  The AP reports the swap as a “landmark.”

The United States and Russia completed their biggest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history on Thursday, with Moscow releasing journalist Evan Gershkovich and fellow American Paul Whelan, along with dissidents including Vladimir Kara-Murza, in a multinational deal that set two dozen people free.

Gershkovich, Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva, a journalist with dual U.S.-Russia citizenship, arrived on American soil shortly before midnight for a joyful reunion with their families. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris also were at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to greet them and dispense hugs all around.

The trade unfolded despite relations between Washington and Moscow being at their lowest point since the Cold War after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Negotiators in backchannel talks at one point explored an exchange involving Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but after his death in February ultimately stitched together a 24-person deal that required significant concessions from European allies, including the release of a Russian assassin, and secured freedom for a cluster of journalists, suspected spies, political prisoners and others.

I don’t care that some bad guys got sent back to Russia.  That’s a type of punishment, even though Putin played them up as heroes. I can’t imagine they will be completely safe there.  However, we brought the good folks home to thrive.

I keep reporting that my phone banking response is just about the most uplifting since I did my first phone back as a junior in high school.  The election updates are getting more positive as the Harris Campaign raked in more than twice Team Weird.  This is from NBC News. Election 2024 live updates: Harris team says it raised $310M in July, more than double what Trump’s team announced. Vice President Kamala Harris’ team said it raised $200 million during the first week of her campaign.”

• Vice President Kamala Harris’ team announced today that it raised $310 million in July. That would trounce the $138.7 million former President Donald Trump’s team said it raised last month. NBC News cannot verify those reports until Federal Election Commission reports for July are released.

Tara Sutter, reporting for The Hill, has this headline. “Pritzker says Trump ‘bewildered’ by Harris, new Dem excitement.”  I’m getting trolled on social media whenever I produce my mini-report on what people say to me.  On my Wednesday calls this week, I got to talk to seniors in places like Tennessee, Missouri, and Illinois this week. They are fired up and ready to go! They’re talking to their family and friend circles to pass a better world to our children and their children! I feel very positive.  Some of these folks live in deeply red corners of their states.  Yet, they’ve decided to talk about how excited they are about Harris to friends, family, and neighbors.  One woman said she saw a woman wearing a Kamala t-shirt in a restaurant, which surprised her.  She talked to the woman, and they said they would stand up for the future!  The couple from Tennessee asked how they could volunteer!  They said they knew they had to fight for the future.  I guess I’m not the only granny for sanity.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) said Thursday he believes former President Trump is “bewildered” by Vice President Harris and the excitement she has generated among Democrats.

“Kamala Harris is the perfect person at this moment,” Pritzker said on MSNBC’s “The Beat” to anchor Ari Melber. “We’ve got the kind of palpable excitement, the energy, that we really need in the party to carry us to victory in November, and of course Donald Trump is, I think, bewildered by it all. I don’t know that he has any idea how to handle the excitement that’s happening on the Democratic side, or Kamala Harris herself.”

Pritzker is among the many names floated as a possible running mate for Harris, the likely Democratic presidential nominee. His home state will also host this year’s Democratic National Convention later this month in Chicago.

“We’re planning a phenomenal convention here in Chicago. … the excitement is palpable,” Pritzker said. “The United Center, which is where the convention will happen, is being spruced up, lookin’ terrific.”

Besides Pritzker, other names on the vice presidential shortlist include Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro,  Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Democratic Governors are all speaking out with enthusiasm. They’re also nailing Donald and the guy who changed his name three times to the wall.  DonOld is ratcheting up the racism and misogyny.  This is from Susan B. Glasser reporting for The New Yorker.  “Trump’s Racist Attack on Kamala Harris Was No Accident. Is it, perhaps, a sign that the Vice-President’s swift rise in the polls has him panicked?”

Spoiler alert: he meant it. When Donald Trump claimed, on Wednesday afternoon, in a combative onstage interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago, that Kamala Harris had adopted her identity as a Black woman in an effort to gain political advantage, he drew appalled gasps from the audience. “She was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person,” he said. This was an inaccurate slur as well as a bizarre one. Harris has always been proudly biracial: she is the daughter of an Indian mother and a Black, Jamaican father, both of whom immigrated to the U.S. She attended Howard, a historically Black college, where she joined one of Black America’s most storied sororities. Nonetheless, Trump doubled down on this particularly Trumpian form of hate speech. In a post on his Truth Social platform, he wrote, “Crazy Kamala is saying she’s Indian, not Black. This is a big deal. Stone cold phony. She uses everybody, including her racial identity!” That evening, in a rally in Pennsylvania, his campaign even projected an old news headline proclaiming Harris the first Indian American U.S. senator. Trump’s embattled Vice-Presidential nominee, J. D. Vance, joined in, too, calling Harris a “total phony who caters to whatever audience is in front of her.”

By Thursday morning, as the liberal commentariat feasted on its horror over his remarks and right-leaning pundits struggled to explain and excuse it, Trump mocked them all, posting an old photo of Harris alongside relatives on the Indian side of her family. He wrote, “Thank you Kamala for the nice picture you sent from many years ago! Your warmth, friendship, and love of your Indian Heritage are very much appreciated.” In another post, he circulated the conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer’s idea that, because Harris’s birth certificate says her father’s “color or race” is “Jamaican,” not Black, she is a “liar” who is “NOT black and never has been.”

How much clearer does it have to get? America, you are being trolled.

Laura Loomer probably holds the Guinness World Record for being the largest piece of shit ever.  Meanwhile, I thoroughly enjoyed watching the Atlanta rally Tuesday night.  I got to stick around for some campaign insider stuff and a Zoom visit from the Vice President.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been this hyped up to volunteer my ass off.  This is from the Washington Post. “Harris events: Not your father’s campaign rallies (or Biden’s). If there was ever any indication of the head-snapping transition that Democrats have gone through, it was the one that occurred on Tuesday night in Atlanta when 10,000 people danced and cheered to Megan Thee Stallion before Harris took the stage for a campaign rally.”

If there was ever any indication of the head-snapping transition that Democrats have gone through, it was the one that occurred on Tuesday night in Atlanta when 10,000 people danced and cheered to Megan Thee Stallion before Vice President Harris took the stage for a campaign rally to the strains of Beyoncé’s “Freedom.” Biden forecast this kind of a change four years ago when he talked about a bridge to a new generation, but that transformation didn’t take place until the past two weeks when he officially relinquished his grip on the party.

In fact, Joe Biden never came up.

From the music to the outfits — and, most tellingly, the crowd size — it was clearer than ever that the shift to a new Democratic generation was complete.

By and large, it is the same campaign aides who were putting on Biden events that are now in charge of Harris ones. But the types of crowds interested in attending Harris events — and the musicians willing to perform at them — are very different. The new playlist, even if controlled by the same staffers who curated Biden’s soundtrack (a mix including Whitney Houston’s “Higher Love,” Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down,” and Elton John’s “Philadelphia Freedom”), has a certain Harris flair, and is put together based on her personal input.

Campaign aides say they are still thinking about how Harris events will be different, and they are determined to not only do large-scale rallies but want to put her in smaller settings as well. The coming days will provide more of a test case as Harris picks a running mate and launches a seven-state tour that will probably include a range of venues.

In Atlanta, the baton was fully passed to Kamala Harris. This was now her party. Her campaign. Her playlist.

Even though this headline comes with my usual admonition about trusting polls, it’s a good sign. “Kamala Harris Now Leads Donald Trump in Eight National Polls.”  That’s eight data points, so that’s good.  This reporting comes in Newsweek by Martha McHardy AND Andrew Stanton.

The new polls show the presumptive Democratic nominee is leading the former president by between 1 and 4 points.

RMG Research is the latest pollster to find Harris leading Trump in the national popular vote. The firm released a survey on Friday showing her with a 5-point lead (47 percent to 47 percent) over the former president. The poll was conducted among 3,000 registered voters from July 29 to July 31.

A poll conducted by Civiqs between July 27 and July 30 also showed Harris with a 5-point lead over Trump. Among 1,123 registered voters, Harris leads Trump 49 percent to 45 percent. Her lead is outside the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Harris is ahead of the Republican presidential nominee by 3 points in a poll by Leger conducted between July 26 and July 28. The poll, which surveyed 1,002 U.S. residents and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, showed she was leading Trump with 49 percent of the vote to his 46 percent. That represents a 4-point increase for the Democrat since Leger’s June poll.

When third-party candidates were included in the Leger poll, Harris’ lead over Trump grew to 7 points, to 48 percent, compared to the former president’s 41 percent.

Harris had a smaller lead of 2 points over Trump in four other national polls. These include a poll conducted by The Economist and YouGov, where the vice president polled at 46 percent among 1,434 registered voters—a lead within the poll’s 3 percent margin of error.

The other polls, conducted between July 23 and July 30 by Redfield and Wilton Strategies, Angus Reid, and Florida Atlantic University, showed Harris leading by 2 points—within each poll’s margin of error.

We just have to keep up the Momala Momentum.  This is an interview from Elle on her role as stepmom to two young adults.  To hell with J.D. Vance and his parade of stereotypes.

Cole and Ella could not have been more welcoming. They are brilliant, talented, funny kids who have grown to be remarkable adults. I was already hooked on Doug, but I believe it was Cole and Ella who reeled me in.

To know Cole and Ella is to know that their mother Kerstin is an incredible mother. Kerstin and I hit it off ourselves and are dear friends. She and I became a duo of cheerleaders in the bleachers at Ella’s swim meets and basketball games, often to Ella’s embarrassment. We sometimes joke that our modern family is almost a little too functional.

A few years later when Doug and I got married, Cole, Ella, and I agreed that we didn’t like the term “stepmom.” Instead they came up with the name “Momala.”

Our time as a family is Sunday dinner. We come together, all of us around the table, and over time we’ve fallen into our roles. Cole sets the table and picks the music, Ella makes beautiful desserts, Doug acts as my sous-chef, and I cook.

So, that’s it for me today. We’re on our 4th heatwave and have perpetual Severe Heat warnings.  I’m at the point where I just fill my soaking tub up with cold water and literally chill out.  I’m watching the  Tropical Storm headed to Southern Florida. The Gulf Waters are hot.  This could become a big wet one; southernmost Florida is on the Dirty Side.  CNN is calling it this way. “Tropical Storm Debby forecast to hit Florida this weekend with torrential rain and wind.” It’s going straight up the East Coast and could become a Cyclone Level  Four.  So, be safe if you’re on its path.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?