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      Harris to face biggest test of her political life with Democratic convention speech

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      Kamala Harris will tonight face the biggest test of her political life so far when she addresses the Democratic national convention in Chicago in a bid to persuade American voters to defeat Donald Trump in November’s presidential election and put her in the White House.The vice-president’s rocket-fueled campaign is still barely a month old following Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from seeking re-election in the face of a disastrous debate performance and questions over his age and mental acuity.Harris, and her vice-presidential pick Minnesota governor Tim Walz, have quickly overturned the election’s narrative, turning a solid Trump lead in the polls over Biden into a slight – but clear – advantage over the former Republican president.In addressing the Democratic convention on Thursday night – and by proxy the wider US electorate watching in their millions on television – Harris will be making a direct pitch to voters to back her vision for the United States.Harris’s campaign has sought to portray a more optimistic, future-focused view of the country than her rival, and perhaps also than that of the president, who based much of his pitch on dark warnings of Trump’s autocratic sympathies.Over the course of the week at the convention, the audience has heard from the Democratic party’s most powerful players, who threw their support unequivocally behind Harris. Biden, Barack and Michelle Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi all gave primetime speeches, as did some of the party’s rising stars, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.Now it is expected that Harris’s speech will seek to lay out her personal story as she bids to become a historic president: the first woman president and the first woman of color due to her south Asian and Black background. Her speech is likely to focus on her work as a prosecutor, defending victims of crime.But her speech will also lay out a sharp contrast between her positive view of the country’s future prospects and Trump’s almost wholly grim warnings about the state of the nation and his focus on immigration and crime.Across three days so far, speaker after speaker has already hailed Harris as a change-agent who would not only defeat Trump but lift the country higher, ushering in a new chapter of possibility and seek to return US politics to some semblance of normality since Trump came onto the political stage eight years ago.The Harris campaign – and especially the outspoken Walz – has also displayed sharp elbows and an ability to insult and poke fun at Trump.The switch in the polls and newfound edge has impressed many observers. “She has had a very good month not just because of a honeymoon, but because of the way she’s presented herself, the way her campaign has positioned her,” David Axelrod, a former top aide to Barack Obama, told the Guardian.Certainly it seems to have unsettled Trump and his campaign. Trump has adopted a policy of directly insulting Harris and inventing a series of nicknames for her while trying to paint her as a leftwing extremist and questioning her racial identity. But the jibes have had little effect and even drawn criticism from some senior Republicans.They have not blunted her lead. Harris consistently tops Trump by three or four points in recent head-to-head surveys and has also improved her standing in the handful of key states that are crucial to victory. While the electoral contest remains impossibly close, she has widened the battleground once more from the Rust belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to once again include Sun belt states like North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia.Throughout the convention so far, Democratic speakers have tried to make Trump seem small and diminished. They have sought to keep him on the backfoot and in a reactive mode, responding to attacks and being kept off-balance.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, compared Trump to an “old boyfriend” who has spent the last four years spinning the block, trying to get back into a relationship with the American people.“Bro, we broke up with you for a reason,” Jeffries said.“Kamala Harris has always understood the assignment,” said Laphonza Butler, a California senator and friend of Harris’s.“Kamala, your mom would be so proud of you,” said Doris Baptiste, a family friend who was close to Harris’s mother.On Wednesday night, Walz offered a full-throated attack on Trump, a defense of his record running Minnesota and a passionate advocacy for Harris. After criticizing the Trump campaign, he led the crowd of cheering delegates in a chant of: “We’re not going back! We’re not going back!”Turning to the theme of freedom – which was the focus of the night’s convention programming – Walz said: “That’s what this is all about, the responsibility we have to our kids, to each other and to the future that we’re building together, in which everyone is free to build the kind of life they want. But not everyone has that same sense of responsibility. Some folks just don’t understand what it takes to be a good neighbor. Take Donald Trump and JD Vance.”Walz said Trump and his running mate had an agenda to only benefit the “richest and most extreme” people in the US. Walz added: “It’s an agenda nobody asked for. It’s an agenda that does nothing for our neighbors in need. Is it weird? Absolutely, absolutely. But it’s also wrong. And it’s dangerous.” More

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      Tim Walz channeled grit and empathy at the Democratic national convention

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      “You might not know it, but I haven’t given a lot of big speeches like this,” Tim Walz said demurely towards the end of his keynote Democratic national convention address on Wednesday night.The moment wreaked of understatement. The look on his face, the way he raised his white eyebrows as if he were apologizing, the shrug of his shoulders. Even the phrase “big speech”.This wasn’t a big speech. It was a monumental speech, with the future direction of a country of 333 million people riding on it.But then Walz dropped his faux modesty and got to work. “I have given a lot of pep talks,” he said.From then on it was full steam ahead towards the goal line. After all, if you’re Walz, a scarcely known governor from the midwestern state of Minnesota, and you’ve just been yanked into the most significant election of recent times in the most powerful country on Earth, then what else are you going to do at the climax of your 16-minute oration than invoke your years as a high school football coach?Friday Night Lights never had it so good.As thousands of Democratic delegates from all 50 states packed into the United Center chanted “Coach! Coach! Coach!”, he conjured up the nail-biting finish that the US is now entering. “It’s the fourth quarter,” he said, rocket launching the crowd into a paroxysm of excitement.“We’re down a field goal. But we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field. And, boy, do we have the right team.”Walz never got to tell the delegates the score at the end of the game, but then he didn’t have to. He had already won the contest for their hearts and minds.If Donald Trump were watching the speech on his favoured Fox News, it might have stirred the odd feeling in him. Last month, the former president and Republican nominee caused quite the stir by claiming that vice-presidential running mates make “virtually no impact” on elections.Trump better pray he’s right. Not because of his guy, JD Vance, who is flunking in the polls. But because of this other guy: the plain-talking, gun-owning, and football-coaching former public school teacher.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhen Kamala Harris’s VP pick took the stage sometime after 10pm, he began a little hesitantly. Maybe Walz wasn’t joking, that “big speech” thing was a little much.But as he warmed to his subject, and the delegates got behind him with their deafening cheers, this “son of the Nebraska plains”, as his wife Gwen Walz described him, got into his stride. He channeled the grit and the empathy that has already endeared him to millions of Democrats in the 15 short days in which he has been on the national stage.He deployed words such as “neighbor” (seven times), “school” (eight) and “freedom” (nine) to flesh out a picture of himself as the homely guy next door who cares about you and your family and wants you to lead your best life. When he got to the bit about his record as governor, he turned the dial up, giving vent to his anger and passion.“We made sure that every kid in our state gets breakfast and lunch every day,” he said, eliciting one of the biggest roars of the night. “While other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing kids’ hunger from ours.”In the two weeks of Walz’s breathtaking propulsion into the political stratosphere – meteoric doesn’t do justice to his rise – Trump and team have tried hard to land punches on him. They have accused him of lying about his military record, pegged him as a “radical leftist” who wants to turn the country communist, and rolled out the old attack line that he wants to take your guns.So far, opinion surveys suggest, such efforts have been as sticky as water on a duck’s back.But then, how do you knock the military service of someone who spent 24 years in the national guard, even if he did misstate certain details of his time in uniform? Nor is it easy to portray his legislative record as extreme liberalism when the so-called “Minnesota miracle” of bills that he passed last year included not only universal free school meals, but paid family and medical leave as well as several other reforms that are no more revolutionary than the basic public services routinely provided by virtually every other industrialised nation.And how do you tear down a person for being anti-second amendment when, as he said on Wednesday night: “I was a better shot than most Republicans in Congress, and I got the trophies to prove it”?Not to mention that before Walz came on, the convention organisers reconvened the 1999 football team that he coached at Mankato West high school all the way to the state championship.In the end, though, it wasn’t the folksy football metaphors that hang in the air after the speech was done. It was the determination that was conveyed of a man with values forged in small town Nebraska to stop the advance of a someone who spends all day “insulting people and blaming others”.“We’ll turn the page on Donald Trump,” Coach Walz said. “That’s how we’ll build a country where workers come first, healthcare and housing are human rights, and the government stays the hell out of your bedroom.” More

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      Walz, Bill Clinton and surprise Oprah: Democratic convention day three key takeaways

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      The third night of the Democratic national convention featured a surprise speech from Oprah Winfrey, along with scheduled remarks from Bill Clinton, Pete Buttigieg, Tim Walz and other major party figures, many emphasizing the “joy” of Kamala Harris’s campaign.Here are some key takeaways:1. Tim Walz’s pitch to voters: ‘We’ll turn the page on Donald Trump’Kamala Harris’s running mate gave his keynote pitch to supporters at the end of the third night of the convention, talking about his military service, coaching and teaching days, and his family’s fertility journey. He leaned into his humble roots and deployed repeated football metaphors: “I haven’t given a lot of big speeches like this, but I have given a lot of pep talks … It’s the fourth quarter. We’re down a field goal, but we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field, and boy do we have the right team.”He called on his supporters to step up with urgency: “We got 76 days. That’s nothing. There’ll be time to sleep when you’re dead. We’re going to leave it on the field. That’s how we’ll keep moving forward. That’s how we’ll turn the page on Donald Trump. That’s how we’ll build a country where workers come first, healthcare and housing are human rights, and the government stays the hell out of your bedroom. That’s how we make America a place where no child is left hungry, where no community is left behind, where nobody gets told they don’t belong.”2. Oprah Winfrey, Stevie Wonder, Kenan Thompson and other celebrities invigorate the crowdThe convention continued with a packed celebrity lineup. Oprah Winfrey earned huge cheers when she made an unannounced appearance. She denounced “people who would have you believe that books are dangerous and assault rifles are safe” and took a swipe at JD Vance’s “childless cat lady” comment. She put Harris’s candidacy into the historical context of other trailblazing Black women, including Tessie Prevost Williams, one of the “New Orleans Four” who helped integrate public schools. And she roused the audience with her call to action, singing the word “joy”.Saturday Night Live’s Kenan Thompson had a lively appearance, entering with a large Project 2025 book and virtually interviewing Americans who would be harmed by the rightwing agenda: “You ever see a document that can kill a small animal and democracy at the same time?”Musician Stevie Wonder urged the crowd to choose “joy over anger”. Actor Mindy Kaling gave a personal account of cooking with Harris. And musicians John Legend and Sheila E performed at the end of the night.3. Bill Clinton: ‘We need Kamala Harris, the president of joy’Bill Clinton, the 42nd president, addressed his 12th Democratic convention, reading off written notes, not the teleprompter, suggesting the speech was edited last-minute. He warned Democrats against complacency: “We’ve seen more than one election slip away from us when we thought it couldn’t happen, when people got distracted by phoney issues. This is a brutal business.” He mocked Trump for his narcissism and obsession with crowd sizes, following Barack Obama’s widely cited joke on Tuesday: “[Trump] mostly talks about himself … his vendettas, vengeance, his complaints, his conspiracies.”Clinton preached a message of unity, echoing Obama’s comments, encouraging supporters not to demean or disrespect neighbors they disagree with. He praised Joe Biden for “voluntarily” giving up power and celebrated the hope Harris has injected into the race: “If you vote for this team … you will be proud of it for the rest of your life.”4. Parents of a Hamas hostage were featured while protesters and AOC pushed for a Palestinian speakerJon Polin and Rachel Goldberg gave emotional remarks about their son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who is held hostage by Hamas. Polin praised the White House and said they had met with Harris and Biden: “They’re both working tirelessly for a hostage and ceasefire deal that will bring our precious children, mothers, fathers, spouses, grandparents and grandchildren home, and will stop the despair in Gaza.”Members of the uncommitted movement, who have been advocating for a ceasefire and arms embargo on Israel, said they welcomed the speech, but continued to advocate that a Palestinian leader get an opportunity to address the crowd. Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a doctor who has treated patients in Gaza, spoke on a Democratic convention panel centered on Palestinian human rights, but there hasn’t been a Palestinian American on the main stage. Gaza solidarity protesters staged a sit-in outside the convention, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called on the convention to “center the humanity of the 40,000 Palestinians killed under Israeli bombardment”, posting: “To deny that story is to participate in the dehumanization of Palestinians. The @DNC must change course and affirm our shared humanity.”5. Pete Buttigieg went hard after JD Vance: ‘Doubling down on negativity’Pete Buttigieg, the US secretary of transportation, went hard after Donald Trump’s running mate: “JD Vance is one of those guys who thinks if you don’t live the life that he has in mind for you, then you don’t count, someone who said that if you don’t have kids, you have ‘no physical commitment to the future of this country’ … When I deployed to Afghanistan, I didn’t have kids … but our commitment to the future of this country was pretty damn physical. Choosing a guy like JD Vance to be America’s next vice president sends a message … They are doubling down on negativity and grievance, committing to a concept of campaigning best summed up in one word: darkness.”6. Prominent Republicans again rallied for Harris: ‘Our party acts more like a cult’Prominent Republicans and former Donald Trump supporters continued to earn loud applause at the convention, arguing that GOP voters should reject the former president, even if they don’t agree with all of Harris’s positions. “If Republicans are being intellectually honest with ourselves, our party is not civil or conservative, it’s chaotic and crazy, and the only thing left to do is dump Trump. These days, our party acts more like a cult, a cult worshiping a felonious thug,” said Geoff Duncan, former lieutenant governor of Georgia.Olivia Troye, a former homeland security adviser to then vice-president Mike Pence also spoke, saying: “Being inside Trump’s White House was terrifying. But what keeps me up at night is what will happen if he gets back there.”7. Speakers uplifted LGBTQ+ rights: ‘Trump wants to erase us’Speakers repeatedly promoted LGBTQ+ rights, offering a sharp contrast to the Republican national convention which continually featured extremist, anti-trans rhetoric. Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ+ organization, warned: “Trump wants to erase us … He would ban our healthcare, belittle our marriages, bury our stories. But we are not going anywhere. We are not going back.”Jared Polis, Colorado’s governor and the first gay man to serve as a US state governor, highlighted the anti-LGBTQ+ agenda of Project 2025: “Democrats welcome ‘weird’, but we’re not weirdos telling families who can and can’t have kids, who to marry or how to live our lives.” Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said LGBTQ+ Floridians were enduring “endless state-sponsored hate”. And Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, earned loud applause when she said: “I got a message for the Republicans and the justices of the United States supreme court: you can pry this wedding band from my cold, dead gay hand.”Democratic convention highlights:skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion

      Tim Walz rallies Democrats: ‘We’re gonna leave it on the field’

      Watch speeches from Bill Clinton, Pete Buttigieg, Josh Shapiro

      Oprah Winfrey in surprise speech

      Here are the rising stars and politicians to watch this week

      What to know about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz More

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      RFK Jr to reportedly drop out of race by end of week – live

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      We reported earlier that independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr’s campaign announced that he will make an address to the nation on Friday about “his path forward”.ABC News is now reporting that Kennedy plans to drop out of the race by the end of the week.It comes after Kennedy’s running mate, the Silicon Valley attorney Nicole Shanahan, said the pair were considering abandoning their campaign in order to help the election of Donald Trump.Kennedy was a member of the Democratic party and attempted to run as its nominee before choosing to stand as an independent.At an event hosted by Politico, Kamala Harris’s campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon was asked about how Robert F Kennedy’s reported intention to end his presidential bid would affect the race.One of the biggest questions of this year’s election is whether Kennedy is syphoning support from voters who would otherwise back Harris, or Donald Trump, and we may get a better idea of the answer to that if he ends his campaign.Either way, O’Malley Dillon told Politico she did not think it would be a big deal:
      We are very confident that the vice president is going to win whether she’s running against one candidate or multiple candidates. I don’t think it’s really going to interfere with the race too much.
      Nancy Pelosi delighted a well-heeled crowd at the University Club of Chicago on Wednesday afternoon, sharing anecdotes about her extraordinary career arc that she described as “housewife, House member, House Speaker.”Now considered one of the most powerful House speakers in modern political history, Pelosi said she faced doubts as she climbed the ranks in Congress from male colleagues who admonished her to wait her turn.“I became interested in running [for leadership] because we kept losing the elections, 94, 96, 98 and then it was 2000 I thought, ‘I’m so tired of losing … for the children,’” she said, using a Pelosism, that everything she does is “for the children.”When she made her decision to run for Democratic leadership known, Pelosi said she was immediately met with skepticism, especially among her male colleagues. “Who said she could run?” Pelosi recalled them saying. Their incredulity only encouraged her further.“Light my fire, why don’t you, poor babies?” Pelosi said, drawing laughs. In an aside to the audience, she emphasized that she was telling a story that occured “this century.”Pelosi continued, saying she was told there was a “pecking order” and she wasn’t in it.“They said, ‘these people have been waiting a long time,” Pelosi recounted. “So I said: ‘Was it over 200 years?’”The Uncommitted movement continues to press for the Democratic convention to allow a Palestinian to address delegates.Earlier in the day, the movement said it approved of a reported decision to allow the family of an Israeli hostage to address the convention, but said a Palestinian voice should also be heard:Here’s more about their quest to get Democratic leaders to allow them to speak from the convention stage:Two of Donald Trump’s surrogates will hold a press conference tomorrow in Chicago to criticize Kamala Harris’s record on handling immigration and other issues, hours before she is to deliver the closing address at the Democratic national convention.The Trump campaign has not had much of a presence in the city as Democrats have gathered to celebrate Harris’s entry into the race. That will change tomorrow when Vivek Ramaswamy and Carlos Trujillo, a former Trump administration official, address reporters from the Trump Hotel & Tower downtown.Kamala Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, is tonight’s keynote speaker, and will deliver a speech focused on telling American voters about his life and career, the Biden-Harris campaign said.“In his remarks at the Democratic national convention, Governor Tim Walz will introduce himself to the American people. He will highlight the values that he learned growing up in a small town in Nebraska, which shaped his service in the national guard, as a teacher, football coach, member of Congress, and governor, and that he will bring to the White House. Governor Walz will lay out what Vice-President Harris will do for working families and call on the American people to work together to elect Kamala Harris president,” according to the campaign.Musicians John Legend and Sheila E will introduce Walz, who will be nominated by Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar and Ben Ingman, a former student of the governor.Gaza solidarity protesters interrupted an environment and climate crisis council meeting at the convention on Wednesday, chanting “free, free Palestine”.“If you want to show some political courage, go and interrupt one of Donald Trump’s rallies,” responded Maryland representative Jamie Raskin, who was speaking. “We’re organizing against Trump, we’re organizing against the reactionary autocrats, plutocrats and kleptocrats.”“Anybody who interferes with that is objectively helping Donald Trump and Tim Walz,” Raskin continued, mistakenly naming Harris’s vice-presidential pick instead of Trump’s. “So cut it out,” he added before the protestors were escorted away.Some climate groups, however, are pushing for the Harris campaign to stop supporting Israel’s deadly war in Gaza by backing an arms embargo. Among them is the Sunrise Movement, the influential youth-led environmental justice group who spearheaded the push for a Green New Deal.“Young people want a livable world for our generation and generations. We want everyone to have clean air and water and safe homes,” said Stevie O’Hanlon, a Sunrise Movement spokesperson. “Everyone must have those rights and freedoms, including Palestinians.”Those of us who have shown up early to the United Center in Chicago (such as your live blogger) are getting a sneak peek at one of the night’s musical guests: Stevie Wonder.He’s sound-checking his 1972 hit Higher Ground, and was earlier at the podium rehearsing some remarks. Wonder has with him backing dancers, as well as a bassist, guitar player and someone who looks to be playing turntables. He is, of course, playing piano.Robert F Kennedy Jr, who is reportedly planning to drop out of the 2024 presidential race and considering throwing his support behind Donald Trump, was asked by ABC News’s Jonathan Karl about Trump calling the climate crisis “a hoax”.Here’s how Kennedy responded:Kennedy spent decades working as an environmental lawyer who sued polluters and founded a large non-profit focused on protecting clean water. Trump has long questioned human-made global warming, including calling it “mythical”, “nonexistent” or “an expensive hoax”, or suggesting that the climate could “change back again”.Pink is expected to take to the stage on Thursday for a closing-night performance at the Democratic national convention, CNN is reporting.The award-winning singer-songwriter will perform on Thursday evening before Kamala Harris’s speech, according to the outlet.As we reported earlier, John Legend will be performing tonight before Tim Walz’s remarks.Donald Trump Jr said he “loved the idea” of having Robert F Kennedy Jr appointed to a role in a potential Trump administration so that he can take a government agency and “blow it up”.The Republican presidential candidate’s son, in an interview with conservative radio host Glenn Beck reported by the Hill, said:
      I loved the idea, love the idea of giving him some sort of role in some sort of major three-letter entity or whatever it may be and let him blow it up.
      He added that he believes Kennedy is “a smart guy” and that “he’s actually got very good views on certain things”. Trump said:
      I think that’s what we need. And so, I think that kind of unity, even where there may be certain disagreements on certain things, I think he could be a really great asset for that.
      The former House speaker Nancy Pelosi demurred and deflected when asked by the Democratic strategist David Axelrod to share how difficult it was to have “that conversation” with the president.Pelosi, who pushed subtly but forcefully in public and private for the president to step aside, said it was ultimately Joe Biden’s decision to make but one that ultimately set the party on a path to winning that they had not been on when he led the ticket.“A great sacrifice was made here,” she said. But the rupture between Biden and Pelosi, two devout Catholics who have known each other for decades has been hard on her, she said. “I’ve cried over this. I’m sad about this,” she said.Her highest priority then and now was to win – and not just the White House, but the House and the Senate. She said the prospect of a second Trump term was too dangerous.“Thank God I was the speaker on January 6, last time,” she said, suggesting the assault on the US Capitol would have been far worse if Republicans had been in charge that day. She said:
      You have to make the decision to win, and you have to make every decision in favor of winning.
      Donald Trump, in an interview yesterday, said he would “certainly” be open to appointing Robert F Kennedy Jr to a role in his administration, if the independent presidential candidate drops out of the race and backs him.“I like him, and I respect him,” Trump told CNN after a campaign stop in Michigan on Tuesday.
      He’s a brilliant guy. He’s a very smart guy. I’ve known him for a very long time. I didn’t know he was thinking about getting out, but if he is thinking about getting out, certainly I’d be open to it.
      Trump said he would “love that endorsement, because I’ve always liked” Kennedy.Asked if he would consider appointing Kennedy to a role in his administration if he wins in November, Trump replied:
      I probably would, if something like that would happen. He’s a very different kind of a guy – a very smart guy. And, yeah, I would be honored by that endorsement, certainly.
      Robert F Kennedy Jr is leaning toward endorsing Donald Trump but the decision is not yet finalized and could still change, ABC News is reporting, citing sources.Kennedy’s hope is in part to finalize things quickly in order to try to blunt momentum from the DNC, one source told the outlet.Kennedy told ABC News’s Jonathan Karl that he would not confirm or deny reports that he is endorsing Trump, adding: “We are not talking about any of that.”Robert F Kennedy Jr, who will address the nation about “his path forward” on Friday, has held “advanced discussions” with Donald Trump and his campaign team about dropping out of the race and endorsing the Republican presidential nominee, the Washington Post is reporting, citing multiple sources. More

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      Obamas cast Kamala Harris as their heir and ‘flip script on Trump’, says ex-aide

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      Barack and Michelle Obama have cast Kamala Harris as the heir to their political movement and flipped the script on Donald Trump, former Obama adviser David Axelrod told the Guardian on Wednesday.The Obamas delivered electrifying speeches at the Democratic national convention in Chicago on Tuesday night. The former US president compared Harris’s ascent to his own by observing: “I’m feeling hopeful because this convention has always been pretty good to kids with funny names who believe in a country where anything is possible.”Michelle, the former first lady, invoked her husband’s hope-and-change campaign by remarking: “Something wonderfully magical is in the air, isn’t it?… A familiar feeling that’s been buried too deep for too long. You know what I’m talking about? It’s the contagious power of hope.”Both addresses were lauded by Axelrod, chief strategist for the 2008 and 2012 Obama presidential campaigns, in an interview after an event organised by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and the Cook Political Report on the sidelines of the convention.He said: “When Barack Obama got the call in 2004 that he was going to give the keynote speech at the Democratic convention, he said immediately, I know what I want to say, I want to talk about my story as part of the larger American story, and he’s always done that. He and Michelle are great American stories and they take pride in that and the values associated with that.“You heard it last night and Kamala Harris is very much rolling down those same tracks. They flipped the script on Trump. Trump’s play is to try and make people alien and what they did was make Trump alien to the values that most Americans share, so I thought those speeches were incredibly effective.”Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Obama in the White House, said there was “no doubt” that the Obamas regard Harris as their natural heir.“I think they feel very much a kinship with Harris and they see her as carrying that torch forward of what America really is about: the time-honored values of community and selflessness and hard work and all the things that we like to associate with what it means to be an American. She is out there talking about that and it’s one of the reasons why she is right in the middle of this race.”The mood in Chicago has been buoyant, with fears of a repeat of the party’s chaotic 1968 convention in the same city evaporating: instead of division and acrimony there is unity and joy. The gloom around Joe Biden’s candidacy has lifted as opinion polls show Harris pulling narrowly ahead of the Republican nominee Trump in swing states. Can it last?Axelrod, who was a student in Chicago and has spent much of his career in the city, commented: “I don’t know how you measure when honeymoons end but here’s the reality of the situation. This turnover happened very late in the race. She has had a very good month not just because of a honeymoon, but because of the way she’s presented herself, the way her campaign has positioned her. She now has a convention, which is a four-day commercial.“You get to Labor Day because next week is sort of a dead week and then the following week you have the debate. If she does reasonably well in the debate that takes you into late September and people are already voting. I think she has the ability to extend this and it may just turn out that it’s not a honeymoon but the consolidation of the base and then it becomes a scrum for the remaining voters.”As the Obamas define Harris as a personification of American values, Trump has been struggling to land a counter-punch. He has sampled attacks on her racial identity and intelligence as well as peculiar nicknames such as “Laffin’ Kamala”, “Lyin’ Kamala” and “Kamabla”. Axelrod believes that the former president is flailing.“He’s a jazz man when it comes to all of this and he gets in front of a crowd and he tries to find the groove and he throws everything against the wall. It’s generally bile, it’s personal and it’s negative. But he’s just trying out themes. The campaign seems more rational than the candidate and that’s been true from the beginning. The question is whether they can get him under control and on the message.“The best chance is for them to try and make her sort of Biden-lite and make her wear the jacket for whatever it is that people are unhappy with about Biden’s policies. But it’s hard to get people to buy the idea that the vice-president was actually pulling all the strings. That’s the flip side of nobody really knowing much about her. I don’t think they believe that and so there aren’t that many good options for that.”But he warned: “That’s not to say this isn’t a really close race and I’m not sure, if the race were today, that Trump wouldn’t win. But the motion is certainly in her direction.”Asked by the Guardian for a final prediction, Axelrod shot back: “Are you nuts? My prediction is it’s going to be a very close race. And I would not have made that prediction a month ago.” More

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr to drop out of presidential race by end of week – report

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr is set to drop his maverick campaign for president, it has been reported, amid speculation that the independent and environmental lawyer will throw his support behind Donald Trump.The ABC network, citing “sources familiar with the decision”, reported that Kennedy would formally leave the race on Friday. The report followed an announcement on his campaign website that he would make a statement that day “about the present historical moment and his path forward” in Phoenix that would be live-streamed on X and other social media.Speculation that Kennedy could abandon his presidential bid intensified after his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, revealed on a podcast on Tuesday he was considering that option – and considering endorsing Trump, the Republican nominee. Shanahan suggested Kennedy’s continued candidacy risked diverting support away from Trump, thereby helping to elect Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.Her comments were immediately welcomed by Trump, who told CNN that Kennedy – who he denounced as recently as April as a “Democrat plant” and a “radical left liberal” – was “a brilliant guy”.“I didn’t know he was thinking about getting out, but if he is thinking about getting out, certainly I’d be open to it,” said Trump, who, perhaps not coincidentally, is also due to speak in the Phoenix area on Friday, at a campaign rally.In truth, the pair seem to have been in contact for weeks amid an apparent rapprochement.A leaked recording of a telephone call between them emerged last month during the Republican national convention – just days after Trump survived an assassination attempt – when the former president solicited Kennedy’s support and the two discussed the possibility of Kennedy joining a future administration.Trump also appeared to endorse some of the anti-vaccine theories, for which Kennedy has become noted, during the call.In an interview with NBC News, JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, acknowledged there had been a stream of “communication” between the two campaigns.“I haven’t spoken to RFK personally, but I know there’s been a lot of communication back and forth between RFK … [and] this campaign,” he said. “Our argument to RFK, and I’ll make it right now, because, of course, he hasn’t dropped out yet, is, look: if you want a Democratic party that protected American workers and stood for strong borders, maybe disagreed with Republicans on things like tax policy, that party doesn’t exist any more.”Kennedy initially sought the Democratic nomination before abandoning that attempt to launch an independent campaign.His presidential bid has been hit by a spate of damaging stories that have undermined his efforts to present himself as a serious figure.An allegation surfaced in a Vanity Fair article that he had groped a family babysitter, to which Kennedy responded not with a denial, but by saying: “I am not a church boy.”He added: “I said in my announcement speech that I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world.”A further embarrassing disclosure was unearthed by the New Yorker, which described how Kennedy once left the carcass of a dead bear cub in Central Park and placed a bicycle next to it to make it look like an accident.Kennedy pre-empted the article by posting a video on X of him admitting the episode in a conversation with Roseanne Barr, as the pair sat in a spacious kitchen.The campaign has also run into money troubles in recent weeks, as Kennedy’s poll standing has dropped. It reportedly ended July $3.5m in debt, while Shanahan – who has contributed her own funds to it – was recently given a $1m refund. More

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      Trump and Musk’s talk of a cabinet position is all hot air, but we shouldn’t ignore it | Brian Merchant

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      What if Elon Musk went to Washington to serve in Donald Trump’s White House? There have been worse pitches for a comedy sketch, I suppose. Veep’s Armando Iannucci could probably do something with it. Sadly, the notion is all too real. Sort of.A Reuters reporter recently asked Trump whether he’d consider appointing Musk to his cabinet. “He’s a very smart guy,” Trump responded. “I certainly would, if he would do it, I certainly would. He’s a brilliant guy.” Musk replied with an AI-generated rendering of himself alongside a decade-old crypto meme and tweeted, “I am willing to serve.” It’s not the first time the idea has come up – Trump floated the possibility in May – but it is the first time that Musk has responded in the affirmative, winkingly or otherwise.The exchange is the culmination of an escalating series of displays of awkward amity and mutual admiration between the two, who were on icy terms as recently as this spring. The two are, after all, cut from remarkably similar cloth. Each demands attention the way a flame demands oxygen: incessantly, and at any cost.We can all but count out the idea of Musk becoming an actual cabinet member, or taking on any role that would require him to officially step away from his job as CEO at a half-dozen companies (Tesla, SpaceX, X, Neuralink, the Boring Company and xAI, as of last counting). More than any other founder, Musk is his companies, and they are him. Investors are not backing an auto manufacturer. They are backing Tesla, the revolutionary EV company with self-driving features piloted by the richest and second-most omnipresent man on the planet. Musk knows as well as anyone that if he stepped away, his companies’ stock values would plummet, his fortune alongside them. As funny as it is to imagine Musk, secretary of energy, fumbling his way through a press conference about natural gas prices, it’s not going to happen.That we must even consider taking such a thing seriously is a testament to just how powerfully both men have distorted the nature of our heavily mediated reality through trolling and sheer force of ego. And, unfortunately, I think we should take it seriously! Not because it is at all likely to happen but because it’s worth examining what the entreaty itself reveals about Trump and Musk’s relationship and the relinquishing of a once pivotal platform – X, formerly Twitter – to forces preoccupied with conspiracy and propaganda at this precarious moment.It’s hard to remember now, but Musk long proclaimed himself a moderate in politics. He didn’t much wade into the fray, save to accept the tax credits handed to his companies by Obama’s stimulus bill, and lob the occasional bromide. Why would he? Through 2015, his companies enjoyed nearly $5bn in subsidies sent his way by Democratic policies, and by running a standard-bearing electric car company, he was beloved by liberals.Since then, Musk has been on a rightward drift – until he bought Twitter in 2022, turned it into X, and that drift became a lurch. Perhaps criticism over the treatment of workers at the flagship Tesla plant or a growing obsession with identity politics spurred him on. He’s taken to boosting rightwing content, sharing transphobic memes, promoting baseless conspiracy theories about Democrats, complaining about immigration, and stoking racial division in the UK. By the time Trump survived an assassination attempt in July, Musk was well primed – he immediately endorsed the former president, and has been all-in ever since.Trump made his long awaited return to the social network following Musk’s endorsement. So far, he’s posted campaign ads and an AI-generated image of Kamala Harris as a communist leader. Ugly but typical stuff. Musk hosted Trump on Spaces, a livestream feature of X, where, after a half an hour of technical difficulties, they set about rambling for two hours, talking past each other about immigration, Harris and nuclear bombings. The two have done a dance of public online friendship – posting AI-generated images of each other, exchanging laudatory remarks in the press, and now, musing about Musk in a Trump White House. The rendering Musk posted on Tuesday depicted him at a podium labeled Department of Governmental Efficiency, or Doge, a reference to the half-joke cryptocurrency that Musk has found endlessly amusing for years, Dogecoin. He made it a weak punchline on SNL.Where once Musk may have claimed impropriety, and argued that X was a centrist platform free of political bent, now that’s all out the window. X has openly become a place where rightwing memes, projects and baseless conspiracy theories are amplified directly by its owner and most-followed user (195 million as of writing). It is what much of the online right has said it has always wanted: a social network that caters to its policy and cultural preferences and is not censored by those meddling liberals. The social network is a shadow of its former self; hemorrhaging advertisers and credibility, though it has held its place as the center of American political news.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump remains one of the world’s most noxious content creators, notorious for egging on the January 6 riots in tweets. That earned him a three-year exile to the obscure partisan wilds of Truth Social. What happens when the owner of his preferred platform is an ally and a fellow election conspiracy theorist – and instead of turning off the tap, can jack up the heat? Misinformation experts are bracing themselves.Trump and Musk’s alliance is in its infancy. If the election takes a darker turn and Trump again refuses to recognize the election results, we can expect that Musk, a potential member of a Trump cabinet, will exacerbate any ensuing chaos.The truth that undergirds Musk’s deepening bond with Trump is that he doesn’t have to go to Washington to wield influence over our institutions. With his vast wealth, addled megaphone and Trump’s ear – he already does. More

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      ‘Small is petty’: Michelle Obama’s artful takedown of Trump widely praised

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      Michelle Obama is being widely applauded for delivering a devastating takedown of Donald Trump in a speech at the Democratic national convention.The former first lady artfully lampooned Trump and belittled his exploitation of race for political gain in a 20-minute speech that was greeted ecstatically by Democratic delegates in Chicago, her hometown.“For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. His limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard-working, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black,” Obama told the gathering, referring to Trump’s well-known hostility to the presidency of her husband, Barack Obama, including promoting a false conspiracy theory that he was born outside the US.Trump also recently used the expression “Black jobs” in a televised debate with Joe Biden in June to describe the economic threat he claimed was being posed to African-Americans by illegal migrants.“I want to know, ‘Who’s going to tell him?’” asked Michelle Obama in her speech. “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?’” – a response that provoked prolonged cheering at the convention, and praise on social media.It was far from her only stinging jibe at Trump. She also turned the tables on him by using the term “affirmative action” – a phrase normally applied to government-mandated racial quota schemes, much criticised by rightwing Republicans – to allude to the former president’s inherited wealth as the son of a successful property magnate.Praising Harris, she said: “She understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward. We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth.”In another delicate sideswipe, she appeared to parody the former president’s famous descent down a golden escalator in Trump Tower in 2015 to launch an earlier presidential campaign, by referring to the obstacles many Black and other Americans encounter in their everyday lives.“If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top,” Obama said.She even gave a passing nod to her own previous “we go high” statement – made in a speech at the 2016 Democratic convention – by casting Trump as insignificant and suggesting his approach was to “go small”.“Going small is never the answer,” she said. “Small is petty, it’s unhealthy and, quite frankly, it’s unpresidential.”The New York Times described Obama’s change of tack as moving from “When they go low, we go high” to “when they go low, we call it out”, while Rachel Maddow on MSNBC praised her for “one of the best convention speeches I’ve ever seen by anybody in any circumstance … because it was subtle and deep and thought provoking and surprising … Just a stunning speech.”Commentators also noted Obama’s deployment of mockery and put-down humour in an apparent effort to demystify the Republican candidate – an approach seemingly consistent with that of Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, who has branded Trump and his fellow Maga Republicans as “weird”.The term has been picked up by pro-Harris campaigners and has gradually superseded the Democrats’ earlier message of fear over what a second Trump presidency would do to the country’s democratic institutions.Politico characterised her approach to Trump – and Barack Obama’s in a speech immediately following hers, where he appeared to make an anatomical allusion to Trump’s obsession with crowd size – as “make him small”. Biden’s campaign, by contrast, had long attempted to cast the Republican as such a powerful figure that he could be a threat to democracy itself.Barack Obama picked up on his wife’s theme of disdain with his own fusillade of putdowns of a political opponent whom he famously antagonised by mocking at a 2011 White House correspondents dinner, an occasion often credited with energising Trump to run for president.“This is a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago,” the former president said.On the prospect of a second Trump administration, he said: “We don’t need four more years of bluster and bubbling and chaos; we have seen that movie before – and we all know that the sequel’s usually worse.”“Trump, in this telling, is less a diabolical genius than an irritating, grievance-obsessed buffoon,” John Harris wrote in Politico. More