Democrats

Subterms

    More stories

    • 250 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Democrats accused of ‘tragic mistake’ by ruling out Palestinian convention speech; Shapiro says ‘Trump is obsessed with me’ – live

      by

      Ro Khanna, the progressive California Democratic respresentative, said the party is making a “tragic mistake” by not allowing a Palestinian person to speak on the main stage of the Democratic national convention.As we reported earlier, the Uncommitted National Movement has continued its sit-in outside the convention after the anti-war group was denied its request for a Palestinian person to speak at the convention’s main stage. The group Muslim Women for Harris later announced that it was disbanding in response to the Harris-Walz campaign’s refusal of the group’s request.Khanna, who was an early supporter of a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, has met with Arab American and Muslim leaders disaffected by the Biden administration’s handling of Israel’s war. He posted to X:Abraham Aiyash, the majority leader in the Michigan House of Representatives, said leaders of the convention “cannot claim to want peace in Gaza but actively thwart the ability for Palestinians to speak their truth”.The Guardian’s David Smith ran into Cornel West, the independent presidential candidate, outside the Democratic national convention.What might he be doing here? Did West just come to take in the sights, or could it be a sign that he is following the lead of Robert F Kennedy Jr and will end his campaign, perhaps to Kamala Harris’s benefit?Donald Trump has defended blocking a bipartisan immigration bill earlier this year even though it had the support of Republican leaders in Congress.Following a speech in Arizona at the border with Mexico, where he accused the Biden-Harris administration of allowing millions of people to enter the US illegally, Trump was asked about his opposition to the legislation intended to curb immigration.The bill had the support of Republican leaders in Congress, including Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader. But after Trump made his opposition known, McConnell walked away from his own legislation and other Republicans also abandoned it.Democrats have accused Trump of sabotaging the bill because he of wanting to keep immigration a live political issue. But Trump said he had opposed it for other reasons.“It wasn’t bipartisan. They had a couple of people on the other side. It was weak. It was ineffective, and it would have allowed, as you know, millions and millions of people to pour through and largely unvetted. It was a horrible bill. It was a weak bill. And they don’t need a bill. All Biden had to do is look to the border and say: ‘Close the border.’ He didn’t need a bill.“The bill was terrible. If it was good, I would have approved it.”At the time, Mitt Romney, the Republican senator and former presidential candidate, criticised Trump as more interested in political moves than addressing immigration.“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is … really appalling,” he said.I’m at the pro-Palestinian sit-in outside the United Center, where delegates and activists joined by representative Cori Bush are demanding that the Democratic leadership add a Palestinian American speaker to this night’s lineup to speak from the main stage.Abbas Alawieh, a delegate from Michigan and leader of the uncommitted movement, said that negotiations with the Democratic party are ongoing and called on the leadership to make a decision by 6pm.“When uncommitted came here, we didn’t just come for the four days, we came here to create a democratic pathway for the next four years,” said Lexis Zeidan, a co-chair of the uncommitted movement. “It’s not just about the speaker, it’s about Palestinian Americans deserving a voice in our society.”“Our deadline we’ve set again is six o’clock for a response,” she said, adding that if the party did not meet the deadline, the group would announce updates about “what comes next for this movement”.Alawieh and several others slept on the concrete last night outside the United Center as they increased pressure on the democratic leadership to address calls for a ceasefire and an arms embargo on Israel.“As a member of the United States Congress, where else should I be when people in our community and our country are just saying we want a voice on that stage?” said Bush. ”It’s important because what we’re seeing on that stage are the priorities of the Democratic party as we go toward November. We understand that what is said there is being used to mobilize the country to show up in November.”She asked for a speaker to give up a time slot to give a Palestinian American an opportunity to speak.Chicago has been revelling in its status as host city of the Democratic national convention.Among its pearls is the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop, which opened in 1938 and is a treasure trove of autographs, letters, rare books, presidential memorabilia and reproductions of Lincoln and civil war photos.It currently has an exhibition of artifacts from Chicago’s first political nominating convention in 1860 – the one that set Lincoln on course for the White House.James Carville popped up for a tour of the bookshop on Thursday and posed for photos while holding a picture of William Sherman, a union army general during the civil war.In a discussion with shop owner Daniel Weinberg and former White House official Sidney Blumenthal, the veteran Democratic strategist observed: “If you listen to Fox, Chicago is this giant hellhole: homeless people, streets, they’re shooting everybody. It’s one of nicest goddamn, places I’ve ever been.“My only problem with Chicago as a convention site is that the United Centre is too far away. I don’t know there’s much you can do about it. At some point, Chicago should build a downtown arena like that but I think it’s just a marvellous city. You can get in and out of it.”Weinberg noted Mark Twain’s saying that history rhymes. Carville, who led Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign, replied: “I think it more than rhymes. There’s a lot to be learned from European history – you’re not supposed to say that – but just the power alliances that live with us today.“Internal conflicts: the movies that we’re seeing, the books that are being written, January 6 – I’m sorry, that’s a little more than rhyming. Forty percent of the people in 10 different states want to secede. History, I can’t say it repeats itself but I think it repeats itself more than it rhymes.”Blumenthal, a Guardian columnist currently working on the fourth volume of a monumental Lincoln biography, rejoined: “What I’ve been saying is the deeper I get into the past, the closer I get to the present.”Donald Trump appears to have finally acknowledged that he lost the 2020 election during a speech on the border with Mexico.Trump was looking at a graph of immigration numbers toward the end of his presidency when he said: “This was a last week in office for me because of a horrible, horrible election where I got many millions more votes than I got the first time, but didn’t quite make it, just a little bit short.”Trump did not expand on the statement, which came in the middle of a wandering speech accusing Kamala Harris of permitting millions of undocumented immigrants into the US.Donald Trump has renewed his attacks on immigrants during a visit to the US border with Mexico by again falsely claiming that they are responsible for a disproportionate share of crime.Speaking next to the border fence in Cochise county, Arizona, the former president alleged that countries in Latin America, Africa and Europe are emptying their prisons of criminals and sending them across the US border.“Hardened criminals are pouring into our country. And then they always say the illegal immigrants don’t commit crimes like people that live here. It’s so wrong. They don’t report them, but it’s so wrong. They make our criminals look like babies,” he said.“These are the roughest people, and they’re the roughest people from all over the world. Their jails are being emptied from all over the world.”Trump then sought to pin the alleged flood of criminals into the US on to Harris because Biden appointed her to investigate the causes of rising migration from Central America.“Since Comrade Harris took over the border, there has been a 43% nationwide increase in violent crime and a 60% increase in rape,” he said.There is no evidence to back up these numbers but Trump claimed that is because the FBI is rigging the crime figures.It’s sound check time inside the Democratic national convention hall, and the handful of delegates and journalists in attendance are getting to see musician Pink run through her set.On that note, rumor has it there’ll be a surprise celebrity guest at some point this evening, but we can only speculate as to who that might be.Donald Trump has been speaking from the US-Mexico border near Sierra Vista, Arizona, where he criticized Kamala Harris’s record on immigration and border security and called her “the worst vice-president”.Kamala Harris joined the popular social media show Track Star, hosted by Jack Coyne.In almost every episode of Track Star, guests listen to a snippet of a song, name the artist, and win money ($5), going double or nothing with each round.On the episode published on Thursday, Harris correctly guessed songs by Stevie Wonder, Miles Davis and Too Short.She said one song everyone should listen to is Everybody Loves the Sunshine by Roy Ayers. “I grew up with all that music,” she said.Members of the Uncommitted National Movement, which won 30 delegates to the Democratic national convention, are calling for a Palestinian person to speak on the main stage of the convention.The Harris-Walz campaign notably invited the family of Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin to speak on Wednesday, which the movement supported.As we reported earlier, one of the potential speakers offered is Ruwa Romman, a Georgia state representative who is Palestinian.Romman shared a copy of the speech she wanted to give with Mother Jones, adding that “if an elected official in a swing state who is Palestinian cannot make it on that stage, nobody else can.” Here’s an excerpt of her speech:
      Let’s commit to each other, to electing Vice President [Kamala] Harris and defeating Donald Trump, who uses my identity as a Palestinian as a slur. Let’s fight for the policies long overdue – from restoring access to abortions to ensuring a living wage, to demanding an end to reckless war and a ceasefire in Gaza. To those who doubt us, to the cynics and the naysayers, I say, yes, we can – yes, we can be a Democratic party that prioritizes funding our schools and hospitals, not for endless wars. That fights for an America that belongs to all of us – Black, brown and white, Jews and Palestinians, all of us, like my grandfather taught me, together.
      Ro Khanna, the progressive California Democratic respresentative, said the party is making a “tragic mistake” by not allowing a Palestinian person to speak on the main stage of the Democratic national convention.As we reported earlier, the Uncommitted National Movement has continued its sit-in outside the convention after the anti-war group was denied its request for a Palestinian person to speak at the convention’s main stage. The group Muslim Women for Harris later announced that it was disbanding in response to the Harris-Walz campaign’s refusal of the group’s request.Khanna, who was an early supporter of a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, has met with Arab American and Muslim leaders disaffected by the Biden administration’s handling of Israel’s war. He posted to X:Abraham Aiyash, the majority leader in the Michigan House of Representatives, said leaders of the convention “cannot claim to want peace in Gaza but actively thwart the ability for Palestinians to speak their truth”.Patrick Gaspard, a former White House official and influential thinktank leader, urged local businesses in states such as Georgia to prepare themselves, saying:
      This is not just a Democrat versus Maga Republican thing. It is a profound American question. We have not seen anything like this before in our lives and so you can’t be waiting for that.
      On a positive note, he added:
      I will say I’m excited to see that Marc Elias, who is just a badass election lawyer that some of us worked with for a long time, is now officially sitting next to Bob Bauer [Joe Biden’s personal lawyer] inside the campaign and not outside of the campaign.
      Patrick Gaspard, who served in various positions in Barack Obama’s administration, noted that the Republican state legislature in Georgia just enacted a provision that gives “astonishing” levels of discretion to state officials to question the outcome of a vote count to delay certification.He warned of similar moves afoot in Nevada and North Carolina and also criticised Kevin Roberts, leader of the rightwing Heritage Foundation, for recent comments the country is in the midst of a “second American revolution” that will be bloodless “if the left allows it to be”.Gaspard, president and chief executive of the Center for American Progress in Washington, said:
      That kind of rhetoric, the instrumentisation of those local elected offices and the stoking of these fires on social media – and Donald Trump himself will manipulate all of this – is going to lead to civil unrest and civil confrontation in a close contest that Kamala Harris is declared the winner in. I don’t think anybody is ready for that.
      Patrick Gaspard, a former White House official and influential thinktank leader, has warned that America faces “multiple January 6-like incidents” if Kamala Harris ekes out a narrow electoral college victory in swing states.“Following this election, which we will win in very close margins in those states, I’m 100% confident that Donald Trump and his cabal will say of course one, that the election was stolen and two, that people need to take back their country,” Gaspard told reporters at an event hosted by Bloomberg in Chicago.
      They’re going to support mobilisations in the streets that I think will lead us to have not just a January 6-type incident in the Capitol, but that could potentially lead to multiple January 6-like incidents in state capitols around the country – in Michigan, in Pennsylvania, in Wisconsin, in Nevada, in Arizona, in North Carolina.
      I just spoke with James Zogby, the founder and president of the Arab American Institute, and the last Arab American to speak from the main stage of the Democratic convention, in 1988.He called the DNC’s decision to deny a Palestinian American speaker an “an unforced error, a kind of a bonehead move that is going to cost them votes and didn’t need to”.Zogby said some of the potential speakers offered to the DNC included a Georgia state representative who is Palestinian, Ruwa Romman, and a Democratic organizer who has known Harris for years and has lost dozens of family members in Gaza, Hala Hijazi. He said:
      It was a no brainer, just a no brainer, and they couldn’t agree to that, and I don’t know why, and I don’t think there was any logic involved.
      This is what’s called a real stupid, boneheaded mistake, to end up literally dumping on your own story that ought to be about the convention and Kamala Harris and hope and joy and all that. And instead, we’re talking about a dumb mistake made by consultants to exclude Palestinian voices. More

    • 200 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Hottie’ Dems and Chappell Roan stans: meet the 200 TikTokers who scored access to the convention

      by

      More than 200 content creators hit Chicago this week, bringing their ring lights and attempts at business casual as part of a historic push by the Democratic national convention to credential non-traditional media.Memes had fueled the initial excitement surrounding Kamala Harris’s 11th-hour presidential bid, and the campaign aimed to churn out more viral moments by granting the creators access during this crucial week. Many, if not most, of the creators paid their own way to Chicago. Some were sent courtesy of political action committees. On the convention floor, they have danced to Chappell Roan, landed interviews with lawmakers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Raphael Warnock, and filmed get-ready-with-me videos of their convention outfits. Is their content breaking through?Some of the better-known creators at the convention include Deja Foxx, who worked with the Harris campaign in 2019 as a surrogate strategist and spoke on the convention floor this week; Hasan Piker, a Twitch streamer who used TikTok to spotlight pro-Palestinian protesters; the menstrual equity activist Nadya Okamoto, who interviewed Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, about her first period; and the fashion influencer Vidya Gopalan, who spoke to Harris about sharing a last name with the vice-president’s late mother.A Wired dispatch from one influencer after-party described a scene that included a special couch for JD Vance, a “wall of weirdos” with photos of Republican leaders, a wall of Democratic “hotties” like Travis Kelce, and an arcade room with “abortion access Skee-Ball”. Liz Plank, a journalist and creator with over 589,000 followers, posted a video from the party in which she asked men who tried to buy her a drink to donate to an abortion fund instead.View image in fullscreenNot all of the content coming out of the event is pro-Harris. Charlie Kirk, founder of the rightwing organization Turning Point USA, posted videos from the convention floor, including one in which he goaded the president of the Young Democrats of Georgia with the question “What is a woman?” Bari Weiss’s the Free Press put together a mash-up of interviews with Harris voters struggling to name one of her policies.But the majority of creators present support Harris and want their viewers to as well. This year, Democrats expect millions of gen Z voters to hit the polls for the first time, and TikTok is gen Z’s main news source, with a third of US adults under 30 telling Pew Research Center they regularly get their news from the app. “Everyone is really excited that we’re here, because we have such a direct line to the youth vote, and everyone wants to do content with us,” said Alexis Williams, a TikToker who posts about fashion, Stem, and social justice.Still, she said bridging the gap between the under-30s and older politicians at the convention can be a challenge. “It’s difficult to stand next to a more senior person and say, ‘OK, so we’re going to make this joke about Republicans, or play this Chappell Roan song, I swear it’s going to make sense. They’re like, ‘What does this mean?’”Williams’s videos reveal what it’s like behind the scenes at the convention. She’s posted a tour of the “creator penthouse” overlooking the convention stage, filmed herself hauling free Plan B and UTI tests out of an after-party that handed out reproductive care products, and hammed it up on the convention floor in a pink tweed dress.Videos that feel intimate do well on TikTok. Kory Aversa, a 51-year-old publicist and content creator from Philadelphia, treats the event like a red carpet, filming VIPs like Ocasio-Cortez, Tim and Gwen Walz and Jesse Jackson from just a few feet away.View image in fullscreen“My content style is making you think like you’re in the seat next to me,” Aversa said. “It’s one thing to see a pretty picture in the newspaper, but it’s another to walk into the convention with me and be like, ‘holy crap, this is epic, Stephen Colbert is here.’ I want people to feel that with me.”The official Harris campaign TikTok, @KamalaHQ, follows this ethos too, posting videos of staffers wearing Harris-Walz camo hats and cheering during speeches.“When you turn on CNN or Fox News, you know exactly what you’re going to get,” said Heather Gardner, a 36-year-old TikToker covering the convention. “You’re going to hear the speeches and the talking heads. But the beauty of what we’re doing here is that everyone’s unique and different.” For Gardner, that means posting videos of the impressionist Matt Friend doing his best Walz, or of herself walking the convention floor in a brat green suit and coconut tree T-shirt.(Some antics have crossed over to mainstream news: two young people wearing “Twinks for Kamala” shirts ended up on CNN, much to the delight of the terminally online.)RaeShanda Lias, a 43-year-old content creator from Louisville, Kentucky, secured invitations to the convention from the Congressional Black caucus, Human Rights Campaign and Emerge America, a non-profit that supports Democratic women running for office. (Lias is an alum of the program, having run for Louisville city council in 2018.) She says influencers were given free rein to post what they want, so not all of their videos end up centering politics.View image in fullscreen“My content deals with facts, fashion, and fun,” Lias said. In one video liked more than 58,000 times, Lias shows off a baby blue suit she wore to the Congressional Black caucus brunch, while riffing on how “demure” the outfit is. “But we’re all coming together to help elect the first Black and Asian woman to the highest point in this country,” she said.For all the buzz surrounding this convention influencer class, there is still a clear line between journalists and content creators. Creators don’t break news. Most don’t factcheck, and many are fawning in their coverage. With this tension as a backdrop, Reuters reported that journalists from traditional media outlets were having to “battle for space” against creators, with journalists receiving less access.“I had this major wake-up call yesterday where I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, we have so much more access than people who have been doing this for decades,’” Williams said.It can feel tense at times. “The creators are learning how to be around reporters and the reporters are learning how to be around creators,” Aversa said. “I was at one event where a journalist came along and asked some of the creators to be mindful of holding up their phones and blocking cameras. We all have to coordinate with each other.”It’s clear that most of the creators are using their access to contribute to Harris’s vibes-only brand of hopecore campaigning. But, despite being openly pro-Harris on social media, Williams says she doesn’t want her content to feel like a Harris ad. “A lot of us approach our content as, ‘These are the reasons we support her, and you should go out and do that, but be insightful and educated about the process,’” she said. “Giving people the knowledge of how the DNC works helps us create strategies that will get our administrations to listen to us, so we can get what we want out of politics.”As Gardner put it in a TikTok: “Good vibes aren’t enough.” More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Project 2025: Democrats warn convention extreme plan is no joke

      by

      The Saturday Night Live cast member Kenan Thompson carted out a massive version of the Project 2025 book onto the main stage at the Democratic national convention on Wednesday night. Despite the comedian’s involvement with the prop, which has been used throughout the convention, Democrats want voters to know that the conservative manifesto for a second Trump administration is no joke.Democrats have sprinkled the words “Project 2025” into speech after speech for months, culminating in the big book’s spot on the big stage – a sign of the toxicity that the mere mention of the project has with voters of multiple political persuasions.The project would dismantle much of what Democrats have done in the federal government under Joe Biden’s administration. The 900-plus-page policy outline, the Mandate for Leadership, is just one piece of the plan, which also involves assembling a roster of potential political appointees for jobs if Donald Trump wins, training those allies on how it thinks the government should work and coming up with a playbook to swiftly put those plans into place if Trump wins in November.A poll from the University of Massachusetts Amherst released earlier this month showed that more than half of respondents had heard of Project 2025, and the majority of those surveyed did not agree with many of its aims.Trump and his campaign have worked to distance the candidate from the project, which was put together by the conservative thinktank the Heritage Foundation. But many of the authors and groups behind the project have Trump ties, and the policy goals often align with things Trump has said he intends to do if he wins again. Trump’s team cheered when a Project 2025 leader announced he was stepping down from his role after pressure from the campaign.After the Minnesota governor and vice-presidential nominee, Tim Walz, mentioned Project 2025 in his speech on Wednesday night, Trump called into Fox & Friends on Thursday morning to say it was “disgraceful” that Democrats keep tying him to it.“They know I have nothing to do with it,” he said. “I had no idea what it was. A group of people got together, they drew up some conservative values, very conservative values, and in some cases perhaps they went over the line, perhaps they didn’t, but I have no idea what Project 25 is.”Each night at the convention, an elected official has lugged the book back on to the stage to cite an exact page number for a policy that should concern Democrats. The Michigan state senator Mallory McMorrow talked about plans to weaponize the Department of Justice. The Pennsylvania state representative Malcolm Kenyatta talked about its plans to stop Medicare from negotiating drug prices. The Colorado governor, Jared Polis, pointed to plans to limit abortions and promote “traditional” families.“Usually Republicans want to ban books but now they’re trying to shove this down our throats,” Kenyatta said.The bit with SNL’s Thompson involved video appearances by a handful of Democrats from around the country who would be affected by policy changes the project suggests, including a teacher, a federal employee and a doctor.“What do you do for a living?” Thompson asks an OB-GYN. “An OB-GYN that delivers babies? Uh-oh.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It’s bad news, isn’t it?” the OB-GYN responds.“It sure is. On page 459, Project 2025 resurrects a law from the 1800s called the Comstock Act to ban abortion nationwide and throw healthcare providers in jail,” Thompson replies.The speakers, including Thompson, reference a webpage put up by the Harris campaign to highlight parts of the project that are most egregious for Democrats.“Just remember, everything that we just talked about is very real. It is in this book,” Thompson said. “You can stop it from ever happening by electing Kamala Harris as the president of the United States.” More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Muslim Women for Harris disbands and withdraws support for candidate

      by

      On the third night of the Democratic national convention, the group Muslim Women for Harris released a statement announcing that it was disbanding in response to the Harris-Walz campaign’s refusal to allow a Palestinian person to speak on the main stage.The statement was released as members of the Uncommitted National Movement, which won 30 delegates to the convention, and their supporters held a sit-in outside of the convention. Ilhan Omar joined the demonstration for some time, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called in to the sit-in via FaceTime. The sit-in came after the anti-war group was told a Palestinian person would not be allowed to speak on the main stage – until then, whether or not such a speech would happen was up in the air.During the sit-in, Muslim Women for Harris pulled their support for the Democratic nominee.“We cannot in good conscience continue Muslim Women for Harris-Walz, in light of this new information from the Uncommitted movement, that VP Harris’ team declined their request to have a Palestinian American speaker take the stage at the DNC,” the group’s statement reads.Kamala Harris’s campaign notably invited the family of Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin to speak on Wednesday, which Uncommitted supported. The group called for a similar platform for a Palestinian person.“Uncommitted delegates urge the Democratic party to reject a hierarchy of human value by ensuring Palestinian voices are heard on the main stage. We are learning that Israeli hostages’ families will be speaking from the main stage. We strongly support that decision and also strongly hope that we will also be hearing from Palestinians who’ve endured the largest civilian death toll since 1948,” the Uncommitted statement read.During the family’s speech, Goldberg-Polin’s father, Jon Polin, called for a return of the hostages and an end to “the suffering of the innocent civilians in Gaza”, joining other speakers like Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, who both made reference to Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza. During the course of the Democratic convention, calls for a ceasefire have been met with raucous applause from audience members. Still, some have said the party’s nods have fallen short.“The family of the Israeli hostage that was on the stage tonight, has shown more empathy towards Palestinian Americans and Palestinians, than our candidate or the DNC has,” Muslim Women for Harris’s statement read. “This is a terrible message to send to Democrats. Palestinians have the right to speak about Palestine.”Alana Zeitchik, who has multiple family members who are hostages, spoke out in support of having a Palestinian American speak on the main stage. “Rachel and Jon deserved every second on that stage. I also believe a Palestinian American voice deserves to be heard on that stage,” Zeitchik wrote on X. “I’d love to hear from @Ruwa4Georgia and I hope the DNC will give her the chance to be heard.”Chicago, where the Democratic convention is being held this year, has one of the largest Palestinian communities in the United States. Muslim Women for Harris did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

    • 175 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Brat, what’s that?’: Harris’s meme fame (sort of) makes its way to the DNC

      by

      Six hours and 26 minutes after Joe Biden endorsed Kamala Harris to be the Democratic presidential nominee, a three-word tweet upended the presidential race.“Kamala IS brat,” singer Charli xcx tweeted.The British pop star’s tweet wasn’t just referencing her album, brat – already the soundtrack of the summer – but merely adding to the viral cacophony of mashup videos that featured Harris laughing and dancing to songs from her album.It was also a larger exaltation of Harris’s personality. Being “brat”, according to Charli xcx, is “just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, who feels herself, but then also maybe has a breakdown, but kind of parties through it”.Put another way, “the brat girl is authentic and unabashed, wholly herself, says what she thinks, means what she says, can’t be shamed because she owns all of her messiness, awkwardness, shortcomings”, said Abigail De Kosnik, a professor at the Center for New Media at the University of California, Berkeley.“Harris has long come across in interviews and social media videos as real and very much herself, unafraid to laugh loud and dance in public, proud to geek out and be weird about things she loves (Venn diagrams, her campaign buses), so she has never been invested in being or seeming ‘perfect’,” she said.The meme exploded on Twitter, TikTok and beyond, helping the Harris campaign engage younger voters – a critical demographic. The Harris campaign immediately embraced the meme, changing the background of its rapid response account on Twitter to match the chartreuse album cover with its plain font.The Guardian asked some attendees at the Democratic convention whether they had heard of the meme.“Brat? What’s that?” said Pamela Cleveland, 60, who had travelled up to Chicago all the way from Temple, Texas. “I don’t know what brat is, though I’ve been hearing it a lot recently.”Her friend and travelling companion, Sharon Rose, 66, was equally bemused: “I’ve been hearing that it’s something cool, but I don’t know why.”After the Guardian gave one explanation of brat as slightly messy, strong, street smart and authentically real, both faces lit up.“Then Kamala is definitely brat,” exclaimed Cleveland. “She’s relatable, people of all races and nationalities can relate to her. It makes sense.”Harold Love, a Democrat who represents Nashville in the Tennessee legislature, told the Guardian he also hadn’t heard of the meme.“I haven’t seen that,” he said on the floor of the Democratic convention Monday evening. “I don’t know what that means.”Raumesh Akbari, the Democratic leader in the Tennessee state senate and a self-described “geriatric millennial”, said she had learned the term recently.“Kamala is brat,” she said. “I’m like, OK, Charli, I get it, I get it. I understand what it means. I need to get a button, I’ve seen them around.”Priya Sundareshan, an Arizona state senator who just turned 40, was wearing lime-green shoes to signify brat.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’m a little too old for that, but I heard about it and that’s why I wear these lime-green shoes, because apparently that is the colour of brat!” she said with a laugh.Asked whether brat signifies that Harris has a strong connection with young voters, Sundareshan replied: “Absolutely. I know we’ve seen that with the gen Z and millennial influencers who have come out in support and are spreading the message. Kamala is definitely #brat and I’m a young cool kid, yeah!”The Guardian attempted to approach Greta Gerwig, the Barbie director, on the convention floor Monday evening to ask her whether Kamala was brat.“No, sorry, she can’t talk,” an assistant said before a Guardian reporter could pose the question.An effort to inquire with Amy Klobuchar, the Democratic senator from Minnesota, was also unsuccessful.“I’m not doing interviews,” Klobuchar said.Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a professor at Syracuse University who has studied social media and presidential campaigns, said that it made sense that some voters may not have heard of the meme. She noted the campaign had visibly embraced the meme on Twitter, but not on other platforms.“That’s strategic on the part of the campaign. They didn’t amplify it across platforms,” she said. “It’s strategic because it only resonates or resonates clearly with a particular demographic, which is meaningful to the Democrats. The Democrats need young voters.“They’re an important voter segment for the Democratic party, but they’re not the base. And so they can’t alienate the base by going too far into this pop culture reference that they don’t get.“Strategically, it is a dance that the campaign has to walk,” she added. “That’s because their voter base doesn’t get Kamala as brat, because for the most part, right, voters tend to be older. And that meme in particular is confusing. Those older voters, like, they’re not listening to Charli xcx’s music.” More

    • 225 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Democrats are finally done with the ‘high road’ – and hitting Trump where it hurts | Robert Reich

      by

      I’m glad Democrats are finally hitting back at Trump. Enough with the “high road”.They’re calling him “weird”.They’re mocking him. “Donald Trump fell asleep at his own trial,” Hillary Clinton sneered at the Democratic convention. “When he woke up, he’d made his own kind of history – the first person to run for president with 34 felony convictions.”Barack Obama noted Trump’s “weird obsession with crowd sizes”.Michelle Obama asked: “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?”Trump hates to be laughed at. He cannot abide ridicule. So, keep it up.But in addition to the mockery, we must not forget Trump’s treachery.The values a president enunciates and demonstrates ricochet through society, strengthening or undermining the common good.George Washington’s biographer, Douglas Southall Freeman, noted that by June 1775, when Congress appointed him to command the nation’s army, Washington had already “become a moral rallying post”.In the 2016 presidential campaign, 240 years later, candidate Donald Trump’s moral squalor was on full display. When accused of failing to pay his income taxes he responded: “That makes me smart.”He thereby signaled to millions of Americans that paying taxes in full is not an obligation of citizenship.Trump also boasted about giving money to politicians so they would do whatever he wanted. “When they call, I give. And you know what, when I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me.”In other words, it’s perfectly OK for business leaders to pay off politicians, regardless of the effect on our democracy.After Trump launched an attack on NFL players who kneeled during the national anthem, Steve Kerr, coach of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, explained that the players were trying to protect a core American value. “They’re protesting excessive police violence and racial inequality,” said Kerr. “Those are really good things to fight against. And they’re doing it in a nonviolent way. Which is everything that Martin Luther King preached, right?”Before Trump, the peaceful transfer of power was assumed to be a central feature of American democracy.As the Harvard political scientist Archon Fung has noted, when losing candidates congratulate winners and deliver gracious concession speeches, they demonstrate their commitment to the democratic system over the result they fought to achieve – an important means of reaffirming the common good.Think of Al Gore’s gracious concession speech to George W Bush in 2000, after five weeks of a bitterly contested election and just one day after the US supreme court ruled in favor of Bush:“I say to President-elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of this country … Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the court’s decision, I accept it … And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.”Consider what might have occurred had Gore bitterly accused Bush of winning fraudulently and blamed the five Republican appointees on the supreme court for siding with Bush for partisan reasons. Or if, during his campaign, Bush had promised to put Gore in jail for various alleged improprieties, and then, after he won, accused Gore of spying on him during the campaign and trying to use the FBI and CIA to bring his downfall.These statements – close to ones Trump actually made – might have imperiled the political stability of the nation.Instead, Gore made the same moral choice his predecessors made at the end of every previous American presidential election, and for the same reason: he understood that the peaceful transition of power confirmed the nation’s commitment to the constitution, which was far more important than his own loss.Trump has had no such qualms. When he lost, he embarked on a coup against the United States and instigated an assault on the US Capitol, resulting in five deaths.At this moment, Trump and his lackeys are installing loyalists in state and county election offices to deny certification to the Harris-Walz ticket and other Democrats down the ballot.The essence of Trump’s failure as president – and the fundamental reason he doesn’t merit a second term – is not that he has behaved in childish and vindictive ways or is “weird”.It is that he sacrificed – and continues to sacrifice – the processes and institutions that undergird America to achieve his own selfish aims.He abused the trust we place in a president to preserve and protect the nation’s capacity for self-government.Trump is a traitor.He and the Republican party – now a personality cult based on Trump’s “big lie” – violate everything America stands for.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      No tax on tips fires up Nevada hospitality workers: ‘I want that!’

      by

      Kristine serves gamblers playing countertop video poker screens at the center bar of Las Vegas’s Ellis Island casino. She declines to share her last name for privacy reasons, but is not timid about her support for Donald Trump when asked about his campaign promise to end federal taxation on tips.“I want that!” Kristine says as she fulfills cocktail waitresses’ orders. “Our tip compliance is too high. They take so much from our paycheck.”Tip compliance – the tax process for expected earnings from tips – has become a political football in Nevada, with federal lawmakers from both parties piling in to co-sponsor bills or present their vision for how tax exemption for tips should work.The push for tax relief for a specific sector of wageworker may seem out of the blue if the idea wasn’t so brazenly opportunistic. According to state employment figures, one in four jobs in this crucial swing state are in leisure and hospitality, many if not most of which are tip-earning positions at bars, restaurants, casinos, spas and hotels in Las Vegas and Reno.The frenzy over the issue started in June, during a Trump rally in Las Vegas, where he surprised supporters, press and members of his own party, saying: “Hotel workers and people that get tips, you’re going to be very happy because when I get to office we are going to not charge taxes on tips.”It was a “wild-ass promise”, says Ted Pappageorge, treasurer for the Culinary Union Local 226, which represents 60,000 hospitality workers in Nevada.He points out that during Trump’s four years in office and the four years since, the union’s heard “not a peep out of him” regarding overtaxed wage workers. Indeed, Trump’s signature legislative achievement as president was a tax cut that mainly benefited corporations, real estate developers, and billionaires and millionaires transferring wealth to their scions. “One of the problems is Trump lies, and he lies a lot,” Pappageorge said.But, Pappageorge added, Trump’s comments created an opening. “There’s actually a requirement now to have a discussion and an opportunity for us to wedge into the discussion, to make it real.”The union is now seeking tip compliance relief for their members while also advocating to raise the federal sub-minimum wage, which allows employers in some states to pay tipped earners as little as $2.13 per hour.Trump’s opponents have been listening. In Kamala Harris’s first Las Vegas rally as the presumptive Democratic nominee, she announced that she wouldas also pursue no taxes on tips, delighting rank-and-file Democrats who had become intrigued with the proposal, and irritating Trump supporters who wanted him to have the policy all to himself.“Why is she copying him?” says Kristine, the Ellis Island bartender. She voted for Trump in the last two election cycles and will again this fall. “I believe in women power, but I feel like we need a better president, like a strong personality, a tough one, to put [things] back to normal.”Wistful for the pre-pandemic economy, before food, fuel and housing prices shot up, Kristine says it would be nice if people could afford to enjoy themselves again: “Go on vacation again, because everything we make goes to bills, that’s it, and it’s not enough still. Everything is so expensive and you’re making the same money.”Southern Nevada’s vulnerability to economic slumps has led to two local sayings: the region is “the first to suffer, last to recover” because “when the economy gets sick, Las Vegas catches pneumonia.”The city was hit hard by pandemic-era travel restrictions. Since then, resorts have recovered strongly, reporting record profits from gaming each of the past three years. In resorts and casinos that are unionized (Ellis Island is not), the culinary union leveraged these historic profits to negotiate higher wages for their members.Still, many workers say their tip earnings have remained stagnant.Machines such as the Smarttender beverage-mixer and screen-based ordering systems have depressed tip earnings by dehumanizing the experience and distorting the scale of service, says Sheri Earl, 51, a cocktail waitress at Mandalay Bay. “It looks like a lot of the servers are bringing out so many drinks, but we’re not being tipped on all of those.View image in fullscreen“Also,” Earl adds, “people just aren’t tipping the way that they used to because they don’t have the money. I noticed when I’m serving, more people will give $1 for four drinks, whereas it used to be $1 per drink, so I’m serving more drinks, but bringing back less money.”A lifelong Democrat, Earl’s loyalty to the party had wavered in recent years, and her conversations in the employee break room suggest that many her colleagues will support Trump out of nostalgia for how they thrived before Covid.But Harris’s candidacy has reaffirmed her allegiance to the Democratic ticket, Earl says. “She’s very optimistic about changes that she wants to do as a female president, and a lot of the tax cuts for the working class helps.“Now, I don’t think there will ever be no taxes on tips,” Earl clarified. “I expect to pay it, but not at rates where it’s unrealistic, or I can’t support my family, or I can’t pay my bills at the end of the month.”Others were less inspired.“It’s a ‘so you vote for me’ promise,” says Samantha, a blackjack dealer at Ellis Island. “I don’t think Congress will let it happen. [The candidates] can say it, and they can hope that because they said it, you’re going to vote for them, but it isn’t going to happen.” Shrugging, she says she does not intend to vote. “Unfortunately, I don’t believe that my vote matters.”Democratic presidential candidates have enjoyed a winning streak in Nevada that goes back four cycles from Biden’s narrow 2020 win, to Hillary Clinton’s 2.4% margin over Trump, to Barack Obama’s victories in 2012 and 2008. Survey averages currently show Trump leading Harris by 2 to 3 percentage points.Before Biden dropped out, Trump led by 9 points in Nevada. Harris has rejuvenated Democratic enthusiasm and made strides to corral the unwieldly coalition that defeated Trump four years ago, but Nevada is proving to be a different beast. It’s one of the few swing states in which Trump continues to lead in most major polls. But her canny decision to jump on the no tax bandwagon may help.Badass Tax Guys, a tax preparation company in Henderson, Nevada, has hundreds of tip-earning clients, and many have mentioned to owner Robert Wagner that the proposal, while intriguing, seems too good to be true.“‘We see all the upside, and we love keeping our money, but what’s the catch potentially?’ is what I’m hearing right now,” he paraphrases while warning that it would be exploited if not written carefully to solely target those who need relief.“I would put a tip jar on my desk, you know what I mean?” Wagner quips. “I’ll charge lower fees and you can throw the difference in the tip jar. All of a sudden, my income is to going to go down quite a bit. I generally like the idea overall, but if you’re going to do that there needs to be a way to stop Wall Street from taking advantage of it.” More

    • 225 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘She may be family, but we need to hold her accountable’: Howard students cautiously excited by Kamala Harris

      by

      On Tuesday, day two of the Democratic national convention in Chicago, Howard University, in Washington DC, was abuzz with students excited about alumna Kamala Harris’s presidential candidacy. The Guardian spoke to several students who expressed pride that one of their own may assume the highest office, which they hoped would shine a light on historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Others emphasized the need to hold Harris accountable on Gaza policy, as well as on issues that affect Black communities, such as overpolicing and high maternal death rates.“I was pretty happy to not only be a Howard student, but to be Black as well,” Shondo Green, a 20-year-old biology major, said about Harris’s nomination. The general sentiment on campus since classes started on Monday has been uplifting – everyone is smiling, he said. “There’s something different about this year compared to my previous two years. There’s something in the air.”Hundreds of Howard University students milled around the Yard, the central hub of campus life, in between classes during the first week of school. Surrounding the grassy area were trees painted with Greek letters that represent the Black sororities and fraternities known as the Divine Nine. Harris, a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, pledged as a Howard student in the 1980s.Dezmond Rosier, a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and a senior studying political science and economics, said he was thrilled to vote in a presidential election for the first time. His main concerns were about cancelling student debt and ensuring that “the justice system is justice for all”. Rosier wants to see Harris create just policies around the possession of cannabis as it becomes legalized in states throughout the nation while “there’s still people in our prison systems who are unfortunately being held up for things that are now considered legal”.View image in fullscreen“She may be our family member in the sense of the university,” Rosier said, “but we also need to hold her accountable.”Outside the university’s auditorium, Ruqayyah Taylor, a senior from Norristown, Pennsylvania, attended a back-to-school pop-up event hosted by DTLR Radio. The 21-year-old journalism major wants to see Harris continue working toward the student debt forgiveness plan put forward by the Biden-Harris administration, which was thwarted by court challenges. She lauded the Harris campaign’s use of social media to galvanize gen-Z voters.“I think that she has the ability to [change course on Gaza policy],” Taylor said. “She has a different sense of awareness that Biden doesn’t have, whether it be because of age or demographics.”At the library, senior Jaden Lopes da Silva said he wanted to see more outreach efforts that catered to young Black voters. “[Her engagement] is more of a broad gen-Z sort of thing, but it appears to be more towards pop culture,” he said, referencing the Harris campaign’s embrace of the “brat” label from the pop musician Charli xcx. “I haven’t really seen anything specifically towards the Black gen-Z community.” Sitting next to him, junior Nala Francis said she considered Harris’s nomination her generation’s version of Barack Obama, who became president when she was a toddler. “I never had the experience of ‘oh we could get a Black president,’ and now that we get a Black president that is also a woman and from Howard,” she said. “This is literally history in the making and I’m now old enough to be a part of it.”Friends Jada Phillips and Jada Freeman, 19-year-old sophomores from Chicago, chatted on a walkway in between classes. “I think it’s going to bring a lot of light to Howard itself and how good of a school it is,” Freeman said about an alumna being the Democratic nominee. She plans to vote for Harris, but Phillips said that she wants to see how Harris’s economic policies will differ from previous administrations.View image in fullscreenAt a nearby cafe, Msia Kibona Clark, an associate professor in Howard’s department of African studies, recalled receiving a pop-up alert on her phone that Harris would be the presumptive nominee. She said that she was waiting to see if Harris changes course on US’s Gaza policy; however, she felt hopeful that Harris seems to be more empathetic toward the plight of Palestinians than Biden does. “From her talks before, her appearances, she definitely has been less embracing of Israel, so that has given me hope,” Kibona Clark said.Marcus Board, an associate professor of political science, said that if Harris becomes president, he would like to see her work with racial justice organizers. “I hope that they do choose to work with movement organizers who, as my research shows, are the people who are reinforcing democracy … reinforcing inclusion, access to care, access to human rights,” he said. “Without them, this whole thing is gonna fall faster than a freshman’s GPA.”View image in fullscreenLast week, freshman Elijah Sanford Abdul-Aziz waited in a long line to hear Harris speak on campus. “I’ve only been here for like two weeks, so that’s fire to me,” said Sanford Abdul-Aziz, an 18-year-old political science major. “It was like when one of the old ladies from church tells you about how they used to know you, when she talked about her orientation in the auditorium.” He said he was inspired by her statement that students could become president of the United States with hard work and determination. “She’s a vision of what you can be,” he said.Even though he said that he will cast a ballot for Harris in November, he wasn’t “super-duper excited”, given the US’s continued funding of Israel’s war on Gaza, in which more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since 7 October. “It’s either Kamala or Donald Trump,” Sanford Abdul-Aziz said. “I look at it as we can’t advocate as much as we can under Trump as we can for Kamala.” Sanford Abdul-Aziz said that he has one message for Harris about US allyship with Israel: “In 2020 I remember she said during a vice-presidential debate that allies are like your friends. And I know that to be a good friend, you have to hold your friends accountable.” More