But Trump actually took things a step further.
Wednesday Reads
Posted: September 18, 2024 Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris 2024 | Tags: abortion, Amber Thurman, Candi Miller, D&C, election interference, Georgia, J.D. Vance, Lawrence O'Donnell, Springfield Ohio 4 CommentsGood Day!!
Autumn Portrait of Lydia Cassatt, by Mary Cassatt, 1880
Last night, Lawrence O’Donnell opened his show with a scathing rant on the results of the Republican crusade against legal abortion titled, “Women are dying. They got what they wanted.” He talked about the ProPublica article about Amber Nicole Thurman, who died in a Georgia hospital because doctors were afraid to give her the basic procedure (dilation and curettage or D&C) that would have saved her life. They then continued to withhold treatment until she died of sepsis. As a result, Thurman’s 6-year-old son has been left without a mother. O’Donnell then talked about what happened to his own mother when he was 6 years old. His mother had a miscarriage and was immediately given a D&C. This was before abortion was legal. O’Donnell choked up as he told this story. You can watch the video at MSNBC.
Today, Kavita Surana posted the story of the second Georgia woman known to have died because of the state’s anti-abortion laws: Afraid to Seek Care Amid Georgia’s Abortion Ban, She Stayed at Home and Died.
Candi Miller’s health was so fragile, doctors warned having another baby could kill her.
“They said it was going to be more painful and her body may not be able to withstand it,” her sister, Turiya Tomlin-Randall, told ProPublica.
But when the mother of three realized she had unintentionally gotten pregnant in the fall of 2022, Georgia’s new abortion ban gave her no choice. Although it made exceptions for acute, life-threatening emergencies, it didn’t account for chronic conditions, even those known to present lethal risks later in pregnancy.
At 41, Miller had lupus, diabetes and hypertension and didn’t want to wait until the situation became dire. So she avoided doctors and navigated an abortion on her own — a path many health experts feared would increase risks when women in America lost the constitutional right to obtain legal, medically supervised abortions.
Miller ordered abortion pills online, but she did not expel all the fetal tissue and would need a dilation and curettage procedure to clear it from her uterus and stave off sepsis, a grave and painful infection. In many states, this care, known as a D&C, is routine for both abortions and miscarriages. In Georgia, performing it had recently been made a felony, with few exceptions.
Her teenage son watched her suffer for days after she took the pills, bedridden and moaning. In the early hours of Nov. 12, 2022, her husband found her unresponsive in bed, her 3-year-old daughter at her side.
An autopsy found unexpelled fetal tissue, confirming that the abortion had not fully completed. It also found a lethal combination of painkillers, including the dangerous opioid fentanyl. Miller had no history of drug use, the medical records state; her family has no idea how she obtained them or what was going through her mind — whether she was trying to quell the pain, complete the abortion or end her life. A medical examiner was unable to determine the manner of death.
Her family later told a coroner she hadn’t visited a doctor “due to the current legislation on pregnancies and abortions.”
The conclusion of experts:
When a state committee of experts in maternal health, including 10 doctors, reviewed her case this year at the end of August, they immediately decided it was “preventable” and blamed the state’s abortion ban, according to members who spoke to ProPublica on the condition of anonymity.
They came to that conclusion after weighing the entire chain of events, from Miller’s underlying health conditions, to her decision to manage her abortion alone, to her reticence to seek medical care. “The fact that she felt that she had to make these decisions, that she didn’t have adequate choices here in Georgia, we felt that definitely influenced her case,” one committee member told ProPublica. “She’s absolutely responding to this legislation.”
This is the second preventable death related to abortion bans that ProPublica is reporting this week. Amber Thurman, 28, languished in a suburban Atlanta hospital for 20 hours before doctors performed a D&C to treat sepsis that resulted from an incomplete abortion. It was too late. “This young mother should be alive, raising her son and pursuing her dream of attending nursing school,” Vice President Kamala Harris said of Thurman on Tuesday. “This is exactly what we feared when Roe was struck down.”
There are almost certainly other deaths related to abortion access. Georgia’s committee, tasked with examining pregnancy-related deaths to improve maternal health, has only reviewed cases through fall 2022. Such a lag is common in these committees, which are set up in each state; most others have not even gotten that far.
Path in the garden of the asylum, Vincent Van Gogh
The situation women are dealing with now is far worse than what happened in the years before Roe. Old right-wing men without even basic knowledge of the female anatomy and medical procedures are making decisions that can condemn women to death and their families to the loss of a mother or daughter who becomes pregnant in a red state. Of course none of this could have happened without six monsters on the Supreme Court. As Lawrence O’Donnell said, “Women are dying. They got what they wanted.”
Here’s another horror story out of Georgia; this one is about election interference. Justin Glawe at The Guardian: Network of Georgia election officials strategizing to undermine 2024 result.
Emails obtained by the Guardian reveal a behind-the-scenes network of county election officials throughout Georgia coordinating on policy and messaging to both call the results of November’s election into question before a single vote is cast, and push rules and procedures favored by the election denial movement.
The emails were obtained by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) as a result of a public records request sent to David Hancock, an election denier and member of the Gwinnett county board of elections. Crew shared the emails with the Guardian.
Spanning a period beginning in January, the communications expose the inner workings of a group that includes some of the most ardent supporters of the former president Donald Trump’s election lies as well as ongoing efforts to portray the coming election as beset with fraud. Included in the communications are agendas for meetings and efforts to coordinate on policies and messaging as the swing state has once again become a focal point of the presidential campaign.
The communications include correspondence from a who’s who of Georgia election denialists, including officials with ties to prominent national groups such as the Tea Party Patriots and the Election Integrity Network, a group run by Cleta Mitchell, a former attorney who acted as an informal adviser to the Trump White House during its attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
The group – which includes elections officials from at least five counties – calls itself the Georgia Election Integrity Coalition.
These emails go way back:
Among the oldest emails released are those regarding a 30 January article published by the United Tea Party of Georgia. Headlined “Georgia Democratic Party Threatens Georgia Election Officials”, the article was posted by an unnamed “admin” of the website, and came in response to letters sent to county election officials throughout Georgia who had recently refused to certify election results.
“In what can only be seen as an attempt to intimidate elections officials,” the article began, “the Georgia Democratic party sent a letter to individual county board of elections members threatening legal action unless they vote to certify upcoming elections – even if the board member has legitimate concerns about the results.”
The letter had been sent by a lawyer representing the Democratic party of Georgia to county election board members in Spalding, Cobb and DeKalb counties. Election board members in each of those counties had refused to certify the results of local elections the previous November. In their letter, Democrats sought to warn those officials that their duty to certify results was not discretionary in an attempt to prevent further certification refusals, including in the coming presidential election. In response, the United Tea Party of Georgia took issue with the letter, calling it “troubling” and saying that it was “Orwellian to demand that election officials certify an election even if they have unanswered questions about the vote”.
While the author of the article was not named on the United Tea Party of Georgia’s website, the emails obtained by Crew show that it was Hancock, an outspoken election denier and member of the Gwinnett county board of elections, who has become a leading voice in the push for more power to refuse to certify results.
There’s more at the link.
Autumn in Honfleu Cote de Grace, cir. 1906, byEmile-Othon Friesz
More efforts at election interference were reported by ABC News: Suspicious mail containing white powder was sent to election offices in at least 16 states.
The FBI and Postal Service are investigating suspicious mail containing a white powder substance that was sent to election offices in at least 16 states this week, according to an ABC News canvass of the country.
None of the mail has been deemed hazardous so far – and in one case, the substance was determined to be flour – but the scare prompted evacuations in some locations.
Election offices in New York, Tennessee, Wyoming, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Indiana, Massachusetts, and Colorado received the suspicious packages. Similar suspicious mail was addressed to offices in additional states – Arizona, Georgia, Connecticut and Maryland among them – but investigators intercepted them before they reached their destination.
The FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service said in a statement Tuesday that they were investigating letters containing white powdery substances. A law enforcement source said at this point none of the packages were believed to be hazardous.
“We are also working with our partners to determine how many letters were sent, the individual or individuals responsible for the letters, and the motive behind the letters,” the statement read.
At least some of the packages were signed by the “United States Traitor Elimination Army,” according to a copy of a letter sent to members of the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center obtained by ABC News.
The Saga of Springfield goes on and on. The Wall Street Journal learned that before he began spreading rumors of dogs and cats being eaten, he was told by city officials that the stories were baseless. We know this from a story in The Wall Street Journal. It’s behind the paywall, so this is a summary from Raw Story:
A representative for J.D. Vance was told “point blank” that the Republican vice presidential nominee’s claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio were not true, but he continued to smear them anyway as bomb threats were called in to local schools and government offices.
The Republican senator posted about the rumors on X, where he’s got 1.9 million followers, and he did not delete the post even after one of his staffers called Springfield city manager Bryan Heck on the morning of Sept. 9 to ask whether Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating cats and dogs, as other social media users had alleged, reported the Wall Street Journal.“
He asked point-blank: ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’” Heck told the newspaper. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.” [….]
Vance has admitted the claims are false, but he continues to make dubious and debunked claims about Haitian immigrants in the state he represents in the U.S. Senate, such as his claim that communicable diseases have spiraled out of control in Springfield.“Information from the county health department, however, shows a decrease in infectious disease cases countywide, with 1,370 reported in 2023 — the lowest since 2015,” the Journal reported.
“The tuberculosis case numbers in the county are so low (four in 2023, three in 2022, one in 2021) that any little movement can bring a big percentage jump. HIV cases did increase to 31 in 2023, from 17 in 2022 and 12 in 2021. Overall, sexually transmitted infection cases decreased to 965 in 2023, the lowest since 2015.”
Another claim by Vance fell apart after a spokesperson provided the Journal reporter with a police report involving a woman who alleged that a Haitian immigrant may have taken her cat.“But when a reporter went to Anna Kilgore’s house Tuesday evening, she said her cat Miss Sassy, which went missing in late August, had actually returned a few days later — found safe in her own basement,” the newspaper reported. “Kilgore, wearing a Trump shirt and hat, said she apologized to her Haitian neighbors with the help of her daughter and a mobile-phone translation app.”
The Autumn, by Alphonse Mucha, 1896
Trump says he wants to visit Springfield, but the mayor would prefer that he didn’t. NBC News: After false pet claims, Springfield mayor says Trump visit would be ‘an extreme strain’ on resources.
The Republican mayor of Springfield, Ohio, the city that has been the target of unfounded claims from former President Donald Trump and his running mate about Haitian immigrants’ eating residents’ pets said Tuesday that a visit from Trump would tax the city’s resources.
“It would be an extreme strain on our resources. So it’d be fine with me if they decided not to make that visit,” Mayor Rob Rue said at a news conference at City Hall.
NBC News reported Sunday that Trump planned to visit the city “soon,” according to a source familiar with his planning, after he amplified during the presidential debate a baseless claim that had circulated in right-wing spheres online for weeks, saying Haitian immigrants were “eating the dogs” and cats of local residents.
Officials in Springfield have said the allegations are meritless, with city police issuing a statement that said there were “no credible reports” of Haitian immigrants’ harming pets.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, had also “panned the claims as “garbage,” and he visited Springfield Tuesday as the city responds to dozens of bomb threats, deemed hoaxes that have led to temporary closings and evacuations of schools and city buildings.
DeWine said a campaign visit from a presidential candidate is “generally very, very welcomed,” but he acknowledged that it would pose challenges.
“I have to state the reality, though, that resources are really, really stretched here,” he said.
Trump and Vance should stay the hell out of Springfield, Ohio.
Trump is holding a rally on Long Island tonight–a strange use of campaign resources in a blue state this close to the election. Anyway, there’s been a “suspicious occurrence.” Newsweek: ‘Suspicious Occurrence’ Near Donald Trump New York Rally: What We Know. “
Nassau County police responded to a “suspicious occurrence” near the location of former President Donald Trump‘s Wednesday night rally in Long Island, noting that no explosives were located, the department confirmed to Newsweek.
“We did respond to a suspicious occurrence in the vicinity of the Nassau Coliseum, however there was no validity of an explosive device being found,” a public information officer told Newsweek after a report about an explosive device at the rally site circulated online.
“We’re unsure where this information originated, but we can confirm that no explosives were discovered.”
I suppose we’ll be dealing with these false alarms from now on.
More Republicans are backing Kamala Harris every day now. This is from The New York Times: 111 Former G.O.P. Officials Back Harris, Calling Trump ‘Unfit to Serve.’
More than 100 former national security officials from Republican administrations and former Republican members of Congress endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday after concluding that their party’s nominee, Donald J. Trump, is “unfit to serve again as president.”
In a letter to the public, the Republicans, including both vocal longtime Trump opponents and others who had not endorsed Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020, argued that while they might “disagree with Kamala Harris” on many issues, Mr. Trump had demonstrated “dangerous qualities.” Those include, they said, “unusual affinity” for dictators like President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and “contempt for the norms of decent, ethical and lawful behavior.”
John Everett Millais, Autumn Leaves, 1855–1856
“As president,” the letter said, “he promoted daily chaos in government, praised our enemies and undermined our allies, politicized the military and disparaged our veterans, prioritized his personal interest above American interests and betrayed our values, democracy and this country’s founding documents.”
The letter condemned Mr. Trump’s incitement of the mob attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, aimed at allowing him to hold onto power after losing an election, saying that “he has violated his oath of office and brought danger to our country.” It quoted Mr. Trump’s own former vice president, Mike Pence, who has said that “anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States.”
The letter came not long after former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, both said they would vote for Ms. Harris. Democrats featured a number of anti-Trump Republicans at their nominating convention last month, including former Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois. Mr. Pence has said he will not endorse Mr. Trump but has not endorsed Ms. Harris.
The 111 signatories included former officials who served under Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush. Many of them had previously broken with Mr. Trump, including two former defense secretaries, Chuck Hagel and William S. Cohen; Robert B. Zoellick, a former president of the World Bank; the former C.I.A. directors Michael V. Hayden and William H. Webster; a former director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte; and former Gov. William F. Weld of Massachusetts. Miles Taylor and Olivia Troye, two Trump administration officials who became vocal critics, also signed.
But a number of Republicans who did not sign a similar letter on behalf of Mr. Biden in 2020 signed the one for Ms. Harris this time, including several former House members, like Charles W. Boustany Jr. of Louisiana, Barbara Comstock of Virginia, Dan Miller of Florida and Bill Paxon of New York.
I’ll end with this piece by conservative Stuart Rothenberg in Roll Call: So, you’re sure the presidential race will be close?
If there is one thing on which liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, journalists and political partisans all agree, it’s that the 2024 presidential race is too close to call.
Vice President Kamala Harris may have a slight advantage nationally and in a couple of competitive states, but polling in at least half a dozen swing states – including Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, Michigan and Wisconsin – shows that the presidential race between Harris and former president Donald Trump is separated by only a percentage point or two.
As the New York Times wrote on Sept. 8 and updated three days later, “The national results are in line with polls in the seven battleground states that will decide the presidential election, where Ms. Harris is tied with Mr. Trump or holds slim leads, according to New York Times polling averages. Taken together, they show a tight race that remains either candidate’s to win or lose.”
But if you are something of a gambler and everyone you know believes the 2024 presidential contest is and will remain extremely close, you probably should put a few dollars on the possibility that November will produce a clear and convincing win for Harris.
That assessment isn’t based on the most recent survey numbers but on the current dynamics of the race and the advantage of taking a contrarian position.
Harris has plenty of momentum going into the fall election. She has become a strong speaker at her rallies, and she should have a considerable financial advantage over the next couple of months.
Her coalition, which includes some high-profile Republicans and conservatives, stretches from former Vice President Dick Cheney and conservative intellectual Bill Kristol on the right to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the left.
Harris clobbered Trump in their first (and possibly only) debate, and another debate would be extremely risky for Trump, who can’t afford another bad performance.
Harris wasn’t merely good on one or two topics during the debate. She successfully deflected Trump’s attacks and baited him so that he spent more time defending himself than defining his opponent. Harris was particularly effective on abortion/reproductive rights and foreign policy/national security.
The Democratic ticket is drawing huge crowds in the key states where Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, are campaigning, and it’s quite possible that pollsters are underestimating the turnout that the Democrats will generate in the fall.
Read the whole thing at the link.
Have a nice Wednesday, everyone!!
Wednesday Reads: Kamala Dominates Debate
Posted: September 11, 2024 Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris 2024 | Tags: conspiracy theories, Harris facial expressions, Harris Trump handshake, Joe Biden, presidential debate Sept 10 2024, Trump lies 2 CommentsGood Day!!
Kamala Harris completely dominated Trump in last night’s debate, and in the process made him look like a foolish, angry old man. She threw him off at the outset by forcing him to shake her hand after he stalked to the podium, obviously trying to avoid her. Trump never looked at Harris once during the debate and never said her name, but she looked at him and spoke directly to him.
The moderators gave Trump more time to rant and rave, but Harris made good use of that by using facial expressions to demonstrate her disdain for his stupidity and his many blatant lies. Every time she had the floor, she mocked him mercilessly. She never once lost her cool.
Trump, on the other hand, lost control early on after she mocked his rallies and his obsessions with Hannibal Lector and windmills and then noted that people leave his rallies early because they are bored stiff by his repetitive, nonsensical rants. After that, he flew into a rage and never recovered.
I’m going to share some media reactions to the debate–mostly from independent writers, because I’m personally fed up with the mainstream outlets–especially the NYT and WaPo.
David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo: Kamala Harris Directly Confronted The Trump Menace In Our Midst.
Kamala Harris practiced a different kind of dominance politics in last night’s debate, confronting the menace of Donald Trump directly and taking him down a peg like you would a schoolyard bully.
After nearly a decade of Trump doing as he pleases with little accountability, a lot of appeasement, and very rare consequence, he was brought up short by an opponent who looked him in the eye, called him out, didn’t back down, and in the process threw him off his game and took command of the debate stage.
The emotional weight of her presentation was centered on confronting him with a combination of mockery, scorn, bemusement, disdain, and condescension. Yes, it got under his skin, Yes, he was rattled, Yes, it turned him into a fulminating old man. I’m less interested though in the stagecraft she used than in the catharsis it provided to viewers who have craved to see Trump get his comeuppance for so many years, only to be repeatedly and endlessly disappointed.
It was Joe Biden’s failure to confront Trump on this level during their debate in June that led to the existential crisis among Democrats. Biden failed in multiple ways in that debate, but the biggest letdown was his failure to stand up to Trump in a convincing fashion and instead let Trump run all over him.
In contrast, Harris confronted Trump repeatedly. She referred to him as a “disgrace” twice, as “dangerous and unfit,” as “confused,” and as lacking the right “temperament” to be president. She derided him to his face as someone dictators know “they can manipulate … with flattery and favors.” She often referred to him in the second person, a more charged and direct way of punching the bully in the nose. She called him out for warring against the rule of law and the Constitution and for his own criminally-charged conduct.
Kurtz posted a number of Harris’ facial reactions to Trump’s nonsense; click the link to see them.
From You Tube, Trump losing it and claiming immigrants are “eating the dogs.”
The Independent on Trump buying into this weird conspiracy theory: Bizarre debate moment Trump wildly claims Haitian migrants are eating pet dogs and cats.
Donald Trump’s false claim that immigrants in Ohio are abducting pets and eating them during Tuesday’s presidential debate was quickly slapped down by ABC News moderator David Muir.
While on the debate stage in Philadelphia, the former president asserted that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were “eating dogs” and “eating the cats” while pushing his anti-immigration policies.
“What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country and look at what’s happening to the towns all over the United States,” the former president said.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating – they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame,” the former president claimed.
As he spoke, Harris looked in disbelief at the former president before laughing.
There is no evidence that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating pets.
Muir corrected the former president, adding: “ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there had been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”
Trump interrupted Muir and disputed him, claiming he saw it “on television.”
“Well, I’ve seen people on television. People on television say, ‘My dog was taken and used for food,’ so maybe he said that and maybe that’s a good thing to say for a city manager,” Trump said.
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (R) shakes hands with former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 2024. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP)
Josh Fiallo at The Daily Beast on Harris forcing Trump to shake hands: Trump Tries to Dodge Harris’ Handshake Before Debate Starts.
Who saw that coming?
In a shocking slice of professionalism, or perhaps mind games, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris shared an awkward handshake before Tuesday night’s presidential debate.
Harris initiated the greeting, walking to behind Trump’s podium for the brief moment after they each took the stage—Trump from the left and Harris from the right on TV broadcasts.
Trump gave Harris a strong handshake and told her “good luck” before Harris returned to her podium. In photos of the encounter, Harris appears to be smirking and giving Trump a side-eye.
It’s the first handshake before a presidential debate since Trump and Hillary Clinton met for the first time on stage in 2016.
Aaron Rupar’s assessment of the debate at Public Notice: Kamala Harris dogwalks Trump. She put on a debate masterclass, triggering Donald into a tailspin.
Kamala Harris walked right onto that stage in Philadelphia last night, approached Donald Trump as he tried to slink away behind his podium, and shook his hand.
That subtle show of dominance (watch it below) set the tone for a debate performance from the Democratic nominee that was everything Democrats could’ve hoped for and then some.
After a June debate that left me feeling catatonic and made the terrifying prospect of a second Trump presidency more palpable than ever, last night served as a morale-boosting reminder that he’s very beatable — especially considering who he’s up against now.
Kamala Harris won and did so convincingly. And a frazzled Trump doesn’t seem to have answers….
Trump started the debate off calmly, but it didn’t last long. Things really started slipping for him after Harris hit him where it hurts by bringing up the fact that his fans are in the habit of leaving his rallies early.
The facial expressions Harris made as Trump responded by spewing a bunch of angry lies were priceless.
Trump was off balance the rest of the night. He threw JD Vance under the bus while serving up a word salad about his views on abortion. He defended his call decades ago for a group of Black teens to be executed for a crime they did not commit by insisting “a lot of people agreed with me.” He repeatedly refused to answer a question about whether he wants Ukraine or Russia to win the war his dictator buddy started, though he did at one point suggest disconcertingly that Putin might nuke the United States.
One of Trump’s worst moments came during the healthcare discussion. Asked by ABC moderator Linsey Davis if he’s developed any sort of plan over over the past nine years, Trump made clear that he still hasn’t, lamely saying that “I have concepts of a plan.”
Trump was so bad that even Fox News couldn’t sugarcoat it, and CNN’s post-debate panel was openly talking about his obvious decline. And while some of Trump’s troubles were self-inflicted, Harris deserves a lot of credit for masterfully dogwalking him all over the stage….
In addition to triggering Trump over crowd size, Harris pulled no punches during the foreign affairs portion of the debate, saying “world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump” and military leaders think he’s “a disgrace.”
Trump then played right into Harris’s hands by touting his endorsement from Hungarian strongman Victor Orban.
Read more and see more videos at Public Notice.
At The Daily Beast, Lilly Mae Lazarus wrote about Harris’s hilarious facial expressions while Trump was talking: How Kamala Harris’ Face Told the Story of the Debate.
With mics muted during Tuesday night’s debate, there were few opportunities for cross-talk or clapbacks. (At least at the beginning of the night.) Kamala Harris didn’t need to say what she was thinking out loud, though. Her face did most of the talking for her.
The vice president abandoned any semblance of a poker face while Donald Trump rambled and rebutted. She cocked her brow, cringed, and served incredulous side-eye at her political opponent throughout the night. The GOP presidential candidate, meanwhile, did his best to maintain a stoic face.
Please check out the photos of the facial expressions at the Daily Beast link above.
Rolling Stone: Harris Does What Biden Couldn’t at Debate, Destroys Trump on Abortion.
When Donald Trump debated President Joe Biden in June, one of the most cringe-inducing moments was when Trump announced, unchallenged, the batshit insane lie that Democrats want to “kill” babies. “They will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth — after birth — if you look at the former governor of Virginia, he was willing to do this,” Trump said. “He said, ‘We’ll put the baby aside, and will determine what we do with the baby,’ meaning: We’ll kill the baby.’”
Biden couldn’t choke out a coherent sentence in response. On Tuesday in Philadelphia, Kamala Harris had the chance for a re-do after Trump again pushed the same lie. But even before she opened her mouth, ABC’s Linsey Davis — moderating the debate with her colleague David Muir — corrected Trump: “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill the baby after it’s born.”
Harris went on to slam Trump for packing the Supreme Court with conservative justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, and detailed the horrific experiences of women living in states that have implemented strict abortion restrictions in the aftermath.
The vice president spoke of “Trump abortion bans that make no exception even for rape and incest, calling on viewers to “understand what that means: A survivor of a crime of violation to their body does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body next. That is immoral.”
She spoke of women bleeding out after miscarriages, afraid to get medical help, and children who are victims of incest being forced to carry pregnancies to term. She pledged, as she has repeatedly since becoming the Democratic nominee, to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade if she is elected with a Democratic majority. “If Donald Trump were to be reelected, he will sign a national abortion ban,” she added.
A representative for Harris campaign, which aid it was monitoring the reactions of groups of undecided voters via dial groups in battleground states, said those voters had a strong response during the debate when Harris talked about abortion: “This really was off the charts, we rarely see dials go this high.” The represented added that in the 9 p.m. hour during the debate, 71 percent of their grassroots donors were women.
One more reaction from David Frum at The Atlantic: How Harris Roped a Dope. She stayed human when Trump went feral.
Vice President Kamala Harris walked onto the ABC News debate stage with a mission: trigger a Trump meltdown.
She succeeded.
Former President Donald Trump had a mission too: control yourself.
He failed.
Trump lost his cool over and over. Goaded by predictable provocations, he succumbed again and again.
Trump was pushed into broken-sentence monologues—and even an all-out attack on the 2020 election outcome. He repeated crazy stories about immigrants eating cats and dogs, and was backwards-looking, personal, emotional, defensive, and frequently incomprehensible.
Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a presidential debate hosted by ABC with Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., September 10, 2024. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harris hit pain point after pain point: Trump’s bankruptcies, the disdain of generals who had served with him, the boredom and early exits of crowds at his shrinking rallies. Every hit was followed by an ouch. Trump’s counterpunches flailed and missed. Harris met them with smiling mockery and cool amusement. The debate was often a battle of eyelids: Harris’s opened wide, Trump’s squinting and tightening.
Harris’s debate prep seemed to have concentrated on psychology as much as on policy. She drove Trump and trapped him and baited him—and it worked every time.
Trump exited the stage leaving uncertain voters still uncertain about whether or not he’d sign a national abortion ban. He left them certain that he did not want Ukraine to win its war of self-defense. He accused Harris of hating Israel but then never bothered to say any words of his own in support of the Jewish state’s war of self-defense against Hamas terrorism. In his confusion and reactiveness, he seemed to have forgotten any debate strategy he might have had.
Something every woman watching the debate probably noticed: Trump could not bring himself to say the name of the serving vice president, his opponent for the presidency. For him, Harris was just a pronoun: a nameless, identity-less “she,” “her,” “you.” It’s said that narcissists cope with ego injury by refusing to acknowledge the existence of the person who inflicted the hurt. If so, that might explain Trump’s behavior. Harris bruised his feelings, and Trump reacted by shutting his eyes and pretending that Harris had no existence of her own independent of President Joe Biden, whose name Trump was somehow able to speak.
Hemmed, harried, and humiliated, Trump lost his footing and his grip. He never got around to making an affirmative case for himself. If any viewer was nostalgic for the early Trump economy before its collapse in his final year in office, that viewer must have been disappointed. If a viewer wanted a conservative policy message, any conservative policy message, that viewer must have been disappointed. When asked whether he had yet developed a health-care plan after a decade in politics, Trump could reply only that he had “concepts of a plan.”
Almost from the start, Harris was in control. She had better moments and worse ones, but she was human where Trump was feral. She had warm words for political opponents such as John McCain and Dick Cheney; Trump had warm words for nobody other than Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian strongman whom Trump praised for praising Trump. It was an all-points beatdown, and no less a beating because Trump inflicted so much of it on himself.
Frum has come a long way since the GW Bush days. And face it; the guy can really write.
Even Republicans admit that Harris won the debate.
HuffPost: ‘Trump Had A Bad Night’: Conservative Pundits Declare Kamala Harris Winner Of Debate.
Conservative pundits acknowledged on Tuesday that Vice President Kamala Harris got the better of former President Donald Trump in Tuesday’s presidential debate in Philadelphia, citing her success in getting under his skin.
“Let’s make no mistake. Trump had a bad night,” Fox News host Brit Hume said. “We just heard so many of the old grievances that we all know aren’t winners politically.”
“She was exquisitely well-prepared, she laid traps, and he chased every rabbit down every hole,” added former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), who often appears as a commentator on ABC News.
“Whoever prepared Donald Trump should be fired. He was not good tonight at all,” Christie said.
Trump lost his cool early in the debate, and never recovered.
Harris baited Trump by bringing up the attendance at his campaign events, saying people leave his rallies early out of boredom and exhaustion. She also got under Trump’s skin by bringing up his calls for the execution of the Central Park Five, the teens who were later exonerated in the 1989 rape of a jogger, calling him a weak person who is mocked by world leaders and questioning his mental acuity.
“We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible in the history of politics,” Trump shot back at one point, veering off his message on immigration.
Trump also got into trouble by again denying he lost the 2020 presidential election despite only days earlier acknowledging he lost “by a whisker.” But the most bizarre moment of the night may have been Trump bringing up false reports of migrants eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio, which Republicans have seized on as a reason to crack down on migration at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Hill: House Republicans bemoan Trump debate performance: ‘Not good.’
House Republicans are bemoaning former President Trump’s performance in the first — and potentially only — debate against Vice President Harris, acknowledging that the Democratic nominee successfully got under her GOP opponent’s skin.
Several times throughout the more than 90-minute debate in Philadelphia, Harris appeared to try to bait Trump with attacks on matters that hit close to home — the size of his rallies, the magnitude of his family fortune, world leaders “laughing” at him — in an effort to thwart his composed posture. Some House Republicans say she succeeded.
“I’m just sad,” one House Republican who is supportive of Trump told The Hill. “She knew exactly where to cut to get under his skin. Just overall disappointing that he isn’t being more composed like the first debate.”
“The road just got very narrow,” they added. “This is not good.”
A second House Republican, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic, said “many” in the GOP conference were “disappointed” that Trump could not stay on message throughout the debate.
“She talks to us like toddlers but is doing a good job provoking him. He [is] right on policy but can’t keep to a message,” the lawmaker said. “Many are disappointed he couldn’t stay focused or land a punch. Not sure much changes but it wasn’t a good performance.”
“Lots of missed opportunities so far,” a third House Republican told The Hill in a text message during the debate. “It’s not devastating – but it’s not good.”
The final insult for Trump came after the debate, when Taylor Swift announced she will vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz for president and vice president. The Guardian: Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris for president in post signed ‘childless cat lady.’
Taylor Swift has endorsed Kamala Harris for president, in a post on Instagram published minutes after the US presidential debate, saying the Democratic candidate would be the “warrior” to fight for the rights and causes she believes in.
“As a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything I can,” Swift wrote on Instagram to her 283 million followers late on Tuesday, adding: “I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 presidential election”.
“I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.”
In her statement, Swift encouraged her fans to register to vote….
Swift said she had watched the US presidential debate between Harris and Trump, and urged her fans to do their research on “the stances these candidates take on the topics that matter to you the most”.
She signed off “Childless cat lady,” a reference to comments made by Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance. The picture that appeared with the post was of Swift with her cat Benjamin Button, one of three she owns.
I’m going to end there, but I have a couple more articles that I’ll share in the comments. If you didn’t watch the debate, You can read the transcript at ABC News and/or watch the full debate on YouTube.
Have a great day!!
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: September 7, 2024 Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, cat art, caturday, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris 2024 | Tags: Dick Cheney, E. Jean Carroll, Economic Club of New York, fascism, Jeff Jarvis, Liz Cheney, media criticism, sexual abuse, tariffs 4 CommentsHappy Caturday!!
By Tetsuhiro Wakabashi
Yesterday we got some earth-shaking news: Dick Cheney endorsed Kamala Harris for president. His daughter Liz had announced her endorsement a couple of days ago. Of course neither Cheney is announcing agreement with Harris’s policies, but they both see the danger that another Trump term would pose for our country and for democracy here and around the world. With just two months to go before the 2024 election, we the people are building a coalition of people with differing political views who will act together to save us from the forces of fascism.
AP: Former Vice President Dick Cheney says he will vote for Kamala Harris.
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Former Vice President Dick Cheney, a lifelong Republican, will vote for Kamala Harris for president, he announced Friday.
Liz Cheney, who herself endorsed Harris on Wednesday, first announced her father’s endorsement when asked by Mark Leibovich of The Atlantic magazine during an onstage interview at The Texas Tribune Festival in Austin.
“Wow,” Leibovich replied as the audience cheered.
Like his daughter, Dick Cheney has been an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump, notably during Liz Cheney’s ill-fated reelection campaign in 2022.
Dick Cheney put out a statement Friday confirming his endorsement, which read almost entirely as opposition to Trump rather than support of Harris.
“He can never be trusted with power again,” the statement said. “As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.” [….]
Jen O’Malley Dillon, Harris’ campaign chair, released a statement saying, “The Vice President is proud to have the support of Vice President Cheney, and deeply respects his courage to put country over party.”
A bit more from Newsweek: Dick Cheney Reveals His Reason for Endorsing Kamala Harris Over Donald Trump.
Former Vice President and influential Republican Dick Cheney released a statement announcing his endorsement of Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris for President. Speaking out against the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, Cheney said that he can “never be trusted with power again.”
“In our nation’s 248 year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney, 83, said in the statement shared on Sept. 6. “He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him,” he continued, referencing the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
Cheney, who served as Vice President under President George W. Bush between 2001 and 2009 went on to say that American citizens have a “duty” to prioritize the nation over partisan politics.
Cheney’s endorsement marks the most high profile Republican politician to announce that they will vote for Harris over Republican nominee Trump, further spotlighting other former establishment Republicans who have yet to come out to endorse Trump during this run for the presidency—many of whom have been critical of Trump in the past—including his own former Vice President Mike Pence, former President George W. Bush, and former Republican nominee for President Mitt Romney.
Miroco Machiko, 1981-present
Liz Cheney also announced that she will vote for Democrat Colin Allred, who is challenging Ted Cruz for the Senate.
The Hill: Liz Cheney will back Allred in Texas Senate race.
Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said she would be backing Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas) in the Texas Senate race, endorsing the House member over the Republican incumbent, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
“I want to say specifically, though, here in Texas, you guys do have a tremendous, serious candidate running for the United States Senate,” Cheney said during her Friday appearance at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, stopping as she was cut off by a raucous applause.
“Oh, well, it’s not Ted Cruz, but Colin Allred is somebody I served with in the House, and somebody who really, when you think about the kind of leaders our country needs, and going to this point about, you know, you might not agree on every policy position, but we need people who are going to serve in good faith,” she said.
“We need people who are honorable public servants and in this race that is Colin Allred so I’ll be working on his behalf.”
Allred, who is waging an uphill run to unseat the third-term Cruz, thanked Cheney shortly after on social media, saying the former No. 3 leader of the House Republican Conference is a “patriot who continuously puts country over party because she believes in the importance of protecting our democracy.
“I am so honored to have her support. In the Senate, I will work across party lines to get things done for Texas,” Allred said.
Naturally, the mainstream media is not treating this news with the seriousness it deserves. So far the NYT is AWOL.
Journalist, professor and media critic Jeff Jarvis at his blog Buzz Machine: The unprecedented grand coalition.
As Nicolle Wallace exclaimed on her show Friday, Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders have all gathered together around a cause. That cause is democracy and its standard bearer is Kamala Harris.
This is a momentous time in the United States, unprecedented at least in this century and likely since long before the Civil War. It is the biggest story in my journalism career. The question is whether our national media will understand this moment — or whether they will continue to insist on their trope of a divided America.
By Tetsuhiro Wakabayashi
It is not a divided America. Patriots are gathering together and putting past differences aside to forestall a next civil war, to support and defend the Constitution. The movement that matters is not Trump’s and the Republicans’ fascist insurrection, which is the one that gets attention in news media. The movement that matters now is this one: the movement for democracy.
In recent days, in The Times, Nick Kristof scolded liberals, telling us why we should not demean Trump voters. A few days later in The Washington Post, Matt Bai rebutted, saying he understands Trump voters but asking why he should give them empathy. I say both framings are wrong, for each centers Trump and his fascists.
A much more profound phenomenon is growing — not on the “other side” of the fascists, but instead at the new and true core of American politics and governance. The question is not whether we should demean or understand or empathize with fascists. What we should be concentrating on instead is welcoming those who will stand for democracy in a larger movement.
Jarvis pleads with the both-sides-ing political press:
For God’s sake, political reporters, stop framing these two movements — one to tear down democracy, one to build it up — as equivalent sides across your imaginary continental divide. Stop your false balance. Stop washing the insanity of the fascist party’s leader — and the insanity of his followers for following him. Stop normalizing his and their patently abnormal and abhorrent behavior. Stop trying to predict (in this unprecedented moment, all your “models” and experience and presumptions are worthless). Stop hoping for bad news. Stop making the story about yourself — yes, I am looking at you, A.G. Sulzberger — and please try to understand the threats to democracy, liberty, and life from the perspectives of those who do not share the power and privilege of your platforms. Stop ignoring the rising chorus of critics who are trying to make you and your journalism better — to save journalism from your lapses of judgment. Stop your amnesia about what Trump and company have already shown us to be. Stop making up new white-gloved euphemisms for racism, misogyny, lies, insurgency, corruption, hatred, and grift — call these things what they are, otherwise you are not doing journalism, not informing and explaining reality to your publics.
Yesterday, Trump made a fool of himself again–what else is new? He attended a court hearing on his effort to appeal the jury verdict in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case. Afterward he gave a “press conference” in which he for some strange reason described in detail some of the accusations against him by various women. Trump took no questions as this purported “press conference.”
The Hill: Appeals court weighs Trump’s bid to toss E. Jean Carroll sexual abuse verdict.
Former President Trump appeared before a federal appeals court Friday where his attorney argued that he should get a new trial in writer E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit accusing him of sexual abuse and defamation that ended in a multimillion-dollar jury verdict.
Cat and butterfly Woodblock print by Ohara Koson
The argument delved into whether Trump’s trial judge erred by allowing the jury to hear from two other women who accused the former president of sexual assault and the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump can be heard bragging about groping women without their permission.
“It’s very hard to overturn a jury verdict based on evidentiary rulings,” noted Circuit Judge Denny Chin.
The three-judge panel on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, all appointed by Democratic presidents, heard arguments for less than a half-hour, hewing closely to the allotted argument time….
Trump himself attended Friday’s proceeding after not attending any of the trial and later blaming his lawyers for the loss….
Much of the argument revolved around the former president’s claim that his trial judge erred in allowing the jury to hear from two women who accused Trump of sexual assault on a 1979 airplane flight and during a magazine interview in 2005.
Read more about the hearing at the link.
The Washington Post: Trump rants, resurfaces sexual assault allegations for 49 unfocused minutes.
Donald Trump railed against women who have accused him of sexual assault. He baselessly blamed the Biden-Harris administration for his legal difficulties. He appeared to criticize the physical appearances of some of his accusers. “She would not have been the chosen one,” he said of one, later adding that he would “not want to be” involved with another accuser, even as he acknowledged his advisers urged him not to make such a comment.
And those were only some of the ways he veered away from topics voters have said they care most about in what his campaign billed as a “press conference” Friday, with the first ballots to be cast soon in the presidential election. Trump took no questions from the news media.
It was yet another striking strategic choice by the former president, who is in a toss-up race with Vice President Kamala Harris in the polls and facing what could be a historic gender gap in November as he struggles to appeal to women voters. After attending oral arguments Friday morning in his appeal of the verdict that found him liable for sexually abusing advice writer E. Jean Carroll decades ago, he went before the cameras and repeatedly impugned his accusers. He dismissed a string of allegations as entirely meritless as he leaned into his core message that he is a victim of political persecution.
In a roughly 49-minute appearance that sometimes verged into a stream-of-consciousness rant that was hard to follow, Trump also reminisced about his early career as a real estate mogul and reality television star. (“I was,” he said, “a celebrity for a long time.”) He lamented his two impeachments, calling them “impeachment hoax number one, impeachment hoax number two.” And he mentioned Monica Lewinsky, the former White House intern who had an affair with President Bill Clinton, at least three times.
“This is the weaponization of justice at a level that nobody’s ever seen in this country before,” Trump said, blaming the Biden-Harris administration’s Justice Department for his state and federal legal entanglements, even though there is no evidence that the White House has sought to influence any of Trump’s criminal cases. “You see it in Third World countries. You see it in banana republics, but you don’t see it in the United States of America. And it’s a very sad thing. And I think I’m doing a great service by having gone through it.”
“She would not have been the chosen one.” In other words, she was not attractive enough for him to force his sexual attentions on.
Analysis by Aaron Blake at The Washington Post: Trump’s sudden move to re-litigate sexual abuse claims goes off the rails.
Former president Donald Trump is near a crucial juncture of the 2024 campaign. Mail ballots are due to go out soon, his only scheduled debate with Vice President Kamala Harris is happening in four days and Trump is trying to reverse the momentum Harris has generated in her six-plus weeks as a presidential candidate.
By Kanoko Takeuchi
With that as the backdrop, Trump decided to spend nearly an hour Friday rehashing old grievances, offering a laundry list of false and debunked claims, criticizing his lawyers and going into great and seemingly ill-advised detail about the sexual assault allegations and verdicts against him.
Trump even acknowledged he was advised not to say some of what he said, either because it raised the possibility of yet more legal jeopardy or because it was obviously counterproductive politically.
Trump’s ability to go off-message and rant in ways that make his advisers — and, potentially, voters — squirm is unmatched. But even against that backdrop, this was on another level.
The impetus for the media event at Trump Tower was Trump’s appeal of the E. Jean Carroll sexual assault and defamation civil verdict, which was argued Friday morning. (This is the $5 million verdict against Trump — compared to the later $83.3 million case in another Carroll defamation suit.)
Some examples from Trump’s insane rant:
Trump began by repeating many claims he has made before, including that he doesn’t know Carroll and never met her, despite a photo showing the two of them meeting at one point. He said she made up the story of his assaulting her. The claims closely resembled the ones that were found to be defamatory in both of his cases. Carroll could seemingly sue again, an option her lawyer has reserved in the past when Trump kept saying such things. Her lawyer raised the prospect again Friday.
At one point, he suggested that the 1987 photo of him and Carroll showing them, in fact, meeting “could have been AI-generated.” (This is the photo in which Trump in a deposition mistook Carroll for his ex-wife Marla Maples.) This is as nonsensical as Trump’s claim that recent images of Harris’s crowd size were faked. The photo first circulated in 2019, when Carroll brought her allegations forward.
At another point, Trump echoed his previous claims about another woman who accused him of sexual misconduct, suggesting that she wouldn’t have been desirable enough — a theme he returned to repeatedly throughout the appearance.
“I know you’re going to say it’s a terrible thing to say, but it couldn’t have happened,” Trump said of the other woman, Jessica Leeds, before adding that “she would not have been the chosen one. She would not have been the chosen one.”
The “chosen one” being the one he would choose to assault? Even the most generous interpretation of his bizarre comment makes it hard to conclude otherwise.
Trump has previously suggested he wasn’t attracted to the women who have accused him. But here he was casting assaulting women as something of a selection process.
Trump dwelled on that point, too, despite indicating that a lawyer had told him, “Please don’t say that I would not want to be involved with her.” He said at another point that his “people” told him not to say that, before saying it: “I would not want to be involved with her.”
There’s much more at the WaPo link.
By Tetsuhiro Wakabayashi
Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about Trump’s embarrassing appearance at the Economic Club of New York and his bizarre response to a question about child care costs. Becky Quick of CNBC was present at the meeting. Josh Fiallo at The Daily Beast: CNBC Anchor: I Can’t Understand Trump’s ‘Crazy’ New Economic Plans.
Trump used a speech to the New York Economic Forum on Thursday to set out his fiscal plans, which included claiming that he would pay for child care by raising tariffs on imports—but left many who saw it confused and unable to explain it.
Among them were the co-anchor of CNBC’s Squawk Box Becky Quick, who was on stage watching while Trump spoke for half an hour.
On Friday morning, she said she couldn’t make any sense of his plans for tariffs.
“The idea you are going to raise a lot of money through tariffs and not have it be inflationary does not make a lot of sense to me,” Quick said on Friday morning’s Squawk Box.
Quick added, “You are either changing behavior or raising money. If you are raising money from it, it is inherently inflationary. Your consumers are not getting low prices.”
Quick’s co-host, Joe Kernen—named in court papers as one of the people on Trump’s contact list when he was in the White House—was equally perplexed at how Trump planned to hike tariffs on foreign goods without sending inflation into overdrive. He called Trump’s plan a “bad, populist idea.”
Trump’s incoherent rant Thursday on tariffs came after—of all things—he was asked what sort of legislation he’d support to make child care affordable.
“If you win in November,” a nonprofit founder asked, “can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable, and, if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?”
Trump suggested that he’d bring down prices for parents by subsidizing it with money made from higher tariffs on countries like China, but offered no explanation on how that would actually work. His answer went on for two minutes and totaled 360 words, but was mocked by critics as an “absolute word salad.” [….]
I wish someone in the media would follow Lawrence O’Donnell’s suggestion to ask Trump to explain what a tariff is. He describes it as a “tax” on foreign countries, and either doesn’t understand or is lying about the fact that tariffs are simply added to price Americans pay for foreign goods and are obviously inflationary.
One more story before I wrap this up. We haven’t heard much about Ron DeSantis since failed miserably in the Republican primaries. But he is still down in Florida pushing his fascist agenda.
Tampa Bay Times: DeSantis’ election police questioned people who signed abortion petitions.
Isaac Menasche remembers being at the Cape Coral farmer’s market last year when someone asked him if he’d sign a petition to get Florida’s abortion amendment on the ballot.
He said yes — and he told a law enforcement officer as much when one showed up at the door of his Lee County home earlier this week.
Cat in Bamboo, Hiroshima, by Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani
Menasche said he was surprised when the plainclothes officer twice asked if it was really Menasche who had signed the petition. The officer said he was looking into potential petition fraud.
Though the officer was professional and courteous, Menasche, who has had little interaction with police in his life, said the encounter left him shaken.
“I’m not a person who is going out there protesting for abortion,” Menasche said. “I just felt strongly and I took the opportunity when the person asked me, to say yeah, I’ll sign that petition.”
The officer’s visit appears to be part of a broad — and unusual — effort by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to inspect thousands of already verified and validated petitions for Amendment 4 in the final two months before Election Day. The amendment would overturnFlorida’s six-week abortion ban by proposing to protectabortion access in Florida until viability.
Since last week, DeSantis’ secretary of state has ordered elections supervisors in at leastfour counties to send to Tallahassee at least36,000 petition forms already deemed to have been signed by real people. Since the Times first reported on this effort, Alachua and Broward counties have confirmed they also received requests from the state.
One 16-year supervisor said the request was unprecedented. The state did not ask for rejected petitions, which have been the basis for past fraud cases….
Menasche later posted on Facebook that it was “obvious to me that a significant effort was exerted to determine if indeed I had signed the petition.” He told the Times that the officer who showed up at his door had a copy of Menasche’s driver’s license and other documents related to him.Menasche said he does not recall which agency the officer was with.
I’m so glad I live in a blue state.
That’s all I have for you today. Have a nice weekend!
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: August 24, 2024 Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, cat art, caturday, Donald Trump, Kamala Harris 2024 | Tags: Democratic National Convention 2024, Greg Palast, Kurt Andersen, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tim Walz 6 CommentsHappy Caturday!!
Piere Auguste Renoir, Sleeping girl with a cat, 1880
There’s not a lot happening in the news today, so I’m just going to give you some odds and ends, some some serious some humorous, some creepy or crazy.
First up, a few follow-ups to the exciting and successful Democratic National Convention.
Al Weaver at The Hill: Democratic convention energy, Harris hot streak making Republicans nervous.
The energy emerging from the Democratic National Convention and Vice President Harris’s hot streak is making Republicans increasingly nervous.
Thursday marked the culmination of what was unthinkable just a month ago: A coronation for a new party leader who Democrats are ardently behind.
Former President Trump and Republicans, meanwhile, are grappling with the whiplash of going from the predictions of a landslide just a few short weeks ago to surveys showing Harris has shaken up races up and down the ballot and closed the gap with Trump.
“In some of the swing states … people are becoming increasingly concerned that the momentum is moving in the wrong direction,” said one Senate Republican, adding that the nervousness among Republicans is “real” at this stage.
Just a month ago, Republicans were riding higher than at any point of the campaign after President Biden’s disastrous performance in a debate sent Democrats into a tailspin. Trump accepted the GOP nomination in Milwaukee, where lawmakers and delegates were bullish that the former president would not only return to the White House, but do so in a convincing manner — and polling backed them up.
Now that thinking is firmly out the door.
Democrats’ four-day gathering in Chicago prompted comparisons to the energy around former President Obama’s landmark 2008 presidential bid. It could also hand Harris another slight polling bump as the calendar turns to September after she closed out the convention with a fiery speech heavy on biography and history that also took the fight to Trump.
“They are beginning to realize this is a wrestling match. There’s not going to be any knockout punch and they’ve got to get the best grip they can find, and it’s all state specific,” the Senate Republican continued.
Greg Sargent at The New Republic: Kamala’s Harsh Takedown of Trump Points the Way to a Post-MAGA America.
Kamala Harris just showed us the promise of a post-MAGA future. Now it’s up to the voters to decide to take us there.
In her rousing convention speech on Thursday, Harris offered many olive branches to right-leaning independents and Republican voters. She vowed toughness on immigration and crime. She promised to transcend the nation’s divisions. She vowed to govern for all Americans and transcend faction or party. She made numerous appeals to voters with decidedly right-leaning values.
But, in mulling what Harris means by all this, it’s crucial to appreciate what she did not do. Harris offered all this outreach to voters outside the core Democratic coalition without making serious concessions to the ideological preoccupations we associate with MAGA-style right-wing populism. There was no real accommodation with what might be called The World According to MAGA.
Instead, Harris treated Trumpism and the MAGA movement as forces that must be decisively repudiated—and unequivocally left behind.
How could Harris appeal extensively to voters on the other side—which by definition includes tens of millions of people who voted for Donald Trump—while insisting on a firm national renunciation of many MAGA voters’ apparent aspirations and beliefs? This tension, I think, helps explain why her appeals came across as so richly complex.
Harris extensively reassured swing voters on many fronts. For those struggling economically, she offered populist, broadly appealing policies to curb health care and housing costs. To those preoccupied with crime and the border, Harris recounted her history as a tough prosecutor and vowed stringent border security. Harris delivered extensive paeans to middle-class struggles and values like family, community, homeownership, and faith. As William Kristol notes, she even strongly endorsed American exceptionalism.
Yet Harris was also absolutely unsparing in her takedown of Trump. And it’s important to appreciate this criticism for what it really was. In numerous ways, Harris portrayed the broad MAGA worldview as something in need of comprehensive repudiation.
It’s a long piece. You’ll need to head over to TNR to read the rest of Sargent’s argument.
Black and White Cat II, by Muriel Mougeolle
Could the tide be turning on Republicans’ efforts to control what children read and think?
Juan Perez Jr. and Andrew Atterbury at Politico: Are Republicans losing the culture wars?
Republicans are confronting a decisive moment in the battle over public education: proving they can still win a culture war.
School board candidates backed by Moms for Liberty, a conservative vanguard whose members popularized restrictions on classroom library books, are losing elections in Florida and some swing states. Republican leaders who rallied against critical race theory and LGBTQ+ issues recently faced recalls in red pockets of California.
And in the presidential race, Democrats are playing offense. This week’s party convention in Chicago featured liberals attacking conservative candidates as “weird” and denouncing so-called book bans.
Former President Donald Trump is expected to lean into school politics next week at a Moms for Liberty summit, making the case that culture war issues still resonate with core supporters. Republicans show no signs of changing their strategy. But the party faces new challenges from a Democratic agenda — embodied by vice presidential nominee Tim Walz — that is redirecting the divisive education issues promoted by conservatives during the pandemic into a vehicle for highlighting free school lunches and affordable child care.
“We’re in the middle of a cultural revolution in America, and one of the biggest battlegrounds is the schools,” Moms For Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice said in an interview. “We didn’t start this fire, but we’re going to put it out.”
Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said there is “a lot of mutual consensus” between the Republican nominee’s beliefs on education “and what Moms for Liberty stands for.”
But several Democratic National Committee speakers found ways to leverage social issues, including Walz, a former teacher who used them to pivot to a law he signed as Minnesota governor providing free school meals to all students.
“We made sure that every kid in our state gets breakfast and lunch every day,” Walz said Wednesday at the DNC. “So while other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing hunger from ours.”
Read the rest at Politico.
Here’s the latest on Trump’s reaction to the changed political landscape.
The Guardian: Is Trump OK? Unhinged reaction to rise of Harris worries supporters.
Even some of Donald Trump’s supporters are now asking the question that was the undoing of Joe Biden: is the former president fit for office?
But while Biden’s run for re-election was largely sunk by a single disastrous televised debate before a national audience, Trump is ramping up doubts with each chaotic, disjointed speech as he campaigns around the country.
While rambling discourse and outrageously disprovable claims, interspersed with spite and vitriol, may seem nothing new to many of Trump’s supporters and critics alike, the former president appears to have been driven to new depths by suddenly finding himself running against Kamala Harris a month ago.
Trump has only grown more infuriated as his poll lead over Biden evaporated, with Harris opening up a clear, if narrow, lead. The vice-president’s tactic of mocking Trump more than arguing with him appears to have incensed him further.
Since Harris assumed the mantle of the presumptive Democratic candidate, Trump has claimed to be better-looking than the vice-president, questioned whether she is really Black and attacked her laugh as that of “a lunatic”.
The former president has also characterised Harris as both a communist and a fascist, and described Harris as “dumb” but then told CBS he didn’t mean it as an insult because it was “just a fact”.
“I don’t think she’s a very bright person. I do feel that. I mean, I think that’s right. I think I am a very bright person, and a lot of people say that,” he said.
This is a long article, so here’s a bit more:
Trump seems particularly obsessed with the size of the crowds at Harris’s rallies, drawing derision for falsely claiming she used artificial intelligence to fake the turnout.
When he’s not worried about size, Trump is vexed by Harris’s looks. After the vice-president appeared on the cover of Time magazine, Trump compared her appearance to Sophia Loren and his wife, Melania, before drawing a comparison with his own features.
By Pierre Bonnard
“I’m a better-looking person than Kamala,” he declared to an audience of thousands who were more amused than convinced….
At a rally in Pennsylvania a week ago, Trump went as far as rambling on about rambling.
“I don’t ramble. I’m a really smart guy, you know, really smart. I don’t ramble. But the other day, anytime I hit too hard, they say he was rambling, rambling,” he told the crowd.
Even some of Trump’s most loyal fans were disturbed by that performance. Joan Long travelled from New York with her husband, Billy, to see the former president speak.
“I honestly can’t say I know why he starts talking about how to pronounce names. What does that have to do with the election?” she said. “And I wish he would stop talking about Kamala’s looks.”
There’s quite a bit more in this vein at the Guardian link. This is the kind of insanity from Trump that the NYT and WaPo ignore or try to normalize.
The supposedly big news yesterday was that Bobby Kennedy Jr. suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump at a rally in Arizona.
John Hendrickson at The Atlantic: Why RFK Jr. Endorsed Trump.
In the spring of 2023, not long after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launched his chaotic presidential campaign, I asked him a straightforward question. What do you see as more harmful to America: another term of Joe Biden, or Donald Trump returning to power? “I can’t answer that,” Kennedy replied.
This morning, Kennedy finally stopped being cagey. He announced that he was suspending his campaign and throwing his support to Trump. During a rambling, nearly hour-long speech at the Renaissance Hotel in downtown Phoenix, Kennedy shared that the two had been talking for more than a month, and that he had visited the former president at Mar-a-Lago. “In a series of long, intense discussions, I was surprised to discover that we are aligned on many key issues,” Kennedy said. He correctly noted that his announcement would cause “difficulty” for his family members. “Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and family hold most dear,” five Kennedys said in a statement this afternoon. “It is a sad ending to a sad story.”
Kennedy’s evolution from member of a Democratic dynasty to a soldier in the anti-democratic MAGA movement will no doubt confuse casual observers. Trump once called Kennedy the “dumbest member” of his famous family, and Kennedy once suggested that Trump was a sociopath. The main reason for Kennedy’s conversion may be pure desperation. This summer, Kennedy made overtures to both major-party candidates; only Trump reciprocated. But the Trump-Kennedy pairing makes a certain kind of sense. To be sure, Kennedy doesn’t share Trump’s anti-immigrant sentiment, nor does he lean on white-identity politics or nationalism. Instead, it’s Kennedy’s conspiratorial, anti-establishment, burn-it-down ethos that makes him fit into the MAGA universe….
As Kennedy lashed out against the Democratic Party this afternoon, he sounded like a jilted lover searching for answers. He noted that he had attended his first Democratic National Convention at the age of 6, in 1960. And he attempted to draw a contrast between the party of his father and uncle, and today’s “shadowy DNC operatives” who staged “a palace coup” against Joe Biden. The Democratic establishment, he claimed, had weaponized government agencies against him and his campaign. He accused Biden of colluding with media companies to “censor” him and bemoaned his relative lack of cable-news interviews. He also sounded daft. “In an honest system, I believe that I would have won the election,” Kennedy said.
Three key factors forced Kennedy’s withdrawal. The first and most obvious was money. Despite tapping Nicole Shanahan, the wealthy Silicon Valley businesswoman, to be his running mate, Kennedy’s fundraising had recently dried up. Recent FEC filings showed that his campaign had just $3.9 million on hand at the end of July. The second factor was ballot access. Nick Brana, the campaign’s ballot-access director, told me that, as of today, the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket was certified in only 22 states. Kennedy was disqualified from the New York ballot after a recent court case, making the goal of all 50 states a virtual impossibility. The third factor was perhaps the most obvious: His core proposition had become moot once Biden dropped out.
All along, Kennedy’s pitch had relied on the fact that a sizable chunk of voters didn’t want a Biden-Trump rematch. But after Harris took Biden’s place as the nominee, she began to win back some of the disaffected Democrats, independents, and undecideds who had “parked” their support in the Kennedy column. Kennedy’s polling average had fallen to about 5 percent, from a 2024 high of about 10 percent.
Intellectual cat, Olena Kamenetska-Ostapchuk
There’s been some suggestion that Trump may have promised Kennedy a job in Trump’s prospective administration in return for Kenedy’s support. That would be a quid pro quo, and would be illegal. Of course Trump couldn’t care less. Kennedy also tried to strike a bargain with the Harris campaign, but they refused to meet with him. Harris, unlike Trump, obviously knows that would be illegal.
and , CNN: RFK Jr. reached out to Harris campaign about administration role in exchange for endorsement.
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign reached out to Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign to arrange a meeting about a possible role in her administration if he drops out of the race and endorses her, a Kennedy campaign official and a Democratic official told CNN.
The approach from Kennedy’s team occurred last week, and no meeting between the two candidates materialized, the Kennedy campaign official told CNN.
The effort to meet comes weeks after Kennedy and former President Donald Trump met in person during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where the two discussed a possible role for Kennedy in a potential Trump administration in exchange for an endorsement.
Kennedy campaign staff also attempted to reach out to intermediaries for Ron Klain, former White House chief of staff for President Joe Biden, but those efforts were fruitless, the Kennedy campaign official said.
A couple more RFK Jr. stories:
Kurt Andersen: RFK Jr. Was My Drug Dealer.
Donald Trump and Bobby Kennedy—as I’ve referred to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. since we met freshman year at Harvard—have always had many features in common as well. Both are entitled playboy sons of northeastern wealth; both (in Michelle Obama’s words) were “afforded the grace of failing forward” as misbehaving, underachieving adolescents admitted to Ivy League colleges thanks to “the affirmative action of generational wealth”; both were reckless lifelong adolescents, both attention-craving philanderers and liars, both jerks. And Kennedy’s hour-long speech today was nearly as meandering and filled with lies as any average hour of Trump.
On the subject of reckless-adolescent entitlement, I’ve got one Bobby Kennedy anecdote to tell. But it’s actually relevant to his endorsement of Donald Trump for president and his apparent expectation of joining a second Trump administration….
By Olga Sevorova
My Bobby Kennedy story involves pharmaceuticals—not the legal, lifesaving kind, such as the vaccines he’s made a career of lying about, but the recreational kind….
As a teenager in Nebraska, I’d smoked cannabis and dropped acid before I got to Harvard in 1972. Sometime during my freshman year, I tried cocaine, enjoyed it, and later decided to procure a gram for myself. A friend told me about a kid in our class who was selling coke.
The dealer was Bobby Kennedy. I’d never met him. I got in touch; he said sure, come over to his room in Hurlbut, his dorm, where I’d never been, a five-minute walk. His roommate, whom I knew, was the future journalist Peter Kaplan—with whom I, like Kennedy, remained friends for the rest of his life. He left as I arrived. I wondered whether he always did that when Bobby had customers.
“Hi. Bobby,” Kennedy introduced himself. Another kid, tall, lanky, and handsome, was in the room. “This is my brother Joe.” That is, Joseph P. Kennedy II, two years older, the future six-term Massachusetts congressman….
He poured out a line for me to sample, and handed me an inch-and-a-half length of plastic drinking straw. I snorted. We chatted for a minute. I paid him, I believe, $40 in cash. It was a lot of money, the equivalent of $300 today. But cocaine bought from a Kennedy accompanied by a Kennedy brother—the moment of glamour seemed worth it.
As soon as he got back to his dorm room, Anderson got a call from RFK:
“Hello?”
“It’s Bobby.”
“Hi.”
“You took my straw!”
I realized that I had indeed, and had thought nothing of it. Because … it was a crummy piece of plastic straw. But Bobby was pissed.
“There are crystals inside it, man, growing. You took it.”
Growing? The residue of powdered cocaine mixed with mucus formed crystals over time? What did I know. It reminded me of some science-fair project.
“So … you want the straw back?”
“Yeah, man.”
I walked it back to his room. He didn’t smile or say thanks. It was the last time I ever bought coke from anyone.A famous rich boy selling a hard drug that could’ve gotten him—or, more precisely, someone who wasn’t him—a years-long prison sentence. His almost fetishistic obsession with a bit of plastic trash. His greedy little burst of anger cloaked in righteousness. His faith that he was cultivating precious cocaine crystals. In retrospect, it has seemed to me a tiny illustration of the child as the father of the man he became: fantastical pseudoscientific crusader, middle-aged preppy dick who takes selfies with barbecued dogs and plays pranks with roadkill bear cubs he didn’t have time to eat.
Thomas is Sleeping, by Grazyna Smalej
One more crazy RFK, Jr. story:
Greg Palast at his website Greg Palast Investigative Journalism: I was on the phone with RFK Jr.
When he lost his mind.
This is painful. This is horrible and feels a bit like a betrayal. But I have no choice. Bobby Kennedy Jr. was my friend and co-author. We wrote stories together for Rolling Stone. Bobby introduced my New York Times bestseller and wrote a chapter for Billionaires and Ballot Bandits. And, with Jesse Jackson, we co-authored the Number 1 selling adult single issue comic book of all time, Steal Back Your Vote.
But then, Bobby lost his mind.
It was truly scary. In 2012, Bobby had arranged a press conference about the Deepwater Horizon explosion. Eleven oil rig workers were incinerated in the blow-out of a British Petroleum drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Palast investigations team discovered that, 17 months before that oil rig blew out in the Gulf, British Petroleum suffered an identical blow-out in the Caspian Sea. The oil company—with the connivance of then-Sec. of State Condoleeza Rice—covered it up.
It was a hell of a story, which I broadcast on prime time in Britain and Europe. I wrote a book about it, Vultures’ Picnic.
Here’s where Bobby comes in—and it gets weird. On the second anniversary of the blow-out, Bobby, a professor of environmental law, arranged for a major press conference to expose this story of BP’s blood-encrusted perfidy.
But then, Bobby cancelled the press conference, saying he heard the story had been told previously. Well, yes it had. You told it. Bobby, I was on the radio with you for an hour discussing the blow-out and its cover-up. Bobby had a national radio/TV show, Ring of Fire. He reviewed my book about the story. And strangest of all, Bobby was on my Democracy Now! Report about the blow-out. That Bobby had forgotten all these things was frightening—as if Leonardo DiCaprio had forgotten he was in a film about the Titanic.
Our investigator Leni Badpenny was listening in and she began making frantic cut-off gestures, to end a call with him. End it now! “Something’s wrong with him, or he’s just a jerk. I don’t know. But something’s really wrong and you don’t want your reputation destroyed by standing next to him when it goes wrong in public. Promise me we will never work with him, never see him again. I think he’s dangerous. I really do.” [….]
This was not the first incident. Bobby was a strong guy in his late fifties talking like a 92-year-old in a nursing home trying to remember his first date.
Since then, we’ve found out that Bobby had a worm in his brain—a real, live physical critter that somehow got inside his skull. I’m not sure about the connection because I’m not a brain surgeon and I don’t speak worm.
You can read the rest at the link. It’s not paywalled.
That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?
Wednesday Reads
Posted: August 21, 2024 Filed under: 2024 DNC, 2024 presidential Campaign, Kamala Harris 2024 | Tags: Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Doug Emhoff, fund-raising, michelle obama, Milwaukee, Stephanie Grisham, Tim Walz, TV ratings 9 CommentsGood Morning!!
I’m on the third day of a some kind of stomach thing, so this post may be brief. I’ve been sleeping a lot, and last night I dozed off and slept through most of Doug Emhoff’s speech and all of Michelle and Barack Obama’s speeches. I’ll have to try and watch them later on. I did watch the ceremonial roll call of the states, and it was a lot of fun. The DNC played “walk up” songs and the state-by-state speeches were upbeat and enthusiastic.
NBC5 Chicago: DNC roll call playlist: Full list of each state’s ‘walk-up’ songs from night 2 of DNC.
Sure, there were big speeches from The Obamas, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders at the Democratic National Convention last night. But Tuesday at the DNC in Chicago felt more like a dance party than a buttoned-up political event.
DJ Cassidy strode on stage in a bright blue double-breasted suit and spun tunes for every state during the event’s ceremonial roll call, as they nominated Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to the Democratic presidential ticket. Minnesota got “1999” by native son Prince, Kansas got “Carry on Wayward Son” by, well, Kansas. “Born in the U.S.A.” by Bruce Springsteen played as New Jersey weighed in.
See the whole list at the link. Unlike the Trump campaign, the Democrats got permission from all of the featured artists. In contrast, the Trump campaign yesterday posted a video with Trump walking from his plane to “Freedom,” by Beyonce, who gave Kamala Harris exclusive permission to use that song.
CNN with takeaways from last night’s speakers:
Barack and Michelle Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, delivering back-to-back speeches that eviscerated Donald Trump and urged Americans to reject the Republican nominee once and for all.
The former first lady, in one of the most memorable speeches in convention history, called on Democrats to drop the “Goldilocks complex” and work hard to elect Vice President Kamala Harris.
“We cannot indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala, instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected,” she said.
Then, the former president — in a speech that evoked memories of his emergence into the American political consciousness and his own winning campaigns — said that the “vast majority of us do not want to live in a country that’s bitter and divided.”
“We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos. We have seen that movie before, and we all know that the sequel is usually worse,” Obama said.
Their speeches closed a night during which Democrats had sought to introduce Harris in more personal terms to Americans who are only now learning about the vice president, just a month after she ascended to the top of the party’s 2024 ticket.
Second gentleman Doug Emhoff told the story of their relationship and why his children call the vice president “Momala.” Maryland Senate candidate Angela Alsobrooks explained how Harris came to be someone she considered a friend and mentor.
CNN also summarized speeches by Republicans who now support Harris/Walz:
Throughout the night, the DNC featured former Republicans making the case for independents and Trump critics to vote for Harris.
One of the prime-time speaking slots went to Mayor John Giles of Mesa, Arizona, a self-declared lifelong Republican who said the Biden-Harris administration had delivered results for his conservative community.
“I have an urgent message for the majority of Americans who, like me, are in the political middle: John McCain’s Republican Party is gone, and we don’t owe a damn thing to what’s been left behind,” Giles said. “So let’s turn the page. Let’s put country first.”
Giles’ speech capped off a series of appearances Tuesday by Republicans, or people who’d left the party, rallying support for Harris….
Stephanie Grisham, a former Trump White House press secretary and chief of staff to former First Lady Melania Trump, described herself as a “true believer” who spent her holidays at Mar-a-Lago. But she resigned on January 6, 2021, after Trump failed to immediately move to stop his supporters from attacking the US Capitol.
Grisham used her remarks to condemn Trump’s behind closed doors, telling that audience that he mocks his supporters in private and has called them “basement dwellers.”
“He has no empathy, no morals and no fidelity to the truth,” she said.
The one sour note was Bernie Sanders, who apparently has no sense of humor and rarely if ever smiles. According to the BBC, he didn’t “feel the Bern” from the audience.
BBC: Obamas, dancing delegates and other takeaways from DNC day two.
During back-to-back speeches, Barack and Michelle Obama mixed gags with serious exhortations to Democrats to get out and vote in November – pointing out that Ms Harris was in a close race with Donald Trump.
Mr Obama characterised the Republican presidential candidate as being selfish and dangerous, quipping that he was obsessed with crowd sizes.
And Mrs Obama mocked Trump for his use of the term “black jobs” on the campaign trail. She suggested that Trump might himself be seeking one of those jobs – in a reference to her husband’s previous tenure of the White House.
By contrast, Ms Harris represented “hope”, Ms Obama said, echoing her husband’s campaign messaging from 2008.
On Bernie Sanders:
Bernie Sanders gave his own speech on Tuesday night – but the energy in the arena was described as “minimal” by the BBC’s North America correspondent, Anthony Zurcher. A murmur of people talking could be heard at the same time.
That is in contrast to the hero’s welcome that the veteran senator received in 2016, the year he challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. Then, his supporters streamed into the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.
Eight years later, Mr Sanders could still be witnessed railing against oligarchs and corporate interests, but the atmosphere was very different.
One explanation was that the building was filled with delegates who originally supported Joe Biden – rather than the Sanders faithful. But it could also signal that the senator has no clear successor to lead the Democratic progressive left.
The TV ratings for the first night of the DNC beat out the RNC. Deadline: Democratic National Convention Draws 20 Million On First Night, Surpassing RNC Viewership.
The first night of the Democratic National Convention averaged 20 million viewers across 13 networks, surpassing the audience for the initial day of the Republican National Convention, according to Nielsen.
The numbers are for the 10 p.m. ET to 12:30 a.m ET time frame, as the proceedings went way overtime, finishing with the address by President Joe Biden.
The DNC audience was greater than the first night of the party’s convention in 2020, when it drew 19.75 million viewers. But it was down significantly from 2016, when the DNC drew 25.95 million.
The first night of the DNC on Monday drew 15.32 million 55 and over, 3.51 million in the 35-54 demo and 851,000 aged 18-34, per Nielsen.
MSNBC topped the networks, drawing 4.6 million viewers, compared to 3.2 million for CNN, 2.8 million for ABC News, 2.4 million for Fox News, 2 million for CBS News and 1.8 million for NBC News. The figures are also Nielsen via MSNBC.
Harris and Waltz in Milwaukee last night
While the convention was taking place in Chicago, Kamala Harris and Tim Waltz appeared in Milwaukee a the same venue where the RNC was held–and it was packed to the rafters with an estimated 15,000 people. Harris gave her acceptance speech to both audiences simultaneously through a TV hookup.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Kamala Harris, Tim Walz hold rousing rally at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Republican VP nominee JD Vance in Kenosha: Recap.
Vice President Kamala Harris held a rousing rally before thousands of supporters Tuesday night in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, while the second day of the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago was taking place.
Harris accepted the party’s nomination for president in Milwaukee after the roll call vote of delegates in Wisconsin’s neighboring state of Illinois at the DNC. It was the Democratic presidential nominee’s third visit to the state since she took over the top of the ticket in late July.
Meanwhile, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance traveled to Kenosha for a press conference focused on crime and public safety.
Their appearances continue to show Wisconsin’s importance in the November presidential election.
The Journal Sentinel had live coverage from both the Harris/Walz and Vance events on Tuesday. Below are all the highlights from the political events in Wisconsin today.
Since the screen just outside Fiserv Forum that was supposed to show a stream of the DNC was malfunctioning, rally goers migrated to screens in the nearby Drink Wisconsinbly bar and the screen outside the Mecca Sports Bar and Grill to watch second gentleman Doug Emhoff speak out of Chicago.
They cheered as Emhoff left the stage and former first lady Michelle Obama was announced as the next speaker.
Gloria Boileau of Milwaukee said Harris brought “electric” energy inside Fiserv Forum. She spoke excitedly about the Harris-Walz ticket.“Knowing that they are the common people that we are and they will be in the White House representing us, that was electric,” Boileau said.
Read more from Milwaukee at the link.
The AP on tonight’s speakers: Tim Walz and Bill Clinton will speak at the Democratic National Convention’s third day.
Vice presidential nominee Tim Walz and former President Bill Clinton will headline the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, the third day of the party’s choreographed rollout of a new candidate, Kamala Harris, and her pitch to voters.
In a delicate balancing act, Harris and the parade of Democrats speaking on her behalf all week are looking to harness the exuberance that has swept over their party since President Joe Biden stepped aside while making clear to their supporters that the election will be a fierce fight and frustratingly close.
“So much is on the line in this election,” Harris said Tuesday in Milwaukee, where she spoke at a professional basketball arena in battleground Wisconsin as the convention continued 90 miles away in Chicago. “And understand, this not 2016 or 2020. The stakes are higher.”
And in Chicago hours later, former President Barack Obama offered his own caution: “Make no mistake, it will be a fight,” Obama said. For all the energy and memes and rallies that have defined the campaign since Harris became the nominee, Obama said, “this will still be a tight race in a closely divided country.” [….]
And while the theme of Tuesday was “a bold vision for America’s future,” the disparate factions of Harris’ evolving coalition demonstrated, above all, that they are connected by a deep desire to prevent a second Trump presidency.
Harris continues to raise lots of campaign cash.
Reuters: Exclusive: Harris’ election effort raises around $500 million in a month, sources say.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’ election effort has raised around $500 million since she became the Democratic presidential candidate, sources told Reuters, an unprecedented money haul that reflects donor enthusiasm going into the Nov. 5 election.
Four sources familiar with the fundraising effort told Reuters that figure had been banked for Harris in the four weeks since she jumped into the race on July 21.
Campaign cash is critical for advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts that help bring people to the polls and persuade undecided voters to swing a candidate’s way.
Harris entered the fray after President Joe Biden stepped aside from the top of the Democratic ticket, unleashing floods of funding that had dried up in the weeks after Biden’s disastrous debate against Republican Donald Trump.
Harris raised $200 million in the first week of her campaign while she quickly wrapped up support to become the party’s nominee.
Harris’ team raised $310 million in July, bringing the total amount of money raised by her and Biden before he dropped out to more than $1 billion, the most rapid crossing of that fundraising threshold in history, according to the campaign.
Trump’s campaign said it raised $138.7 million in July and had cash on hand of $327 million. The former president’s campaign outraised Biden in the second quarter.
Harris is also working to mobilize supporters to volunteer for the campaign. ABC News: Harris-Walz team has largest mobilization week of campaign cycle.
The Harris-Walz campaign effort to calcify the renewed enthusiasm from their party at the top of the ticket is seeing their biggest week of mobilization of the entire election cycle as the party’s national convention charges on in Chicago.
Ahead of the convention, the campaign launched what they characterize as a “weekend of action,” where over 10,000 volunteers barnstormed battlegrounds, making near 900,000 calls and knocking on more than 100,000 doors, contacting in sum over a million voters, per details first shared with ABC News. The campaign says that they were able to recruit over 24,000 volunteers.
Yet the most ambitious investments in organization will come at the latter half of the week — with the campaign hosting its largest telephone banking night of the cycle Wednesday, planning to launch 4,000 volunteers to work the lines.
On Thursday, the campaign will host 500 watch parties across the country in every state as Harris delivers her formal acceptance speech as the party’s newly minted nominee, a process that has come together in the short span of a month.
The campaign also held volunteer trainings and launched organizing resources on Monday and Tuesday….
These efforts are part of the campaign’s new efforts to mine the honeymoon buzz around Harris and Gov. Tim Walz, moving on turning any energy into action; mission critical with what continues to be a dead-heat race between Harris and former President Donald Trump several major battleground polls. This also comes as several grassroots voter groups host large-scale virtual telethons of sorts drawing big celebrity names to recruit volunteers and entice hefty donations, often netting millions of dollars each call.
More reads to check out, links only:
NOTUS on whining journalists: Accessibility and Access: Reporters Have Complaints About the DNC.
Meredith Shiner at The New Republic: Beware the Pundit-Brained Version of the Democratic Convention.
The Independent: How Kamala Harris became Donald Trump’s supertroll and found his weak spot.
The New Republic: Trump’s Latest Scheme to Beat Harris May Have Crossed Legal Lines.
Stephen Robinson at Public Notice: Trump sets the stage for another coup attempt.
The Hill: Republicans worry Trump blowing their chances for Senate majority.
Center for Politics: North Carolina Moves to Toss-up, Setting Up November Battle for Magnificent Seven Swing States.
The Daily Beast: Trump Surprised by Who Hurt His Feelings the Most at the DNC.
AP: Voters in Arizona and Montana can decide on constitutional right to abortion.
Have a great day everyone!!
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments