Kamala Harris

Subterms

    More stories

    • 175 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Violence and instability have become a feature, not a bug, of US political life

      by

      It has happened again. Another serene and sunny weekend. Another lone suspect wielding a rifle. Another apparent bid to assassinate Donald Trump. And a nation hurtling into uncharted territory 50 days from a presidential election.On Sunday, Secret Service agents opened fire after seeing a man with a rifle near Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club in Florida while the Republican candidate was playing. The suspect fled in an SUV and was later apprehended by local law enforcement.The FBI discovered in the bushes two backpacks, an AK-47-style firearm with a scope and a GoPro camera – suggesting a plan to kill Trump on his own golf course and film it for all the world to witness.The incident was the latest shocking moment in a campaign year marked by unprecedented upheaval and fears of violence and civil unrest. It came nine weeks after Trump was shot during an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a bullet grazed his ear and a supporter was killed. The former president’s bloodied, defiant response, urging supporters to “Fight!”, prompted headline writers to ask: Did Donald Trump just win the election?But a week later, Joe Biden withdrew from the race and was quickly replaced by Kamala Harris. The assassination attempt faded from a hectic news cycle and earned only a passing mention at Tuesday’s debate. Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump aide, complained at the recent Moms for Liberty conference: “We’re seven weeks away and it’s as if it never happened. It’s been memory-holed, more effectively than George Orwell could ever have imagined.”It is true that what happened that day in Pennsylvania should be remembered, not for partisan reasons, nor as evidence that Trump is protected by God, but because of what it resurfaced: a nation with a long history of political violence bracing for what has been dubbed “a tinderbox election”.Danger and instability have become a feature not a bug of US political life. A white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to the death of a civil rights activist. A mob of angry Trump supporters storming the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. A hammer attack on House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul in their home. Countless threats of violence to members of Congress and judges.A new documentary film, The Last Republican, features sinister voicemails left for congressman Adam Kinzinger, a Trump critic who sat on the House January 6 committee. One says: “You little cocksucker. Are you Liz Cheney’s fag-hag? You two cock-sucking little bitches. We’re gonna get ya. Coming to your house, son. Ha ha ha ha!”As the election draws near, the temperature only rises. False accusations that Haitian immigrants are eating their neighbour’s cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, have led to bomb threats and school closures. Just as at Trump’s rally nine weeks ago, innocent people are the collateral damage of reckless propaganda.The normalisation of violence crosses partisan boundaries. In 2017 a man with anti-Republican views opened fire during a practice session for the annual congressional baseball game, injuring five people including House majority whip Steve Scalise. There is more support for violence against Trump (10% of American adults) than for violence in favour of Trump (6.9%), according to a survey conducted in late June by the University of Chicago.But only one of the two major parties is actively fanning the flames. Trump encouraged strongarm tactics against protesters at his rallies. He mocked Pelosi over the hammer attack. He called for shoplifters to be shot and disloyal generals to be executed for treason. He warned of a “bloodbath” if he is not elected and claimed that undocumented people in the US are “poisoning the blood of our country”.It is enough to fill any concerned citizen with foreboding about the coming election – and what comes next in a nation that has more guns than people. Trump, a convicted criminal with more cases looming over him, is in a desperate fight to stay out of prison. Having never acknowledged his 2020 loss, he has refused to commit to accepting the outcome in 2024, promising “long-term prison sentences” for anyone involved in “unscrupulous behavior”.With Republicans focused on “election integrity” efforts, poll workers could face intolerable levels of violence and intimidation. Opinion polls suggest that the election will be perilously close, giving plenty of scope to sow doubt, likely to be turbocharged by Elon Musk’s X social media platform.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs the Axios website recently noted: “A perfect storm has been brewing for years now – fueled by extreme polarization, election denial, political violence, historic prosecutions and rampant disinformation. Mayhem is bound to rain down in November.”A Reuters/Ipsos poll in May found that more than two in three Americans say they are concerned about extremist violence after the election. Last month Patrick Gaspard, a former White House official, told reporters at a Bloomberg in Chicago that the US faces “multiple January 6th-like incidents” at state capitols if Harris ekes out a narrow electoral college victory.Biden and Harris rightly condemned both attempted assassinations and said they were glad Trump is safe. Even his harshest critics should not condone such actions. But it is inescapably also true that, like a one-man Chornobyl, Trump has polluted the political atmosphere and created a permission structure for violence.His response to Sunday’s close call? Emails and text messages declaring: “I will not stop fighting for you. I will Never Surrender!” – and asking his supporters for money. More

    • 113 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Former Ronald Reagan staffers endorse Kamala Harris for president

      by

      More than a dozen former Ronald Reagan staff members have joined dozens of other Republican figures endorsing the Democratic nominee and vice-president, Kamala Harris, saying their support was “less about supporting the Democratic party and more about our resounding support for democracy”.In a letter obtained by CBS News, former Reagan aides and appointees – including Ken Adelman, a US ambassador to the United Nations and arms control negotiator, as well as a deputy press secretary, B Jay Cooper – said they believed that, if alive today, Reagan would have supported Harris.“President Ronald Reagan famously spoke about a ‘Time for Choosing.’ While he is not here to experience the current moment, we who worked for him in the White House, in the administration, in campaigns and on his personal staff, know he would join us in supporting the Harris-Walz ticket,” the group wrote.“The time for choosing we face today is a choice between integrity and demagoguery, and the choice must be Harris-Walz,” the group added. “Our votes in this election are less about supporting the Democratic party and more about our resounding support for democracy.”The letter comes as more than 230 former Republican administration officials have also backed Harris. Karl Rove, George W Bush campaign strategist and senior adviser, wrote “there’s no putting lipstick on this pig” after Donald Trump’s debate performance. Bush has said he has no plans to endorse any 2024 candidate.While there are more Republican-for-Harris defectors than vice-versa – Trump has gained the support of the Democrat outcasts Robert F Kennedy Jr. and former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard – natural alignment resets are increasing.The conservative columnist George Will floated in the Washington Post last week that “a Harris presidency, tempered by a Republican-led Senate, might finally revive a more normal politics.”Will wrote that the outcome required the removal of Donald Trump – “that Krakatau of volcanic, incoherent, fact-free bombast” – from public life and the rekindling of genuine liberal-conservative debate.The Reagan staffers said they were looking to convince former colleagues to back their stand for Harris and the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as “the only path forward toward an America that is strong and viable for our children and grandchildren for years to come”.Other Republicans backing Harris include former vice-president Dick Cheney and daughter Liz Cheney, a former congresswoman, Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham, former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger and former Georgia lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan. The latter three accepted speaking slots at the Democrats’ convention in August.But few Republicans endorsing Harris over Trump are in the political game.Trump’s nomination rival Nikki Haley has not backed Harris and said she agrees with Trump’s policies. But challenged last week to go further, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, failed to say she thought Trump was a good candidate.“I think he is the Republican nominee,” Haley replied. “Do I agree with his style, do I agree with his approach, do I agree with his communications? No.”Olivia Troye, a former adviser to Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, said before the Harris-Trump debate in Philadelphia last week that “many people who have worked for Donald Trump have said that they do not support Donald Trump coming back to the presidency. And I think that speaks volumes, because we know him.” More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘It’s such a dramatic contrast’: Harris turns North Carolina into a toss-up

      by

      Landon Simonini found himself standing in the middle of a Charlotte highway lane at 2.30 in the afternoon, stuck in an artificial traffic jam while drivers waited for Kamala Harris’s plane to land and the motorcade to clear for the rally later that day.He was out of his car, because why not? He wasn’t going anywhere soon. His red Make America great again cap stood out among others cursing the traffic gods.Simonini, born and bred in Charlotte, builds houses. His livelihood depends to some degree on Charlotte’s tremendous growth. But not all growth is great, he said.“This is a traditionally southern state,” Simonini said. “Over 100 people move to Charlotte a day. That is changing the election map. I am born and raised in Charlotte, for 33 years. I have lived here my entire life. I went to school at UNC Charlotte. This is my city. It is a conservative city and I want to keep it that way.”But in America’s nail-biting 2024 presidential election, North Carolina is now in play. It rejoins a select list of crucial swing states whose voters will decide if Harris becomes America’s first woman of color to win the White House or if Donald Trump returns to the Oval Office from which he wreaked political chaos for four years.Up until about two months ago, the odds didn’t look like this.Though the margins in North Carolina have been close for decades in presidential races, Obama in 2008 was the last Democrat since 1976 to win the state, eking out a win by three-tenths of a percentage point. Biden’s weakness earlier this year threatened to turn North Carolina into an also-ran contest. Every poll through June had Trump beating the president by at least two points, with an average around six.Party affiliation can only tell so much in a state with a storied history of split-ticket voting. Almost four in 10 of North Carolina’s 7.6 million registered voters choose not to affiliate with a political party. But between August 2020 and August 2024, Republicans added about 161,000 new registered voters in North Carolina while Democrats lost about 135,000 registered voters.Trump won the state by about 75,000 votes in 2020, a margin of about 1.3 percentage points, his closest winning state, before losing the election. Biden won the four states with closer margins – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia.Biden’s withdrawal and Harris’s ascent scrambled the math. North Carolina’s secretary of state, Elaine Marshall, described the reaction as euphoric.“It’s such a dramatic contrast from that venom, that poison, that hatred that’s coming from Republican events,” she said. “That contrasts so strongly with the hope and the expectations of the future from Democratic party events.”The Trump campaign reportedly abandoned its efforts to mount a serious contest in New Hampshire, Minnesota and Virginia recently. That leaves seven states in the political battleground – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and now North Carolina.Counting electors aside from the remaining non-battleground states, Harris starts with 226 and Trump with 219. North Carolina can deliver 16 electoral votes to the victor. A candidate must have 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. Only Pennsylvania has more electors among the remaining battleground states.A re-energized Democratic electorate has been visible in polling data, which now shows the state as tied. Part of that is the roughly 20% of North Carolinians who are Black; increased African American voter turnout helped Obama win the state in 2008.But the enthusiasm is far more widespread, and was visible this week, when Harris drew 25,000 people to two rallies this week, one in Charlotte and another a few hours later in Greensboro. It was the vice-president’s 17th trip to North Carolina and her ninth just this year.If Harris wins North Carolina and holds in Michigan and Wisconsin, she need only win one of the four other swing states to clinch the presidency. But if Trump wins North Carolina, he can win the presidency with Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin even while losing elector-rich Pennsylvania and Michigan.Melissa Benton waited on one foot for traffic to clear on Tuesday night outside the Greensboro coliseum. Her right knee rested on a scooter, keeping her broken ankle off the ground. She came up from Charlotte for the event, she said.Benton is an Atlanta-area transplant. She left Georgia out of frustration with how her community had changed with growth. The irony is not lost on her.Locals complain about the rising cost of living, and soaring housing costs are first on the list. Even people who have weathered the slow-motion collapse of the furniture industry over the last 30 years are being saddled with property tax increases as their homes rise in value.“Every time I meet a native Charlottean, I’m always like, ‘Listen, I’ve been where you are right now,” Benton said. “I swear I’ll be a great citizen, because I understand what it’s like for new people to come in.” She has a keen eye on municipal problems, services and infrastructure. “But it’s also keeping Charlotte Charlotte, and we’ve lost sight of that in some big cities.”Affordable housing is a crisis in Charlotte, much like it is in Atlanta and Greensboro and most large cities in the US. But in North Carolina, it’s not just an urban problem. Lenoir – pronounced “len-OR” – up at the edge of the Brushy mountain range of the Appalachians, is in one of 73 rural counties in the state, and it has a problem with market rate housing too. About a third of North Carolina’s voters live in rural counties.The Democratic party has a field office in Lenoir. The lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, held a campaign event there on Wednesday for his gubernatorial run. Marshall, the secretary of state, held a discussion there last week. No part of the state can escape battleground politics today.View image in fullscreenDemocrats have long expected a brutal fight in North Carolina, and have been investing time, money and personnel into the state for the last year.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The Democratic party is certainly trying to reach young people,” Marshall said. It’s also trying hard to connect with young women who may have abortion politics on their mind. “They’ve got Sunday school, and they’ve got work, getting the kids fed and kind of stuff. So suburban mom, working professional women, you know.”Harris’s visit to North Carolina for her first rallies since the debate is no accident. North Carolina is that important. Trump has planned a rally in Wilmington on North Carolina’s coast next week. JD Vance, his running mate, will be in Raleigh next week as well. The Republican campaign has been sending surrogates to local events regularly. Two weeks from now, the former housing secretary Ben Carson will speak at the Salt and Light conference of the North Carolina Faith and Freedom Coalition.The Democratic party has 26 field offices in North Carolina with 240 paid staff, according to the campaign. The choices of placement for some of the offices, such as rural Wilson county in the state’s “Black belt” and Lenoir in western mountain country, speak to movement away from a focus on high-density urban territory that’s friendly to Democrats.Democrats are also using their significant financial advantages in fundraising to swaddle broadcast and social media in a blanket of Harris advertising. Organizers say they have been on the air with ads for a year. The ad tracking firm AdImpact notes that Democrats have reserved about $50m in ad buys through the end of the cycle, with particular attention paid to Black and Spanish-language media outlets. Trump only began advertising in earnest in August.But Republican campaign leaders view much of that effort as artificial.“We feel like, from our standpoint, that the race is a toss-up, but we feel like we still have an advantage,” said Matt Mercer, director of communications for the North Carolina GOP. “One of the big reasons is our leadership. You know, we didn’t abandon a ground game at any level in 2020. What you’re seeing from Democrats is an effort to catch up.”The Republican campaign is decentralized, Mercer said, accommodating far-flung efforts in a state that’s 560 miles wide from Manteo in the east to Murphy in the west. “You win statewide by going across the entire state, and that means going west of I-77 and east of I-95.”“For every person that’s moving to Charlotte or Raleigh, you’ve also got retired couples moving to the coast, or you’ve got military deciding to stay in the state,” Mercer said. “You know, I think Democrats kind of fall into this trap where they think growth is all going to benefit them, and they’re just missing it.”The GOP dominates North Carolina’s legislative branch, which has enough Republicans to override a gubernatorial veto. But North Carolina’s governor, Roy Cooper, is a Democrat and the state has elected a Democratic governor for most of the last 30 years, even as it has delivered wins to Republican presidents.Josh Stein, North Carolina’s attorney general and the Democratic nominee to succeed Cooper, has maintained a consistent lead over Robinson throughout the year. Robinson is an unusually controversial candidate even by standards set in the Trump era, with a litany of offensive and antisemitic attacks made on social media or in public statements.View image in fullscreenRobinson has tried to keep a low profile over the last few months, even as Stein has used his financial edge to batter Robinson with ads drawing primarily on the lieutenant governor’s own words. In recent weeks, Robinson has taken to the campaign trail, meeting with small groups in small towns far away from urban centers, haranguing the media and calling Stein’s ads deceptive. “Josh Stein is a liar,” he said, demanding that a news reporter convey that message to his opponent, along with a demand for a debate.Stein has, so far, declined.James Adamakis watched a Robinson speech, from a seat at Countryside BBQ in the small town of Marion, North Carolina, on Tuesday. It’s a popular stop for politicians in North Carolina’s rural mountains. A picture of Barack Obama’s visit in 2011 hangs proudly on the wall next to the cash register.Adamakis works in juvenile justice. The military veteran supports Republicans because they’re tougher on crime he said. But he acknowledges that even people who share his political values may vote in peculiar ways in North Carolina.He described the conversion of one of his friends into a Republican. “It was the economics, where he just kept seeing the inflation and buying groceries and everything,” Adamakis said. “He was like, why is the media and Biden saying that it’s good when it’s not? I think that the economy cuts across lines.“Everybody you meet in western North Carolina still may vote Democrat, but they still don’t like that.”But political diversity is about more than race in North Carolina. The economy of a place like Research Triangle Park near Durham is fundamentally different from the banking sector in Charlotte, or the tourism of the southern coast, or mountain towns struggling to reinvent themselves.“It might be easier in my job if there were just one [swing voter], but there’s not,” Mercer said. “And I think that dynamism is what makes the state so interesting and so hard to win, and why you truly need to understand the entire state.” More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Real v fake: how the Harris-Trump debate laid out different takes on AI

      by

      In their first, and likely only debate, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump argued about artificial intelligence. They spoke of China, chips and “domestic innovation”. The country learned how Harris, Trump and their allies would – or intentionally wouldn’t – use artificial intelligence for their own ends.But the real lessons were in the aftermath. The online furor over the IRL confrontation revealed that Republicans use AI to illustrate their political points. Democrats do not.View image in fullscreenThe RepublicansRepublicans’ excitement over AI focused on a debunked claim by their nominee. During the debate, Trump said that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were “eating the dogs – the people that came in, they’re eating the cats”. The statement was not true. ABC’s moderators fact-checked him in real time with information from the city’s animal control commissioner, who has not received any calls about such grisly crimes. Immigrants in the city are now facing real violence over the false statement.Absent real images of such bestial violence, Trump and company have turned to images created by artificial intelligence. Before the debate had even begun, Donald Trump Jr tweeted images of his father astride a giant cat and holding a gun. The ex-president’s son wrote: “Save our pets!!!” A post made by Trump Jr during the debate reads: “They know who they’re rooting for tonight” and shows three cats and a duck or a goose watching the candidates face off on TV.The images bear the hallmark sheen of AI-generated material, a sign Republicans may be using Elon Musk’s AI image generator Grok. Midjourney and OpenAI’s Dall-E have advanced beyond that telltale uncanny lighting, but both also limit the manipulation of public figures’ images to tamp down misinformation. Grok has few such safeguards.Two days after the debate, Trump jumped on the same train as his son. The former president posted an image of himself on a plane surrounded by cats and geese, a picture of a cat holding a sign reading “Kamala hates me” and a depiction of him speaking at a “Cats for Trump” rally, all on Truth Social and Facebook, where AI-generated images are extremely popular.The Republican members of the House judiciary committee have tweeted an image of Trump cuddling animals in water captioned: “Protect our ducks and kittens in Ohio!” One bizarre image posted by the committee stitches ducks and cats together into hybrid beasts as they float on a pond under a red, white and blue flag that might fly over the island of Dr Moreau. “Save them!” the committee cries. Elon Musk joined in by tweeting screenshots of Trump’s posts on Truth Social accompanied by a crying-laughing emoji, the billionaire’s favorite. The CEO of X has endorsed Trump for president and hosted an online event with him.The DemocratsIn the hours after the debate ended, it was not Kamala Harris who struck back at the Republicans’ use of AI; it was the most famous woman on the planet. Taylor Swift endorsed Harris and took explicit aim at AI-made images of her boosting Trump. Swift wrote on Instagram: “Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter.”Swift has been the victim of sexualized deepfakes of her that have been seen by millions. In response, US lawmakers have proposed new legislation that would empower people who have their own likenesses weaponized against them.Trump has posted faked images of Swift’s endorsement on “his site”, Truth Social. He disclaimed responsibility for what may have been an enormous political mistake: “I don’t know anything about them, other than somebody else generated them. I didn’t generate them.” The images originated from a small Texas foundation that aims to bankroll rightwing tweeters.Harris herself has not posted any images made by AI, debate-related or otherwise. Instead, in the days following the debate, her campaign has posted childhood photos of her visiting her grandparents in India and happily posing on a stoop. The choice is notable because AI has difficulty replicating the balance between fuzziness and detail that imbues old photos with authenticity and charm. Harris’s images stand in deliberate contrast with the synthetic glow of Trump’s.Harris boasts extensive familial and professional ties to Silicon Valley from her time as a senator and the state’s attorney general, but as a candidate, she projects an image of low tech. One of the most famous videos of her – “We did it, Joe” – shows her talking to the president via wired Apple headphones. She has been seen using them many times since. She believes Bluetooth to be a security risk. (Trump, by contrast, uses an Android device that experts have deemed extremely vulnerable to foreign incursion.)Her campaign may boast about its TikTok operation staffed by extremely online members of gen Z, but the technology she carries on her person connotes an attitude of wait and see, not early adoption. She loves to be filmed making calls with the phone to her ear, the original use of the device. During her vice-presidency, Harris didn’t spend much time showcasing who she was. The choices she’s made in the crafting of her image as a candidate demonstrate an emphasis on realness.Trump has made himself into the candidate of generative artificial intelligence. Whether he is allied with AI companies is a separate question. He has adopted the aesthetic of AI as his own, perhaps because he has seen how popular AI-generated images are on Facebook, where older people hang out online. Harris has eschewed AI image generation, and by doing so made a powerful ally in Taylor Swift.She wants voters to see her as authentic, so she’s making all her images the old-fashioned way. More

    • 125 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump ‘likelier winner’ unless Harris tackles two failings, says ex-ambassador

      by

      Donald Trump will remain the “likelier winner” of the US presidential election on 5 November unless the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, addresses key failings in her campaign, a former British ambassador to Washington says on Sunday.Kim Darroch says that despite clearly getting the better of Trump in last week’s televised head-to-head debate, Harris risks making two crucial mistakes in the final weeks of campaigning, which mean the former Republican president is still the favourite.View image in fullscreenWith a Trump return to the White House on the cards, Lord Darroch says it is important that the prime minister, Keir Starmer, who met US president Joe Biden and other leading Democrats in Washington on Thursday, should also now be seeking a meeting with Trump and his team before polling day, so he has built links with both sides.“It is important that if Starmer meets one, he meets both,” Darroch says in an article for the Observer. “It will be noticed and resented by the Trump team if he doesn’t.”Darroch was UK ambassador to the US from 2016 to 2019, when he resigned in a row over leaked confidential emails in which he criticised Trump’s administration as “clumsy and inept”. Darroch’s position became untenable after Boris Johnson, then involved in the Tory leadership contest to succeed Theresa May, failed to give the ambassador his unequivocal backing.Darroch, who remains a respected figure in diplomatic circles on both sides of the Atlantic, says Trump is now “a less formidable campaigner” than in 2016, “down on energy, more liable to become confused, with a mind cluttered with grievances. And he remains a policy-free zone.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“But,” he adds, “he is still capable of connecting with the ‘left behind’ to a level few others can match, a talent which ensures a devoted and enduring support base in a country where one in three workers say they live paycheck to paycheck.”Darroch argues that the Democratic campaign is at risk of making two hugely important errors. Urging Harris to be “laser-focused” on voters in the key swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin won by Biden in 2020, Darroch warns that they may drift back to Trump unless Harris is able to offer “some crisply worded, specific, targeted policies to bring jobs and hope back to these blighted neighbourhoods”.The second error is that Harris appears to be hiding from the media, repeating a mistake made by Hillary Clinton. “Back in 2016, Trump was ever-present. He would accept any and every invitation. He would even, unbidden, phone the morning news shows to offer his views on the day’s issues. By contrast, Hillary Clinton locked the media out – and lost.”Harris, he claims “seems to have adopted the Clinton playbook”.View image in fullscreenDarroch says the UK embassy in Washington will no doubt be advising Starmer to try to meet Trump, perhaps taking time out from a meeting of the UN general assembly this week to do so.“There is a lot to discuss with him, starting with his views on Ukraine. And however badly Trump performed in the debate, however visible his personal decline, he remains for many of us the likelier winner.” Last week, Starmer’s former pollster Deborah Mattinson met Harris’s campaign team in Washington to share details of how Labour pulled off its stunning election win by targeting key groups of “squeezed working-class voters who wanted change”, further strengthening contacts with the Democratic side. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden, Harris address Congressional Black Caucus: ‘The baton is in our hands’

      by

      President Joe Biden and vice-president Kamala Harris spoke on Saturday at the Congressional Black Caucus’s Phoenix Awards dinner, bringing a message that its members were in a “battle for the soul of the nation”.Biden highlighted his relationship with the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), and Black voters.“In 2020, I ran for president to redeem the soul of America, to restore decency and dignity to the office of the president,” he said. “I ran to rebuild the backbone of America, the middle class. And I ran to unite the country and remind ourselves when we’re together there’s not a damn thing we can’t do.”The spectre of Trump, Maga Republicans and the threat Democrats say they pose to the country loomed over Biden’s remarks, and his call to action for those CBC members gathered.“The old ghosts in new garments [are] trying to seize your power and extremists coming for your freedom making it harder for you to vote and have your vote counted, closing doors of opportunity, attacking affirmative action,” he said. “My predecessor calls the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6 ‘patriots’, but when peaceful protesters marched for justice for George Floyd, Trump wanted to send in the military, but they wouldn’t go.”Biden continued by pointing to the juxtaposition between his and Harris’s tenure in the White House and that of their predecessor’s. On the theme of unity, Biden once again condemned Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, who, in recent weeks, has led a rallying cry of baseless, racist accusations toward Haitian-American immigrants in Ohio.“It’s wrong. It’s got to stop,” he said. “Any president should reject hate in America and not incite it. Folks, to win this battle for the soul of the nation, we have to preserve our democracy and speak out against lies and hate.”Towards the end of his remarks, Biden spoke about his time in Congress, during which he served with Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to run for president.CBC attenders were jubilant when Harris, also the Democratic candidate for president, walked on to the stage to Beyoncé’s Freedom after the president introduced her as “Kamala Harris, for the people”.Members of Harris’s sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha gleefully greeted her with their trademarked “Skee-Wee” call.Harris began by highlighting the importance of the caucus. For a November win, she said, the support of the CBC was necessary.“The Congressional Black Caucus has served as the conscience of the Congress and of our nation, and as a proud former CBC member, I know first-hand America relies on the leaders in this room, not only for a conscience, but for a vision,” Harris said.Harris said the CBC’s vision for the future was under “profound threat” and went on to point out the differences between her and Trump while also reiterating her platform, including reproductive rights, building an “opportunity economy”, healthcare and “not going back”.“We actually have a plan for healthcare, not just ‘concepts of a plan,’” she said, referencing Trump’s comments during Tuesday night’s debate.Towards the end of her speech, Harris returned to “joy” and hard work, two of her campaign themes.“Now the baton is in our hands,” she said. “I truly believe that America is ready to turn the page on the politics of division and hate, and to do it, our nation is counting on the leadership in this room.”Harris called on and thanked members of the CBC for their work registering voters and mobilising people to vote. She and Biden spoke during the 53rd Annual Legislative Conference (ALC) or, “CBC week” in Washington, during which Black political and social leaders convene on public policy. The Harris campaign has been working to increase the enthusiasm of Black voters, particularly in key battleground states.“We know what we stand for, and that’s why we know what we fight for,” Harris said. “And when the CBC fights, we win.” More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      What debate? Harris and Trump back to brutal grind of swing state campaigns

      by

      Even as gleeful Democrats spent days circulating video clips and memes of Kamala Harris ridiculing and riling Donald Trump in Tuesday’s presidential debate, the candidates themselves got back to the brutal grind of winning over the tiny proportion of voters who will decide November’s election in a clutch of swing states.Harris is on a “New Way Forward” tour of pivotal areas this weekend to exploit the momentum from her humiliation of Trump. On Friday, she was in Pennsylvania, perhaps the most crucial of crunch states, to push the themes she hit hard in the debate in painting the former president as a threat to democracy, women’s rights and the US’s international standing.Trump is in Arizona on Saturday and then headed to Michigan, both states he narrowly won in 2016 and then lost four years later, as he attempts to recover from what was widely recognised to be a damaging performance.The contest for the White House remains on a knife edge.Before the debate, Harris’s narrow lead in the polls was being chipped away by a Trump campaign trying to claw its way back from the shock of Joe Biden exiting the contest. After Trump’s poor debate showing, Harris appears to be edging up again. But neither campaign is taking anything for granted and both are returning to the daily fight.A CNN poll showed that 63% of debate watchers thought Harris won as Trump made outlandish claims about immigrants eating family pets and Democrats wanting to kill newborn babies. A focus group of undecided swing state voters put together by the Washington Post overwhelmingly said Harris came out on top.Even Fox News conceded the defeat. Its political analyst, Brit Hume, said Trump spent too much time airing old grievances that do nothing to win votes.“Let’s make no mistake, Trump had a bad night,” he said.Still, more cautious Democrats recognised that one bad night for the former president is far from a knockout blow and that their candidate remains particularly vulnerable on the economy, the top issue for large numbers of voters hit by surging inflation.The CNN poll showed that confidence in Harris to handle the economy fell by two points to 35% because of the debate after she failed to address inflation, or even acknowledge the hardship it has caused, while trust in Trump on the issue rose by two points to 55%.And while the latest YouGov poll gives Harris a nine-point advantage over Trump in favourability ratings, the presidential race is still neck-and-neck with each candidate claiming the support of 45% of the electorate.Charles Franklin, director of the respected Marquette Law School polling of voters in the swing state Wisconsin, where only about 20,000 votes separated Trump and his opponent in the last two presidential elections, said that while it was clear Harris won the debate, he doubted the outcome would shift the dial very much in those states where the election will be decided.“The question is, how much does it move the electorate in Wisconsin? Our electorate is pretty highly polarised even by national standards and so moving it much seems a little far-fetched,” he said.“The trouble is that voters always go to debates looking at it through their partisan glasses. If their candidate is clearly doing poorly, they come up with reasons why that is that still doesn’t lead them to reconsider their support for that candidate.”Swathes of Trump supporters lamented his performance but then shifted the blame to the debate moderators by accusing them of picking on the former president while giving Harris an easy ride.Polling says that about one in 20 voters in swing states have yet to make up their minds about who to vote for. But political analysts are sceptical that so many people are really undecided when Trump is such a known and divisive candidate.Nicholas Valentino, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan, said that even though Harris’s positions are not particularly well-known, few people can be in doubt about the differences between the contenders on key issues from abortion to immigration and healthcare.“There are very few undecided voters left in the electorate at this point in the campaign. When those undecided voters say we need more substance from either of the candidates, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t know the differences or that they’re really waiting for some key piece of information that will tip the scales. That’s ambivalence. It’s not ignorance about where the candidates stand,” he said.Franklin said his polling showed that when uncommitted voters in Wisconsin are pressed about the reasons for their indecision, it often has less to do with policies or individual candidates than how they feel about politics in general.“The fact that they are negative towards politics, though, also sounds like many of Trump’s supporters, and that is one argument to think that Trump might have an advantage winning over those folks who are undecided but very negative about politics,” he said.Nonetheless, the YouGov poll shows Harris has the opportunity to make headway with voters who say they favour a candidate but are open to changing their minds. Four per cent of Trump supporters would consider voting for Harris while just 1% of Democrats are prepared to contemplate switching. But many of those Trump supporters see the economy as the most important issue. A majority of voters continue to view the former president’s tenure in the White House as a time of greater prosperity and have much more confidence in him to improve their finances.For all that, Harris’s combative approach to the debate was informed by the recognition in both campaigns that the key to victory almost certainly lies in turnout and generating enthusiasm among ambivalent supporters.In 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania by fewer than 45,000 votes out of nearly 6m cast. Four years later, Trump increased his vote in the state by more than 400,000 ballots. But he still lost Pennsylvania in 2020 because Biden was able to boost the Democratic turnout by 530,000 votes.That was a pattern repeated across swing states that delivered a Biden victory and that Harris must now almost certainly win. Probably no state is more pivotal than Pennsylvania.“It’s mostly now about the turnout game,” said Valentino. “It’s very likely that this election in Pennsylvania will be decided by fewer than 100,000 votes, just like it has been in the last two elections. There are many, many voters in Pennsylvania – white, less-than-college-educated men, women in the suburbs around the big cities – that each respective camp is going to be trying to turn out.”Polling shows that enthusiasm for the election among Democrats shot up after Biden dropped out of the race in July. Franklin saw it in Wisconsin.“Democrats are now running about nine points ahead of Republicans in enthusiasm, which certainly seems to point to another very high-turnout election,” he said.The YouGov poll shows that, nationally, 72% of Harris supporters say they are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting. Only 67% of Trump supporters say the same. But enthusiasm is significantly lower among younger people, whom the Democrats need. Only 78% of under-30s say they are likely to vote, compared with 95% of over-45s, who lean toward Trump.Harris continues to alienate some Democrats who outright refused to vote for Biden, calling him “Genocide Joe” over US support for Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians. Harris sought to defuse the issue during the debate by saying that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed”, but that prompted critics to ask: how many innocent deaths is too many?The Democrats were particularly worried about the impact of Gaza policy on the significant Arab American vote in swing state Michigan, but Valentino thinks it has lost some of its sting, particularly among younger voters now focused on concerns about Trump returning to power.After the debate, Harris faced criticism for spending her time taunting Trump instead of detailing economic policy and a political vision. But Democratic strategists are only too aware that the surge in turnout for Biden in 2020 was less about support for the candidate than to get Trump out of the White House.Valentino said Harris’s approach may have served her well in that regard.“Her campaign strategy in this debate was clearly to allow Trump to display this kind of intense anger and goad him into making highly questionable arguments that they would cause moderates, and maybe even some moderate Republicans, to either become disillusioned with Trump and stay home from voting,” he said.“The other reason she was doing this is to mobilise her own base. Young people are worried about the future of democracy. I have data that shows the issue of protecting electoral institutions and elections is a very mobilising issue for Democrats, especially young Democrats. They know that they’re going to have to live and vote in this country for a lot longer than older folks and they are really worried about democratic institutions. That’s an issue that’s very potent for the Democratic party and for Harris, and she’s trying to make the most of it.” More

    • 213 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      The polling is in and Harris won the debate. But Democrats shouldn’t get cocky | John Zogby

      by

      A total of 67 million Americans watched the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump on Tuesday, and the first polls taken after the event all show the vice-president gaining a little ground over the former president.Harris’s lead ranges from three to five points, depending on the poll, but we need to be careful about drawing any exaggerated conclusions. One poll by Reuters has Harris leading by five points, but she had been leading by four in their previous poll published on 21 August. Another by Morning Consult also revealed similar results, but her lead had been three points the day before the debate and four the day of the debate.All polls agree that Harris won by a large margin and that favorable ratings rose by as many as nine points. She is seen as better for protecting democracy by nine points and on abortion by 21 points.But the new polls also make clear that Trump’s numbers really did not change much. According to interviews conducted by CNN before and after the debate, he is still given higher marks for handling the economy and immigration, the two top issues in the campaign.A CNN flash poll found that debate viewers felt, by a margin of 63% to 37%, that Harris turned in a better performance onstage in Philadelphia – with 96% of her supporters saying that she had done a better job, while a smaller 69% majority of Trump’s supporters credited Trump with having a better night.Similarly, in the eyes of most pundits, Harris came across as confident and did not lose her cool. She framed her performance around the idea that she represents a new generation that will not dwell on the past. She also laid out her plan for an “Opportunity Economy” with tax credits for small businesses and expansions of affordable housing and the Affordable Care Act, among other things.She did a good job of contrasting her positive approach with Trump’s negativity. She linked him with tax cuts for billionaires, raised tariffs on China that were tantamount to a “20% sales tax” on consumers, an expansion of the powers of an unchecked presidency and the massive defunding of federal agencies and bureaucrats in the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.For his part, Trump chose a scowling face, perhaps to demonstrate that he is very serious. There was very little attempt at humor during the debate. He certainly came out swinging at Harris’s claim of millions of new jobs by claiming they were “bounce back jobs” that had been lost during the Covid epidemic. He roundly attacked her (and, of course the president Joe Biden’s) record on immigration and for the badly managed and deadly exit of American troops from Afghanistan. He also attacked the Biden administration for being unwilling to fire poorly performing government staff. He focused on her early opposition to fracking, a major issue in the battleground Pennsylvania, which also happened to be the location of the debate. He predicted that her election would mean the end of Israel, while she called for a two-state solution and a ceasefire.Harris touted her background as a prosecutor and bragged of shutting down drug lords. She chided Trump for talking tough on crime while he has been indicted and convicted numerous times. Perhaps her best moment was when she drew a sharp distinction on reproductive rights. Women have been hurt by the striking down of Roe v Wade by the US supreme court, an issue that has drawn otherwise disengaged women voters to the polls and given Democrats victories in state and local elections.She put Trump on the defensive for his changing positions, something which has hurt him also with Christian conservatives. He resorted to accusing the Democrats of supporting the possible execution of newborn infants. He was immediately fact-checked by the moderators on that one – and lost. Harris, he said, was “all talk” on abortion and relief on student loans because she knows that Congress will never pass anything nor will federal courts allow it.Trump resorted to the bizarre at times. The small city of Springfield, Ohio, has seen entry of about 15,000 Haitian immigrants in recent months and he raised an unsubstantiated far-right claim that Haitian immigrants have been caught eating longtime residents’ pets. David Muir, chief anchor for ABC News and one of the moderators, immediately jumped in to say there was no evidence found of that, citing a statement from the local mayor.Trump also claimed a huge rise in violent crimes under the Biden-Harris administration while the most recent report of the Federal Bureau of Investigation actually notes that violent crime is in dramatic decline. And, of course, he still claims that he won the 2020 election because the Democrats defrauded the system by allowing undocumented immigrants to vote. Again, the moderators stepped in.Harris did have some weak moments. When asked if Americans were “better off” financially under the current administration, she completely ignored the question and talked instead about her vision of an “Opportunity Economy”. There are times when talking about the future is just not good enough. The economy is the elephant in the room and she is simply going to have to do better. Trump will be sure to remind her of that.Similarly, the Israel-Gaza war is a major issue for younger voters and Democratic progressives. Her attempt at a middle ground may not be reassuring to those who believe a genocide is being conducted with American weapons.At times, Trump was simply ridiculous. But he did not receive a knockout blow. “We have a nation in decline and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris know it.” While Harris hit him hard without appearing to bully him and turn him into a victim, he nonetheless had one of the most memorable lines of the evening: Harris “has been in for three and a half years, so why hasn’t she done” all the things she is promising? A good question that she will have to answer.Harris won on points. She may have regained the momentum she had most of August, but the race is still at equilibrium.Do these debates matter? They certainly have in the past. We all saw the strengths and weaknesses of both campaigners and now we have a clearer sense of what to watch from here.

      John Zogby is senior partner at the polling firm of John Zogby Strategies and is author of Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read the Polls and Why We Should More