Kamala Harris

Subterms

    More stories

    • 200 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Democrats’ deference to Biden was a disaster. They still haven’t learned their lesson | Norman Solomon

      by

      Joe Biden’s insistence on running for re-election was certainly disastrous. It kept credible contenders out of the Democratic presidential primaries and prevented the selection of a nominee who had gained momentum in the winnowing process. Even after his stunningly feeble debate performance on 27 June last year, Biden took several weeks before finally opting out of the race. That left Kamala Harris a mere 107 days between the launch of her campaign and election day.Ample evidence shows that the Biden team was riddled with obstinate denial and misrepresentation aimed at the public. But tales of tragic egomania in high places can take us only so far. What’s essential is to scrutinize how – and why – the Democratic party, its leaders and its prominent supporters enabled Biden and his inner circle to get away with such momentous stonewalling for so long.Democrats in Congress, with few exceptions, refused to jump off the Biden 2024 bandwagon until the debate disaster. Similar enabling also came from state party chairs and Democratic governors. Likewise, a wide range of party-allied organizations toed the Biden party line. Meanwhile, many activists took on the role of spectators, if not cheerleaders for another Biden campaign, in an unfolding tragedy of vast proportions.A common denominator was fear. Fear of being accused of disloyalty to the Democratic president. Fear of being ostracized by fellow Democrats or denounced by anti-Trump commentators. Fear of being accused of weakening the party by pointing out Biden’s evident frailty. Fear of damaging personal ambitions or future access to halls of power. And on and on.The silence and compliance helped Biden to coast toward renomination. Yet by midway through his term, polling numbers and increasingly shaky public behavior were clear signals that he would be a weak candidate. Support from working-class voters, the young, and people of color drastically eroded.Notably, leading progressives in Congress assisted Biden in fending off a serious primary challenge. Representative Pramila Jayapal, then chair of the congressional Progressive caucus, made a very early endorsement. “I never thought I would say this, but I believe he should run for another term and finish this agenda we laid out,” she said in November 2022. Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed Biden in April 2023. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed him three months later.Polls routinely showed that most Democratic voters did not want Biden to run again. But party leaders were on autopilot, choosing discretion over valor, benefitting their relations with the White House but undermining the party’s prospects of retaining it – as is now painfully and undeniably clear.A few weeks ago, speaking at a Harvard Kennedy School forum, Jayapal said: “I do think had the president just served one term, he would have gone out a hero, he would have passed the torch, he would have been celebrated for his accomplishments, we would have had a really strong Democratic primary with a lot of good candidates, and then we would have had the full election season to fight it out and to actually get somebody who could win.”Now, an open question is whether crucial lessons have been learned and will be heeded. At stake is the capacity of the Democratic party to defeat Trumpist forces in the midterm elections next year and in 2028.The outlook is not good. A grim reality is that the Democratic party and its loyalists have developed an enduring corrosive culture – which had everything to do with the insistence on continuing to fuel the faulty Biden 2024 locomotive as it dragged the party toward a calamitous defeat.I am not writing from a vantage point of hindsight alone. In November 2022, days after the midterm elections, my colleagues and I at the progressive non-profit RootsAction launched the Don’t Run Joe campaign (renamed Step Aside Joe when Biden announced his candidacy the following spring). During the next 20 months, not one other sizable national organization was willing to push for Biden to forego a re-election bid.We began in New Hampshire, the longtime first-in-the-country presidential primary state. (Biden had finished fifth with only 8.4% of the vote in the 2020 Democratic primary there. For 2024, he demoted New Hampshire to make South Carolina first.) On 9 November 2022, our kickoff digital ads reached Democrats across New Hampshire. Within days, upwards of 2,000 Democratic voters in the state had signed a Don’t Run Joe petition, conveying this message: “We cannot risk losing in 2024. We shouldn’t gamble on Joe Biden’s low approval rating.”That was the gist of our messaging that continued for more than a year and a half via online advertising, email blasts, social media, news releases, media interviews, mass texting to Democratic voters, leafleting at state party conventions and TV ads in several key states and Washington DC. A mobile Don’t Run Joe billboard circled the Capitol and White House as well as the site of a Democratic National Committee meeting.Don’t Run Joe placed full-page print advertisements in the Hill, aimed at congressional Democrats. One ad included a picture of men in suits with their heads in the sand. Presented as An Open Letter to Democrats in the House and Senate, the ad declared that “evasion is no solution” and concluded: “Conformity and fear of a White House rebuke have never served Democrats or the nation well. It is time to stop muffling genuine concerns and start being honest about the pivotal downsides of a prospective Biden ’24 candidacy. The future of the Democratic Party – and the country – is at stake.”Today, conformity and fear are still contagions afflicting the Democratic party, now impairing its capacity to roll back Donald Trump’s autocratic rule and effectively fight for a progressive agenda. The rebellion against Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, while encouraging, has not shaken the party’s underlying power structure. And habitual deference to uninspiring party leadership does not bode well.The day after the president’s recent demagogic speech to Congress, the new Democratic National Committee chair, Ken Martin, and the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, were the featured speakers for “a virtual National Update and Call to Action”. The next morning, I received a text from a progressive Democratic party activist, who summarized the event as “sad and weak,” adding: “Jeffries and Martin’s delivery was anemic, content essentially pablum.” The activist signed off with the words “Really frightened”.I asked if it would be OK to use the activist’s name while quoting from the text in an article. The reply was both understandable and symptomatic of how fear prevents the kind of open debate that the Democratic party desperately needs: “No, I am working inside the party … ”

      Norman Solomon is the director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His latest book is War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine More

    • 138 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump revokes security clearances for Biden, Harris and other political enemies

      by

      Donald Trump moved to revoke security clearances for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and a string of other top Democrats and political enemies in a presidential memo issued late on Friday.The security-clearance revocations also cover the former secretary of state Antony Blinken, the former Wyoming representative Liz Cheney, the former Illinois representative Adam Kinzinger and the New York attorney general, Letitia James, who prosecuted Trump for fraud, as well as Biden’s entire family. They all will no longer have access to classified information – a courtesy typically offered to former presidents and some officials after they have left public service.“I have determined that it is no longer in the national interest for the following individuals to access classified information,” Trump wrote. He said he would also “direct all executive department and agency heads to revoke unescorted access to secure United States government facilities from these individuals”.Earlier this month, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, announced that she had revoked the clearances and blocked several of the people named in Trump’s memo, along with “the 51 signers of the Hunter Biden disinformation letter” – referring to former intelligence agency officials who asserted that the notorious Hunter Biden laptop, which was discovered before the 2020 election, was likely a Russian disinformation campaign.Trump’s decision to remove Biden from intelligence briefings is a counterstrike against his Democrat political opponent, who had banned Trump from accessing classified documents in 2021, saying the then ex-president could not be trusted because of his “erratic behavior”.Earlier this week, Trump announced he was pulling Secret Service protections for Biden’s children, Hunter and Ashley, “effective immediately”, after it was claimed that 18 agents had been assigned to the former president’s son for a trip to South Africa and 13 to daughter Ashley.More broadly, the security-clearance revocations issued on Friday appear to correlate with a cherrypicked list of the president’s political enemies, including the New York attorney general, Letitia James, and the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, both of whom prosecuted Trump during the Biden era.Others on the list include Fiona Hill, a foreign policy expert who testified against Trump during his first impeachment about her boss’s alleged scheme to withhold military aid to Ukraine as a way of pressuring its president to investigate the Bidens; Alexander Vindman, a lieutenant colonel who also testified at the hearings; and Norman Eisen, a lawyer who oversaw that impeachment.Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, Republicans who served on the committee investigating the January 6 US Capitol riots, were also added to the list. Trump said the information ban “includes, but is not limited to, receipt of classified briefings, such as the President’s daily brief, and access to classified information held by any member of the intelligence community”.The move comes as NBC News reported that former president Biden and and his wife, Jill Biden, had volunteered to help fundraise for and help to rebuild the Democratic party after the stinging defeat of Biden’s nominated successor, Kamala Harris, in November.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAccording to the network, Biden made the proffer last month when he met the new Democratic National Committee chair, Ken Martin, but the offer had not been embraced.An NBC News poll published last weekend found the Democratic party’s popularity has dropped to a record low – only 27% of registered voters said they held positive views of the party. On Friday, Trump was asked about the prospect of Biden re-entering the political arena. “I hope so,” he responded. More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Tim Walz says he and Harris were too ‘safe’ during 2024 presidential campaign

      by

      Tim Walz has said that he and Kamala Harris were too “safe” during their 2024 election campaign, with the former vice-presidential candidate claiming they should have held more in-person events around the US.“We shouldn’t have been playing this thing so safe,” Walz, the governor of Minnesota, said in an interview with Politico, as Democrats seek to learn the lessons of Donald Trump’s win in November, which has sent the party into the political wilderness.Walz, who was widely seen as one of the Democratic party’s most effective messengers against Trump and Vance in 2024, becoming best-known for his frequent description of the pair as “weird”, also said he and Harris had been hampered by the shortened length of their campaign.Harris effectively became the official Democratic party nominee on 5 August, just three months before the election, and Walz said that the abbreviated time frame limited the amount of risks the campaign was able to take.“These are things you might have been able to get your sea legs, if you will, 18 months out, where the stakes were a lot lower,” Walz said.He added: “[But] after you lose, you have to go back and assess where everything was at, and I think that is one area, that is one area we should think about.”Walz’s verdict was that he and Harris should have spent more time directly engaging with Americans, as they sprinted through their 107-day campaign.“I think we probably should have just rolled the dice and done the town halls, where [voters] may say: ‘You’re full of shit, I don’t believe in you,’” he told Politico. “I think there could have been more of that.”Walz has been returning to the national spotlight of late, conducting more TV appearances and last week headlining a fundraising event in front of 1,000 Democrats in his home state. His use of social media, and folksy appearances in TV interviews, were praised during the early party of the 2024 campaign, and Walz suggested he and Harris could have done more.He told Politico that Democrats “as a party are more cautious” in engaging with mainstream and non-traditional media. The former high school football coach added: “In football parlance, we were in a prevent defense [a strategy whereby a team focuses on a gritty defense, rather than attacking], to not lose – when we never had anything to lose, because I don’t think we were ever ahead.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHarris and Walz lost to Trump by 312 electoral college votes to 226, losing in the national vote by about 1.5%. Republicans also won both houses of Congress. Walz said he bears some of the blame for the loss, because “when you’re on the ticket and you don’t win, that’s your responsibility”.The 2028 Democratic presidential primary is expected to be extremely crowded, with Democrats boasting several high-profile governors, and Walz, who is yet to decide whether he will run for a third term as Minnesota governor, was coy about whether he would run, telling Politico he was “not saying no”.“I’m staying on the playing field to try and help because we have to win,” Walz said. “And I will always say this: I will do everything in my power [to help], and as I said, with the vice-presidency, if that was me, then I’ll do the job.” More

    • 200 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘What a circus’: eligible US voters on why they didn’t vote in the 2024 presidential election

      by

      The 2024 US presidential election had been widely characterized as one of the most consequential political contests in recent US history. Although turnout was high for a presidential election – almost matching the levels of 2020 – it is estimated that close to 90 million Americans, roughly 36% of the eligible voting age population, did not vote. This number is greater than the number of people who voted for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.More than a month on from polling day, eligible US voters from across the country as well as other parts of the world got in touch with the Guardian to share why they did not vote.Scores of people said they had not turned out as they felt their vote would not matter because of the electoral college system, since they lived in a safely blue or red state. This included a number of people who nonetheless had voted in the 2020 and 2016 elections.While various previous Democratic voters said they had abstained this time due to the Harris campaign’s stance on Israel or for other policy reasons, a number of people in this camp said they would have voted for the vice-president had they lived in a swing state.“I’m not in a swing state, and because of the electoral college my vote doesn’t count. I could have voted 500,000 times and it would not have changed the outcome,” said one such voter, a 60-year-old software developer with Latino heritage from Boston.Having voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, he voted in 2020 but left the presidential slot blank “as a Quixotic protest against the electoral college and my preference for Bernie Sanders”, he said.He said he felt “heartbroken” over Joe Biden and Harris’s stance on Gaza. “If I were in a swing state I would always vote for Dems, though,” he added, echoing several others.A 40-year-old carpenter from Idaho who voted in the previous two elections because he then lived in the swing state of Arizona – giving his vote to Clinton and Biden – also said he did not vote this time because he felt his vote did not matter due to the electoral college system.“I didn’t find Harris compelling, just more of the same. Politicians from both parties seem unwilling to make the kind of fundamental economic and political changes that would make a meaningful difference for all people, namely a move towards a more democratic socialist system. That being said if we didn’t have the electoral college I probably would have voted for Harris,” he said.A large number of people said they abstained because no candidate represented working- or middle-class interests and people such as themselves, including several people who voted in the previous two elections but did not vote this time.Some people from swing states said they did not vote because both parties were too similar and did not address concerns of the common voter, among them John, a 29-year-old financial professional from Pennsylvania who is a registered independent, but voted for Clinton and Biden in the previous two elections.“What is the point [of voting]?,” he asked. “Aside from a handful of weaponized issues, the parties are nearly identical. They both hate the poor and serve only their donors.”A number of former Trump and Biden voters said they had not voted in this election as they disliked both candidates, among them Jared Wagner, a 34-year-old from Indiana who works in the trucking industry and said he had voted for Trump in 2016 but had abstained in both the 2020 and 2024 election.“I refuse to put my name on either candidate when I know neither of them are truly the best we have to offer. We need a major overhaul to the two-party system,” he said.
      “As a man with young children I worry about what kind of country they will grow up in. It terrifies me; we deserve better.”John, a 58-year-old from West Virginia, said he had voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, but had decided that not voting this November “felt most authentic and appropriate”.“I wasn’t apathetic about this election, I followed it closely,” he said. “But most of the candidates and issues left me cold and disinterested and seemed to be simply perpetuating the existing system, especially the status quo of authority and law and order, or rampant human development on the land.“On the presidential level, I was shocked and disgusted that the Harris campaign chose to completely ignore discussing climate change. Fundamentally, this election seemed to have very little to do with my interests and concerns.”Anne, a 65-year-old retired white woman from California, was among various people who said they had voted but not for any presidential candidate.She said she had always previously voted for the Democratic candidate, but could not bring herself to do so this time.“I did vote for all other down-ballot candidates and initiatives,” she said. “I would have voted for Harris had my vote made a difference, but I could not vote for a president who will continue the complete destruction of Gaza and annexation of the West Bank.”Various people said they did not vote for a presidential candidate in the 2024 election because they had only wanted to cast a positive vote for a candidate rather than merely an opposition one, and that neither candidate had offered a compelling vision for change.Among them was a 62-year-old professional working in process planning from Texas, who said he had voted for the Republican presidential candidate at every election between 1984 and 2016.“In 2020 I voted Libertarian as a protest vote,” he said. “This year I was so turned off by Trump’s low character, economic ignorance, disregard of our national debt, hostility to Ukraine and so on that I was trying to convince myself to vote for Harris. But her economic policy was just a grab bag of voter payoffs and she doesn’t care about the debt either.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“So I did not vote for president. I voted for Senate, congressman, and many other down ballot races. I split my ticket, too. I just no longer want to vote against anyone. I want to vote FOR someone. And none of the candidates for president wanted my vote enough.”A 35-year-old Black male voter from Portland, Oregon, who works at a gas station, said he disliked Kamala Harris but now regretted not voting for her, as he had thought Trump would lose the election.“I did not vote in 2016 or 2020 either because I did not like any of the candidates in those elections either. I last voted in 2012, for Obama,” he said.“I felt both candidates fell well short of the presidential standard, and didn’t feel I could cast a vote for either,” said a 47-year-old engineering manager and registered Republican from Texas.“VP Harris failed to demonstrate she was ethically or intellectually capable of executing the office, repeatedly failing to detail out her policies and generally running her campaign like a popularity contest – ‘collect enough celebrity endorsements, by paying them, and the masses will elect you,’” he said.Trump, he felt, “cares about the US and believes his own ideas will ‘save’ the country – but he’s a terrible human being. I don’t feel he represents a majority of Americans at all, but is more a reaction to some of the issues we face as a country.”Various people who did not vote in other recent elections either said that again this time no candidate was leftwing enough, among them 37-year-old Elly, a mother of four daughters from the midwest.“Bernie Sanders was the last candidate I was excited to vote for,” she said. “This election came down to two parties who have utterly abandoned everyday people and their problems with affordability and worries about climate change, but one party, the Republicans, were savvy enough to pretend they felt the collective pain of the common folks, whilst the Democrats mostly said ‘all is well.’ I couldn’t in good conscience support either side on the national level.”Several people who usually always voted Democrat in the past said the Harris campaign had been overly focussed on progressive identity politics for them to be able to lend it their support this election, such as Simon, a father from California in his 60s who had voted for Clinton in 2016 and for Biden in 2020 in protest against Trump, but had abstained this year due to Harris’s embracing of “trans ideology”, among other reasons.“I am not a fan of the Democrats, but I would have voted to keep Trump out of office if there was an economically literate, competent, law and order candidate who was willing to challenge the excesses of ‘woke’,” he said. “The Dems are out of touch on social issues, and have tacked too far to the left to appease a minority of progressives.“I support some policies that would be considered rightwing on immigration, but also investing in social housing, so I’m looking for candidates capable of taking difficult decisions based on rational analysis.”Leigh Crawford, a 56-year-old hedge fund manager from California, who had voted for Barack Obama in 2012, for Clinton in 2016 and for Biden in 2020, said he had abstained this time as both candidates were fiscally irresponsible in his view, because he strongly disliked Trump’s anti-immigration and pro-tariffs stance, and because Harris had been “pro-censorship” and “too tolerant of antisemitism”.Several people said they did not vote this time because of a growing disillusionment with the extreme polarization in US politics, including Chris, an architect in his 40s from Tennessee who had voted twice for Obama, and once for Trump in 2016, but had abstained in 2020 and 2024 as he had lost hope in politics.“Skip the debates, what a circus,” he said. “I’m so sick of hearing about politics.“The political system in the US is broken. Things are so polarized, there is no cooperation for the good of the people. There is just so much hate, even in everyday conversation with average people.“There is just so much of this ‘if I don’t win, I’m taking the ball and going home’ mentality. It just causes nothing to get accomplished.” More

    • 225 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      On wokeness, patriotism and change, Kamala Harris’s defeat has lessons for Starmer | Deborah Mattinson and Claire Ainsley

      by

      Given how events unfolded, it was never going to be easy for Kamala Harris. Many Democrats are ­convinced her ­campaign saved the party from an even worse result. To be fair, it achieved some real highs: she won the debate. But she never won the argument, at least not with the ­voters who mattered most.The US election triggered a scary deja vu moment for those of us who had watched the 2019 UK ­general ­election from behind our sofas, hands over our eyes. The Democrats lost votes with almost everyone, almost everywhere, but, like Labour in the “red wall”, most ­dramatically with traditional heartland ­voters: working-class, low-paid, non-­graduates. And, like Labour back in 2019, that lost connection with core voters had not happened overnight.Working with the DC-based Progressive Policy Institute, we ­conducted post-election polling and focus groups with past Democrat voters who voted for Trump on 5 November. The work laid bare an anxious nation desperate for change. Be in no doubt, this was a change election: any candidate failing to offer the change the electorate craved had become a risky choice. Asking how voters felt about the results on 6 November, “relieved” was the word we heard most often.Overwhelmingly, change focused on two issues: inflation and ­immigration. Trump enjoyed a clear lead on both. Sure, Harris had some popular policies (anti price-­gouging, tax cuts, help for first-time ­buyers and small businesses), but these seemed sidelined in an overcrowded campaign, with voters concluding that she was not on their side and was too focused on “woke” issues.Among working-class ­voters, 53% agreed the Dems had gone “too far in pushing a woke ­ideology”. They’ve “gone in a weird ­direction”, said one, “lost touch with our ­priorities”, said another. Worse still was the sense that any voter who disagreed with them was “a bad person”.American liberals were out of step with these voters’ views – most importantly, on loving their country. As many as 66% of Americans say theirs is the greatest country in the world, rising to 71% of working-class voters. Liberals were the only group who disagreed. What this patriotism means matters. Voters expressed it in terms of putting US interests ahead of others – it also meant recognising that change is needed and being prepared to act. As one voter put it: “If you’re not championing change, you’re not patriotic.”Hungry for that change, voters yearned for a shake-up in the way that both government and the economy operates. Just 2% said the system needed no change, while 70% believed the country was heading in the wrong direction. The Democrats did not seem to hear this – some even interpreted Harris’ pledge to “protect democracy” as “protecting the status quo”. By contrast, Trump’s appetite for disruption, coupled with his contempt for Capitol Hill sacred cows, seemed to promise change that for once might actually deliver for working class voters.Are there things the Harris campaign could have done ­differently? Of course. Joyful celebrities seemed tin-eared to an ­electorate feeling worried, ­pessimistic, even scared. But what should really ­trouble the Democrats now is the sense that the party – not just the candidate or the campaign – has, since 2020, parted company with the voters that its electoral success depended on: millions of Americans who work hard, pay their taxes, do the right thing and now feel they are not ­getting a fair deal. The Democrats can only win by putting those “hero voters” back at the centre of their politics. The same was true for Labour in 2024 and is true for ­centre-left parties elsewhere. That requires a course correction which needs to start now.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs Democrats absorb the result, without an immediate leadership contest to ­provide direction, local leaders must be prepared to step up, flex their muscles and challenge Trump. Change demands strong leadership – all the more so when voters feel vulnerable. Polling gave Trump a 28% lead on strength. Described as a “powerhouse”, he was likened to “neat whisky – gives it to you straight” while Harris was a “watered down cocktail”. Imagined as a car, he was a “sturdy dump truck owning the road, not to be argued with” while she was a “flimsy Kia”. The grit that took a mixed race woman tantalisingly close to the top job in world politics was just not evident to voters. Having absolute ­clarity of conviction is a must for tomorrow’s aspiring candidates – and showcasing that must start today.This is eerily familiar ground to those of us who worked hard to ­distance Labour from what led to catastrophic loss in 2019. It remains to be seen if the Democrats embrace the change their party needs as ­courageously as Keir Starmer did over the past four years.But there is food for thought for the new Labour administration, too. Labour must continue to channel its powerful change message in ­government, reflecting the anti-establishment mood that now exists both sides of the Atlantic. It must be prepared – enthusiastic even – about disrupting rather than defending old, tired institutions. It needs a strong overarching narrative and a plan to reform government and the economy so it can truly deliver back to the hero voters that delivered its electoral success in July. That work started last week with the launch of Starmer’s Plan for Change with its powerful emphasis on working people being better off, but there remains much to do.Deborah Mattinson is Keir Starmer’s former director of strategy. Claire Ainsley was Labour’s executive director of policy from 2020-2022 More

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Tim Walz ‘surprised’ that he and Kamala Harris lost election to Donald Trump

      by

      In his first television interview since their defeat in the 5 November presidential election, Tim Walz said he was “a little surprised” that he and his fellow Democrat Kamala Harris lost the race to the Republican ticket headed by Donald Trump.“It felt like at the rallies, at the things I was going to, the shops I was going in, that the momentum was going our way,” the Minnesota governor told KSTP, one of his state’s news outlets, in an interview published on Thursday. “So, yeah, I was a little surprised.“I thought we had a positive message, and I thought the country was ready for that.”Walz said “history will write” whether the outgoing vice-president erred in choosing him as her running mate before Trump clinched his return to the White House.“Are there things you could have done differently? Since we lost, the answer is obviously yes,” Walz remarked. “On this one, I did the best I could.”During the conversation with KTSP, Walz also described the frantic morning after Harris called him on 6 August asking him to serve as her vice-president if she were elected. His acceptance led to him being flown to Philadelphia on a private jet to be introduced at Temple University – where he said he and Harris shared a humorous moment.“She turns to me and she says: ‘Well, let’s not screw this up,’” Walz recalled. “And we went out there.”Walz’s election debrief with KTSP came after his participation in the presidential race with Harris initially generated excitement with Democrats. His midwestern, former high school football coach persona charmed on the campaign trail at first, and his popularity surged after he perturbed Trump by labeling him and his allies “weird”.Nonetheless, Walz became less visible as the Harris campaign adopted more conventional strategies on the home stretch. Many ultimately regarded Walz as having performed less effectively than his Republican counterpart, US senator JD Vance of Ohio, by the time the two men debated.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHarris ended up losing the electoral college to Trump by a 312-226 margin. The Republican candidate also captured the popular vote 49.9% to 48.4%, leaving him free to attempt to deliver on promises of mass deportations of immigrants and retribution against those who worked to hold him accountable for trying to forcibly overturn his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.Walz told KTSP he “certainly got to see America” during his failed run for the vice-presidency but is now prepared to focus on his gubernatorial agenda in Minnesota.“It was a privilege to do that,” Walz said. “Coming back here now and having the privilege to do this work feels really good.” More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden library reportedly under threat by Democrats enraged by Hunter pardon

      by

      Senior Democrats are reportedly considering withholding contributions to Joe Biden’s future presidential library amid a mounting backlash over his decision grant a blanket pardon to his son Hunter.The threat has emerged as simmering anger among congressional Democrats – already building over the president’s insistence on seeking a second term before belatedly stepping aside as the party nominee in favour of Kamala Harris – has burst into the open over Sunday’s pardon, which Biden had previously vowed not to give.Axios reported that party grandees were considering taking out their “rage” on Biden’s library project. Planning for the library, in the president’s home state of Delaware, is being spearheaded by the White House deputy chief of staff, Annie Tomasini, and Anthony Bernal, senior adviser to Jill Biden, the first lady.“If they had their shit together, they would have been doing the work on this over the summer – right after he announced he was stepping aside,” the site quoted one unnamed Democrat as saying. “Now, it’s just too late. Hopefully they are rightsizing their expectations and budget!”Presidential libraries – a tradition begun by Franklin D Roosevelt – are generally funded by a combination of private donors, state and local governments, and university partners. Maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration, they are used to house presidents’ papers and documents after they leave office.A source familiar with Biden’s project played down the possibility of donations being withheld, telling Axios: “That sentiment hasn’t come up in a single donor conversation, and work is well under way.”However, the fact that it is being publicly mooted is a sign of the internal party disenchantment following the pardoning of Hunter Biden, 54, who was convicted of lying on gun ownership application forms and separate charges of tax evasion. He had been due to be sentenced on both convictions this month. The act of clemency came less than a month after a demoralising election defeat that many privately blame Biden for.Biden, in his statement, said his son “was treated differently” than other people who had been late paying taxes because they were undergoing addiction problems. Biden pardoned his son for all possible offences committed between 2013 and 2024 – foreclosing the possibility of the incoming Trump administration reopening a case against the younger Biden that might be driven by the president-elect’s often-repeated desire for “retribution” against his political enemies.The judge in the tax case, Mark Scarsi, accused the president of “rewriting history” in a ruling penned after the pardon. He added that Hunter Biden’s tax offences had been committed after the period of his drug and alcohol addiction.A procession of Democratic senators and congressmembers have publicly accused Biden of putting his feelings for his son above the national interest and handing Donald Trump an excuse to abuse the presidential clemency powers.Even Chuck Schumer, the Democrats’ leader in the Senate and normally a loyal ally of the president, damned him with uncharacteristic reticence this week, telling reporters “I’ve got nothing for you on that” when asked his view.But party insiders say the outrage is a lightning rod for lingering resentment over Biden’s refusal to drop his bid for a second term until it was too late for Harris or other presidential contenders to be stress-tested in primaries and launch a well-prepared presidential campaign.“The pardon is simply a resentment delivery vehicle, like dressing on lettuce,” Philippe Reines, a veteran strategist who helped prepare Harris for September’s debate against Trump – which she was widely viewed to have won – told the New York Times.David Axelrod, a former adviser to Barack Obama, said the pardon gave “a free throw for people who think they can gain political advantage” from separating themselves from an unpopular, outgoing president.“But,” he added, “there’s also genuine concern and anger about the way the last year went down.” More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘This is not time for retreat or apathy’: Black women dissect Harris loss

      by

      Misogynoir, the intersection of racism and sexism, was the main reason behind Kamala Harris’s loss in the 2024 general election, a panel of Black female experts argued, noting how post-election coverage has failed to contend with how white supremacy undergirded the election results.In a conversation titled “Views from the 92%: Black Women Reflect on 2024 Election and Road Ahead”, several academics dissected how and why the vice-president lost, particularly given Trump’s problematic history.The panel was hosted by the African American Policy Forum, a social justice thinktank co-founded by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and Columbia University.“Racism is designed in such a way to make you question your humanity, but sexism is also. Sexism is really a power move,” said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund. “When you combine those two things together, I think that that best explains what [Harris] experienced.”Throughout the 2024 election campaign, Trump and other conservatives launched an onslaught of racist and sexist attacks against Harris: repeatedly claiming that Harris “slept her way” into political power, was unintelligent and that she was not a Black woman.Such attacks are unsurprising given American’s history with racism against Black women, the call participants said. But what was especially frustrating were platforms Trump was given to spread disinformation, Crenshaw argued, specifically calling out Trump being featured at the 2024 National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention.Karen Attiah, the former co-chair of the convention, who stepped down after the announcement that Trump would be interviewed, said the interview was a “viscerally painful experience” which was excused by many “white liberals”. During the contentious interview, Trump questioned Harris’s race, saying she suddenly “became a Black woman”. “Is she Indian or is she Black? I respect either one but she obviously doesn’t because she was Indian all the way and then all of sudden she became a Black woman.” Trump was also repeatedly combative with the interviewer Rachel Scott, the senior congressional correspondent for ABC News, accusing her of being “rude”.“The responses that I personally got for stepping down from white allies or people who are white leaders, was, ‘Well, he was racist and he destroyed your conference, but we needed to see that’ and I was like, ‘At the expense of our dignity[?]’,” she said.Following the general election on 6 November, exit polling showed that 53% of white women voters still supported Trump, calling into question who the legitimate allies of Black women’s interests are, said Melanie Campbell, president and CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation.“After going through this last presidential election, we really have to reassess and have real deep conversations about when these people say they’re your allies. What does that really mean?” she said, arguing that internal organizing of Black women needed to continue taking place.“There was a majority of white women who voted against democracy, against women’s interests, for a racist, for somebody who is proud to have taken away our right to choose.”Crenshaw also called out the mainstream media for failing to hold Trump accountable, as well as post-election coverage that ignored voter suppression tactics carried out by Trump supporters, including a multimillion-dollar initiative led by the billionaire Elon Musk.“Donald Trump was the biggest beneficiary of identity-based preferential treatment in terms of his media coverage,” she said. “He was like a Teflon-coated pan. Unlike Kamala, who was rendered by the media like a static, clean repository, anything would stick to her over and over again. It’s hard to imagine anybody other than a wealthy white male claiming he could shoot someone in broad daylight and get away with it, and then prove to us that this is, in fact, virtually true.”In light of Trump’s win, Black women – who voted for Harris more than any other demographic, need to be prepared to deal with racist attacks from far-right Republicans, argued Barbara Arnwine, president and founder of Transformative Justice Coalition.“It is critical for Black women to not just talk about our magic … We gotta talk about how we fight, how we become a fighting formation, how we are able to know that these battles are going to come, that these kind of things are going to be said, that these kind of attacks are going to be launched.”Looking forward, experts emphasized the importance of continuing to organize internally despite feelings of despondency.Rebuilding freedom schools – educational programs in marginalized communities – creating spaces of communication on social media, akin to “Black Twitter”, targeting disinformation being spread by artificial intelligence, and addressing ongoing attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion are just some of the potential strategies, said the speaker Fran Phillips-Calhoun, an Atlanta Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta.“This really is not time for retreat or apathy,” said Phillips-Calhoun. “We really do have to turn inwards so we can build again.” More