In recent days, Donald Trump and MAGA media figures have ramped up the attacks on Kamala Harris’s laugh, her personality, and her temperament. That’s vile stuff, but MAGA’s strategy also suggests an inability to entertain a remarkable possibility: What if Harris’s laugh and energy are actually well suited to this moment in American politics? Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, co-founder of the progressive strategy group Way to Win, has been advising Democrats to respond aggressively to racist and sexist attacks on Harris. We talked to Ancona about whether Harris’s temperament might prove to be kryptonite to MAGA’s negativity and hate. Listen to this episode here.
New pod: Trump/MAGA sneering at Kamala Harris's laugh is a big political blunder. Her fun, optimistic demeanor is an effective antidote to MAGA's vicious, hateful politics. MAGA is too locked into "American carnage" to see this.@jenancona and I dig in:https://t.co/I7gIdt7rSi
Ancona moderated a panel at Netroots-Baltimore this month: Amplify: Getting Louder to Win in 2024 (video). One finding to note: to get more young people to turn out, younger candidates need to be prominent in our interactions with voters. They need to see younger faces reflected in the Democrats’ 2024 slates.
Several of NC’s statewide candidates fit that bill. These three are all roughly 40.
NC Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs is running to retain her seat on the GOP-dominated court. She’s just over 40.
Make sure younger voters know Democrats are advancing candidates who look like them, including the youngest state chair in the country. Anderson Clayton is 26.
If you haven’t seen the first Kamala Harris ad that dropped Thursday, here ’tis.
Both with the Beyoncé soundtrack and her “fighting for the future” framing, Harris is defining freedomour way while reclaiming it from conservatives who wrap themselves in it while stomping on the freedoms of everyone not in their MAGA tribe.
New: VP Harris initial campaign video is released
With references to "the freedom to make decisions about your own body" .. with a Beyonce soundtrack.. and with images of Trump while referencing "people who think we should be a country of chaos, of fear, of hate" pic.twitter.com/4anInNuuLR
Harris frames the election as the freedom to choose a future — following the advice messaging expert Anat Shenker-Osorio has been talking to us about all year. This isn’t about the narrow notion of freedom that’s gotten currency on the right, the sort of freedom that’s about retreating from public life and obligations, even if it is wrapped in the flag. It’s about coming together to work for a bigger, broader sense of freedom that includes all of us — the idea that the flag actually should stand for.
Harris needs to brand herself before Republicans have a chance to “but her emails” her, so this ad is an important first salvo.
— Anat Shenker-Osorio 🟧 (@anatosaurus) July 25, 2024
The contrast with Trump and Vance is an important feature here. For Democrats to be the good guys, there must be bad guys. And, brother, are these some bad guys.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Waltz (D) describes them “weird” and Gorka as “a Bond villain” out of Central Casting.
🔥🔥 MUST SEE: Veteran @Tim_Walz on with @jrpsaki absolutely DESTROYING Trump, Vance, and Republicans:
"You know, there's something wrong with people when they talk about freedom. Freedom to be in your bedroom, freedom to be in your exam room. Freedom to tell your kids what… pic.twitter.com/plUg6naNjf
Two political myths inspired the dreams and haunted the nightmares of the Founders of the American republic. Both these foundational myths were learned from the history and literature of the ancient Romans.
Cincinnatus was the name of a man who, the story went, accepted supreme power in the state to meet a temporary emergency and then relinquished that power to return to his farm when the emergency passed. George Washington modeled his public image on the legend of Cincinnatus, and so he was depicted in contemporary art and literature—“the Cincinnatus of the West,” as Lord Byron praised him in a famous poem of the day.
Against the bright legacy of Cincinnatus, the Founders contrasted the sinister character of Catiline: a man of depraved sexual appetites who reached almost the pinnacle of power and then exploited populist passions to overthrow the constitution, gain wealth, and pay his desperately pressing debts. Alexander Hamilton invoked Catiline to inveigh against his detested political adversary, Aaron Burr:
He is bankrupt beyond redemption except by the plunder of his country. His public principles have no other spring or aim than his own aggrandisement … If he can, he will certainly disturb our institutions to secure to himself permanent power and with it wealth … He is truly the Cataline of America.
President Joe Biden’s speech last night adapted the story of Cincinnatus: “Nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy,” he said. “That includes personal ambition.” By presenting the next election as a stark choice between, on the one side, “honesty, decency, respect, freedom, justice, and democracy” and, on the other side, the opposites of those things, Biden cast his chief political adversary in the ancient role of Catiline.
Biden’s act of renunciation gives power to his words of denunciation. By demonstrating that he cared about something higher than personal ambition, the president became more credible when he accused his chief opponent of caring for nothing other than personal ambition. By surrendering the power that he’d once hoped to keep, Biden condemned by contrast the predecessor who clung to the power he’d lost. Biden’s July 24 rebuked Trump’s January 6.
The names and stories of Cincinnatus and Catiline are no longer well remembered. But their symbolism survives even after the details have blurred: self first versus country first; appetite versus conscience; ego versus law.
Indeed they do.
The founders are screaming from the graves. Let’s hope this country hears them.
The NY Times got hold of the new book by Trump’s nephew. It’s exactly what you would expect:
In 2020, a few months before the last election, former President Donald J. Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, published a book about her uncle and how awful and psychologically warped she found him to be. At the time, her brother, Fred C. Trump III, put out a statement slamming his sister for such treachery.
Now, he’s wielding the knife. Next week, he will publish “All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got to Be This Way,” a tell-all that puts the former president in a harsh light. The New York Times obtained a copy.
Fred isn’t like his sister Mary. He was upset about her hostility and remained fairly close to his uncle even visiting from time to time at the White House where Trump would brag about how he killed terrorists.
But the relationship soured because of this:
Fred Trump’s son was born with a rare medical condition that led to developmental and intellectual disabilities. His care had been paid for in part with help from the family. After Mr. Trump was elected, Fred Trump wanted to use his connection to the White House for good. With the help of Ivanka Trump, his cousin, and Ben Carson, at the time the housing and urban development secretary, he was able to convene a group of advocates for a meeting with his uncle. The president “seemed engaged, especially when several people in our group spoke about the heart-wrenching and expensive efforts they’d made to care for their profoundly disabled family members,” he writes.
After the meeting, Fred Trump claims, his uncle pulled him aside and said, “maybe those kinds of people should just die,” given “the shape they’re in, all the expenses.”
The remark wasn’t a one-off, according to Fred Trump. A couple of years later, when he called his uncle for help because the medical fund that paid for his son’s care was running out of money, Fred Trump claims his uncle said: “I don’t know. He doesn’t recognize you. Maybe you should just let him die and move down to Florida.”
That’s the least surprising story about Trump I’ve ever heard. As is the fact that he used the “N” word. Of course that’s who he is.
This is important:
One thing the book makes clear is that, in the Trump family, score-settling and feuding is a way of life. “Blood went only so far in this family,” he writes, “as far as the dollar signs.”
Fred Trump’s account retreads the well-documented fight that occurred after his uncle teamed up with two of his siblings to cut him and his sister out of their grandfather’s will. The legal battle that ensued was vicious and public, chronicled in the pages of the city’s tabloids.
And yet, once it was all settled, Fred writes that his uncle invited him to go golfing. “We’re through, right?” he asked him. When his nephew said they were, the elder Mr. Trump gave him a hug. (Then, according to the book, he stepped away and added, “Your lawyer never should have said that thing about your grandfather’s toupee.”)
Fergawdsakes. Trump tried to steal the family fortune to pay for his massive business losses and largely succeeded. I guess Fred thought he could get something out of him in the end if he sucked up. But I guess he had his limits. Trump wanted him to let his son die. He is the most indecent man on the planet.
In one peculiar scene at the end of the book, he recounts going to see his uncle after he had left the White House, because he was having trouble finding work. (Fred worked in commercial real estate, but not for the Trump Organization.) He told his uncle that their family’s name was now too “toxic,” and the former president “gave a small jolt” at hearing that.
As he turned to walk out, he claims his uncle admonished him: “Don’t ever say that the Trump name is toxic. Never say that.”
The Trump name is toxic. There’s only one other name that I can think of that’s equally so and it starts with an H.
This is good. Judging from the reaction on Tik Tok the youts really like this. Which is good.
I’ve long pushed the idea of Democrats using freedom as a rallying cry. The idea that these authoritarian right wingers, of all people, promote freedom as their brand is ludicrous.
The last time women organized in opposition to Trump they showed up by the millions and created the Resistance that helped lead the Democrats to win in 2018, 2020, and 2022. Just saying.
Sunday night, 44,000 women gathered with Win with Black Women to support Kamala Harris, and they raised over $1 million.
White women, it’s our turn to show up.
JOIN US!!! All are welcome, please share with your people.
Thursday, July 25 | Virtual meeting | 8:30 p.m. ET
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen any Democratic activism aimed specifically at white women before and it’s a little weird to see it in print. But considering there are so many women of all races and ethnicities who are thrilled at the prospect of the first Black, Asian women president, any form of organizing to help get her elected seems pretty positive to me.
Joe Biden gave a moving speech from the Oval Office last night explaining his decision to withdraw from the race. He pointedly said, “In this sacred space, I’m surrounded by portraits of extraordinary American presidents. Thomas Jefferson wrote the immortal words that guide this nation. George Washington showed us presidents are not kings.” He asked if the character of the president still matters and tasked voters to question whether Trump (to whom he did not refer by name) would uphold the sanctity of democracy and the presidency.
Biden questioned, notably, if the character of a president still matters, and without naming Donald Trump, asked voters to question whether the Republican nominee would uphold the sanctity of the presidency or US democracy. [No, definitely not.] He said, “This sacred task of perfecting our union is not about me, it’s about you,”
That is true. Are there enough of us out there willing to step up and fight back this fascist MAGA movement that’s led by a cretinous imbecile? We’re about to find out.
Meanwhile, here’s Trump this morning on Fox News, always that classy statesman:
“I think it was a coup. They didn’t want him running. He was way down in the polls, and they thought he was going to lose. They went to him and they said, you can’t win the race, which I think is true, unless I did something very foolish, which I wasn’t going to do, and I think he was so far down and they said, ‘You’re not going to win, and you’re not in great shape, and you did poorly in the debate.’ I think the debate started everything.”
“I know a lot of people on the other side, too, that they went, and they forced him out between Pelosi and Obama and some others that you see on television. It was interesting. I’d watch them on television and they act so nice. ‘Oh, yes, we loved you. We loved you behind the scenes.’ I know for a fact they were brutal.”
“It was like a terrible speech and terrible delivery. He looked like he was having problems, and yet you watch the other networks and you would think he was Ronald Reagan in his prime, Winston Churchill in his prime, and he wasn’t. It was not good… It was not a good speech.”
“It’s so phony what’s going on. The press is so – it’s so fake. Anybody can see it was a problem.”
He is incapable of grace or decency. And I know it’s not politic to blame his legions of supporters but I cannot understand how anyone could admire such a man, much less worship him. It’s like worshiping a small, evil child. It’s inexplicable to me. If the Democrats manage to pull out yet another win in November and we get past the inevitable hysteria that will follow I honestly don’t see how we can ever put this country back together with some sort of reckoning with how this happened.
To Donald Trump’s backward-looking “Make America Great Again” movement, Vice President Kamala Harris says forcefully, “We’re not going back.” Her rally crowds now chant it.
“So here’s the thing about breaking barriers,” Harris told the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies in Wasghington, D.C. on Monday. She’s broken a few. “Breaking barriers does not mean you start on one side of the barrier and you end up on the other side. There’s breaking involved. And when you break things, you get cut. And you may bleed. And it is worth it every time, every time.”
This campaign to push back the fascist urges of the MAGA Republican Party’s Christian nationalists will not be pretty. Their once racist and sexist dog whistles now are fog horns. The metaphorical “cutting” Harris mentioned will be involved in the breaking ahead. People who once were and still are being hurt in this “land of the free” know their freedoms, their families, and their futures are at stake in this election. Yours as well.
Much went on yesterday (Wednesday), including Joe Biden’s speech to the nation from the Oval Office. But if you missed it, do yourself a favor and watch Maya Wiley, former Assistant U.S. Attorney, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, deliver her emotional rebuttal to Republican efforts to turn back the clock on America to a time when women and minorities knew their place.
Attempts to repeal the last 60+ years of progress toward equity in this country comes from “a certain group of people who [feel] victimized by fairness, victimized by competition from the competent, who are upset because for so long they’ve gotten to be mediocre and rise.”
Dear Leader is the patron saint of mediocre. And he doesn’t even rise to that level.
“A certain group of people who are victimized by fairness, victimized by competition from the competent, who are upset because for so long they’ve gotten to be mediocre and rise.” – @mayawiley 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/ZI0kyYMuMR
I am so grateful to have had @esglaude hand to hold because this is real talk and it’s about real people’s lives, and value, and purpose and place. We all have a place in this country and we will only move forward! Together! And we #vote! https://t.co/620FNitW72https://t.co/ahS8rSUQO1
It won’t be enough to break the spell. It’s not news that former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) opposes Donald Trump. Last year he called Trump a man with the moral compass of an axe murderer. Duncan announced he would support Joe Biden for president in May, writing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “This November, I am voting for a decent person I disagree with on policy over a criminal defendant without a moral compass.”
But about six seconds into the first presidential debate it was clear that Biden was not capable of handling the rigors of the campaign. If Harris is the one to pick up the baton, Duncan is on board.
BREAKING: Former Georgia Republican Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan has endorsed Kamala Harris for President.
With Kamala Harris now the presumptive Democratic nominee, Duncan announced on FKA Twitter he will support her. He repeated his stance in a Wednesday interview on AJC’s “Politically Georgia” podcast.
I’m committed to beating Donald Trump. The only vehicle left for me to do that with is the Democratic Party. If that requires me to vote for, speak for, or endorse @KamalaHarris then count me in! 🇺🇸
Duncan disagrees with Democrats on abortion. But he isn’t shy about hijacking the Democratic Party to restore a Republican Party “I can actually recognize.” He wants back a country where neighbors can disagree without being disagreeable. Are there any more like him back home?
I’m not sure we were ever that country, but it’s something to which we might aspire. A lot like “created equal” and “liberty and justice for all.”
“This election either is going to be an asterisk mark in the history books or a pivot point,” Duncan told “Politically Georgia.”
That’s up to you.
BREAKING: The Kamala Harris campaign just released their first ad. Retweet to make sure every American knows who Kamala Harris is and what is at stake this November. pic.twitter.com/d55aNDbYNZ
Awwww. They have belatedly realized that their piggishness might not be the selling point they thought it was. It’s too late, I’m afraid. We know who they are:
Speaker Mike Johnson and other top Republicans are encouraging members to avoid attacking the vice president’s identity as they seek to navigate a campaign against the new presumed presidential nominee. Harris is the first woman, the first Black American and the first South Asian American to serve as vice president.
Johnson (R-La.) encouraged members to” focus on policy not personality” during a closed-door conference meeting Tuesday, later echoing that sentiment publicly to reporters.
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) encouraged members in the meeting to “hold off on ‘editorializing’ on Kamala. Just stick to her disastrous record,” a GOP lawmaker who was present for the comments told Axios.
Leadership’s push to quash gender- or race-based critiques of Harris follows comments from a handful of GOP lawmakers asserting that the vice president was able to quickly step in for Biden because she’s a woman of color.
“The media propped up this president, lied to the American people for three years, and then dumped him for our DEI vice president,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) posted on X.
During a recent television appearance, Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) alleged Democrats had to stick with Harris as the nominee “because of her ethnic background.”
Johnson’s efforts to focus on Harris’ policy record are complicated by rhetoric from the top of the ticket.
Sen. JD Vance — Trump’s running mate — hasn’t limited his criticism to Harris’ stance on issues.
In his first solo campaign appearance Monday, Vance drew a biographical contrast with Harris, who he accused of “collecting a government paycheck for the last 20 years”
Reps. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.) and Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) are weighing introducing a censure resolution against Burchett over his remarks, Politico first reported.
Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) told CNN the comments “are just racist dog whistles. Whenever you hear DEI, I want you to think about the N-word. I want you to think about racial slurs. That’s what they actually mean.”
“Of course it’s not appropriate, for heaven’s sakes. What, are they just going to say, ‘If you’re not a white male, it’s a DEI candidate?’ I’m sorry. No,” Rep. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told Huffington Post.
Johnson, meanwhile, said he’d “talked with a lot of members,” and he thought his message had landed.
That’s very nice, I’m sure. But unless Fox News and the right wing media lay off of it, it’s going to be out there. And it’s going to gross out over half the population. .
Also, respects to our potentially new Democrat Challenger, Laffin’ Kamala Harris. She did poorly in the Democrat Nominating process, starting out at Number Two, and ending up defeated and dropping out, even before getting to Iowa, but that doesn’t mean she’s not a “highly talented” politician! Just ask her Mentor, the Great Willie Brown of San Francisco.
I’m sure I don’t have to point out that he has suggested exactly the same thing about NY Attorney General Leticia James and Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis, both of whom are Black women. He’s the one who gives permission for this garbage, not Mike Johnson.
