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Biden’s trajectory is a Shakespearean tragedy. Clooney can play the president | Sidney Blumenthal
George Clooney can now play Joe Biden in the movie. After he urged the president to quit the race, the penultimate scene became greater than any Hollywood ending. The actor, while the King of Hollywood, has not yet won an Oscar for a leading role. This part, though, drawing on a range of classic genres, moving from pathos to tragedy to triumph, will challenge his dramatic skills as never before.The curtain rises on Biden as Richard II, beleaguered and beset, facing his overthrow from within.
What must the king do now? Must he submit?
The king shall do it: must he be deposed?
The king shall be contented: must he lose
The name of king? o’ God’s name, let it go
The Shakespearean inevitability seems overwhelming, tragedy heaped upon tragedy with a comic thread: the plotting against him from Julius Caesar, his rages against fate from King Lear, and reality suspended with a touch of A Midsummer’s Night Dream. Then in a thunderclap the drama turns romantic through Byron’s Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte.
Tis done – but yesterday a King
And arm’d with Kings to strive –
And now thou art a nameless thing
So abject – yet alive!
In 2011, Clooney wrote the screenplay for a film called The Ides of March in which he played an idealistic Pennsylvania governor and Democratic presidential candidate reacting to cynical plots and subplots. The New York Times called it “less an allegory of the American political process than a busy, foggy, mildly entertaining antidote to it”. Clooney did receive an Oscar nomination for his writer’s credit but no more.Now he can play in something other than a belabored story of the supposed price idealism pays to ambition. Now he can sink his teeth into a far more complicated starring role, following a far richer storyline.The film begins with a bright young star of the post-JFK generation from a middle-class background with an unusual common touch yet stricken by unspeakable tragedy and trauma. His wife and daughter are killed in a car accident, and his two sons are critically injured. Though just elected to the Senate at the age of 29, one of the youngest ever, he devotes himself to his sons. He travels daily on the train from Washington to his home in Delaware to watch over them, while still establishing himself as a peer among his fellow senators despite his youthful age.In the second arc, Biden launches a campaign for his party’s presidential nomination but wrecks his chance by borrowing the identities of various political figures put into his mouth by overheated media consultants. His earnest ambition is undone by trivial mendacity, his promise upended by careless overreaching.Then he is the chair of the US Senate judiciary committee, seeking respect, comity and bipartisan cooperation, presiding over the nomination of a US supreme court nominee who perjures himself about his sexual harassment of an employee. In the interest of misguided fairness, the senator suppresses the evidence of two corroborating witnesses.Again, he runs for his party’s nomination, now the even more powerful and knowledgeable chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, but he wins less than 1% of the vote in the Iowa caucus and glumly drops out. A charismatic up-and-comer who had served hardly any time in the Senate emerges victorious, then lifts the loser from the depth of his political despair to make him his perfectly complementary running mate.Biden emerges as a substantive vice-president, the consummate negotiator with Congress to help enact the signature achievement of the administration, the long-held dream of national health insurance. But, again, personal tragedy strikes. His beloved son, Beau, rising in politics after a military career, whom his father had pinned for a trajectory to the White House, attaining what he could not, contracts brain cancer and dies. As Biden copes with his grief, the president passes over him as his chosen successor to anoint another, who narrowly loses to a vile grifter posing as a man of the people.Again, Biden appears to stumble out of the gate yet in another run, but regains his footing. He is the only one who can bridge the whole of the party. As hundreds of thousands die during a plague-like pandemic, the economy withers. He stands as a figure of empathy and solidity against the malignant narcissist in the Oval Office. At last, when Biden wins the prize, Donald Trump stages an insurrection to prevent the certification of the election and departs in disgrace.Despite razor-thin margins in the Congress, he passes the most far-ranging legislation since the Great Society, manages the economy through its complex hazards, expands the western alliance in the teeth of Vladimir’s Putin’s aggression against Ukraine, and gets little credit. He is healing the world, but the toxicity lingers. He is blamed for his extraordinary but incomplete success. Trump rises from his ruins to be acclaimed through willfully blind nostalgia.Once too young for his responsibility, Biden is assailed as too old to hold it. There is a bit of The Last Hurrah about his last campaign, also played by Spencer Tracy in the film based on the Edwin O’Connor novel of an old Irish-American Boston mayor who, on his deathbed, responding to the talk around him that he would have done it all differently if he could live his life over, says as his last words: “Like hell I would.”Against the tide of criticism for months, Biden knows he is not suffering from cognitive decline that affects his judgment as president. He is handling the crises around the globe with skill and experience, the master of foreign policy. He has defeated the menace of Trump before. But he has occasional lapses from natural aging. He tires; he forgets a name or place. His childhood stutter seems to have made a partial return as he pauses to form and explain his thoughts. He has taken cognitive tests, previously unknown to the public, that demonstrate he has no underlying condition. But he assumed the burden of running again out of a sense of duty that he is best able to meet the troubled times.He stubbornly resists and takes umbrage at the chorus of criticism at his obvious aging, his halting and slow gait from a broken foot early in his presidency he didn’t properly treat and his sometimes broken sentences. In his mind, he’s saving the country.He offers an early debate to dispel what he considers the smears of his disability. He and his staff are certain he can repeat his adroit State of the Union appearance. But he falters and loses his place and looks painfully old. He makes subsequent public appearances to put the lie to his collapse as just “a bad night”. After a successful Nato summit, at a press conference he displays his intricate knowledge and management of foreign policy. Yet the press is not quelled. Pundits describe him as clinging to power as a selfish old man, his refusal to leave proving he’s as bad as Trump.Nancy Pelosi, now the speaker emerita, as she calls herself, still the regnant monarch of the Congress, recognizes his flaw as fatal political decline. She orchestrates a slow process of persuasion, of regretful statements from a trickle of members urging him to withdraw, which threatens to become a torrent.Barack Obama, muffled behind the curtain, lends his assent, if not by silence, to the critics. His multitude of former aides, spread throughout the media as kibitzers, have raised their voices as a chorus of Biden naysayers. Obama does not wave off Clooney, the actor casting himself the party broker. Biden feels betrayed. He is given to bouts of self-pitying, defiant and angry cries, but these do not hold off the ranks from further dividing or the walls from closing in.On 13 July, an assassin nicks Trump at a rally. The terrible event gives him the unprecedented possibility at the Republican convention to appear as a transformed figure. He could use his narrow escape to reveal an inner conversion. But after his entrance to the lights flashing his name, like the old Elvis in Las Vegas, after describing what happened to him when the bullet went by his head, he reverted to the fossilized Trump. For a droning hour and a half, he fell into his lounge act of canned jokes and insults. Since then, he has declined further into his decadent routine. At his first rally since Butler, he went on about Nancy Pelosi as a “dog” and “crazy as a bedbug”, Kamala Harris as “crazy”, and Biden as “stupid”. His encounter with death could not alter his character. With each slur and slight, Trump shrinks himself.Biden catches Covid-19. He retreats to his home in Delaware. He contemplates his mortality in the scale of his duty. He can read the polls. He comes to the epiphany that he could achieve his aims only by relinquishing his pride. He rose to the figure in Byron’s Ode:
Where may the wearied eye repose
When gazing on the Great;
Where neither guilty glory glows,
Nor despicable state?
Yes – one – the first – the last – the best –
The Cincinnatus of the West,
Whom envy dared not hate,
Bequeath’d the name of Washington,
To make man blush there was but one!
When George III learned that George Washington would resign after his term, voluntarily give up the office of the presidency to establish the principle of a peaceable transfer of power and preserve the American Republic, the King remarked: “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist More
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Kamala Harris’s home town cheers historic White House run: ‘She’s going to do it’
As Kamala Harris emerged as the Democratic frontrunner to replace Joe Biden, residents of her home town of Berkeley, California, greeted the news of her potentially history-making White House run with enthusiasm – and some trepidation.Those who once knew her as a little girl living above a daycare on Bancroft Avenue were proud of their home town hero and – like many Democratic supporters in the US – hopeful she has a better chance than Joe Biden of beating Donald Trump.“This was where her story began,” said Carole Porter, 60, standing on a corner where she and Harris waited for the school bus starting as first-graders, both participating in a city campaign to desegregate local schools. “For people of color and for women, once she breaks that glass ceiling – and I’m sure she’s going to do it – there’s no going back.”Days after Biden’s historic decision to exit the US presidential race, Democrats have largely coalesced around the vice-president – raising a record $81m in 24 hours for her campaign and gaining the support of top party members including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Nancy Pelosi and Biden himself.Born in Oakland, Harris moved to the neighboring city of Berkeley where she lived until she was 12 with her single mother, Shyamala, and sister, Maya. She later served as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, before becoming the state’s junior senator.The East Bay neighborhood where Harris and Porter rode bikes as children is steeped in political and cultural history. Across the street is the former home of the first Black mayor of Berkeley, and several blocks away sits a school where the radical Black Panthers organization first organized free breakfasts for children. Its founder, Huey P Newton, frequented the area.Harris joined that legacy in 2020, when she became the first woman in US history and the first Black woman and woman of south Asian descent to be elected as vice-president. Now she stands poised to make history once again as the first woman of color to lead a presidential ticket and – if she wins – the first female president of the United States.Porter said coming from this area, historically a red-lined district primarily inhabited by Black and immigrant families, gives her “a broad perspective”.View image in fullscreen“I think because we were in such an accepting environment of all people, that is where her baseline is,” Porter said. “She has no obstacles, no judgment and no thinking that she has to do or be anything different than who she is.”Biden’s decision to step aside came as a relief to many, following weeks of concern among Democratic party members and voters that the president was not fit to run for re-election. Still, some voters in Harris’ former stomping grounds are wary of her chances in November.Tina, a 60-year-old voter who requested not to be quoted by last name, said she was “thrilled” to hear Harris is being considered as the top candidate, but questioned whether she will be able to win. “She’s got a lot stacked against her,” she said. “I mean, we weren’t even able to vote a white woman into the White House before.”Other voters echoed those concerns. “I worry about the misogyny vote,” said Pat Roberto, a woman strolling down Solano Avenue, a street adjacent to Thousand Oaks elementary school, which Harris attended as a child. “She wouldn’t have been my ideal, but she is better than Trump, and that’s what we need – to get him out.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAlthough Trump is expected to attack Harris as being further left than Biden on many issues, voters in her blue home state have often criticized the former prosecutor for being too centrist or even conservative on some issues.View image in fullscreen“I have never been a big supporter of her, because she is a prosecutor and I am kind of on the other end of the spectrum,” said Paula Dodd, a 69-year-old voter who has lived in the Bay Area her whole life and was enjoying lunch near Harris’s former elementary school. “She’s definitely not a traditional Californian in that regard – she’s not super progressive.”Brian Dodd, lunching at the same table, said that could be seen as a strength for Harris. “That’s what gives me hope, that she can appeal to more people,” he said.Polling has shown Harris’s favorability ratings are similar to those of Trump and Biden. A June AP-Norc poll found about four in 10 Americans have a favorable opinion of her, though the share of those who have unfavorable opinion was slightly lower than for Trump and Biden.Despite misgivings, there was an air of excitement in the neighborhood on Monday. “We figure they’ll be renaming the school after she gets elected,” Brian Dodd said. More
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Kamala Harris to visit Wisconsin in first rally since launching presidential campaign – live
Kamala Harris is travelling to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, today where she will hold her first campaign rally since she launched her presidential campaign on Sunday with Joe Biden’s endorsement. Biden won Wisconsin by about 20,000 votes in the 2020 election, and recent polling had suggested a tight race between Biden and Donald Trump in the battleground state again.Tuesday’s visit was scheduled before Biden ended his campaign, but took on new resonance as Harris prepared to take up the mantle of her party against Trump, who is scrambling to pivot his campaign against the vice-president.According to Wisconsin Democratic party chair Ben Wikler, 89 of Wisconsin’s 95 delegates, including senator Tammy Baldwin and governor Tony Evers, had already pledged their support for Harris as of yesterday afternoon.After confirming the state Democratic Party had officially backed Harris for the nomination, Wikler was quoted by Wisconsin Public Radio as saying:
And in hearing from elected officials across the state of Wisconsin, hearing from Democratic Party activists, hearing from donors, there is a surge of focus, of enthusiasm – a kind of flowering of the kind of unity that we’re going to need to defeat Donald Trump.
During her visit to Wisconsin today (see post at 10.14), Kamala Harris is to be joined by major elected officials in the state, including governor Tony Evers, senator Tammy Baldwin, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, attorney general Josh Kaul, secretary of state Sarah Godlewski and Wisconsin Democratic party chair Ben Wikler, as well as state labor leaders.House Democrats and Republicans will meet separately today for the first time since the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on 13 July and Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the presidential race on Sunday, Chad Pergram, the senior congressional correspondent for Fox News, has posted on X. He said there will be a House hearing today on the shooting at Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.Kamala Harris is travelling to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, today where she will hold her first campaign rally since she launched her presidential campaign on Sunday with Joe Biden’s endorsement. Biden won Wisconsin by about 20,000 votes in the 2020 election, and recent polling had suggested a tight race between Biden and Donald Trump in the battleground state again.Tuesday’s visit was scheduled before Biden ended his campaign, but took on new resonance as Harris prepared to take up the mantle of her party against Trump, who is scrambling to pivot his campaign against the vice-president.According to Wisconsin Democratic party chair Ben Wikler, 89 of Wisconsin’s 95 delegates, including senator Tammy Baldwin and governor Tony Evers, had already pledged their support for Harris as of yesterday afternoon.After confirming the state Democratic Party had officially backed Harris for the nomination, Wikler was quoted by Wisconsin Public Radio as saying:
And in hearing from elected officials across the state of Wisconsin, hearing from Democratic Party activists, hearing from donors, there is a surge of focus, of enthusiasm – a kind of flowering of the kind of unity that we’re going to need to defeat Donald Trump.
As we have already reported, Kamala Harris has earned enough delegates to become the likely Democratic party nominee, after California delegates voted unanimously to endorse her.Several state delegations met on Monday evening to confirm their support for the vice president, including Texas and her home state of California. By Monday night, Harris had the support of more than the 1,976 delegates she needs to win on a first ballot, according to a tally by the Associated Press. No other candidate was named by a delegate contacted by the AP.California state Democratic chairman, Rusty Hicks, said 75% to 80% of the state’s delegation were on a call on Tuesday, all supporting Harris.“I’ve not heard anyone mentioning or calling for any other candidate,” Hicks said, adding “tonight’s vote was a momentous one”.Hicks had urged delegates to quickly line up behind Harris and had circulated an online form to submit endorsements.Daniel Boffey is the Guardian’s chief reporterThe spectacle of the Olympic Games opening ceremony could be overshadowed by the human drama in the White House after it was confirmed that Jill Biden will attend the event on the Seine.It will be a first appearance on the world stage for the president’s wife since her husband withdrew from his re-election campaign over concerns about his deteriorating health.Rumours had swirled in Paris that the first lady could pull out of the games at the last minute with some suggesting that she might even be replaced by vice president Kamala Harris whose husband, Douglas Emhoff, is leading the delegation at the closing ceremony.The White House, however, confirmed on Monday evening that Jill Biden would lead a delegation of seven other senior US figures at the opening ceremony, including the US ambassador to France, Denise Campbell Bauer, senators Chris Coons and Alex Padilla, and the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass.Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the presidential race on Sunday sets the stage to end a nearly five-decade run when either a Bush, Clinton or Biden was on the ballot for president or vice-president.USA today reports:
Members of the Bush and Clinton families, along with Joe Biden, have been on every presidential election ticket since 1980, when Ronald Reagan and running mate George HW Bush won.
Reagan and Bush easily won reelection in 1984 before Bush won the presidency himself in 1988.
The next four elections would feature either a Bush or Clinton on the ballot, with Bill Clinton defeating George HW Bush in 1992, before defeating Bob Dole in 1996, and George W. Bush winning elections in 2000 and 2004.
The following four elections (2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020) all had Biden or Hillary Clinton on the ballot, with Barack Obama and Joe Biden winning election in the first two contests, Hillary Clinton losing to Donald Trump in 2016 and Biden defeating Trump in 2020.
Ed Pilkington is chief reporter for Guardian USWhen Joe Biden finally ends his self-imposed seclusion at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, this week he will emerge into a very different world than the one from which he isolated when diagnosed with Covid last Wednesday.He will still be president of the United States, and as such the most powerful person on Earth. But it may not feel like that to him. His hopes of carrying on in that office died at 1.46pm ET on Sunday when he announced that he was standing down from the 2024 race.Very little is known about Biden’s specific plans for the next six months. Given the speed at which the final demise of his campaign happened, he may not know much himself.What we do know is that attempts by Donald Trump and his inner circle to force him out of the Oval Office now, on grounds that “if he can’t run for office, he can’t run our country”, are as half-hearted as they sound. Barring surprises, Biden will remain in the White House until noon on 20 January 2025.You can read the full analysis piece here:Donald Trump is due to appear on professional golfer Bryson DeChambeau’s YouTube show on Tuesday for a “special episode”.In a post on X, DeChambeau said the Republican presidential nominee will appear on his Break 50 show.The golfer’s show will be donating $10,000 to the Wounded Warrior Project for every stroke they score under par, according to the X post.DeChambeau said Tuesday’s episode “is about golf and giving back to our nation’s veterans, not politics”.The post added:
A few weeks ago I reached out to both parties’ presidential campaigns and @realDonaldTrump was down for the challenge. It is an incredible honor to be able to enjoy a round of golf with any sitting or former president, and all have an open invitation to join me for a round of Break 50 anytime.
A new CBS News/YouGov poll found that 83% of Democratic registered voters surveyed approved of the US president, Joe Biden, withdrawing from the race while just 17% disapproved.Four in ten registered Democrats said Biden exiting makes them more motivated to vote now he is out of the race, with 79% thinking the party should nominate the US vice president, Kamala Harris, as a replacement, according to the poll.45% of those surveyed believe the party’s chances of beating Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, in November have improved since Biden’s announcement, though 10% say the electoral prospects have got worse for the Democrats, while 28% say it depends on who the nominee is and 17% say a change in candidate won’t make a difference.Democratic voters have long had doubts about Biden’s reelection bid. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in January, while the party’s nomination contest was still under way, 49% of Democrats said the 81-year-old should not run again in 2024.Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has told families of the estimated 116 hostages still held in Gaza that a deal that would secure their loved ones’ release could be nearing, his office has said.“The conditions are undoubtedly ripening. This is a good sign,” Netanyahu told the families on Monday in Washington, where he is expected to meet Joe Biden later this week after making an address to Congress.It will be Biden’s first meeting with a foreign leader since he opted not to run for reelection and endorsed vice president Kamala Harris as his successor as the Democratic presidential nominee. Harris is to meet Netanyahu, who is under increasing pressure from much of the Israeli public to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza, this week separate from Biden’s meeting.Efforts to reach a Gaza ceasefire deal, outlined by Biden in May and mediated by Egypt and Qatar, have gained momentum over the past month.Israeli protesters are calling for a deal with Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, which would free the hostages in exchange for a pause in fighting. Negotiators from Israel’s the Mossad intelligence service are expected in Qatar later this week, continuing talks that have dragged since early this year.Democrats are urging Kamala Harris to consider choosing her potential running mate from the so-called battleground states, which this year are: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.“That is the first presidential decision that vice president Harris has, so she’s got a lot of good choices ahead of her,” senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) told reporters at the Capitol, according to the Hill.He listed a number of Democratic governors as possible choices – Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Roy Cooper of North Carolina, alongside transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg (who has deep ties in Michigan) and senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. Here is a useful explainer on who else could be Harris’ running mate for the November election:Andrew Roth is in Washington for the Guardian, and has this analysis on how Kamala Harris will tread a careful path on Israel and Gaza while Benjamin Netanyahu is in the US:For much of Monday, no meetings between Benjamin Netanyahu and either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris had been confirmed, even though the Israeli PM had already departed for the US and was scheduled on Wednesday to address a joint session of Congress at the request of the House leader, Mike Johnson.Harris appears likely to skip that session, where she would have sat directly behind Netanyahu as the president of the Senate. She will be out of Washington for a public event at a college sorority in Indiana.Late on Monday, an aide to Harris said that both she and Biden would sit down with Netanyahu in separate meetings at the White House and denied that her travel to Indianapolis indicated any change in her position towards Israel.Harris backers and insiders say that she is more likely to engage in public criticism of Netanyahu than Biden and to focus attention on the civilian toll among Palestinians from the war in Gaza – even if she would maintain US military aid and other support for Israel that has been a mainstay of Biden’s foreign policy.“The generational difference between Biden and Harris is a meaningful difference in how one looks at these issues,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel lobbying group that has endorsed Harris’s presidential bid.Read more of Andrew Roth’s analysis here: As Netanyahu arrives in Washington, Kamala Harris treads a careful path on Israel and GazaThat’s it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. My colleague Yohannes Lowe will take it from here. More - in US Politics
Running Kamala Harris may actually be a political masterstroke for the Democrats | Steve Phillips
Kamala Harris will likely be the next president of the United States – and that’s overall good news if you care about democracy, justice and equality. Joe Biden’s decision on Sunday to bow out of the presidential race clears the path for the country to elect its first woman and first woman of color as president.Even though the electoral fundamentals for this year’s election have always favored the Democrats – despite what numerous misleading polls have been showing (and with most of the news media reacting purely off those polls) – Harris’s selection will largely shore up the weaknesses that were dragging down Biden’s poll numbers.All of the drama and dissatisfaction over Biden’s June debate performance completely obscured the underlying factors that made it more likely than not that the Democrats, even with Biden as nominee, were in a strong position to win in November. Here are the facts.First, most people in this country typically choose the Democratic nominee for president over the Republican nominee time and time again. With the sole exception of 2004, in every presidential election since 1992, the Democratic nominee has won the popular vote (Biden bested Donald Trump by 7m votes in 2020).Those trends have only continued during the four years since the 2020 election. Since 2020, 16 million young people have become eligible to vote, and 12 million people, most of them older, have died. Biden beat Trump by 30 points among young people, according to the exit polls, and he lost among the oldest voters (52% for Trump, 47% for Biden). So the fundamental composition of our nation’s electorate is more progressive, more diverse and more favorable to Democrats right now than it was in 2020.Second, although far too many in the media proceed from the premise that large swaths of the electorate are up for grabs each election cycle and susceptible to switching their political allegiances from one party to the other, the actual data starkly contradicts that belief.The gold standard measure of voter behavior is the American National Election Studies (Anes), “a joint collaboration between the University of Michigan and Stanford University” that analyzes voter behavior over several decades. The Anes has found a clear and undeniable trend of swing voters virtually disappearing from the populace. In 2020, just 5.6% of voters fell into that category – down from 13% in 2008.Lastly, a reality that historians will certainly puzzle over in future years when they try to understand why Biden was forced out less than three and a half months before election day is that the economy is actually going like gangbusters. Fifteen million jobs have been created under the Biden administration and the stock market is at an all-time high, swelling 401k retirement coffers by an average of $10,000 according to Fidelity investments.Despite all that, Biden’s position as nominee became untenable when support within his own party crumbled as people worried about his poor debate performance and weak polling numbers. Looking under the hood at those polls, however, we see that Harris should be able to quickly consolidate the support that was slow to coalesce around Biden. The instructive and completely overlooked data point in the latest polls is that Biden was doing just fine with white voters (that is, the percentage he needed in order to win), and the softness in his numbers mostly stemmed from tepid support among some people of color.An 18 July CBS poll showed Trump leading Biden by 51% to 47%. Breaking down the numbers reveals that Biden was backed by 42% of white voters – a higher percentage than he received in 2020 when he defeated Trump. The top line weakness came from the results for voters of color, which showed just 52% of Latinos and 73% percent of African Americans currently supporting the president (with drop-off primarily among men from these groups).First of all, those figures are so historically aberrant that they call into question the polling methodology. Biden received 65% of the Latino vote in 2020, and 87% of the Black vote (no Democratic nominee has ever received less than 83% of the Black vote since the advent of race-specific exit polling in 1976). Either there has been a cataclysmic decline of support for Biden among voters of color, or the pollsters just aren’t that good at surveying people of color, or people of color are expressing their current lack of enthusiasm, which is a very different thing than how they will ultimately vote in November.If, in fact, support for Democrats among people of color is the principal problem, then putting Harris at the top of the ticket is a master stroke. The enthusiasm for electing the first woman of color as president will likely be a thunderclap across the country that consolidates the support of voters of color, and, equally important, motivates them to turn out in large numbers at the polls, much as they did for Barack Obama in 2008.The challenge the party will face in November is holding the support of Democratic-leaning and other “gettable” whites, especially given the electorate’s tortured history in embracing supremely qualified female candidates such as Hillary Clinton and Stacey Abrams. (The primary difference between Abrams, who lost in Georgia, and Senator Raphael Warnock, who won, is gender.) Sexism, misogyny and sexist attitudes about who should be the leader of the free world are real and Democrats will have to work hard to address that challenge.One critical step to solidifying the Democratic base is for all political leaders to quickly and forcefully endorse and embrace Harris’s candidacy.Mathematically, it is likely – and certainly possible, if massive investments are made in getting out the vote of people of color and young people as soon as possible – that the gains for Democrats will offset any losses among whites worried about a woman (and one of color, no less) occupying the Oval Office and becoming our nation’s commander in chief.All of this adds up to the likelihood that the 47th president of the United States will be Kamala Devi Harris.
Steve Phillips is the founder of Democracy in Color, and author of Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority and How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good More
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Kamala Harris earns enough delegate support to become Democratic nominee
Kamala Harris has said she is looking forward to “formally accepting the [presidential] nomination” of the Democratic party after she earned enough support from delegates including hundreds from her native California.“When I announced my campaign for President, I said I intended to go out and earn this nomination,” she said in a statement late Monday.“Tonight, I am proud to have secured the broad support needed to become our party’s nominee, and as a daughter of California, I am proud that my home state’s delegation helped put our campaign over the top. I look forward to formally accepting the nomination soon.”Speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi made the motion to endorse Harris for president at a virtual meeting of California’s DNC delegation on Monday evening, a spokesperson confirmed.Pelosi, who represents San Francisco in Congress, announced that with the endorsement of California’s delegation, Harris had earned enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination for president in August.Earlier on Monday, top Democrats rallied to support Harris in their bid to defeat Republican Donald Trump.Harris was headed to the battleground state of Wisconsin on Tuesday as her campaign for the White House kicks into high gear. The event in Milwaukee will be her first full-fledged campaign event since announcing her candidacy.She offered a sense of how she plans to attack Trump in a speech to campaign staff in Wilmington, Delaware earlier on Monday, referring to her past of pursuing “predators” and “fraudsters” as San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general.“So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type,” she said of her rival, a convicted felon who was found liable for sexual assault in civil court. Other courts have found fraud was committed in his business, charitable foundation and private university.She also cast herself as a defender of economic opportunity and abortion access. “Our fight for the future is also a fight for freedoms,” she said. “The baton is in our hands.”Biden, who is recovering from Covid-19 at his house in Rehoboth, spoke by phone to the staff first, saying he would be out on the campaign trail for Harris and adding: “I’ll be doing whatever Kamala Harris wants me or needs me to do.”When Harris took the microphone to address staff, Biden said to her: “I love you, kid.” Harris put her hands on her heart and said: “I love you, Joe.”Joe Biden’s departure freed his delegates to vote for whomever they choose at next month’s convention. And Harris, whom Biden backed after ending his candidacy, worked quickly to secure support from a majority.Big-name endorsements on Monday, including from governors Wes Moore of Maryland, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, JB Pritzker of Illinois and Andy Beshear of Kentucky, left a vanishing list of potential rivals.According to an Associated Press tally, Harris had 2,668 delegates, well beyond the simple majority of 1,976 needed to clinch the nomination on the first ballot.The survey is unofficial, the AP said, as Democratic delegates are free to vote for the candidate of their choice when the party formally chooses its candidate. Delegates could still change their minds before 7 August but nobody else received any votes in the AP survey, and 57 delegates said they were undecided.Pelosi, who had been one of the notable holdouts, initially encouraging a primary to strengthen the eventual nominee, said she was lending her “enthusiastic support” to Harris’s effort to lead the party.Pelosi said: “Politically, make no mistake: Kamala Harris as a woman in politics is brilliantly astute – and I have full confidence that she will lead us to victory in November.”A tweet late on Monday night announced that Pelosi’s office had confirmed Harris’s endorsement.Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison vowed that the party would deliver a presidential nominee by 7 August. A virtual nominating process before the national convention in Chicago, beginning on 19 August, is still needed.“I want to assure you that we are committed to an open and fair nominating process,” Harrison said on a conference call.The DNC had said earlier that a virtual vote would take place between 1 and 5 August, in order to have the nomination process completed by 7 August, the date by which Ohio law had required a nominee to be in place to make the state’s ballot.Ohio lawmakers subsequently pushed back the deadline to 1 September, but party officials said they hoped to beat the 7 August deadline to avoid any legal risk in the state.Winning the nomination is only the first item on a staggering political to-do list for Harris after Biden’s decision to exit the race, which she learned about on a Sunday morning call with the president.She must also pick a running mate and pivot a massive political operation to boost her candidacy instead of Biden’s with just over 100 days until election day.But Harris has also been raking in campaign contributions. Her campaign said on Monday she had raised $81m since Biden stepped aside on Sunday, nearly equalling the $95m that the Biden campaign had in the bank at the end of June.Hollywood donors ended their “Dembargo” on political donations, as fundraisers and celebrities from rapper Cardi B to Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis and TV producer Shonda Rhimes endorsed Harris.Wisconsin, where Harris will campaign on Tuesday, is among a trio of Rust-Belt states that include Michigan and Pennsylvania widely considered as must-wins for any candidate, and where Biden was lagging Trump.“There are independents and young people who did not like their choices, and Harris has a chance to win them,” said Paul Kendrick, executive director of the Democratic group Rust Belt Rising, which does routine polling in the battleground states where voting preferences can swing either way.Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report More
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If Kamala Harris wins the nomination, who could be her running mate?
A Democratic party ticket led by Kamala Harris seems increasingly likely as scores of high-profile elected Democrats line up to endorse her for president in the wake of Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race.In Biden’s announcement that he would no longer pursue a second term, he thanked Harris “for being an extraordinary partner in all this work”, and later, in endorsing her, called his choice to run with her in 2020 “the best decision I’ve made”.In short order, a series of powerful endorsements rolled in, including from Democrats formerly viewed as possible presidential candidates themselves, some of whom are now being floated as potential vice-presidential candidates on a Harris ticket.If Harris takes up the mantle for the Democratic party, one of her first major decisions as a candidate will be choosing a running mate. Harris has not indicated who she would consider, but here are some of the names Democrats are floating, so far, as possible vice-presidential candidates.Andy BeshearBeshear’s unlikely position as the Democratic governor of Kentucky – a state that voted for Trump by a margin of 25 points in 2020 – makes him a compelling vice-presidential candidate for the Democratic ticket. In office, Beshear has vetoed Republican bills banning abortions and gender-affirming care for transgender minors, although the GOP-controlled state legislature was able to override his vetoes in both cases. Beshear would also offer a contrast to Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, the Ohio senator who in his popular 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy claimed Appalachian culture was to blame for the region’s impoverishment. On MSNBC’s Morning Joe show Monday, Beshear endorsed Harris and knocked Vance. “JD Vance ain’t from here,” Beshear said, nodding to Vance’s depictions of Kentuckians as lazy.Mark KellyArizona senator Mark Kelly would offer swing-state credibility and could be a favored choice among party elites, given his role as a moderate in the Democratic party. His record as a combat veteran and former astronaut could also be a draw for independent voters. Kelly has been an advocate for gun reform after a shooting left his wife – former US representative Gabby Giffords – partly paralyzed. “I couldn’t be more confident that Vice-President Kamala Harris is the right person to defeat Donald Trump and lead our country into the future,” Kelly wrote on X on Sunday.Josh ShapiroShapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, has been a strong supporter of Biden and a faithful surrogate for his campaign. Shapiro has a track record of winning races in the swing state, serving as Pennsylvania’s attorney general for six years before he was elected governor in 2022. An outspoken opponent of Trump for years, Shapiro has nonetheless built bipartisan support within Pennsylvania; a May Philadelphia Inquirer/New York Times/Siena College poll showed he enjoyed 42% approval from Republicans in the state – a rare showing of support in an age of hyper-partisanship. Shapiro endorsed Harris Sunday, saying she had “served the country honorably” and describing her as a unifying figure. Roy CooperThe 67-year-old governor of North Carolina touts a long record in the state as a representative, attorney general and governor. Cooper is approaching the end of his time in the office (North Carolina governors are term-limited), where he has fought for the passage of bipartisan legislation despite the Republican party controlling the state legislature. In 2023, Cooper signed into law Medicaid expansion, which some red states have declined despite the measure being guaranteed under the Affordable Care Act. Cooper also quickly endorsed Harris’s presidential campaign. “I appreciate people talking about me, but I think the focus right now needs to be on her this week,” he said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe show on Monday. Wes MooreMaryland governor Wes Moore has also been floated by some Democrats as a running mate alongside Harris. Moore, who is the only sitting Black governor in the US, is widely considered to be a rising star in the Democratic party. Sworn into office in January 2023, Moore’s record in office is short. He has said that he would not want to be tapped as a vice presidential candidate, saying: “I want to stay as the Governor of Maryland, I love the momentum we are seeing right now in the state of Maryland.”Gretchen WhitmerMichigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democratic star who some hoped would run for president this year, has been floated as a potential running mate, even if it’s highly unlikely that Harris would pick another woman. Whitmer endorsed Harris Monday morning – but quickly dispelled the notion that she would be joining Harris on the ticket. “I’m not leaving Michigan,” Whitmer said at a media event. “I’m proud to be the governor of Michigan.” Whitmer, who enjoys broad popularity within the Democratic party for helping to flip the swing state blue, emphatically backed Biden before he dropped out of the race.Pete ButtigiegUS transportation secretary and former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Buttigieg rocketed into political stardom during his 2020 presidential bid, which gained surprising momentum given his sparse political record. Buttigieg, who is a navy veteran, has spoken powerfully about coming out in 2015 and later marrying his husband, Chasten Glezman Buttigieg. Buttigieg has served during a tumultuous time for US transportation systems – from the devastating and high-profile derailment of a train in East Palestine, Ohio, to airline meltdowns, to the Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore. More
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Biggest US abortion rights groups back Kamala Harris as effective messenger
The biggest abortion rights groups in US politics are lining up behind Kamala Harris’s bid for president, a show of faith in a politician who has already become the face of the White House’s fight over abortion rights – which is not only one of the election’s biggest issues but one of the few where Democrats have the advantage.Within hours of Joe Biden’s stunning announcement on Sunday that he would drop out of the presidential race and endorse the vice-president, Emilys List, which champions Democratic women who support abortion rights, and Reproductive Freedom for All, which advocates for abortion access and was previously known as Naral Pro-Choice America, officially endorsed Harris. Emilys List plans to pour at least $20m into the race in support of Harris.Planned Parenthood Action Fund, whose endorsement must be ratified by local chapters, has not officially weighed in. However, its CEO and president, Alexis McGill Johnson, warmly commended Harris for keeping “the needs and experiences of patients and providers front and center”.Harris has spent much of this year on a tour of the country in support of abortion rights, where she has proven to be a far more effective messenger on the issue than Biden. The president was infamously reluctant to even say the word “abortion” and fumbled answers to questions about it in the June debate that ultimately cost him his candidacy.“Just right off the bat, she’s primed to run with the message around abortion rights,” said Jean Sinzdak, associate director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers. “Her messaging around abortion and being out there forcefully on the issue is going to be a net positive for her.”Harris, the first sitting vice-president or president to visit an abortion clinic, has described the 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade and the abortion bans that now blanket the US south as “a healthcare crisis” and frames abortion rights as an issue of personal freedom.“One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling her what to do with her body,” she told a crowd in Savannah, Georgia, in February.Democrats hope that outrage over Roe’s downfall, which hobbled Republicans in the 2022 midterms and led GOP strongholds such as Ohio and Kansas to pass ballot measures protecting abortion rights, will boost turnout among their base – especially in battleground states like Nevada and Arizona. Both states are set to hold abortion–related ballot measures this year.Donald Trump, his running mate, JD Vance, and other Republicans have attempted to neutralize the importance of abortion rights in the 2024 election by downplaying the issue as well as their party’s role in Roe’s demise. During last week’s Republican national convention, the issue was conspicuously missing onstage. Neither Trump, who appointed three of the supreme court justices who overturned Roe, nor Vance, who has previously supported a national abortion ban, mentioned abortion.“Trump and Vance can downplay the abortion message all they want, but the political reality speaks for itself,” said Melissa Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute.Deckman suspects that a Harris candidacy will invigorate young women, young women of color and suburban women.“We see in our polling that young women in particular are the most staunchly supportive of abortion rights,” Deckman said. “I think it’s gonna be an extremely close election. But I think the benefit for the Democrats is now they have a new narrative. There’s some enthusiasm happening, where there wasn’t with the Biden campaign.”Before Roe fell, anti-abortion Republicans were far more likely than pro-abortion rights Democrats to identify as single-issue abortion voters.That picture has changed somewhat. One in eight voters say abortion is the “most important issue” to their vote, while more than half say that it is “very important issue but not the most important”, according to polling from KFF conducted before Biden’s departure from the race. Two-thirds of the voters who describe abortion as their most important issue say it should be legal in all or most cases. The voters who think it should be legal in all cases tend to be Democratic, Black, female or between the ages of 18 and 29.But voters are also deeply concerned with the economy and immigration – issues where, polls indicate, Trump is seen as the stronger candidate. Although six in 10 Democrats think Harris would make a good president, only about three in 10 overall adults feel the same, according to polling released by the Associated Press on Friday.As vice-president, Harris has backed Biden’s promise to codify abortion rights into law.“Here’s what a second Trump term looks like: more bans, more suffering, less freedom,” Harris said in a May speech. “But we are not going to let that happen.”While abortion rights groups are backing Harris, anti-abortion activists are already mobilizing against her. SBA Pro-Life America, which plans to spend $92m across eight states this election cycle, has started calling Harris “the “abortion czar”. More
