Kamala Harris
Subterms
More stories
- in US Politics
‘Cat ladies’ come together to show support for Kamala Harris
A group of pet lovers and self-described “cat ladies” came together for the latest in a series of Zoom calls in support of Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. The Tuesday evening call was hosted by Christine Pelosi, a political consultant and the daughter of Nancy Pelosi, and Nikki Fried, the chair of the Florida Democratic party.The call was not organized around racial and ethnic identity, but as a rebuff to comments made in 2021 by JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, who told the then Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the US was being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs and “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too”.Tuesday’s meeting began with a slideshow of pet pictures that played over Dancing Queen by Abba. Nancy Pelosi, a surprise guest, bopped along to the tune before telling the audience that the purpose of the gathering was to show support for women’s freedom to “love how they wanna love, and live how they wanna live”.“When JD Vance couched his opinion on our freedom, we decided that the cat ladies are striking back,” Pelosi said. “He didn’t realize what an opportunity he was giving us, and what he would unleash.”The digital conference was organized by a group called Pet Lovers for Kamala. Originally, the group was focused on cat owners in particular, but Christine Pelosi said they found solidarity among dog owners, so they formed an inclusive group that includes owners of all animals.That included Donna Brazile, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee, and Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois congresswoman. Both appeared with their dogs.Christine Pelosi and the call’s other organizers gave tips for how to engage people via social media posts, phone and text banks, and by volunteering on behalf of Harris. Fried, who also served as Florida’s commissioner of agriculture from 2019 to 2023, said Harris winning was the only thing stopping the rest of the US going the way of her home state.“I had to sit next to Ron DeSantis for four straight years and see up close and personal the strangeness of Ron DeSantis,” Fried said. “We have been living under Project 2025. We have been the lab rats for the Heritage Foundation.”The Tuesday call also follows several other Zoom rallies put on by affinity groups to raise money for the presumptive Democratic nominee.Within 24 hours of Joe Biden announcing he was ending his campaign, nearly 100,000 Black people logged on to Zoom calls with the groups Win with Black Women and Win with Black Men in support of Harris’s campaign.Last week, Shannon Watts, best known for founding the gun violence prevention group Moms Demand Action, corralled more than 160,000 white women, and on Monday, a White Dudes for Harris call attracted more than 190,000 people and raised $4m for the vice-president’s campaign.A virtual meeting of Latino voters is slated for Wednesday and will be hosted by comedian George Lopez. More
- in US Politics
Atlanta rally: Harris tells Trump to ‘say it to my face’ and challenges him to debate
Three weeks ago, the political commentariat was writing off Georgia and talking of narrow pathways for Joe Biden to hold the White House. Georgia was a desert. Tuesday evening, an Atlanta crowd greeted Kamala Harris like she backed up a truck full of sweet tea to that desert.It’s probably too early – nine days since the president’s withdrawal and the vice-president’s ascension – to know if sentiment in Georgia had shifted enough to justify jubilation. But the crowd in Atlanta treated the new presumptive presidential nominee as a reason to celebrate after months of her quieter campaigning in the city as the vice-presidential nominee.“As many of you know, before I was elected vice-president … I was an elected attorney general and an elected district attorney,” Harris said after taking the stand. “Hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type, and I have been dealing with people like him my entire career.”This elicited chants of: “Lock him up!”Harris addressed a crowd of 10,000 who filled the Georgia State Convocation Center, with people waiting outside for a seat. She touted her prosecution record and referenced Trump’s criminal convictions and the findings of fraud in his businesses.“As an attorney general, I held big Wall Street banks accountable for fraud. Donald Trump was found guilty of fraud,” Harris said. “In this campaign, I will proudly put my record against his any day, including on the issue of immigration.”Harris spoke of walking underground tunnels at the California border and prosecuting traffickers, and pledged to bring back the border security bill that was tanked in Congress by Republicans to preserve the issue in the campaign.Referencing a Migos song – popular as an Atlanta group – she said: “He does not walk it as he talks it.”Ahead of Harris’s appearance on Tuesday, several Atlanta voices made the case for her. Mayor Andre Dickens noted that this was the vice-president’s 15th time visiting the state since 2021. Harris has been in Atlanta so often that she may as well have rented a condo in Buckhead to save money.Harris is expected back in the state next week, and will debut her running mate on a seven-stop swing state tour, according to details confirmed by her campaign. Politico reported Harris will hold the first rally in Philadelphia on Tuesday. Harris said she as of today has not yet picked the candidate yet.For the last two years, Harris has been Joe Biden’s chief campaign surrogate in Georgia, making deliberate connections with campaign organizers and Black community leaders, a weapon in the Democratic arsenal that Republicans have not been able to match.“Georgia is on everybody’s mind,” said Raphael Warnock, the senator and reverend, to a boisterous crowd. “And there’s a reason. Because of what you did in 2020, 2021, everybody knows that the road to the White House goes through Georgia.”View image in fullscreenDonald Trump has been on his heels in recent polls, which show ground captured in the rust belt. The former president announced that he would refrain from committing to a debate against Harris until after the Democratic national convention, which the senator Jon Ossoff characterized as cowardice.“I know about having an opponent who’s too scared to debate,” Ossoff said, harkening back to his winning 2020 campaign against then senator David Perdue, in which he spent 90 minutes debating an empty chair. “The candidate who is dodging debates is the candidate who is losing.”Stacey Abrams took the stage at 5.33pm to thunderous chants of “Stacey!”, which Abrams immediately turned around into a chant for “Kamala!”“We are the ones who put our boots on the ground,” said the former gubernatorial candidate and voting rights advocate. She preached the virtues of a progressive presidency on infrastructure development in the Black community, on job creation and on the climate. She pointedly noted that Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, who defeated her two years ago, took credit for new investment in solar panel manufacturing in Georgia even as the federal government has been spurring those investments.View image in fullscreen“They started with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden believing in the environment,” she said.Now that Harris has replaced Biden as the presumptive nominee, the question is whether there is time to capitalize on the administration’s connections in a state that may still be difficult to win for Democrats.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“When we get deep into those communities, when we are hitting apartment complexes in the hood, when we’re places we don’t usually go, I’ll know its real,” said state representative Imani Barnes, a Democrat representing a sprawling suburban district in DeKalb county near Atlanta.Barnes’ constituents range from CDC scientists to some of the poorest immigrant communities in the state, and she can see how campaigns have to change the language on flyers to reach some voters. “That’s how we know a campaign is making a difference.”Previous appearances in Georgia by Biden and Harris have been closely vetted campaign events filled with a curated selection of activists, advocates and party leaders. Though the guest speakers on Tuesday were a selection of federal officials and local leaders – with Geoff Duncan, the former Republican lieutenant governor, stalking the edges of the press pit – that selectivity was less evident.“Georgia saved the whole nation,” Warnock said. “I have a feeling that Georgia is going to save the nation one more time.”In her speech, Harris sought not only to attack her opponent but to refocus on top voter issues in Georgia, such as the economy.“Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency,” she said. “When our middle class is strong, America is strong. To keep our middle class strong, families need relief from the high cost of living so that they have a chance not to get by but to get ahead.”She said she would go after price gouging and hidden fees by banks and other companies, and take on corporate landlords to cap unfair rent increases, and to cap prescription drug costs.“There are signs Donald Trump is feeling” the competition, she says.“You may have noticed he pulled out of the debate.”She repeated the assertion made by her campaign in recent days that Trump is “just plain weird”.“I do hope Trump will agree to meet me on the debate stage, because as the saying goes – if you got something to say, say it to my face,” she said as the crowd exploded.The convocation center at Georgia State University is a state-owned building. Election law requires the facility to offer its use on the same terms to the Trump campaign. Hence, Trump will appear here Saturday, offering a mark to compare their relative fortunes even as he refuses to accept debate. More
- in US Politics
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump neck and neck in new poll – live
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are neck and neck in the presidential race, according to a new Reuters and Ipsos poll.The poll, which was completed on Sunday, showed that the vice-president was supported by 43% of registered voters while the former president was supported by 42%.Last week, a Reuters and Ipsos poll showed that Harris was leading by 44% to Trump’s 42%.Reuters and Ipsos’s latest poll was conducted among 1,025 adults, including 876 registered voters, from 26 to 28 July.Kamala Harris will announce her vice-presidential pick as early as Monday before embarking on a multi-state battleground tour with her new running mate later in the week, two sources familiar with the planning said on Tuesday, Reuters reports.The high-stakes decision on who will run with the current vice-president as the wingman on her presidential ticket has taken center stage since she became the Democratic frontrunner for the 5 November election.Kamala Harris is expected to announce who will be her running mate in her campaign for president as early as Monday, the Reuters news wire is reporting this evening, as an exclusive, citing sources but as yet giving no more detail.This echoes what Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, said yesterday, that Harris would choose and announce “in the next six, seven days”, as we blogged earlier.But anything that echoes or strengthens that prediction is fascinating, so we’ll watch closely.Harris is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president in this election, after Joe Biden withdrew from his re-election campaign nine days ago and anointed Harris as his chosen successor at the top of the ticket.At this rate, she can expect to be officially voted in as the nominee at the party’s national convention next month, in Chicago.Kamala Harris will not attend the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) conference in Chicago, according to a source familiar with her schedule, citing logistical challenges getting to Chicago days after launching her campaign.The vice-president is heading to Houston this week to attend the funeral of the late Texas congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee as well as conducting a rapid search for her running mate.The source said Harris’s campaign offered to participate in a virtual fireside chat, or to host an in-person fireside chat with Harris at a later date, but the request was denied. The source said Harris’s team will continue to work toward a possible solution with the NABJ board.On the sidelines of the centrist WelcomeFest in Washington DC, Will Rollins, the Democratic nominee in a competitive California House district, said Republicans would have a “tricky” time trying to paint Kamala Harris as “dangerously liberal”.“Somebody who goes into law enforcement is not a leftwing ideologue,” said Rollins, a former prosecutor. Already he said she was having a positive impact on down-ballot races. His campaign alone raised a six-figure sum in the 48 hours after her ascent, he said.Rollins noted that when Harris came up in California politics, she was criticized by activists as too conservative, despite the image Republicans are portraying of her as far-left.“She in fact was branded as much too conservative for San Francisco. So I think as voters actually learned more about her actual record it’s going to work well for us,” he said.To underline the point, Rollins said he first met Harris when she was the state’s attorney general at an event with the then Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, whom he worked for at the time.“That kind of proves or disproves their attempt to paint her as an extremist. Here you have this Democratic statewide attorney general, who was working with a Republican governor in California at the time,” he said. “I actually think that’s one of the more underreported parts of her background, what she was able to do across party lines.”He also weighed in on who Harris might choose as her running mate. His choice was for fellow millennial, transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, who he called an “incredible communicator”.Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are neck and neck in the presidential race, according to a new Reuters and Ipsos poll.The poll, which was completed on Sunday, showed that the vice-president was supported by 43% of registered voters while the former president was supported by 42%.Last week, a Reuters and Ipsos poll showed that Harris was leading by 44% to Trump’s 42%.Reuters and Ipsos’s latest poll was conducted among 1,025 adults, including 876 registered voters, from 26 to 28 July.The departure of Paul Dans as the leader of Project 2025 could indicate the project’s work is winding down or at least will not be taking such a public role in the lead-up to the November election, though the policy ideas outlined in its extensive conservative roadmap remain public.Dans, a Donald Trump loyalist, worked in personnel-related roles in the first Trump administration, including as chief of staff at the office of personnel management.Although Kevin Roberts, the president of Heritage Foundation, claimed the change was always intended and followed a set timeline, the move underscores the unpopularity of Project 2025 for Trump, who has for weeks attempted to distance himself from it.Earlier this month, Trump claimed to “know nothing about Project 2025” and have “no idea who is behind it”. The disavowal from Trump came after Roberts said:
We are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless, if the left allows it to be.
At a recent rally in Michigan, Trump quipped about the project: “I don’t know what the hell it is” and “they’re seriously extreme.” But the project includes many former Trump administration officials and its aims often align with Trump’s policy ideas, albeit with far more detail.Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said he has “total confidence” in Kamala Harris’s running mate choice.Asked whether he would support Mark Kelly, the Arizona senator, as Harris’s running mate, Schumer said:
I have total confidence that Vice President Harris will choose a great vice-presidential candidate.
Asked whether he was concerned about the prospect of a special election in Arizona, CNN reports that Schumer replied:
I have complete faith in Vice President Harris’ choice.
Not even a day after audio of JD Vance telling donors that Kamala Harris was a threat and a “sucker punch” was leaked to the Washington Post, Vance continued to make headlines on Tuesday, as a previously unseen video of Vance was published by the Harris 2024 campaign.In the video, Vance can be seen telling an interviewer that not having “kids in your life” makes “people more sociopathic” and makes the US a little bit “less mentally stable”.This comes as Vance continues to face backlash over comments he made in 2021 that recently resurfaced where he criticized the vice-president and other Democrats as “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives”.On Monday evening, Donald Trump sat down with Laura Ingraham of Fox News and defended Vance’s comments, telling the host that his vice-presidential candidate was simply trying to show how much he values family life.Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, made headlines again on Monday evening, after an audio recording of Vance speaking privately to donors on Saturday about Kamala Harris was leaked to the Washington Post.Vance reporedtly told donors that Harris was a threat and “a bit of a political sucker punch” to the Trump Vance campaign.Vance also reportedly said:
The bad news is that Kamala Harris does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden, because whatever we might have to say, Kamala is a lot younger. And Kamala Harris is obviously not struggling in the same ways that Joe Biden did.
The comments contradict Donald Trump’s own statements on Harris since Biden withdrew from the race, as he has told reporters that he did not think switching out Biden for Harris “would make much difference”, adding: “I would define her in a very similar [way] that I define him.”Even Vance himself has told reporters that there was in effect no difference in running against Biden versus Harris.The Trump campaign has responded to the news of Project 2025 director Paul Dans’ departure. In a statement, it said:
President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way.
Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.
The work of Project 2025 will continue despite its director, Paul Dans, stepping down from his role, Politico reported, citing a source.The report adds that the source said “the goal of Project 2025 was always to have their work done by the time of the Republican National Convention which ended in late July”.Here’s more on the news that Paul Dans, the director of Project 2025, has stepped down from his role at the Heritage Foundation.Kevin Roberts, the president of the conservative thinktank, has confirmed that Dans is leaving his post.Dans “built the project from scratch and bravely led this endeavor over the past two years” but is now “moving up to the front where the fight remains”, Roberts said in a statement.
Under Paul Dans’ leadership, Project 2025 has completed exactly what it set out to do: bringing together over 110 leading conservative organizations to create a unified conservative vision, motivated to devolve power from the unelected administrative state, and returning it to the people.
Dans informed staff at the thinktank this week of his decision to step down, the Wall Street Journal reported. More - in US Politics
‘It puts everyone in a really bad position’: Black journalists react to Trump joining NABJ panel
On Monday night, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) announced that Donald Trump will participate in a panel discussion at the organization’s annual convention in Chicago, which starts on Wednesday.The announcement, which said that the Q&A would “concentrate on the most pressing issues facing the Black community”, was met with swift online backlash from some Black journalists. They decried the decision to invite a presidential candidate who has lambasted Black journalists, led a movement to squash diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and who is responsible for increased anti-journalistic sentiment, including the popularization of the term “fake news” to describe factual, but potentially unflattering, reporting.Tiffany Walden, a co-founder and editor-in-chief of The TRiiBE, a digital platform that focuses on Black Chicago, told the Guardian that NABJ’s decision was “irresponsible”.“We’ve watched Trump threaten to send the feds here when he was in office,” Walden said. “We’ve watched him use Chicago as a dog whistle in all of his campaign’s materials during his first run for office. He talked about Chicago having top gang thugs. So this puts the city of Chicago and its residents in a very vulnerable position. It also puts Black journalists in a very vulnerable position at a convention that’s supposed to be a safe space for them.”Ameshia Cross, a political analyst, echoed this sentiment on X: “The same Trump that attacked Black journalists from the stump. The same Trump who is attacking DEI, can’t get ahead of his own racism and sexism. And the guy who wants to dissolve journalism as we know it, that’s who is speaking at #NABJ24 w/ record attendance. C’mon yall.”Another journalist, Carron J Phillips, called the move “the single dumbest and worst decision in NABJ history”.The outcry led to the NABJ president, Ken Lemon, and others defending the decision, saying that Black reporters should have the opportunity to question a political candidate.“Every year, every presidential election cycle, we invite the presidential candidates to come,” Lemon said to NABJ student journalists on Tuesday. “We extend that to anyone who is a nominee and in this case we have two presumptive nominees. We invited both of them … This is an important hour. We have people whose lives are depending on what happens in November … This is a great opportunity for us to vet the candidate right here on our ground.”Kamala Harris is scheduled to speak elsewhere on Wednesday, when Trump will be at NABJ, but her confirmation to attend this year’s convention, which lasts through Sunday, is “pending”, according to NABJ.Tia Mitchell, the chair of NABJ’s political journalism taskforce and a Washington correspondent at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, wrote on X: “I helped make this call. And it’s in line with invitations NABJ has sent to every presidential candidate for decades. But continue to go off on your feed. I’ll continue to work to create opportunities for journalists to interview the potential next President.” (Mitchell, NABJ and NABJ’s Chicago chapter did not respond to requests for comment.)Wednesday’s panel will be moderated by Rachel Scott, a senior congressional correspondent for ABC News; Harris Faulkner, who anchors The Faulkner Focus and Outnumbered for Fox News; and Kadia Goba, a politics reporter for Semafor.“As journalists, we can never be afraid to tackle someone like Trump,” Jemele Hill, a contributing reporter for the Atlantic, wrote on X. “The reality is that he is running for president and needs to be treated as such. Being questioned by journalists is part of the job, and especially important in the company of Black journalists. Mainstream media keeps trying to convince us that he actually is gaining support among Black people. Let’s see if it’s true.”But the journalist Matthew Wright pushed back on the notion that there was anything productive in questioning Trump.“What does that serve?” Wright said to the Guardian. “We literally just watched him talk to Laura Ingraham [who] was trying to get him to answer different questions, but he practically played evasive of action even then. If a super conservative white woman can’t get straight answers out of him, what makes you think that three black women are going to get them?”In a statement about the NABJ appearance, Trump’s campaign wrote: “President Trump accomplished more for Black Americans than any other president in recent history.” Some journalists used this statement as evidence that NABJ’s decision to platform the former president was harmful, and would lead to further perpetuation of falsehoods.“This is the way 45 is touting his appearance before @nabj this week. Was this what you wanted [Tia Mitchell]? He is already lying and he isn’t even in Chicago yet. This is your legacy,” April Reign, a media strategist, wrote on X.The timing of the panel announcement – less than 48 hours before the convention’s start – also drew concern from NABJ members.Shamira Ibrahim, a culture writer, told the Guardian that she was shocked by the decision.“It puts everyone in a really bad position,” Ibrahim said. “You already paid your convention fees, you already paid for a hotel that’s likely not refundable at this point, flights are likely difficult to get replaced. Even if you have a moral opposition to it or an ethical opposition to it, you’re kind of already stuck in whatever plan you made.”NABJ’s annual convention has allowed Black journalists a space to fellowship and gather safely since the organization’s founding in 1975, with some reporters likening it to a family reunion. Inviting Trump, Ibrahim said, undermined that sense of community.“NABJ is primarily not just a place for journalists to get opportunities to interview politicians, but also a place for Black journalists to network, to have open conversations about things that are happening in the industry, to attend panels, and really get a sense of how to shift in a very, very volatile, fragile space,” she continued.“Inviting someone who, one, has made targeted attacks on Black journalists, two, has actively been responsible in defunding programs that help build Black journalists, and three, has publicly attacked the Black press flies in the face of any sort of fidelity convention.”On Tuesday afternoon, a coalition of organizations, including Chicago Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression and Anti-War Committee Chicago, announced plans to rally outside the convention to “tell Trump he’s not welcome in Chicago”. More
- in US Politics
Harris and Trump release dueling ads as candidates refine their messaging
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump released dueling campaign ads on Tuesday, as the reshaped US presidential election began to grind into gear with 98 days to go.The US vice-president’s ad, Fearless, was her first since she became the de facto Democratic nominee, after Joe Biden halted his re-election campaign and endorsed her.“Donald Trump wants to take our country backward,” Harris said. “To give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and end the Affordable Care Act. But we are not going back.”The former president’s ad, I Don’t Understand, used a snippet of Harris answering a question about immigration policy to bolster a hardline message about drugs, crime, terrorism and the southern border.Showing footage of her dancing, Trump’s ad called Harris “failed, weak, dangerously liberal”.Harris’s campaign hit back against Trump, pointing to the Republican’s role in directing congressional Republicans to reject bipartisan border reform.“After killing the toughest border deal in decades, Donald Trump is running on his trademark lies because his own record and ‘plans’ are extreme and unpopular,” Ammar Moussa, a Harris campaign spokesperson, told reporters.Harris has been the presumptive Democratic nominee for little more than a week – but she has made an extremely strong start, reeling in more than $200m and appearing to make up ground in the polls.She is still considering her own vice-presidential pick. But on Monday, Trump’s Republican running mate, the hardline Ohio senator JD Vance, was revealed to have made a telling admission about the strength of Harris’s start.In remarks at a fundraiser in Minnesota last weekend, reported by the Washington Post and referring to Biden’s decision to give in to those who said he was too old for a second term, Vance said: “All of us were hit with a little bit of a political sucker punch.“The bad news is that Kamala Harris does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden, because whatever we might have to say, Kamala is a lot younger. And Kamala Harris is obviously not struggling in the same ways that Joe Biden did.”Biden is 81, and Harris is 59. Trump is 78, making him the oldest presidential nominee of all time. The language of Harris’s new ad pointed to Democratic determination to target Trump’s age – and to portray him as backward-looking and a thing of the past, now that their own old man is out of the campaign picture.The Harris campaign is also keen to point to its fundraising efforts, which as the new ad was released saw a “White Dudes for Harris” Zoom call featuring celebrities including the actor Jeff Bridges, who famously played Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski. The campaign said it raised $4m.Five years before Bridges made The Big Lebowski, he played the lead role in Fearless, a 1993 movie about a man whose behaviour is changed after he survives a plane crash.In a statement accompanying the Fearless ad, the Harris campaign chairperson, Jen O’Malley Dillon, saluted Democrats’ own dramatic shift in fortunes, from plummeting polls under Biden to soaring hopes under Harris.“Kamala Harris has always stood up to bullies, criminals and special interests on behalf of the American people – and she’s beaten them,” O’Malley Dillon said, echoing the ad’s citation of Harris’s work as attorney general of California, as well as her time as a US senator and vice-president.“This $50m paid media campaign, bolstered by our record-setting fundraising haul and a groundswell of grassroots enthusiasm, is one crucial way we will reach and make our case to the voters who will decide this election.”The Harris campaign plans to air its ad prominently over three weeks, including amid coverage of the Olympic Games in Paris.The Trump campaign is also reportedly focusing on Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan – the key battleground states. More
- in US Politics
Celebrity-studded ‘White Dudes for Harris’ call raises $4m for vice-president
A Zoom call meant to rally “white dudes” in support of Kamala Harris’s run for the White House raised more than $4m from about 190,000 participants, including several Hollywood stars, in the latest success for her nascent bid for president.The fundraiser added to a series of positives for the Harris campaign on Tuesday, including the release of a new ad, an endorsement from the Republican mayor of a large city in in Arizona, and an admission from the Republicans’ vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, that Harris posed more of a threat to the Trump campaign than Joe Biden did.Guests on the “White Dudes for Harris” call on Monday evening not only included contenders for Harris’s vice-presidential running mate – the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz; the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker; and the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg– but also the actors Jeff Bridges (famous for portraying the Dude in The Big Lebowski) and Mark Hamill, who secured a $50,000 donation during the call by delivering his renowned Star Wars line: “I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m here to rescue you.”A news release from the organizers said the virtual gathering “shattered expectations”.“Over the course of the evening, speakers heard governors, senators, congressmen, actors and singers all speaking directly to white men around the need to organize and support Kamala Harris for president,” the press release said. “Speakers spoke truthfully and honestly about the path ahead, the importance for us to connect with one another and the important role we can play in getting other white men to turn their backs on the dangerous, dark path Donald Trump is trying to march us down.”Harris, a former California attorney general and US senator who is of Indian and Jamaican heritage, became the first woman to be elected vice-president when Joe Biden won the White House in 2020. She is now likely to become the first woman of color to lead a major-party presidential ticket after Biden halted his re-election run on 21 July and endorsed her.Democrats responded to Harris’s ascension with enthusiasm, illustrated by 170,000 people signing up to volunteer for her campaign as well as donating $200m for her political war chest in just the first week.But Trump – Biden’s presidential predecessor – and his Republican supporters, many of them white, have greeted her rise by disparaging her as a hire resulting from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.“Honestly, their dark vision for our future is just holding all of us back,” Brad Bauman, a Democratic party communications consultant who helped organize Monday’s call, told NBC News. “That’s why we decided to start White Dudes for Harris.”Other celebrities on Monday’s call were Mark Ruffalo, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Paul Scheer, Josh Gad, Sean Astin, JJ Abrams and Bradley Whitford. The call lasted over three hours.The Zoom fundraising call came in the wake of similar, well-attended gatherings for Black women, Black men and white women supporting Harris.There is also a “cat ladies for Harris” Zoom call being planned in response to comments from Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, in which he insulted the vice-president as a “childless cat” lady. And there is a similar call in the works titled “Latino Men for Kamala”. The AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US, is hosting a Labor for Harris Zoom call with labor leaders and members around the US on 31 July.The white women for Harris call last Thursday raised nearly $8.5m for the vice-president and had more than 160,000 attenders.The Black women for Harris Zoom call attracted about 90,000 participants. And the Black men for Harris streaming event, moderated by the journalist Roland Martin, saw more than 53,000 people register.Those events also included appearances by numerous celebrities and Democratic officials.The calls come as Harris and Trump are polling closely to each other in crucial battleground states likely to determine the election. After Biden’s withdrawal from the race, the Republican-friendly Fox News poll conducted in three of the key states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – showed Trump and Harris were even.Trump had previously been enjoying relatively comfortable leads.The successful fundraising calls for Harris were anchored by news of an important endorsement in the battleground state of Arizona, as the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona’s third largest city, crossed party lines to endorse Harris.The Harris campaign also released its first video television advertisement, which describes the presumptive Democratic nominee as “fearless” and touts her bona fides as a prosecutor. The one-minute ad is the first of a $50m advertising campaign ahead of the Democratic national convention in Chicago on 19 August.Adding to her campaign’s sense of momentum since Biden declared last Sunday that he was stepping aside from the presidential race was an audio recording leaked to the Washington Post on Monday of Vance telling Republican donors that Harris taking over from Biden was a “sucker punch”.“All of us were hit with a little bit of a political sucker punch,” said Vance in the recording. “The bad news is that Kamala Harris does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden because whatever we might have to say, Kamala is a lot younger. And Kamala Harris is obviously not struggling in the same ways that Joe Biden did.” More
- in US Politics
Kamala Harris is the worst nightmare of America’s far right | Robert Reich
When Joe Biden stepped down in support of Kamala Harris, he didn’t just pass the torch to another generation. He passed it from old white men to America’s future.Consider that women now compose a remarkable 60% of college undergraduates. And that by 2050, it’s estimated that America will consist mostly of people of color – 30% more Black people than today, 60% more Latinos and twice the number of Asian Americans.The power shift has already started.Many of the people who have demanded accountability from Trump constitute a Trump nightmare of strong and able women, including several of color – Letitia James and Fani Willis – along with E Jean Carroll and her lawyer Roberta Kaplan, Liz Cheney and Nancy Pelosi.And now, Kamala Harris.In naming JD Vance as his vice-presidential candidate, Trump feinted a torch pass – but backwards. Vance’s white male belongs in the early 20th century.During Vance’s bid for the Senate in Ohio in 2021, he called Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies”, offering as examples Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.“How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?” Vance asked, suggesting the only way to have a “direct stake” is by giving birth.Even before Vance said this, Harris was stepmother to two teenagers. Soon after, Buttigieg and his husband adopted infant twins.By this logic, no American male – including Vance and Trump – can have a “direct stake” in America.Trump himself – dog-whistling racist; alleged groper, fondler, and sexual harasser; and adjudicated rapist – is hardly respectful of women, especially women of color.Of Harris, he claimed: “They’re saying she isn’t qualified because she wasn’t born in this country.” (Harris was born in California.)Of Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, he charged – also without evidence – that “she ended up having an affair with the head of the gang or a gang member”.Trump has repeatedly denigrated women of color as “angry” or “nasty”.And he views female human beings as almost alien creatures. “There’s nothing I love more than women,” he has said, “but they’re really a lot different than portrayed. They are far worse than men, far more aggressive, and boy, can they be smart!” And, of course, his infamous: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”Trump misogyny has infected the entire Maga Republican party, whose recent convention was a celebration of testosterone – featuring the wrestling champ Hulk Hogan shouting: “Let me tell you something, brother … Trump is the toughest of them all, a gladiator!”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTo remind you, Hogan was the protagonist in a sex-tape video scandal. Hogan’s lawsuit over the circulation of the video, which put Gawker Media out of business, was underwritten by the tech billionaire Peter Thiel – the same man who gave JD Vance a lucrative venture-capital job, funded Vance’s senatorial campaign and introduced Vance to Trump.Other pop cultural “tough guy” icons at the Republican convention similarly attested to Trump’s virility. The conservative rocker/rapper Kid Rock performed his song American Badass.Instead of being introduced by his spouse, as have most candidates accepting their party’s nomination, Trump was introduced by Dana White, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship – known for its machismo culture and sanctioned violence.Trump, Vance, and their Maga allies are misogynists who want to control women by preventing them from controlling their own bodies – forcing them to have children. Vance is against abortion even in cases of rape or incest.Trump’s Project 2025 “Mandate for Leadership” chillingly recommends that the Department of Health and Human Services “ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method”.What’s the underlying goal here? The same as in Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale – authoritarian fascism organized around male dominance.In this worldview, anything that challenges the traditional male roles of protector, provider and controller of the family threatens the social order. Strong women and LGBTQ+ people also weaken the heroic male warrior. Brutality, force and violence strengthen him.In their eyes, Kamala Harris could not pose more of a threat.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More
