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    Democrats are finally done with the ‘high road’ – and hitting Trump where it hurts | Robert Reich

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    I’m glad Democrats are finally hitting back at Trump. Enough with the “high road”.They’re calling him “weird”.They’re mocking him. “Donald Trump fell asleep at his own trial,” Hillary Clinton sneered at the Democratic convention. “When he woke up, he’d made his own kind of history – the first person to run for president with 34 felony convictions.”Barack Obama noted Trump’s “weird obsession with crowd sizes”.Michelle Obama asked: “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?”Trump hates to be laughed at. He cannot abide ridicule. So, keep it up.But in addition to the mockery, we must not forget Trump’s treachery.The values a president enunciates and demonstrates ricochet through society, strengthening or undermining the common good.George Washington’s biographer, Douglas Southall Freeman, noted that by June 1775, when Congress appointed him to command the nation’s army, Washington had already “become a moral rallying post”.In the 2016 presidential campaign, 240 years later, candidate Donald Trump’s moral squalor was on full display. When accused of failing to pay his income taxes he responded: “That makes me smart.”He thereby signaled to millions of Americans that paying taxes in full is not an obligation of citizenship.Trump also boasted about giving money to politicians so they would do whatever he wanted. “When they call, I give. And you know what, when I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me.”In other words, it’s perfectly OK for business leaders to pay off politicians, regardless of the effect on our democracy.After Trump launched an attack on NFL players who kneeled during the national anthem, Steve Kerr, coach of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, explained that the players were trying to protect a core American value. “They’re protesting excessive police violence and racial inequality,” said Kerr. “Those are really good things to fight against. And they’re doing it in a nonviolent way. Which is everything that Martin Luther King preached, right?”Before Trump, the peaceful transfer of power was assumed to be a central feature of American democracy.As the Harvard political scientist Archon Fung has noted, when losing candidates congratulate winners and deliver gracious concession speeches, they demonstrate their commitment to the democratic system over the result they fought to achieve – an important means of reaffirming the common good.Think of Al Gore’s gracious concession speech to George W Bush in 2000, after five weeks of a bitterly contested election and just one day after the US supreme court ruled in favor of Bush:“I say to President-elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of this country … Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the court’s decision, I accept it … And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.”Consider what might have occurred had Gore bitterly accused Bush of winning fraudulently and blamed the five Republican appointees on the supreme court for siding with Bush for partisan reasons. Or if, during his campaign, Bush had promised to put Gore in jail for various alleged improprieties, and then, after he won, accused Gore of spying on him during the campaign and trying to use the FBI and CIA to bring his downfall.These statements – close to ones Trump actually made – might have imperiled the political stability of the nation.Instead, Gore made the same moral choice his predecessors made at the end of every previous American presidential election, and for the same reason: he understood that the peaceful transition of power confirmed the nation’s commitment to the constitution, which was far more important than his own loss.Trump has had no such qualms. When he lost, he embarked on a coup against the United States and instigated an assault on the US Capitol, resulting in five deaths.At this moment, Trump and his lackeys are installing loyalists in state and county election offices to deny certification to the Harris-Walz ticket and other Democrats down the ballot.The essence of Trump’s failure as president – and the fundamental reason he doesn’t merit a second term – is not that he has behaved in childish and vindictive ways or is “weird”.It is that he sacrificed – and continues to sacrifice – the processes and institutions that undergird America to achieve his own selfish aims.He abused the trust we place in a president to preserve and protect the nation’s capacity for self-government.Trump is a traitor.He and the Republican party – now a personality cult based on Trump’s “big lie” – violate everything America stands for.

    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

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

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

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

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

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      Barack Obama calls on Americans to elect Kamala Harris – as it happened

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      Barack Obama brought the crowd to his feet when he described Kamala Harris and Tim Walz as leaders who would care about blue-collar workers.“In this new economy, we need a president who actually cares about the millions of people all across this country who wake up every day to do the essential, often thankless work to care for our sick and clean our streets and deliver our packages – and stand up for their right to bargain for better wages and working conditions,” he said, as he drew a standing ovation. “Kamala will be that president.”“Yes, she can,” he continued, and the crowd joined in, briefly chanting, “yes, she can!”Thanks for following our coverage of day two of the DNC. This blog is now closing. You can find our reporting on the US election here.The same chant greeted Obama when he took the stage in Chicago just after 10pm ET on Thursday and embraced his wife, Michelle. But halfway through his speech, Obama broke from his teleprompter remarks to ad lib: “Yes, she can!” The crowd instinctively chanted, “Yes, she can!” in response.There was a symbolic echo for Democrats who had come to fear that Obama’s election might be a historic aberration but now sense that it might in fact be Trump who represents the last gasp of a dying order.In a nod to his debut at the 2004 convention, Obama, now 63, quipped: “I’m feeling hopeful because this convention has always been pretty good to kids with funny names who believe in a country where anything is possible.“Because we have the chance to elect someone who’s spent her whole life trying to give people the same chances America gave her. Someone who sees you and hears you and will get up every single day and fight for you: the next President of the United States of America, Kamala Harris.”The crowd roared its approval. Obama went on to pay tribute to outgoing president Joe Biden, who was not present, having delivered a valedictory address on Monday. “History will remember Joe Biden as a president who defended democracy at a moment of great danger,” he said. “I am proud to call him my president, but even prouder to call him my friend.”The torch has been passed, he continued, but “for all the rallies and the memes”, the race for the White House remains tight. He suggested the people who will decide the election are asking a simple question: who will fight for them.Amid chants of “Yes, she can!”, Barack Obama returned to the scene of past triumphs on Tuesday to pass the mantle of political history to Kamala Harris – and eviscerate her opponent Donald Trump.The former US president delivered the closing speech on night two of the Democratic national convention in his home city of Chicago. Obama prompted raucous cheers as he delivered a withering critique of Trump, who succeeded him in the White House in 2017.“We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos,” he told delegates. “We have seen that movie before and we all know that the sequel is usually worse. America is ready for a new chapter. America is ready for a better story. We are ready for a President Kamala Harris.”It was another night crackling with energy in the packed arena as America’s first Black president made the case for the nation to elect the first woman and first woman of colour to the Oval Office.Obama was speaking 20 years after he first exploded on to the political stage at the Democratic convention in Boston. That summer, Harris helped host a fundraiser for Obama’s run for the US Senate in Illinois. Four years later, she backed him against Hillary Clinton in the presidential primary, a campaign in which he coined the phrase “Yes, we can!”:Harris took aim at Trump at a rally in Milwaukee on Tuesday, criticising him for saying he had no regrets about the US Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade decision that had recognised women’s constitutional right to abortion:Tuesday night featured the ceremonial roll call when delegates from each state announce their support for the nominees. This portion of the event was led by Grammy-nominated DJ Cassidy and had party vibes as each state had its own song.Celebrities made surprise appearances – film-maker Spike Lee with the New York delegation; rapper Lil Jon with Georgia; the Stranger Things actor Sean Astin with Indiana; and actor Wendell Pierce with Louisiana. Lil Jon sang a spin on his hit, Get Low, saying, “VP Harris … Governor Walz” to the tune of the “To the window … to the wall.”The DNC brought out Stephanie Grisham, Donald Trump’s former press secretary, to offer a firsthand account of the Republican nominee’s character. Grisham, a Republican operative who also served as spokesperson for former first lady Melania Trump, said Donald Trump “has no empathy, no morals and no fidelity to the truth”. Behind closed doors, she said, “Trump mocks his supporters. He calls them basement dwellers. On a hospital visit one time when people were dying in the ICU, he was mad that the cameras were not watching him.”Before Grisham, Kyle Sweetser, an Alabama voter, told the convention crowd he previously voted for Trump and donated to his campaign, but was now supporting Harris: “I’m not leftwing, period. But I believe our leaders should bring out the best in us, not the worst. That’s why I’m voting for Kamala Harris.” John Giles, mayor of Mesa, Arizona, said: “I have a confession to make. I’m a lifelong Republican. But I feel more at home here than in today’s Republican party.”Although Harris’s big speech is scheduled for Thursday, she made a surprise appearance at the convention when her large Milwaukee rally with Tim Walz was live-streamed in Chicago. The moment allowed her to energize two large crowds at the same time. On Monday at the start of the convention, Harris also made a surprise speech on stage to thank Joe Biden.In Milwaukee, Harris criticized Trump for comments earlier in the day saying he had “no regrets” about Roe v Wade. She also told her supporters: “We know this is going to be a tight race until the very end.”The former first lady had one of the most energetic receptions of the night. She reflected on how the GOP nominee had attacked her family: “For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking and highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black.” She offered heartfelt praise for the vice-president, praising the “steel of her spine, the steadiness of her upbringing, the honesty of her example, and yes, the joy of her laughter and her light.“Kamala has shown her allegiance to this nation, not by spewing anger and bitterness, but by living a life of service and always pushing the doors of opportunity open to others. She understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward. We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth,” Obama said.The former first lady described “a deep pit in my stomach, a palpable sense of dread about the future”. But she got a standing ovation when she said, “America, hope is making a comeback.”The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders detailed an extensive progressive agenda that he said Democrats must enact if Harris and Walz take the White House. Sanders mentioned Harris’s name only a handful of times and instead focused his forceful speech on the need to expand healthcare access, reduce the cost of higher education and raise the minimum wage. In a nod to big money that has targeted progressives in primaries, Sanders said: “Billionaires in both parties should not be able to buy elections, including primary elections.” He also earned cheers when he said: “We must end this horrific war in Gaza, bring home the hostages and demand an immediate ceasefire.”A group of uncommitted delegates earlier in the night told reporters that they still hadn’t heard back from the Democratic convention on their demand to have a Palestinian American leader speak on stage.Here is Gwen Walz’s response to Obama’s comments on her husband’s wardrobe:The former president ended the second night of the convention with a characteristic call to action: “We’ll elect leaders up and down the ballot who will fight for the hopeful, forward-looking America we believe in. And together, we too will build a country that is more secure and more just, more equal and more free. So let’s get to work.” His speech prompted repeated throwbacks to his own campaign slogans, with the crowd chanting, “Yes she can!” and Obama telling the crowd, “Do not boo, vote!”He mocked Trump for his “childish nicknames”, “crazy conspiracy theories” and “weird obsession with crowd sizes”: “It’s been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually gotten worse now that Trump is afraid of losing to Kamala … The other day, I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day.” Of Walz, Obama said, “I love this guy,” and of Harris, he said: “She had to work for what she’s got and she actually cares about what other people are going through. She’s not the neighbor running the leaf blower – she’s the neighbor rushing over to help when you need a hand.”Kamala Harris has pushed back on Donald Trump for saying he has “no regrets” about overturning Roe v Wade and ending women’s access to abortion in much of the US.“Yesterday, when he was asked if he has any regrets about ending Roe v Wade, Donald Trump, without even a moment’s hesitation – you would think you’d reflect on it for a second – said: ‘No regrets,’” said the vice-president at tonight’s rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, just after a raucous ceremonial roll call at the Democratic national convention being held in Chicago confirmed her as the party’s nominee for president.“Bad behavior should result in a consequence. Well, we will make sure he does face a consequence, and that’ll be at the ballot box in November.”The remarks come on the heels of the former president’s repeated boasts about overturning Roe v Wade.As she wound up her speech, Michelle Obama talked about the limited time left until voting day, and warned them not to be foolish.Don’t complain if nobody has specifically reached out to you to ask you for your support, she said. “There is no time for that kind of foolishness”.“Consider this to be your official ask. Michelle Obama is asking – no I’m telling y’all, to do something.”The crowd started to chant, “Do something! Do something!”.She ended by saying there were 77 days left to “turn from the fear and division of our past” and “go higher, yes, always higher than we have ever gone before as we elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.” More

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      ‘Yes she can’ and the ‘comeback’ of hope: six key takeaways from day two of the Democratic convention

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      The second night of the Democratic national convention in Chicago featured Barack and Michelle Obama, Bernie Sanders, some notable Republicans and other Democratic heavy-hitters. Here are the key takeaways from the day:1. Barack Obama’s keynote speech: ‘Yes she can’The former president ended the second night of the convention with a characteristic call to action: “We’ll elect leaders up and down the ballot who will fight for the hopeful, forward-looking America we believe in. And together, we too will build a country that is more secure and more just, more equal and more free. So let’s get to work.” His speech prompted repeated throwbacks to his own campaign slogans, with the crowd chanting, “Yes she can!” and Obama telling the crowd, “Do not boo, vote!”He mocked Trump for his “childish nicknames”, “crazy conspiracy theories” and “weird obsession with crowd sizes”: “It’s been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually gotten worse now that Trump is afraid of losing to Kamala … The other day, I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day.” Of Walz, Obama said, “I love this guy,” and of Harris, he said: “She had to work for what she’s got and she actually cares about what other people are going through. She’s not the neighbor running the leaf blower – she’s the neighbor rushing over to help when you need a hand.”2. Bernie Sanders laid out a progressive agenda and reiterated ceasefire callsThe Vermont senator Bernie Sanders detailed an extensive progressive agenda that he said Democrats must enact if Harris and Walz take the White House. Sanders mentioned Harris’s name only a handful of times and instead focused his forceful speech on the need to expand healthcare access, reduce the cost of higher education and raise the minimum wage. In a nod to big money that has targeted progressives in primaries, Sanders said: “Billionaires in both parties should not be able to buy elections, including primary elections.” He also earned cheers when he said: “We must end this horrific war in Gaza, bring home the hostages and demand an immediate ceasefire.”A group of uncommitted delegates earlier in the night told reporters that they still hadn’t heard back from the Democratic convention on their demand to have a Palestinian American leader speak on stage.3. Michelle Obama energized the crowd: ‘Hope is making a comeback’The former first lady had one of the most energetic receptions of the night. She reflected on how the GOP nominee had attacked her family: “For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking and highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black.” She offered heartfelt praise for the vice-president, praising the “steel of her spine, the steadiness of her upbringing, the honesty of her example, and yes, the joy of her laughter and her light.“Kamala has shown her allegiance to this nation, not by spewing anger and bitterness, but by living a life of service and always pushing the doors of opportunity open to others. She understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward. We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth,” Obama said.The former first lady described “a deep pit in my stomach, a palpable sense of dread about the future”. But she got a standing ovation when she said, “America, hope is making a comeback.”4. Harris made another surprise appearance – from MilwaukeeAlthough Harris’s big speech is scheduled for Thursday, she made a surprise appearance at the convention when her large Milwaukee rally with Tim Walz was live-streamed in Chicago. The moment allowed her to energize two large crowds at the same time. On Monday at the start of the convention, Harris also made a surprise speech on stage to thank Joe Biden.In Milwaukee, Harris criticized Trump for comments earlier in the day saying he had “no regrets” about Roe v Wade. She also told her supporters: “We know this is going to be a tight race until the very end.”5. Republicans, including a former Trump aide, support Kamala HarrisThe DNC brought out Stephanie Grisham, Donald Trump’s former press secretary, to offer a firsthand account of the Republican nominee’s character. Grisham, a Republican operative who also served as spokesperson for former first lady Melania Trump, said Donald Trump “has no empathy, no morals and no fidelity to the truth”. Behind closed doors, she said, “Trump mocks his supporters. He calls them basement dwellers. On a hospital visit one time when people were dying in the ICU, he was mad that the cameras were not watching him.”Before Grisham, Kyle Sweetser, an Alabama voter, told the convention crowd he previously voted for Trump and donated to his campaign, but was now supporting Harris: “I’m not leftwing, period. But I believe our leaders should bring out the best in us, not the worst. That’s why I’m voting for Kamala Harris.” John Giles, mayor of Mesa, Arizona, said: “I have a confession to make. I’m a lifelong Republican. But I feel more at home here than in today’s Republican party.”6. Lil Jon, Spike Lee and other celebrities appear at roll callTuesday night featured the ceremonial roll call when delegates from each state announce their support for the nominees. This portion of the event was led by Grammy-nominated DJ Cassidy and had party vibes as each state had its own song.Celebrities made surprise appearances – film-maker Spike Lee with the New York delegation; rapper Lil Jon with Georgia; the Stranger Things actor Sean Astin with Indiana; and actor Wendell Pierce with Louisiana. Lil Jon sang a spin on his hit, Get Low, saying, “VP Harris … Governor Walz” to the tune of the “To the window … to the wall.”Joan E Greve and Chris Stein contributed reporting More

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      Barack Obama to deliver ‘forceful affirmation’ for Kamala Harris in Democratic convention speech – live

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      The Democratic national convention just released the full schedule of its second night, confirming that Barack Obama will deliver the evening’s keynote speech, and Michelle Obama, second gentleman Doug Emhoff and independent senator Bernie Sanders are also scheduled to make remarks.The grandsons of John F Kennedy and Jimmy Carter will be among the early speakers at the convention, along with Stephanie Grisham, Donald Trump’s former White House press secretary.As the night goes on, we’ll hear from Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, and then Sanders, both of whom will speak at the 8pm CT hour. Emhoff and Michelle Obama will speak after 9pm, and Barack Obama is to address delegates starting at 10pm.Do not be surprised if the schedule runs late, as it did last night.Away from the Democratic convention, RFK Jr is considering ending his campaign for president to help Donald Trump, according to his running mate.The startling disclosure was made by Nicole Shanahan, Kennedy’s vice-presidential candidate, who said the pair was considering dropping their campaign over fears it might help elect Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, as president.Shanahan’s remarks, made on the Impact Theory With Tim Bilyeau podcast, were close to an all-out admission that Kennedy’s campaign had more in common with Trump’s than Harris’s. Kennedy was a member of the Democratic party and attempted to run as its nominee before choosing to stand as an independent.Read the full story here:Valerie Jarrett, a former senior adviser to Barack Obama, has warned that Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, currently riding high in the polls, faces plenty of ups and downs before November.“You all remember when President Obama won the Iowa caucuses – if you are old enough to remember that,” Jarrett, speaking at Axios House in Chicago, said of Obama’s first primary campaign against Hillary Clinton in 2008. “We got: ‘Oh, my goodness!’ and ‘We are going for gold!’”Then came the New Hampshire primary and a “devastating defeat”, she added. “But out of that, people found out who he was. We came out of that terrible experience. It forced us to have to go to many more states and introduce him to many more people and, in the end, it was actually good for us.”Harris is bound to undergo “a whole multitude of tests”, Jarrett said. “She is absolutely on a roll right now. I think it’s a hands-up enthusiasm. People are just tired of all the negativity, the polarisation, the toxicity. I think what Governor Walz said: she’s full of joy. People want joy. They actually want to like each other.”Harris, who has replaced Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket, has embarked on a much shorter campaign than the one Obama fought. Jarrett expressed confidence in Harris and running mate Tim Walz and their advisers to deal with obstacles and keep pushing forward.Hot from his primetime appearance at the Democratic convention on Monday night, Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers (UAW), has been explaining to reporters why he wore a T-shirt imprinted with the phrase “Trump is a scab.”“I’ve been a union member for UAW for 30 years, and we have a term for people that cross picket lines and don’t respect working-class people. We call them scabs, and that’s what Donald Trump is.”Fain said that the political leanings of the UAW’s more than 1 million active and retired members had remained stable over the years at about 65% Democratic and 30-32% Republican. But he predicted that this time around, the gap would widen as union members gravitate towards Kamala Harris.“She’s an amazing, very strong woman. I think people underestimate her, and that’s a huge mistake. I think she’s going to move a massive mountain come November,” he said.The UAW is preparing to launch in the next week or so what has been billed as the biggest field campaign in its history to persuade its members to turn out to vote.Fain said that in his view, people would lean towards the Democratic ticket because when they look at Harris and her running mate Tim Walz, “they see themselves. I mean, no one looks at Donald Trump and says: ‘I identify with that person.’”The Democratic national convention just released the full schedule of its second night, confirming that Barack Obama will deliver the evening’s keynote speech, and Michelle Obama, second gentleman Doug Emhoff and independent senator Bernie Sanders are also scheduled to make remarks.The grandsons of John F Kennedy and Jimmy Carter will be among the early speakers at the convention, along with Stephanie Grisham, Donald Trump’s former White House press secretary.As the night goes on, we’ll hear from Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, and then Sanders, both of whom will speak at the 8pm CT hour. Emhoff and Michelle Obama will speak after 9pm, and Barack Obama is to address delegates starting at 10pm.Do not be surprised if the schedule runs late, as it did last night.Lurking in the United Center’s rafters are thousands of balloons that are primed to drop:Political conventions, both Democratic and Republican, typically end with a cascade of balloons. Expect to see that on Thursday night, after Kamala Harris ends her keynote address.Arizona senator Mark Kelly and transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg spoke at the Veterans and Military Families Council at the Democratic national convention today, arguing that concepts of patriotism and freedom are not the monopoly of the Republican party.“Folks come from all over our country, with all kinds of backgrounds to serve,” Kelly said. “We’ve all served alongside folks of different political stripes, and some who are not political at all … Some Republicans want to think that their political party has a monopoly on patriotism. No party does. But it’s clear which political candidate supports military veterans, and which one does not.”Kelly took Trump to task for his recent comments suggesting that the Presidential Medal of Freedom was a “better” award than the Medal of Honor because “everyone [who] gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead.”“The VFW, of which I am a member, called these comments asinine,” said Kelly, a former astronaut and Gulf war veteran. “I agree.”Both Kelly and Buttigieg made oblique references to the attacks made by Republicans on the record of Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz.“You can count from the despicable way – the weird way – that he talks about the service,” Buttigieg said, “There’s a through-line that goes all the way back to the days when Donald Trump used his status as a teenage multimillionaire to procure a doctor’s note to pretend that he was unable to serve, so that some working-class man from who knows, maybe the south side of Chicago went to Vietnam in his place. There’s an unbroken pattern right there of not being able to grasp service to others. Veterans understand service to others. Today’s Democrats understand service to others.”Gwen Walz, wife of the Democratic VP pick, spoke with pride of their service as teachers, and his service as a national guardsman. “I will put that service up against anyone’s,” Walz said. “We are building a future for all of us, each and every one of us that we can be proud of.”It’s sound check time inside the United Center, where the Democratic national convention is being held, and the few journalists and guests in the venue early are getting a sneak peak of who’s performing tonight.Rapper Common is onstage now, spitting verse that pays tribute to Kamala Harris.“Let’s go, ya’ll! Chitown! DNC!” he said, to a smattering of applause. There aren’t that many people here, but he will probably get a much louder reception in a few hours.We reported earlier that the US Secret Service was looking into bomb threats made on Tuesday at “various locations” in Chicago where the Democratic national convention is taking place.According to a police scanner, 14 bomb threats were made today, mostly at hotels in downtown Chicago.I’ve been over at the McCormick Place convention center all day again, popping in and out of caucus and council meetings. And I finally had a chance to check out Dempalooza, an expo event with a bunch of vendors – some selling Democratic and Harris merch, some selling local goods, some selling politics.I saw at least five Kamala Harris cardboard cutouts and a “coconut room”, a nod to Harris’ iconic “you think you just fell out of a coconut tree” line that social media loves.One of those cutouts had Harris in a superhero outfit, and people came up to take photos alongside it. There is also a display of presidential footwear, with displays cases of old shoes.The area wasn’t very busy – the Democratic convention is spread across McCormick Place and the United Center, and getting from one to the other was a major challenge for some delegates yesterday, so as the day wears on, the McCormick location is getting quiet as folks start to make their way to the United Center for tonight’s speakers.Singer-songwriter James Taylor was scheduled to perform on Monday night on the first night of the Democratic national convention in Chicago, but as the evening ran long, organizers skipped elements of the program, meaning that Taylor never took the stage.DNC officials said in a statement that because of the “raucous applause interrupting speaker after speaker, we ultimately skipped elements of our program to ensure we could get to President Biden as quickly as possible so that he could speak directly to the American people,” per NBC News Chicago.Taylor himself released a statement this afternoon, saying that it “became clear” as the evening went on that there “wouldn’t be time for our ‘You’ve Got a Friend’” adding that “maybe the organizers couldn’t anticipate the wild response from the floor of the United Center.” “Sorry to disappoint,” he added.
      But a great and inspirational, quintessentially American moment. We were honored to be there.
      Donald Trump, in an interview with CBS News that aired last night, said he would accept the election outcome if he believes the election is “free and fair”. He said:
      I think if I lose, this country will go into a tailspin, the likes of which it’s never seen before – the likes of 1929 – but if I do, and it’s free and fair, absolutely, I will accept the results.”
      “Fair” to Trump “means that votes are counted,” he said, adding:
      It means that votes are fair. It means that they don’t cheat on the election, they don’t drop ballots, they don’t install new rules and regulations that they don’t have the power to do.”
      He added:
      If I see that we had a fair and free election, which I hope to be able to say, but if I see that, I will be – you will never see anybody more honorable than me. I’m an honorable person.”
      Exactly 20 years ago, Barack Obama was a relatively unknown state legislator when he delivered a keynote address at the Democratic party’s convention. Obama said that evening:
      I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on Earth, is my story even possible.
      His 2004 speech offers one of the clearest examples of how convention speeches can elevate a rising political star to national prominence. Four years later, he returned to accept the party’s nomination for president.In 2012, he made the case for his re-election bid; in 2016, he advocated for Hillary Clinton to succeed him in office; and during the 2020 convention, he issued an attack on Donald Trump and urged Americans to back Joe Biden for president.Now, his speech will make the case for the Harris-Walz ticket and the need to defeat Trump.Here’s what else to know about Obama’s speech tonight.Donald Trump, in his interview with CBS News, said he would “gladly” release his medical records and insisted that he is not experiencing any post-traumatic stress disorder or other lasting effects following his assassination attempt last month.Trump said he had recently passed a medical exam with a “perfect score” and that he had “aced” two cognitive tests.Donald Trump said he has “no regrets” over how his appointment of three conservative supreme court justices led to the reversal of Roe v Wade and ended the constitutional right to an abortion.Trump, speaking to CBS News on Monday night, said:
      The federal government should have nothing to do with this issue. More

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      Obama to bring message of hope on 20th anniversary of Democratic convention speech

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      From “skinny kid with a funny name” to elder statesman: Barack Obama, the former US president, will be the headline speaker at the Democratic national convention in Chicago on Tuesday – 20 years after he first burst onto the national political scene.Obama, a state legislator from Illinois, was days from his 43rd birthday and months from being elected to the Senate when he was given a slot at the party’s 2004 convention in Boston. “Rising star to woo voters with upbeat keynote speech,” was the Guardian headline on 27 July 2004.Obama brought Democrats to their feet with a plea for hope and unity. Two decades later, America is more divided than ever, but on Tuesday the first Black president, back in his home city, will make the case for party nominee Kamala Harris to become the first woman and first woman of colour to win election to the White House.“The president will talk again in personal terms about what it takes to be president in this moment and what he’s prepared to do and that this is an all-hands-on-deck moment, where we all have to get involved,” Valerie Jarrett, a former senior adviser to Obama, said at an Axios House event in Chicago on Tuesday.“One of the lessons we certainly should have learned: it’s not just enough to elect a president. You also have to stay engaged throughout the term of your presidency. Sometimes you elect a president and you go, OK, I’m done, and you go back to your jobs, and that’s not the way democracies work.”Michelle Obama, the former first lady, who is popular enough in her own right that some Democrats floated her as an alternative to Joe Biden, will be speaking on Tuesday night as well.Jarrett, chief executive of the Obama Foundation, added: “Our democracy has been under threat and under attack and it is up to us to be those active and engaged citizens to ensure that we get back on track. I think that’s part of the message you’ll hear from both of them tonight. So be there or be square.”Back in July 2004, in a 16-minute speech, Obama framed the presidential election, talked up nominee John Kerry and told his origin story as the son of a Black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. He told delegates: “Let’s face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely.”Obama did not dwell on policy, but his sweeping indictment of divisive politics struck a chord. “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America,” he said. “There is not a Black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America – there’s the United States of America. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?”Joel Rubin, a Democratic strategist, recalled: “It was such a wonderful moment. It was an inspiring moment. It was like a moment to feel truly patriotic and proud to be part of a political party that wanted to bring back the country together. It spoke to the power of our country as a unified people.”Two and a half years later, Obama reprised that theme when he launched his presidential campaign before thousands of supporters gathered outside the Illinois capital of Springfield. His campaign motto was “hope and change”.Yet the flipside of hope was fear, an emotion that Republican Donald Trump was able to exploit to win the White House in 2016. After eight toxic years, the young Obama’s dream of a genuinely united nation seems as elusive as ever.Rubin, a former Obama administration deputy assistant secretary of state, added: “He diagnosed the problem in America right now. One speech never fixes a country. It’s part of a process.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“What you do is you elect leaders who have a commitment to that kind of vision and, unfortunately, we regressed in 2016 because we had Donald Trump come in committed to the opposite vision by not healing but destroying and magnifying difference rather than unity. But the message for the Democratic convention today is similar to the Obama message of unity and forward purpose.”“The historic nature of this convention is not lost on any of us, but especially those of us who grew up in the civil rights movement,” said Rev Al Sharpton. “Last night, we felt the clear through-line from Fannie Lou Hamer in 1964, Shirley Chisholm in 1972, Rev Jesse Jackson in the 1980s, and Barack Obama in 2008.”“I think that will be felt as much when Obama takes the stage here in his hometown. I cannot help but think of when I ran for president in 2004 and met briefly with him before each of us spoke. It was clear that night that he struck a tone with the nation – one that still resonates with many of us 20 years later.”On Tuesday, Obama will also honour the legacy of Joe Biden, who served eight years as Obama’s vice-president. Biden will not be in the hall to see his former running mate speak, as he departed Chicago after delivering his own speech.Media reports suggest that Biden is still needled by the role that Obama – along with party leaders Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer – played in pressuring the 81-year-old to not seek re-election due to concerns over his mental capacity.Schumer, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, told a CNN-Politico Grill event on Monday: “I’m not going to give my private conversations with the former president. That’s up to him to decide. But we had a number of serious discussions.” More

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      ‘We invest in artists as changemakers’: using art to help increase US voter participation

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      Everything is politics, so the saying goes, and never more so during an election year. With its newest collection, Art for Change is taking the “everything” one step further.Since 2018, Art for Change has curated programs of online sales and exhibitions to raise money for a number of charities. Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Art for Change has partnered with When We All Vote, a non-partisan non-profit founded by Michelle Obama that seeks to up voter participation.On their own, many of the pieces in this collection may not feel overtly political. An art novice would probably imagine a collaboration like this to include art similar to the red, white and blue of Shepard Fairey’s Hope and We The People posters – not Jordan Kasey’s surreal illustration of a baby and mother, Daniel Gordon’s still life of red apples and white poppies, or Aaron Johnson’s vivid auroral depiction of a couple with a bird flying from one’s heart.But interspersed with pieces like Caris Reid’s playful rendering of the word “VOTE” against a starry backdrop and Rico Gatson’s colorful celebration of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, each piece in this collection takes on new context. Especially under the mission statement of When We All Vote, which will receive a portion of all the sales of prints and original works, the artwork of this collection come together to show what’s at stake with each election – what exactly a person risks losing by choosing not to vote.“The When We All Vote collection as a whole creates a narrative that we hope evokes various nuances of America,” said Jeanne Masel, founder of Art for Change. “As a group, they convey a sense of Americana, from the image of an apple to a whimsical take on a ‘Vote’ poster, to abstractions that evoke raw emotions.”Masel added: “What I love about this collection is how varied and multivalent it is, which I think can also be read as reflecting our country’s diversity.”Johnson completed Oh My Heart in 2023 and had not originally intended for it to convey a political message. “My piece can be looked at as kind of a love story,” he said. “It’s a coming together of two figures, melded together into like a non-duality.”As part of this collection, the love story of Oh My Heart comes to represent the ties that hold us together. “In a lot of times in my work, I’m thinking about the interconnectedness of all beings, our interconnectivity with each other as humans or interconnectivity with nature,” Johnson said. “I think that all wraps back around to the idea of community and the idea of why of it’s important to vote, having empathy for others and having a sense of a shared community. I feel like that’s a message that runs kind of kind of parallel to what we’re looking for when we’re going to vote. How do we function together as good citizens? How do we take care of each other as citizens?”View image in fullscreenLike Johnson, Kenny Rivero’s body of work, which looks at architecture and outdoor street space as sentient observers of our daily lives, does not always translate into something political. But once he agreed to work with Art for Change for this collaboration, he thought of Witness Revelator, a painting he finished in 2020 of a Black individual emerging from a dark rectangular portal in a gray brick wall. The witness in Witness Revelator is “a witness to your vote”, Rivero said.“There’s a lot of things that we do alone, that we do intimately and in private and in secret, and I think voting is one of those things, especially now where everything is so polarized,” he said. “There’s this thing you’re doing that is private but you’re being tallied in something greater, something much more impactful. Witness Revelator, for me, is connected to that in the way of somebody witnessing the effort that you’re making to create progress or create change.”Since its start six years ago, Art for Change has raised more than $300,000 for nonprofit partners and has collaborated with more than 100 artists, all of whom are guaranteed 50% of the profits from sales. Masel describes Art for Change as “art for the socially conscious collector”, but also a way for artists to have a platform for social change. “We invest in artists as changemakers,” she said.View image in fullscreenThis collection is the second time Rivero has worked with Art for Change, in part because he said he believes that artists have a unique role in a democracy, no matter the subject matter or intended message of their work.“I think that artists are on the frontlines of creating new ideas on how to relate to each other,” Rivero said. “Because we’re constantly engaging with these ideas around family, community and relationships, so I think that we look to artists, not necessarily on how to rebuild society, but to tell us what’s wrong with it. Where does it hurt?”Art for Change collaborated with When We All Vote for the 2020 election, working with four artists to raise more than $30,000 for the non-profit. This year, 14 artists are participating, with Art for Change pledging to donate a guaranteed $10,000.“A visual medium has the power to drive social change and impact, and having these artists involved and spreading the word to get out and vote is so important,” Masel said. “This project really harnesses a great creativity and joy to inspire change.”

      The When We All Vote virtual exhibit is now available on the Art for Change website More