David Graham at The Atlantic looks at the way Harris and Trump are portraying themselves in the race and I think his analysis is right. Harris says she’s the underdog and she is. The Democrats have been trailing slightly all year and the media has, until now, had Trump as the clear front-runner (even though the polls haven’t really shown that clearly at all.) Trump, meanwhile, is still a juvenile whiner, which his pathetic cult followers can’t seem to get enough of:
Biden and other Democrats argue that he has been an underrated president, but that hardly matters if most voters don’t agree. By painting herself as an insurgent, Harris can try to shake off the despair and ennui that have plagued much of the party in recent months. Doesn’t everyone love an underdog? Harris’s messaging tells Democrats that they shall, or at least can, overcome. That is appealing to American progressives, who see themselves as perpetually fighting to change the nation for the better.
Trump’s approach comes from the opposite direction: a sense among him and his supporters that they used to control the country and no longer do. Eight years ago, this took the form of a vague nostalgia for yesteryear. Since 2020, it has been compounded by the more specific loss of the presidential election. That defeat has provided an answer to the question posed by “Make America Great Again.” When was America great before? In the moment just before COVID-19 struck.
Trump used to tell his supporters that control of the country was rightly theirs but had been taken away from them—perhaps (as he said explicitly) by corporations, elites, and Democrats, or perhaps (more implicitly) by racial and ethnic minorities. Now he sees himself personally as a victim, with the rightful control of the White House taken from him in an election that he still insists, against all evidence, was stolen. In fact, voters rejected him.
I’m just hoping that the American people are fed up with the years-long puerile Trump tantrum and are ready for something a little bit more positive, hopeful and … adult. They knew they needed it in 2020 to get us out of the worst health crisis in a century which was killing tens of thousands of us every week. Now, perhaps, they’re ready to turn the page for good.
This is great. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker on the White Dudes For Trump zoom: ‘Afterward, of course, there's another Zoom that I invite you all to called "Couches Against Trump," better known as CATs’ pic.twitter.com/yZyd7VWgV4
Back when Trump first picked JD Vance, I wrote that the did it at the behest of Tucker Carlson and his sons Uday and Qusay which seems to have been the case. He was also taken with Vance’s zealous defenses of him on Fox News and the fact that he’s got a truly nasty approach to politics which is right up his alley. But I think he was also discombobulated by the assassination attempt which frightened him far more than anyone’s let on.
The decision has been a total disaster. The unmarried cat ladies insult has been revealed to have been a standard line from him for years as well as dozens of other bizarre statements. His political shape-shifting from Trump hater to ult worshiper was so precipitous he seems to have had some kind of interplanetary personality transplant. And then there is the “couch” thing which is one of the most hilarious memes to ever hit the political internet. No politician can recover from that.
Trump is having to try to clean up after his VP which is not good, especially since nobody does clean-up worse than he does. He just says “he likes families” as if that explains anything, As the Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson told Thor Benson at Public Notice:
Thor Benson
Vance has tried to present himself as a country boy even though he’s a venture capitalist and had his Senate seat bought for him by tech billionaire Peter Thiel.
Rick Wilson
JD Vance telling to sell himself as just a working class fella from the sticks is some weapons-grade horseshit. He’s been part of the meritocracy since he could escape from the suburbs. Peter Thiel funded his venture capital firm, which didn’t succeed, but he funded it. He’s a guy who’s much more at home in Silicon Valley and Aspen than the suburbs of Ohio.
He had a couple of billionaire sugar daddies, and they made him what he is. He’s a long way from stealing catalytic converters to support an oxycontin habit.
Thor Benson
Some people have compared him to Ron DeSantis…
Rick Wilson
I did. I think I was the first. I said “I think the D in JD Vance stands for DeSantis.”
As was the case with DeSantis, there was this idea that Vance was some kind of conservative star when he doesn’t appear ready for the big stage.
Rick Wilson
I think it’s quite obvious this is not a guy who is as ready for primetime as they would like to imagine. Look, politics is a hard business. Nobody gets a pass once they’re actually in the arena. Nobody just gets voted in. You have to perform. He has not, so far, delivered a performance that has knocked people over.
Does he have it in him? I don’t think he does. I haven’t seen it yet. I’m always ready to see people grow and change, and some do. I look at some people who got to their first big national debate and almost blew the whole thing. In 2000, George W. Bush in his first debate — Al Gore whipped his ass all over the stage. I was there. I don’t think JD Vance has that level of comeback in him, judging by the last few days.
He’s such a terrible politician he even brought up couches on the stump last night.
Vance: I would call my wife up here to speak but then I think I’d have to sleep on the couch pic.twitter.com/149BDw2EZY
So when is the media going to turn on Harris? I don’t know but I’d guess it’s going to happen pretty soon. It’s inevitable for all the reasons Brian Beutler spelled out in his excellent piece today in Off Message:
As happily as it ended for liberals, the early weeks of July were their darkest since November 2016, illuminating only how various elites will respond if Donald Trump wins the election.
What we saw was disturbing: When it appeared that Trump would win the election all but unopposed, we did not see officeholders take steps to batten down the hatches of the political system, or media figures apply extra scrutiny to the presumptive president. (In 2016, media elites explained away their insipid obsession with Hillary Clinton’s emails by citing her poll numbers—she would likely be president, after all, and thus merited a thorough scrubbing.)
Instead, we witnessed what the scholar Timothy Snyder has famously described as “obeying in advance.”
Some of these gestures were truly ominous. Trump threatened to imprison Mark Zuckerberg if elected, and the Facebook founder responded by lifting post-January 6 restrictions on his accounts. When Trump was injured in an assassination attempt, he refused to allow the medical professionals who treated him to brief the media or release his physician notes, but reporters and law enforcement officials didn’t respond by applying their usual rigorous standards, and instead, fearful of antagonizing him, just swallowed his self-serving version of events whole.
But a lot of it looked more like fawning than cowering. Reporters swooned over pictures of Trump bleeding from the ear. For the umpteenth time, they fell like a ward of amnesiacs for his team’s deceptive insistence that Trump would “set a new tone” with his convention speech. Large newspapers went to press celebrating the supposedly chastened Trump before he’d finished delivering his angry, meandering remarks.
Media figures more recently raced to offer a generous interpretation of his pledge to Christian conservatives that they will no longer have to vote after this election. And through it all, they’ve shrugged at the games Trump has played with his campaign promises: selling policy to billionaires, even if it entails reversing his own positions, and lying about the Republican agenda.
Now they tell us, in so many words, that they’re sick and tired of the good Kamala Harris vibes, announcing implicitly that they intend to cover her more adversarially in the near future… It’s hard to know until we see it, but one approach would be for reporters to over-police Harris for policy consistency across a span of many years, while continuing to yawn at the thorough corruption of the Trump agenda.
He goes on to lay out all the ways they’ve already given Trump a pass as they are wont to do and it’s depressingly spot on. The reaction to the assassination attempt was the most vivid example. His flagrant flip-flopping on issues as he corruptly bribes various constituencies has garnered almost no reporting. The man actually told oil executives that if they give him a billion dollars he’s lift all regulations on their industry. Crickets.
Meanwhile, Harris is going to be held to account for any slight variation in her policies from the 2020 primary campaign today and will be hounded as an unprincipled hypocrite for changing her mind. (You know how women are …)
Beutler concludes:
But here’s the critical difference between Harris and Trump: However Harris defines her issue positions in the year 2024, you can take them to the bank. Obviously circumstances can change in ways that require rethinking policy. But if she says no Medicare for all, she’s not going to win the election and spring a single-payer health-insurance plan on Congress when she takes office. However she evolved, the claim that she evolved will be credible.
In Trump’s case, the same claim is not credible. His well-established record of dishonesty is central to the true story of his agenda. If anything, the press owes Harris a greater spirit of generosity: She’s not only more honest than Trump, she’s also taking up the baton unexpectedly from the administration she served for four years—why wouldn’t her new agenda reflect a commitment to finishing what she and Joe Biden started together?
But experience should prepare us for the opposite. If campaign journalists have taught us anything it’s they’re perfectly capable of turning reality on its head and making Trump’s opponents suffer for his sins. They can make Hillary Clinton an avatar of corruption in a race against a court-sanctioned fraudster; they can make Harris an avatar of inconsistency against a guy who trades policy for cash.
Yep. My only hope is that there is so little time left and the Republicans seem to be so flat-footed that they can’t mount a full-blown “women are so flighty they don’t know what they really believe in” theme out of it. But I won’t be surprised to see it.
Sure, I was disappointed to hear that North Carolina Roy Cooper withdrew from the competition to be Kamala Harris’s vice president. But I get his reasoning:
Cooper, the former chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, has been close to Harris since they were both state attorneys general. His potential selection was seen as a possible asset in shifting North Carolina — the Democrats’ only significant opportunity to expand on their 2020 map — into Harris’ hands.
Under the state constitution, North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who is the GOP’s nominee to replace the term-limited Cooper, becomes acting governor and can assume the Democrat’s powers when he travels out of state.
Cooper, according to two of the people, has expressed concern about what Robinson might do if he were to leave the state extensively for campaign travel. Cooper’s legal team, as well as some outside experts, do not believe Robinson would actually assume the powers that accompany being governor, such as issuing executive orders. But the governor was concerned enough, one of the people familiar with the matter said, that Robinson would try to take action that could prompt litigation and spur distractions in North Carolina, one of the most critical political states nationwide both for the presidency and in its gubernatorial race.
I get it. Besides, Cooper could just top off his career by ousting Sen. Thom Tillis (R) from the Senate in 2026. I’d take that as a consolation prize. So now what?
Politico reports: “Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to announce her running mate by Tuesday, when she will hold her first rally with her pick in Philadelphia.”
Naturally, this sets off speculation that she will pick Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. Will Bunch opines on why that would be a bad idea. Fracking, vouchers, Gaza, and a sexual harassment claim, etc.
What's not to like about Josh Shapiro as VP?
If you're a progressive, quite a lot — school vouchers, fracking, Gaza protests, an aide's harassment scandal. My guide to why the left thinks Pa.'s gov will scare off any pro-Harris youth vote 🎁https://t.co/ZgsKtzKuoi
Except in History class. We’re actually gonna teach it.
A power (and water) outage last night after a long afternoon of canvassing (plus a visit from the neighborhood black bear) has me catching up this morning. I haven’t had time to watch the Kamala Harris rally in Atlanta from last night now that power’s restored. Just sayin’.
Apparently, Harris had the kind of to-the-rafters crowd Donald Trump lies about drawing.
BREAKING: The media might not say it, but Democrats are by far more enthusiastic about electing Vice President Kamala Harris as President than Republicans are about electing Donald Trump. Retweet so all Americans see the enthusiasm at Kamala’s rally today. pic.twitter.com/JO2lqfTpl0
Rev. Warnock did some preaching. Those years of Republican voter fraud allegations about “them” stealing your vote? Warnock reminds Georgians that a “Florida Man” occupying the Oval Office actually tried to steal theirs in 2020. It’s on tape. And he’s been indicted.
Really? What kind of future do you want? Those are the stakes.
Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency. Because we know that when our middle class is strong, America is strong. pic.twitter.com/37bdzLihnT
Vice President Kamala Harris drew her largest crowd yet as her party’s nominee during a boisterous rally in Atlanta where she contrasted her prosecutorial background with Donald Trump’s criminal record, quoted a hip-hop star and vowed to recapture Georgia.
The event put her nascent campaign’s surge of enthusiasm on display, as thousands packed a downtown arena for an only-in-Atlanta mix of fiery political stump speeches and a high-energy hip-hop performance.
It was the biggest Democratic rally of the campaign cycle to date, according to Harris campaign officials, drawing thousands of supporters from metro Atlanta and beyond who cheered performances by Megan Thee Stallion and Quavo.
The crowd roared in approval as Harris promised the “path to the White House runs right through this state” and outlined her past roles as a San Francisco district attorney and top law enforcement official for California.
”In these roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” she said, nodding to Trump’s felony conviction on New York charges involving hush money payments to a porn star. “So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type.”
This is Reform UK. This is Tice. Just an average British person, but he’s a British British Person. Don’t be fooled. Be vigilant. pic.twitter.com/dvA62e2Viz
This is old and it shows that there were always people who didn’t buy into the white supremacy and authoritarianism that characterized much of the America Trump and his followers think was so great. Those better people managed to beat them back and they can do it again.
— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) July 30, 2024
He is a seriously talented politician and I know I’d love to see him out there on the campaign trail with Harris. He’s obviously smart enough to be president. (I mean, look at what the GOP has been putting on offer…) Is it time?
The Transportation secretary is blitzing the airwaves with his Midwest-nice takedowns of Donald Trump and JD Vance. Members of Congress are talking him up. Buttigieg’s digital alumni network is circulating clips of appearances and touting his complementary skills to Kamala Harris. He did a canvassing kickoff for Harris in Traverse City, Michigan, on Saturday morning. And an ally in his home state of Indiana — saying they were acting independently of Buttigieg— has compiled a dossier evaluating Harris’ options and concluding: “Simply put, the vibes are high right now.”
The Pete for Veep trial balloon is approaching mid-flight. His allies view it as a clear signal that Buttigieg wants the job.
“He’s open to it,” a person familiar with his thinking said.
But Harris confidants and allies remain skeptical about his chances, according to interviews with a half-dozen of them, all granted anonymity to speak freely. They anticipate she’ll be ruthlessly pragmatic about her selection, viewing other contenders from outside the Beltway as better positioned to deliver key states and constituencies.
Of Buttigieg, one said, “I just don’t see it.”
And even those around Buttigieg readily concede they view him as a longshot. He and Harris are both products of the Biden administration — not exactly screaming change — and Buttigieg carries some of the same baggage as Harris from their time in the administration. He has been at the center of travel disruptions in his job as transportation secretary, including mass delays at airports, even as he has ushered in protections for airline passengers and leveled historic fines against carriers. And then there is the matter of diversity, with some Democrats fearful a ticket with a woman and a gay man may be unpalatable to some swing voters — too much change, too fast.
He’s so good at it that it’s tempting to think he can overcome all those objections. And maybe he can. But even if they decide to pull one of the other great contenders off the bench, he’s got a great future. And he certainly seems to be popular.
Trump has been telling everyone who will listen that he doesn’t need a get out the vote program because he will personally get his people out. He told the RNC and his campaign that they need to concentrate on stopping the “cheating” (by which he means Democrats voting.) The strategy is to suppress the vote wherever possible and contest the vote no matter how close the election is if he loses. There is no Democratic margin of victory that he will declare legitimate. (After all, even when he won in 2016 he said that he actually won the popular vote which he lost by 2 million votes.)
Rolling Stone took a look at how some of the red dominated swing states have set up a system to deny the election results if Trump doesn’t win and it’s sobering:
WHEN ELECTION NIGHT comes in November, it will be up to thousands of local election officials to certify election results in their counties. Among those election officials are scores of Donald Trump supporters who believe his lies and conspiracies about stolen elections — and will be in prime position to act on those beliefs to try to aid his campaign in November.
In the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, Rolling Stone and American Doom identified at least 70 pro-Trump election conspiracists currently working as county election officials who have questioned the validity of elections or delayed or refused to certify results. At least 22 of these county election officials have refused or delayed certification in recent years.
Certification of election results is what legal experts consider a “ministerial task,” and one required by state and local law. But as Trump’s lies about the 2020 election have taken hold, Republicans nationwide have decided that certification provides them an opportunity to hear fraud allegations — and refuse to officially count their local votes. Republicans have refused to certify election results at least 25 times since Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.
“I think we are going to see mass refusals to certify the election” in November, says Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias. “Everything we are seeing about this election is that the other side is more organized, more ruthless, and more prepared.”
The article goes on to lay out the details. This is a huge threat and with the Supreme Court having shown its cards in the immunity case I don’t think we can necessarily count on the judiciary to be fair this time.
The Democrats have to win. And then they have to be prepared to defend the win. Elias is not sure they totally understand the danger.
Journalist Gil Duran has been following this new movement of tech billionaires who are heavily influencing right wing politics in America. They are way more out there than I realized. I just went down the rabbit hole to read these articles and frankly I’m a bit unnerved. You might want to pour yourself a strong drink before you do it:
I’ve spent this year writing for the @newrepublic about how a group of Silicon Valley billionaires has gone WEIRD. Now their weirdness is mating up with Trump’s MAGA weirdness in the 2024 election.
Here’s a few things to understand about these guys.
#1: They despise democracy. These Trump-loving billionaires believe democracy is bad. They want to create their own corporate dictatorships called Network States. They are actively trying to build these weird little dictator cities all over the world.
#2. They want control over existing governments. In addition to building weirdo colonies, they’re also trying to capture existing governments. In San Francisco, a group of these tech zillionaires is trying to win control of City Hall …(and now the USA!)
3. They want to punish Democrats in weird ways. One of their main influencers has suggested that tech bros should form a “gray tribe,” purge Democrats from San Francisco and build statues to remind people of how bad Democrats supposedly are…
4. JD Vance is ONE OF THEM. Vance was literally put on Trump’s ticket by the same group of people – Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen – who are behind all of the weirdness I’ve been writing about.
5. Most newspaper analyses suggest that these tech authoritarians guys just want lower taxes and friendly regulations, but that’s only part of the story. They have developed their own weird sci-fi influenced tech authoritarian IDEOLOGY.
It overlaps with MAGA in multiple ways.
6. MAGA/Tech overlaps: – Collapse. They believe in an impending societal collapse. – Messiah complex. They believe they alone can save humanity. They “alone can fix it.” – Supremacy. They share a believe in the supremacy of rich white (mostly straight) males over everyone else.
7. MAGA/Tech overlaps cont’d: – Anti-Empathy. They abhor empathy/care. – Anti-Public. They detest the idea of the public and seek to privatize most functions of government. – Anti-Worker. They believe employers are superior to employees.
8. This is not an exhaustive list. But you can see here how many of the tech authoritarian goals align with MAGA. Antipathy toward taxes and regulations may be the root of their alliance, but there are many branches. But there are key ways in which tech diverges from MAGA…
9. For example, tech authoritarians see technology as being above God (if they even believe God exists). As tech founders and investors, they see themselves as the top of the hierarchy — the masters of the universe. These beliefs have resulted in some strange sub-cults…
10. The Network State is one sub-cult — the idea of replacing existing countries with tech-run countries. Transhumanism is another — a belief in merging with machines to obtain eternal life. That’s gonna sound pretty weird to fundamentalist Christians. . . Lots of tech cults!
The tech billionaires behind Trump already have money. Now they want power — to create their own countries, to change what it means to human, to control the fate of the world. Their interest is mainly *ideological,* not economic. Anyone saying otherwise has not done the reading.
This story by @davetroy goes deep into the weird collection of ideas called TESCREAL. Many of these tech guys backing Trump have been working on this project for a long, long time.
Not all tech is bad! But a lot of people in Silicon Valley have been aware of this weirdness for a long time and have stayed quiet … or agree with parts of it. With Thiel/Musk/Vance putting it on the Trump ticket, it’s time to tune in. Because folks — it’s gonna get weirder.
