CAN HARRIS KEEP UP HER MOMENTUM?

 The speed with which the Democratic party has coalesced around Kamala Harris's presidential nomination  is astonishing: since President Joe Biden's terrible debate performance a month ago, there was much speculation among Democrat party members as to how to pick a candidate if and when Biden stepped down, with the possibility of the party going into an open convention in August with no clear front runner being raised.  But then Biden almost immediately endorsed Harris after and she quickly moved to take over his campaign, including the money he had raised.

More importantly, Democrats who had been floated as possible presidential candidates themselves fell in line behind her.  Not only that, the party suddenly seemed thrilled to have Biden step down, with Harris raising record amounts of campaign donations and giving well received speeches that spread throughout social media.  And polls show her pulling even with Trump both nationally and in swing states, turning around the deep hole that Biden was falling into. 

The reason I'm so surprised by this is that the past four years have not been great for her; in 2020 her campaign for the Democratic presidential candidacy failed quickly.  Then when she became vice president, her term got off to a rocky start: there were stories about staff turnover and disorganization, and her trip to Guatemala in 2021 to try and stem the flow of refugees seemed weak ("Don't come." She lectured).  She later found her voice after Roe Vs Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court, and her full throated defense of a woman's right to choose made her a stronger advocate on that issue than Biden ever was.   Still, the party's shift to her in such a short time may qualify as one of the biggest political turn arounds ever; seemingly overnight she went from a VP with a poor approval rating to a strong presidential candidate.  In a way, the viral video clip of her giggling  about "falling off a coconut tree" is the perfect encapsulation of what's happened with her: at first, that video was sent around by Republicans trying to ridicule her and her boisterous laugh.  But now that laugh is seen as good natured and endearing by her supporters.  (I always found it likable myself).

 Is it possible that her surge has more to do with Biden stepping down than Harris herself?  While she is rising in the polls, trouble still lies ahead: she will be attacked as a San Francisco liberal (which is why I like her!) with radical views while Trump will eventually settle on some childish nickname for her that will be echoed ad nauseam in  the right wing media.

And then there is the thorny issue of race and gender; is the country ready to elect not only its first female president, but also its first woman of color?  While polls show that Harris is capturing the youth vote, she's apparently losing the older white voters who's turn to Biden in 2020 were important to his victory.  To his credit, Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has told members of his party to lay off any race or gender based attacks on her: “This is not personal with regard to Kamala Harris,” he said recently in a closed door meeting with party members, “and her ethnicity or her gender have nothing to do with this whatsoever.”  But this is is the Republican party; race based attacks are their bread and butter.  Sure enough, several Republicans have tried to brand Harris as a "DEI hire", implying that she was only chosen as VP because of who she was and not her qualifications (even though those qualifications for office included more political experience than Trump had before he became president!).  Will these racist statements backfire against the Trump campaign as Johnson thinks they will?  Hopefully.

Am I afraid that  that the country will soon  see another version of the unsuccessful Hillary Clinton campaign of 2016? It's possible, but remember that  Harris is no Clinton, who was always, rightly or wrongly, a controversial figure.  Harris, on the other hand,  has been throughly vetted and has no apparent skeletons in her closet.  (There will be no FBI investigations into her email!)  I also like to think that the idea of a female president is less shocking in 2024 than it was in 2016, and the energy behind her candidacy now is giving me happy memories of Barack Obama's historic 2008 campaign.

The question is, can she keep the tide turning against Trump, who seemed unstoppable just a few weeks ago after the Republican National Convention?   While the prospect of a second female candidate losing to a famously misogynistic man, especially one with plans to dismantle American democracy, is terrifying, right now I'm cautiously optimistic about Harris's chances.

THANKS SO MUCH JOE!!

 In the past two weeks we've seen a failed assassination attempt made against Donald Trump and a Republican convention that degenerated into a cult fest around him.  In a truly surreal convention moment, former wrestler Hulk Hogan gave a speech that saw him ripping his shirt, and Trump, a convicted felon, fraud and adjudicated rapist, was introduced by Dana White, the president of Ultimate Fighting who was once caught slapping his wife on video.  So much for unity...

And now, our insane political environment just got a new wrinkle:  President Joe Biden has officially dropped out of the race.  In a way, this isn't a  big surprise: Biden's performance at the presidential debate on June 27th was painful to watch.  Although he and his staff have tried to salvage his campaign ever since, he just wasn't able to turn around that debate.  Going into it most Americans already thought that he was too old to run, and, sadly, that was just how he looked.

Along with dropping out, he has also endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to be the party's nominee, which goes a long way towards locking it up for her.  Any other candidate would not be able to access the money that Biden has raised, and as VP Harris is the logical choice.  Plus, passing up the first Black female VP for someone else would be a bad look for the party, especially given that Black women have long been some of the most faithful Democratic voters.

Is Harris a perfect candidate?  No, she had some staffing issues early in her tenure, and has given some weak interviews.  She also may inherit the bad feelings that many voters have (rightly or wrongly) about the Biden years.  But on the plus side, she's been giving very strong speeches about abortion after the overturning of Roe Vs Wade, she's a former prosecutor, which makes her taking on a convicted felon like Trump logical, and she's grown into the office of Vice Presidency well after a rocky start.

Now that Biden's tenure will soon be in the rearview window, let's take a look at how he did: personally, I think he was a great president, perhaps better than Barack Obama because his lengthy time in congress made him better at getting his priorities passed.  And pass them he did: first there was a stimulus bill, then  the infrastructure bill, the microchips bill and perhaps best of all, the Inflation Reduction act, which went further in fighting against climate change than any action taken by any past president (which in some ways says more about our broken political system than it does Biden!).  Biden will also be remembered as  first president to put a Black woman (Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson) on the supreme court.  

One of the most frustrating aspects of his presidency has been that the public has given him low ratings on the economy and violent crime.  The reality is, unemployment is the lowest its been since the 60's, we managed to get through a pandemic recovery without lapsing into a recession, and violent crime has plummeted in the past few years.  Inflation, brought on by a number of factors (the pandemic, Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine) has been his Achilles' heel, with prices in 2022 spiking more than they had in 40 years, but raised interest rates have brought inflation down (although raised rates bring their own set of problems!).  Still, on the economy I would give him good marks in dealing with the tough hand that Trump (and the pandemic) dealt him.

Really, my biggest problem with Biden's presidency is that it has taken him so long to finally step down.  In a perfect world, he would have pledged to be a one term president four years ago instead of finally stepping down after much pressure a mere four months before the election.  And it appears that the people around Biden were hiding his age issues, possibly for years, before he finally crumpled during the debate.

Still, overall Biden's been an effective president who can now bow out gracefully.  Whoever the Democrats nominate, be it Harris or someone else, I will vote for enthusiastically.  Anyone but Trump! 

A SHOCKING ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT

 

Yesterday at a rally in Pennsylvania, an assassination attempt was made on presidential candidate Donald Trump. Shots were fired and he was wounded slightly by a bullet hitting his ear, while the shooter was quickly killed by Secret Service agents.  Tragically, another rally attendant was also killed in the shooting.

Little is known about the potential assassin other than that he was a 20 year old white male.  While I am very deeply opposed to Trump being president again, obviously the use of violence against him is reprehensible.The most likely scenario is that this is the work of one lone person, a sad, lonely man not unlike past presidential assassins, who turned his hatred on a political figure.  While we may never know the now dead man's motivation, it really doesn't matter now, what does matter is that in the future shootings like this should be avoided with beefed up security at political events like this.  Especially because I'm afraid that a Trump supporter may attempt to extract some revenge on President Biden or other Democrats.  Sadly, we live in a country where access to firearms is so simple that it takes only one deranged assassin to make an another attempt.

Interestingly, in our instant reaction social media era, I almost immediately found myself arguing with fellow progressives on Facebook who thought that this whole thing was a false flag.  Their assertion was that Trump was doing this to build sympathy for himself just before the Republican convention next week.  This seems pretty darn silly to me: why would Trump, who by almost all measures is clearly set to win the White House in November if he's running against President Joe Biden, need to resort to such a wild and over the top method to pump up his base?  If Trump wanted to fake an assassination attempt, why wouldn't he have done it  back in 2020 when he was still president and running behind Joe Biden in every poll?  And that's not even considering the amount of work it would take to pull such fakery off; are we supposed to believe that not only the shooter but also the killed rally attendant are all fakers?  And how could he get so many people to sign off on it, from the Secret Service to the police?  Like many conspiracy theories, this just doesn't add up.

It would seem that in our deeply divided country, people struggle to express any kind of sympathy for the other side  and therefore have to construct a conspiracy theory to explain any tragic event like this. (Remember how conservatives tried to spin an intruder attacking Nancy Pelosi's husband?) But's it always possible to be of two minds about things: Donald Trump is a narcissistic psychopath, a convicted felon and fraud, an adjudicated rapist who has risen to the height of American politics on a wave of bigotry and misogyny.  His reecletion would do permanent damage to the American democratic system.  None of that justifies violence against him.  The only solution to an attack on democracy is to work harder to resist it within that system, as flawed as it may be.   

THE BIDEN CONTROVERSY CONTINUES

 In the past few days, I've struggled to think about much other than President Joe Biden's terrible debate performance last Thursday.  It was such a galvanizing and demoralizing moment.

The recent terrible (and partisan!) Supreme Court ruling that gives Donald Trump partial immunity for any crimes he may have committed while president has only increased my fears about a second Trump term.  With a compliant Supreme Court, one third of whom were appointed by him, Trump could very well carry out the plan of political retribution and mass deportations of undocumented immigrants that he has outlined.

Since the debate, Biden and his people have stood fast against his resigning. They point to a fiery speech he gave a day later and some high fund raising numbers as proof that he just had one bad night that will soon be seen as a blip.  This is crazy: first of all, the mental agility Biden needed to read a speech off of a teleprompter well is a far cry from what he needed to display during the debate.  And that debate was seen by tens of millions of Americans, while his speech the next day was watched by only a fraction of that amount.  And fund raising numbers are no great indicator of support; any president, by the mere power of the office, can raise money.

Personally, I'm angry not just at Biden and his family's stubborn refusal to accept the ravages of time and gracefully step down, I'm also mad at his handlers and advisors who have been treating him with kid gloves almost from the day he took office.  It's been well documented by the media that Biden has done fewer press conferences and interviews than any modern president.  And the few interviews he has done have been mostly softball interviews with few tough questions.   Plus, the Biden campaign wanted this debate, and even got Trump to agree to the rules for it.  Biden's team knew that this was the most important moment for him in the run up to the election to turn around the polls that showed Trump winning in swing states, and Biden put in long hours of debate prep to get ready for it.  And look what happened.

 If Biden is going to convince the American voters that last Thursday was just a off night for him, he needs to put himself out there for interviews and press conferences where he will respond to questions in real time,  showing that he's up for the job.  But is he even capable of doing that?  The man who froze up so memorably last Thursday doesn't look ready to do that, which is the whole reason why he should drop out.

It's important for me to say that if Biden does remain on the ballot I will definitely vote for him in November over everyone else running, and encourage others to do the same.  Trump simply has to lose.  

But that's the very reason that I think Biden should step down for; I don't think he can win again.  Polls in the time since the debate have shown an increase in the number of voters who think that he's not mentally fit for the job.  And some polls have that number as high as 75%!  

Some of Biden's defenders have pointed out that no other Democratic candidates  poll any better against Trump than he does.  But that's impossible to really determine; once other candidates start stepping forward, the media will give them far more attention and they will start doing more interviews and laying out their political views, which could definitely give them a surge in the polls. Plus a younger candidate would flip the age issue back on to Trump, who's mental agility is also in question.   And an open Democratic convention, the kind that hasn't been seen  in years, would make for exciting media coverage that could help whoever emerges as the presidential candidate.  

And there's also some strategy to consider: Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan is a Democrat who's more popular in her state than Biden.  Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania is also a Democrat who's more popular than Biden.  The important thing here is that both Michigan and Pennsylvania are swing states that would almost definitely vote blue if one of them were on the ticket.  (Whitmer and Shapiro together would also make a good ticket, although I don't know who would go on top!)  Another factor is that part of the disillusionment that many people on the left have towards Biden is his support (tempered as it is) for Israel's bombing of Gaza.  A new candidate more opposed to the bombing could reset the issue and win back those voters.  That reset could also be true of economic issues hurting Biden like inflation.  Add to that the fact that Americans are always excited by something new, like a new candidate and I think that the Democrats's chances of winning will improve,  I really think that any decent Democrat can win this thing.  Even a relatively weak debater could have taken apart Trump's absurd stream of lies last Thursday. 

Once again I will restate that if Biden is still running against Trump in November I will vote for him, but I really hope that he steps down.  Putting things bluntly, one stubborn old man who won't step aside could bring ruin to this country.