There is more than vibes to demonstrate that Kamala Harris leading the Democrats’ ticket has changed the dynamic of the presidential contest. There is data. Tom Bonier summarizes voter registration changes since the changeover.
The Harris Effect – in the 13 states that have updated voter files since July 21st, we are seeing incredible surges in voter registration relative to the same time period in 2024, driven by women, voters of color, and young voters. pic.twitter.com/x6AGViJdjm
(In a later tweet, Bonier clarifies that he meant “same time period in 2020” above.)
Young Black women are leading the way, seeing their registration almost triple, relative to the same point in 2020. Young Hispanic women aren’t far behind, with a 150% increase in registration. Black women overall have almost doubled their registration numbers from 2020.
These changes are, unsurprisingly, substantially to the benefit of Democrats. Democratic registration has increased by over 50%, as compared to only 7% for Republicans. These new registrants are modeled as +20 pts Dem, as compared to +6 during the same week in 2020.
What’s “wild,” Bonier adds, is that this voter registration spike “even surpasses the post-Dobbs surge.”
Democrats stand to benefit in swing states like Georgia and North Carolina with their large populations of Black voters. Expanded registration by Hispanic women will not only help keep Arizona in Kamala Harris’ column, but play a larger role in Georgia and North Carolina as well.
My back-of-the napkin analysis of Hispanic/Latino voting patterns in my county indicate that nearly 60% of all HL voters are registered Democrat or UNAffiliated, with 60% of voters under 45 registered UNA. 35% vote irregularly, women more than men by about 3 to 2. But of the nearly one-quarter (22%) of registrants who vote consistently, women outperform men by 2 to 1. About 30% register (likely at the DMV or a social services agency) but never vote; this is a turnout challenge for Democrats. Few (mostly older registrants) were born outside the country per available registration data. This is a young cohort, about 70% are 45 and younger.
New registrants overall have a high propensity to vote the first time.
Democratic vice-presidential nominee and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz appeared on the popular social media account “SubwayTakes” Monday, marking the latest moment in the social media battle defining the 2024 presidential race.
In the video Walz discusses the value of well-kept gutters, regional hardware stores and the Minnesota delicacy that is the Juicy Lucy style hamburger.
The account features host Kareem Rahma interviewing people and asking for “hot takes” on subways, primarily in New York City. The account has over 484,000 followers on Tik Tok.
The Harris-Walz campaign embracing social media that “the kids” like is somehow triggering enough for other media that Slate’s Nitish Pahwa felt the need to punch out a sour grapes warning on Tuesday that it’s a strategy that risks pissing off “anybody who’s open to the idea of voting for her” (read: pundits and mainstream press):
This year, for the DNC’s first in-person gathering since Hillary Clinton’s nomination, the Democratic Party offered credentials to more than 200 influencers and “content creators” operating across the most dominant digital platforms of our day: YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, TikTok…. Reporters there from traditional media sources—including this one—complained about the less-than-ideal working conditions offered to them, while digital natives dressed up for yacht parties hosted on Lake Michigan.
“Democrats, the party that prided itself on supporting institutions and norms of accountability during the Trump years, are embracing this video-centric moment and the journalistic haziness that comes with it,” Pahwa complains. (See the New York Times and CNN for some high-profile, journalistic haziness.)
I get it. Sort of. On Thursday, I attended a digital creators brunch (missed the yacht parties) featuring the messaging team behind the freedoms, families, futures theme of the DNC convention. I was the oldest person there, an old-school blogger, like Billy Pilgrim, out of time and place.
But that discomfort is an easy tradeoff for seeing “dirty hippies” I’ve been in this movement with for a couple of decades finally winning credibility with the Beltway set.
In a move that perhaps recalls one of their top backers having turned Twitter into the world’s largest echo chamber, Trump insiders now claim to have shelled out just under $50,000 to run ads in and around Mar-a-Lago—apparently for the sole purpose of keeping both the presidential candidate and local donors in good spirits.
A source told the Bulwark that this is really about the donors and Trump’s ego is just a happy side effect. I don’t believe it. I think this is all about his ego. (They do this every time.)
George Conway is already there:
Florida Politics reports [he] has spent upward of “six figures” on a 60-second slot across ESPN, Fox News and the Golf Channel to air in exactly the same cherished Florida spot.
Part of his “PsychoPAC” initiative, Conway’s ad apparently features a solid roster of Trump’s greatest hits, such as references to “the late, great Hannibal Lecter,” claims that “windmill noise causes cancer,” struggles with bottled water and touting bleach as a miracle cure for COVID-19.
Whatever the contents of Trump’s forthcoming Mar-a-Lago clip, it’ll be hard pressed to beat Conway’s overarching message for pithiness. As the PsychoPAC website homepage reads: “Voters have forgotten one important fact: Trump is f—ing nuts.”
Harris’s campaign so far has been a work of genius on several levels, but maybe the most ingenious stroke of all has been the decision to mock Trump—to present him not only as someone to fear but also to ridicule. Harris perfectly encapsulated this two-pronged attack in these memorable lines from her acceptance speech: “In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man. But the consequences—but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.… Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails.”
But the emphasis has been on ridicule (Tim Walz’s “weird” comment, Maryland Governor Wes Moore’s jab at Trump’s bone spurs, Barack Obama’s hilarious hand gesture when he was talking about Trump’s obsession with crowd size). It’s great on three levels. The first is that it must drive Trump nuts, and when he goes nuts, he says especially nutty things. Second, it’s arguably more persuasive to swing voters than calling Trump a fascist. Trump is a fascist, make no mistake. But he’s also ridiculous. Mocking him over his Hannibal Lecter obsession will stick in apolitical people’s minds far more strongly than warning about his plans to wreck the Justice Department, and in its way, it’s just as disqualifying. Do we really want a president who thinks an eater of human flesh, however fictional, was misunderstood?
Apparently, almost half the country thinks that’s just fine.
It’s still hard for me to believe that Judge Aileen Cannon had the unprecedented chutzpah to dismiss the Mar-a-Lago stolen documents case against Donald Trump. She should be impeached. It’s beyond outrageous. David Kurtz at TPM:
The timing was breathtaking.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s wholesale dismissal in July of the indictment of Donald Trump for hoarding national security information at Mar-a-Lago and obstructing efforts to retrieve the materials came on the Monday following the Saturday assassination attempt against the former president.
That Monday was also the first day of the GOP convention and the day that Trump announced JD Vance as his running mate.
You could be excused if you missed the Mar-a-Lago news that day.
Yesterday, Special Counsel Jack Smith filed his appeal brief with 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to have Cannon’s dismissal reversed. It is an airtight case for why his own appointment as special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland and the funding for his work were both lawful. It is also an understated but withering deconstruction of Cannon’s deeply flawed decision. The only real bit of news was what the brief didn’t contain: an explicit request that the appeals court remove Cannon from the case.
It is highly likely that Smith prevails at the appeals court, but that victory will not mask the fundamental systemic and institutional failures to hold Trump to account under the rule of law for his crimes in a timely way that halts Trump’s ongoing threat to national security, gives voters a clear picture of who they’re voting for in November, and bolsters public confidence in the ability of the judicial branch to properly function in a crisis.
It’s easy to blame Judge Cannon for this debacle, and she deserves all the scorn heaped on her, but no one judge should be able to wreak this much havoc in such an important case without recourse or accountability. While we properly vest considerable power in individual federal judges, the system has shown its limitations, weaknesses, and ineptitude when confronted with a case of this magnitude.
Looming over these failures is the prospect of Trump winning back the White House then ordering the Justice Department to dismisses the case against him, and as I’ve suggested before, abusing the powers of the presidency to hamstring the judicial branch in various other ways that will sideline it to his autocratic impulses, especially now that the Supreme Court has sanctified him with presidential immunity. To put it more simply, Trump represents an existential threat to the judiciary, too, though it collectively doesn’t seem to grasp the risk.
This is such an excellent point. The judiciary seems to think they’ve got immunity from Trump’s fascism.
Not bloody likely.
As long as they act like his personal lackeys, as Cannon has done here, maybe. But that’s no guarantee as many of Trump’s erstwhile allies have found. One wrong word and Trump will make an example of you, just to show he can.
Maybe the six right wing Supremes like the idea of being Trump’s personal bitches, I don’t know. But if he is elected again I hope they understand that that’s what they’re going to be.
And yes, like so much else in our system of government Trump has found all the weaknesses that required that our institutions be run by people with at least a modicum of integrity.
People are very, very stupid if they think that the alleged billionaire who lives in a golden estate in Florida and flies around in his own 747 is looking out for them. I hate to say it but: suckers and losers.
One of the nation’s largest Latino civil rights organizations is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to open an investigation into a recent spate of state raids on the homes of Latino elected leaders, candidates and political operatives in South Texas.
State investigators tied to state Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office executed search warrants last week at homes across three counties,as part of what Paxton said wasa two-year investigation of alleged fraud and vote harvesting.
The Republican officeholder said in a statement that his office had “sufficient evidence” to confiscate cellphones, laptops and documents. Paxton’s office targeted a Democratic legislative candidate in a swing district important to state Republicans,her political consultant, campaign workers, a local mayor and a city council member in raids on their small-town homes.
Neither Paxton nor the Department of Justice responded to questions Monday.
“We did nothing wrong,” said Mary Ann Obregón, 80, the mayor of Dilley, Tex.,and one of the workerswho recalled being threatened with arrest if she didn’t hand over her cellphone. “That’s what’s eating at us. It is an insult.”
Obregón was one of four Latina women, three of whom were in their 70s and 80s, who said they were intimidated by the morning visits from armed investigators while they were still in their pajamas. Lidia Martinez, an 87-year-old retired educator, and Inelda Rodriguez, 73, a Dilley City Council member, were forced to turn over their phones and laptops.
“It was horrible, gestapo-style,” said Martinez, who added that investigators spent three hours searching her drawers and garage during the raid. “I thought we lived in a free country, not Russia.”
The fact that it was ordered by an actual criminal, Ken Paxton, who narrowly escaped impeachment makes iit just perfect.
Why Kamala Harris might get coattails from the N.C. governor’s race
N.C. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson. Photo by Matt Ramey / WUNC.
As well as Vice President Kamala Harris performed in delivering her acceptance speech at the DNC convention last Thursday night (introduced by North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper), I could not help feeling it might be Harris who benefits in North Carolina from coattails provided by Democrats’ candidate for governor, Attorney General Josh Stein. Pundits touted the race to replace term-limited Cooper as the must-watch governor’s contest in the country.
Stein is as competent a public servant as his MAGA Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Mark “some folks need killing” Robinson, is a train wreck. Robinson’s own statements are sinking him fast in the polls. So much so that veteran Democratic operative Thomas Mills wonders when his own party will stop throwing good money after Robinson’s floundering candidacy.
A lobbyist told Mills last summer that Republicans were giddy at having Robinson, a Black man, atop their statewide ticket. He would draw off enough Black votes in this narrowly divided state to make their retaking of the governor’s mansion a cinch. The NC GOP seems to have put as much effort into vetting Robinson as Donald Trump put into vetting J.D. Vance.
Mills writes:
A year later, Republicans are now deciding when to pull the plug on Robinson’s sinking ship. A SurveyUSA/High Point University poll that came out late last week shows Stein leading by fourteen points, 48-34. Two other polls released within the past two weeks show Robinson down by ten. The Real Clear Politics average, which ignores one of the polls showing him down by ten, has Robinson trailing by 8.7%. This late in the campaign, those are deficits hard to overcome.
Republicans are in a bind. They know that supporting Robinson is almost certainly throwing good money after bad, but if Robinson loses by too large a margin, he could sink other GOP candidates below him on the ballot. If they keep spending valuable resources on him, they’re just trying to keep the race from becoming a blowout. They don’t have good options.
Robinson hates LBGTQ+ people. He claims Democrats are communists. He blames women for unwanted pregnancies and wants a total, no-exceptions ban on abortions. Robinson believes the Civil Rights movement was a mistake, climate change is a “junk science,” etc. It’s as if a sous chef performed a reduction on Donald Trump and the concentrated result is Trump à la Robinson.
But it’s not just what he’s said that’s sinking Robinson, because there’s more:
Stein and company have just begun to unload on him. They aren’t going to let voters forget what Robinson said about himself and they also have plenty more ammunition to take him out. They haven’t even gotten to the fiscal mismanagement and corruption stuff yet.
Democrats would be wise to start wrapping the rest of the Council of State and judicial candidates around Robinson. They chose him to be the GOP standard bearer and now they should be forced to defend him. He should be the centerpiece of the campaign moving forward and they should use him to damage the Republican brand. Not only can they turn off swing voters to the GOP, they can suppress the Republican base, keeping turnout below 2020 levels.
With Robinson sinking fast and the Survey USA poll showing Harris up by a point in North Carolina (other N.C. polls show Harris with a lead between 1 and 3 points), “tanking Robinson” could depress GOP turnout enough to improve Democrats’ chances of flipping the state for Harris. Polling itself theses days is tough enough. Modeling the interaction between the presidential race and the gubernatorial contest even trickier. The Black voters Republicans once thought might help Robinson now could help Harris more.
Meantime (to add to the post just below), the RNC and state GOP officials are suing the State Board of Elections for the second time in a week alleging (without evidence) that large numbers of non-citizens are registering and voting illegally. The suit filed Monday seeks to purge a quarter million registrants from voter rolls within 90 days of the fall election, an action the Board asserts is itself illegal.
