After seemingly endless speculation around weird mini-primaries and town halls moderated by Oprah, it took Kamala Harris a grand total of 24 hours to lock up virtually every important endorsement, a majority of Democratic delegates, and somewhere around $100 million in new donations. She has no competitors and is now the presumptive nominee.
This reminds me of 2020, when various marginal candidates won the first few Dem primaries and then Joe Biden won South Carolina. Within 24 hours all the chatter stopped and it suddenly became clear that everyone had wanted Biden all along. He sailed to victory after that. It's funny how reality intrudes on fantasy with such regularity.
If everyone (politicians and delegates) gets behind her and no contenders pop up, then at least we would have had a de facto vote of members of the Democratic Party. Having said that, I'd still like someone with some gravitas to challenge her, even if only nominally.
kyrsten sinema, come on down!
you're the next contestant on the price is ratfuck.
No kidding! If Joe Manchin didn't want to play the fool, who else is going to besides Mariane Williamson, especially when many of the would-be contenders want to be her Vice-President or have a political future in the Democratic Party? Nope, not going to happen. And why should politicians and delegates wait until the convention (another five weeks away!) to endorse her if that's what they're going to anyways? Ridiculous!
because the lamestream media could playout the intrigue, whatifs, & disarray, that's why.
they want every election season, particularly the presidential, to be like 2016. it was so fun! bernie, trump, low energy jeb!, li'l marco, crooked hillary, zodiac cruz...
Exactly, and Lol!
SADD SADD
Are you saying Marianne doesn't have the requisite gravitas?
Challenge her how, in a debate? In a floor vote where they can humiliate themselves by getting a dozen or so delegates?
Dems are showing real unanimity because they have some idea of what a disaster a second Trump term would be. Nothing concentrates the Democratic mind than the specter of Trump-led MAGA.
The powers that be wanted Biden then, like now with Harris, I agree. The best line I heard about Harris was someone said she's "The future is now" candidate. And it's a good line. Works for me as long as it helps get her elected. But she's still gonna be stuck with all the bullshit. The thing that impressed me about Biden, whether by luck or skill or the overall equanimity of his team, was that he navigated the bullshit so well that he got more done through Congress than any of his forbears of the past almost 50 years. My whole adult lifetime. Good on Obama for the ACA and all. Good on Clinton for not getting caught getting his dick sucked by an intern. (Oh, forgot about that....) But Biden somehow got a couple trillion dollars injected into the economy to make long overdue changes to how this country operates. To help it survive for another 25-50 years, just in terms of physical, ecological, and social infrastructure. I was looking forward to whatever he might have cooked up next.
He has certainly been masterful in dealing with Congress.
The Democrats have a lot of very good people, but it will be some while before there will be another Joe Biden, as it was decades from LBJ to JRB.
I liked Jon Chait’s take: the criminal vs. the cop.
Harris is a prosecutor.
Virtually all of the vitriol that Trump and his enabling goons have been shilling for the past three years now all falls back on Trump:
He’s very, very old (the oldest nominee in history)
He hides the status of his health
He’s likely demented—doesn’t know which country his father was born in
He’s unimaginably corrupt
His spawn are corrupt—and Trump installed them in the White House to enrich themselves
He’s a convicted felon
He wants to terminate the Constitution
He wants to be a dictator on Day One
He believes half the nation is “vermin”
In a couple of months, most Americans are going to realize that they don’t want to restore an angry, fraudulent, bigoted, rapist, deranged, sociopathic, traitorous convicted felon to the White House.
The Democrats looked around and did better.
The Republicans fucked up.
funny then that johnathan chait will still be supporting trump, then.
charter schools are a hell of a drug.
But he also failed at navigating the bullshit because his enemies set the narrative almost every single day. That is as much a part of successful governing as any legislation.
And I think we all vastly underestimate how much Biden contributed to the successes of Obama.
Who agrees with me that JD Vance will be dumped within a week or two?
vivek?
(was he at the convention, though? or is he on the outs?)
He was one of the speakers. Widely ignored.
i think i heard about 15 minutes of convention speeches (on nice polite republicans broadcast in the car driving home early evening from the gym). ten minutes of vance's somnabulent regurgitation of his james donald on the road to orban's budapest moment, & five minutes of trump's rambling grievance listicle. (the world's longest (93 minute read!) listicle. the best ever!)
Rubio or Noem I would guess. Depends what the topic of the day is, I suppose: Hispanic support or abortion.
If he doesn't shave - yes. If he does shave - after the poll drop, yes.
Can he be dropped? He was certified as the party's VP candidate at the convention and that's the way he'll appear on ballots. Is a replacement without the certification able to be on the ballot at all other than as a write-in?
Whatever the legal situation Trump will scream "unfair! They switched so I can switch"
no way the us supremes enforce whatever state law is invoked to keep vance on the ballot.
i wonder how james donald bowman will take to being the new thomas francis eagleton?
Vance brings a powerful amount of money from Silicon Valley and cryptocurrency billionaires. They’ve been supporting his rise for years and would not take his being dumped lightly. Regardless of the legal issues raised above, this seems unlikely.
Interesting point but I think those billionaires care more about tax rates than Vance.
Probably true for most, and a lot of them hate, hate, hate Lina Khan, but some of them are steeped in Waterworld fantasies, and then Elmo grew up suffused in Technocracy movement thinking (which meshes surprisingly well with apartheid, but maybe that's another story). JD is their avatar and intended to be their inside agent.
What? trump admit he was wrong? He'd have Vance disappeared before he'd do that.
Trump won’t admit anything. He’ll say “I get to switch if they do”
vance will fall down the same flight of stairs as ivana trump.
I agree that Trump probably has significant buyer’s remorse. I disagree they’ll dump Vance. Would be really awkward, I think, and risk alienating the white working class.
as if the white aggrieved class isn't already with trump.
Is there annyone else who would fellate Trump as eagerly?
(Ok, Noem. She basically destroyed her face for him. But there’s no way a man who disdains women as much as Trump does would give her the nod.)
so, you agree with me that trump was our second homosexual president.
I dont agree. Vance has proven his loyalty to Trump. Something Trump values above all else. It's possible, I just don't see it happening.
Yes.
There are a relatively small number of people who give large sums to (D) war chests. That buys influence far in excess of what their opinion "should" be. It isn't anywhere nearly as concentrated as in today's Trumpublican party, as the 9 figures in small donations shows. But it still buys a lot of influence.
And some of those people just can't stand a black woman in power.
And then there's the NYT, which won't see a dime from me until I get over it. Which might take a while; I have multiple distinct grudges with them, one of them with the hereditary publisher.
This doesn't make sense. One reason Biden stepped down was a drop in donations, and it was obvious at the time that Harris was the odds on favorite to get the nod if he did so. So I don't think big money donors who stopped donating to force Biden out are shocked that Harris is now the presumptive nominee.
Well, according to AOC, the donor bros didn't want Harris either. I suspect they thought they could wrangle that with an open convention, but of course they were outwitted by Team Biden. The donor bros aren't even half as smart as they think they are. Yes, I'm looking at you, Elon.
This girl from the 1980s,
https://cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ajc/PBUVLIN5TNHJVAERVRYKT3SMEM.jpg
Bet she could name every track on the first five Prince albums, in order.
welp.
that just lost tipper gore's vote.
Stealing this.
Congratulations to the Democrats on achieving unanimity! Too bad they united behind probably the worst campaigner to ever mount a serious presidential campaign. Trump's negatives are so large that it might not matter - I expect attitudes toward him, and willingness to vote for him, have been set in stone for the last 6 years. But Kamala could still embarrass herself.
This would be entertaining as a TV series, but much too implausible.
Turns out - to my surprise also - it’s quite a different matter to be campaigning against Trump than against fellow Democrats.
Yes to this. I - along with many others - was not that impressed with her
political/campaigning skills when she ran four years ago but I think she's smart, spent the last 4 years around Biden and his team and will do just fine this time. And it's easier to call Trump on his bullshit than to take on some of the talented Dems who ran against her - even just the B's is pretty strong: Biden, Bennett, Booker, Bullock, Buttigieg.
agreed on bennett & buttigieg.
As long as keeps her sister out of a position of campaign authority she should do okay. Adviser whatever fine.
Kamala has been elected as a DA, as Attorney-General of California, and as Senator from California. She had the advantage of being a Democrat so her general election victories may have been pretty much foregone conclusions, but she managed to win contested primaries to get to general elections. This is not the record of "the worst campaigner to ever mount a serious presidential campaign".
"Within 24 hours all the chatter stopped and it suddenly became clear that everyone had wanted Biden all along. He sailed to victory after that."
I may be misremembering 2020, but it does seem to me that suddenly, over a couple of nights, almost all the other contenders suspended and got behind Biden. They didn't want to take the chance of bloodying each other too much to pull in the kind of independent and loosely-attached-voter support they'd need in November. In other words, it was less the voters' doing than that the other candidates stopped in their tracks and ceded to Biden.
It was the right thing to do then, and imho it's the right thing to do now (and as of about 10:00 EDT a fait accompli since she amassed more than enough delegate endorsements to win the nomination). She isn't Johnny Unbeatable, sure. But the call went out for Johnny Unbeatable a long time ago and he hasn't showed up yet. And Biden orchestrated the handoff to be seamless, a real act of grace on his part.
I think it was Stuart Stevens who said that she knocked off a sitting DA and that the AG contest wasn't a cakewalk. You golden-staters would know better than us out here in the hinterlands-- what about those campaigns? A general election is a whole different kettle of fish than the D primary that most of us know her from.
Just to clarify, I think a really major element is that SC probably convinced the other candidates that only Biden would pull in a big enough black vote to win. And the basic point is that the way I remember it, they pretty much conceded to Biden and suspended (and iirc some outright endorsed him) at that point, rather than the primary voters dropping everybody else like hot potatoes and clamoring for Joe. He was by candidate consensus the least likely to lose and most likely to pull off a win.
Yes. They knew they needed the Black vote and Biden, having served under Obama, would get it. But I also think there's something else. Elections are won in the center, usually. Biden has a surprisingly progressive record on some fronts (IRA, student debt) but didn't run as a progressive at all. He won the primaries out of an expectation that a back-to-normal candidate would win against Trump. Same is true for Harris now: the minority vote (not just Blacks, I think) plus the back-to-normal card in a country tired of candidates who can't complete sentences.
Oh, how I wish that Trump will have to complete sentences.
will trump be someone's jailhouse spouse like o.j. simpson was in nevada after his conviction for trying to steal his own memorabilia?
Yes, the blacks and establishment wanted nothing to do with Bernie. So once Clyburn delivered South Carolina they struck. I still think South Carolina mattering is a stupid move for primary states because it is meaningless in the general but Biden won fair and won big.
Swap out Georgia for SC? I could go with that.
I still haven't forgiven Clyburn.
Reality intrudes on fantasy, yes, but flukes intrude on reality. Rather often in elections, at least these past decades. In France I saw the bland and unlikely Hollande win the socialist primaries and then the general simply by being the last centrist left standing when a scandal brought down Dominique Strauss-Kahn. After him Macron won when the Socialists and Républicains simultaneously and to everyone's amazement shot themselves in the spinal chord. In the US I think Trump won on a fluke too in 2016. Had polls and pundits not predicted an easy Clinton victory, less people would have stayed at home and less would have cast a protest vote. And now Harris will win (I expect) because she happened to be chosen as veep by Biden who went on to flame out. Not that she's a bad candidate. Hollande and Macron weren't either. But they still needed a winning lottery ticket to get there.
Oh, and Bush won in 2000 (or could be declared winner by Scotus) because of a confusing butterfly ballot in one single county, Palm Beach.
I think Harris can win this, if she avoids the Hillary trap. Clinton got lots of celebrity endorsements, and made a really big deal about the historical character of her (potential) presidency. What she forgot to do is make a case about how she'd make anyone's life better.
Harris's campaign themes, based on her one speech in DE yesterday, are freedom and justice. Free to have a safe pregnancy without worrying about dying from a miscarriage in front of a hospital that refuses you entry. It means the freedom to use contraception and IVF. It means freedom from religious nutcases who want us to live like Catholic nuns in the year 1100.
And justice lets her talk about economic injustice, of which there are too many examples to list, but through which she can spin up the outrage necessary to steal votes back from Trump. Because Trump actually did nothing for workers, except try to block access to health insurance for people with pre-existing conditions.
So, Harris needs to recognize the Twitter fans are a distraction, and celebrity endorsements are worse than useless. She shouldn't talk about how historic her presidency would be -- no one will forget she's Black or a woman. She needs to focus on how she'll make the country better.
if celebrity endorsement is useless, why did terry bollea, bob ritchie, & dana white have pride of place for trump's big nite last thursday?
Not to mention an endorsement from Tailor Swift and this election is over all but for the voting.
Because it matters to Trump. He loves being praised. The more famous or infamous the person is the better.
Nailed it again, Josef.
Hulk Hogan for Veep!
he's as intimately connected to peter thiel as james donald bowman, so, why not?
Stay calm.
No drama wins the day.
Was not a big Harris fan but was delighted by her roll-out speech yesterday because she MADE THE CASE against Trump with brevity and wit. And I was honestly moved by the (reciprocated) love and affection she showed for the Bidens.
Like a California earthquake, the ground has shifted.
She needs to rip Trump a new asshole every day. Don't worry about going negative, just attack Orange Jesus for all the bad shit he has done in and out of office. This isn't a campaign of policy nuances, its a street fight with a thug who is incapable of telling the truth.
I think the prosecutor vs the felon is a good theme to push.
"Give 'em hell, Harry!"
"I don't give them hell. I just tell the truth about them, and they think it's hell."
About time for some strong truth-telling in our public life, no?
Again; Never underestimate the ignorance, or misogyny, of the American voter. And how ironic is it for Mr. Vance to have to temper his racism vis-a-vis his wife being of kindred genealogy with Mrs. Harris?
Yeah. She's a woman. Her tone is an octave above a man's. Get over it. How can she possibly be tough enough to be the President of the United States? Shall we assume that the opposition is "tough enough"?
No one is the perfect candidate. Would we even recognize perfection if we saw it?
The choice seems simple: Do I want to be ruled by a cult, or do I want to give peace a chance?
if kamala transitioned, going on hormones & changing their name to kamal, would the heman womenhaters club come around?
Reuters/Ipsos has Kamala up 2 points on Trump. …. Too early you say? I know. And so are the others. Most useful part of polls is they show a trend. Kamala’s surge has just begun. (And Trump may surge back a little at some point.)