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      Netanyahu upstaged by Biden and Harris on highly anticipated US visit

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      Benjamin Netanyahu expected to land in Washington DC this week with a bang. So far, it has been more of a whimper.The Israeli prime minister has kept a low profile in the US capital, which was stunned by Joe Biden’s decision on Sunday to drop out of the presidential race and endorse his vice-president, Kamala Harris, to challenge Donald Trump.Netanyahu’s first 24 hours have seen a series of small meetings with the families of hostages kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October, in which he said that progress was being made on negotiating a prisoner exchange of the remaining 120 hostages as part of a ceasefire deal but defended delaying for better terms.“I say at the outset that this will be a process – unfortunately it’s not all at once, there will be stages,” he said, according to remarks of the meeting published by the Times of Israel, “but I believe that we can move a deal forward and maintain the means of pressure that can bring about the release of the others.”Some of those in the room were family members that Netanyahu had himself brought to Washington onboard his official jet.Netanyahu however cautioned that the way to reach the deal would be by continuing to apply pressure to Hamas, even as some families of hostages have urged Netanyahu to conclude the deal as quickly as possible. Others have lobbied the Biden administration to put pressure on Netanyahu to cut a deal.“In no circumstance am I willing to give up on victory over Hamas,” Netanyahu said. “If we let up, we will be in danger from all of Iran’s evil axis.”A day into his trip, Netanyahu had not publicly met any US officials, and his meeting with Biden, who is recovering from Covid-19, was rescheduled to Thursday. Trump said he would meet the Israeli prime minister on Friday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. No timings for meetings have been released with Harris.And Biden will address the nation on Wednesday evening, upstaging the Israeli PM once again just hours after Netanyahu was set to deliver an address to a joint session of Congress.“I think Netanyahu was dismayed that he’s not the center of attention,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who focuses on US foreign policy and the Middle East. “He’s not the center of attention here because of what Biden did and what’s going on with Kamala. And he’s certainly not the center of the attention in Israel.”On Tuesday, Netanyahu is set to meet with leaders of the US evangelical Christian community, then hold an event with leaders of the local Jewish community, according to his office.Dozens of Democratic lawmakers were planning to boycott the speech to Congress on Wednesday afternoon. Harris will not be attending, which an aide said was because of a scheduling conflict. According to his public schedule, Netanyahu will meet with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, before the speech.Some hostage family members have said they hope that Netanyahu would use the visit to Washington to announce a ceasefire deal, which Biden had said was already agreed on as a “framework”.“We fully expect that his speech is going to be the announcement of this hostage deal that we’ve all been waiting for,” said Jon Polin, the father of one of the hostages, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, during a separate press conference of the families of hostage members in Washington.Yet analysts have said that Netanyahu may be relying on the war to divert attention from his own political difficulties, or could be delaying a deal until the domestic turmoil in the US resolves and the next president is chosen.“Benjamin Netanyahu’s world is political survival,” said Miller. “That’s his prime directive. That is what drives him and motivates him.“I don’t think there’s anything Kamala can do or Biden can do or not do, frankly, that’s going to alter Netanyahu decision making” on the ceasefire, he said. “He will do this based on whether or not he thinks he can get away with it politically.” More

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      Biden’s trajectory is a Shakespearean tragedy. Clooney can play the president | Sidney Blumenthal

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      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 to visit Wisconsin in first rally since launching presidential campaign – live

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      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

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      Kamala Harris earns enough delegate support to become Democratic nominee

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      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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      Mehdi Hasan on Kamala Harris vs Donald Trump – podcast

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      It’s been a rollercoaster couple of weeks in the US election campaign. On Sunday Joe Biden announced he would not stand for re-election, before endorsing his vice-president, Kamala Harris, as the presidential candidate for the Democrats. On Monday endorsements – and money – rolled in from donors and political luminaries. Mehdi Hasan, a columnist for the Guardian US and a co-founder of the media organisation Zeteo, tells Michael Safi why despite criticising Kamala Harris in the past he is now an enthusiastic supporter of her campaign to be the next president. He explains how her entry will change the race for the White House, how Republican politicians might attack her, how her campaign may differ from Biden’s and, crucially, what he thinks of her chances of success against Donald Trump. More

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      Biden calls for justice after footage released of police killing Black woman

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      Joe Biden has called on Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, moments after shocking police video was released showing an Illinois officer fatally shooting Sonya Massey after she called police fearing a home intruder.In his first public statement since dropping his bid for re-election, Biden said the shooting of Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman, by white Sangamon county sheriff’s deputy Sean Grayson, in her home in Springfield, after a dispute over a pot of boiling water, “reminds us that all too often Black Americans face fears for their safety in ways many of the rest of us do not”.Biden, who is recovering from Covid at his home in Delaware, said Massey, “a beloved mother, friend, daughter and young Black woman … should be alive today”.“When we call for help, all of us as Americans – regardless of who we are or where we live – should be able to do so without fearing for our lives,” he said in the statement, adding: “Sonya’s family deserves justice.”“While we wait for the case to be prosecuted, let us pray to comfort the grieving,” he continued. “Congress must pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act now. Our fundamental commitment to justice is at stake.”The act, known as HR-1280, addresses a range of issues in policing practices, including excessive force and racial bias and increases accountability for law enforcement misconduct. The bill was passed by the House in 2021 but stalled in the Senate.The statement came as a protest march is planned for Monday evening after police bodycam video released showed a rapidly escalating situation.Massey had been retrieving a pot of water from the stove after Grayson told her he did not want a house fire. Massey asked the officers – who visibly distanced themselves from her as she goes to handle the pot – why they moved away from her.“Where you going?” she asks them.“Away from your hot steaming water,” Grayson answers, with a laugh, before Massey responds: “Away from the hot steaming water? Oh, I’ll rebuke you in the name of Jesus.”“You better fucking not. I swear to God I’ll fucking shoot you right in your fucking face,” Grayson warns.Massey can be heard saying, “I’m sorry,” as Grayson continues to advance. “I’m sorry,” she says again as Grayson, with his gun drawn, fires three shots, killing her instantly. After the shooting another deputy said he was going to get his medical kit.“No, a head shot, dude, she’s done,” Grayson responds.Later on in the video, Grayson calls Massey “fucking crazy”.The prominent civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing Massey’s family, previously said the video would “shock the conscience of America like the pictures of Emmett Till after he was lynched”, referring to the photograph released after Till was lynched in Mississippi in 1955.Crump also likened the video to the police killing of Laquan McDonald, who was shot 16 times in the back by police in Chicago in 2014, and to the police murder of George Floyd in 2020.“It is that senseless, that unnecessary, that unjustifiable, that unconstitutional,” Crump said at Massey’s funeral on Friday. “This video is tragic in every sense.”Grayson has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder and is being held without bond until his trial is set to begin. Springfield resident Tiara Standage told the Guardian that when she watched the George Floyd tape, “it pissed me off. When I watched this, it pissed me off even further.”Antwaun Readus Sr, a local community activist, criticized city officials for spending money on police equipment but neglecting basic community services.“They militarized the whole police department,” he said, predicting that when the police video of Massey’s death was released, “the whole country can go upside down.” More

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      The Democrats must back Kamala Harris. An ‘open convention’ would be a fiasco | Ben Davis

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      Joe Biden’s resignation has left the party with two clear options. The first and easiest is for the convention to be a rally for Kamala Harris as the nominee, as nearly all party conventions have been for the last 40 years. The second is to have a floor fight at the convention, with multiple candidates fighting to win over a majority of delegates.The second option is attractive for a few reasons. It creates a process for candidates to win over support from major constituencies in the party, it allows them to make their cases to the broader public much like a regular primary, and it could draw in a large audience. It is the preferred solution of many of the party’s major donors and even, according to some reporting, some of its most astute political leaders.A big open primary and contested convention, however, is still a bad idea. The party institutions and leadership should consolidate behind the vice-president and take the fight directly to Trump as soon as possible.An open nomination fight would be distracting and potentially confusing to voters when there is almost no time to spare. The first ballots will be sent out in less than two months. The Republican national convention has already happened. The minute hand is rapidly ticking.After a bruising traditional primary, parties usually have months to consolidate, mend fences and build enthusiasm. This will not be the case here. The party has already spent the last three weeks paralyzed and unable to campaign while the pressure mounted for Biden to drop out. Biden dropping out has resulted in a groundswell of enthusiasm, including a record-breaking small-dollar donation haul, and Democrats can’t waste any time capitalizing on that enthusiasm and turning it into resilient support for November.Harris is also less known by the public than most nominees would be at this stage. The convention offers an opportunity for her to define her image and make her case to the public. A winning convention would involve dozens of speakers who know her and are able to speak convincingly to her record. A floor fight would prevent that.A floor fight would also cause some structural problems. Though Harris would still be a heavy favorite, someone else winning would not be able to access the campaign’s finances, more than $100m on hand, or infrastructure, more than 1,000 staff members, and a team that has been embedded in swing states organizing and building connections for months. There is very little time to start from scratch.There is also the problem of who is pushing the primary idea of the blitz and why. Progressives in the party have noted that the main drivers behind the blitz primary are megadonors and more conservative party members who see it as a chance to install a more business-friendly candidate and clean house from the Biden administration’s more progressive economic policies and regulators. A primary entirely aimed at winning over a base of moderate party officials, they reason, could turn back the clock to a Democratic party with a more straightforwardly neoliberal policy agenda, and jettison pro-worker actors within the administration like Biden’s NLRB appointees or FTC chair Lina Khan.This would be disastrous for the party and for working class Americans. This sort of primary would not be more democratic, as proponents claim, but instead a return to the days of the smoke-filled room. Harris, at least, has a mandate from voters as the vice-president.The proponents of this blitz primary idea also don’t seem to have a real plan for how it would work, and how it could result in a strong campaign heading into November. The ideas on the table range from confused to ludicrous, like a candidate forum to attract youth voters hosted by Mr Beast, or the revealing idea for a national security forum hosted by neoconservative grandees like Condoleezza Rice. This is not a serious plan.This is not to say that the convention should be a pure coronation. With this change, there is still policy to figure out, and leaders should use their leverage. Progressives should demand action and real policy change from Harris on Palestine, and commitments on the promises Biden made in his waning days. Uncommitted delegates should agree on a single candidate to nominate, and push to gain speaking time for that candidate to represent the millions who are rightfully alienated from the administration over the issue of Gaza.That is quite different, however, from an open convention where many candidates are sincerely attempting to win from the floor, and more in line with how recent nominating conventions have worked.To win the election, Democratic leaders need to ditch the idea of a blitz primary and focus on consolidating for the general. The summer has already been too chaotic for them to add to it, and the Democratic party should reject calls from billionaire donors hoping to install their own candidate and eschew a chaotic and confusing fight. While everyone has the right to court delegates, the party should consolidate rather than forcing through some set of debates and forums between candidates with no mandate from voters.A smart party would begin moving immediately to keep momentum and project confidence and unity, rather than continuing the turmoil and chaos. The stakes are high, and there’s no time to lose.

      Ben Davis works in political data in Washington DC More