Republicans

Subterms

    More stories

    • 200 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Robert F Kennedy Jr to drop out of presidential race by end of week – report

      by

      Robert F Kennedy Jr is set to drop his maverick campaign for president, it has been reported, amid speculation that the independent and environmental lawyer will throw his support behind Donald Trump.The ABC network, citing “sources familiar with the decision”, reported that Kennedy would formally leave the race on Friday. The report followed an announcement on his campaign website that he would make a statement that day “about the present historical moment and his path forward” in Phoenix that would be live-streamed on X and other social media.Speculation that Kennedy could abandon his presidential bid intensified after his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, revealed on a podcast on Tuesday he was considering that option – and considering endorsing Trump, the Republican nominee. Shanahan suggested Kennedy’s continued candidacy risked diverting support away from Trump, thereby helping to elect Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.Her comments were immediately welcomed by Trump, who told CNN that Kennedy – who he denounced as recently as April as a “Democrat plant” and a “radical left liberal” – was “a brilliant guy”.“I didn’t know he was thinking about getting out, but if he is thinking about getting out, certainly I’d be open to it,” said Trump, who, perhaps not coincidentally, is also due to speak in the Phoenix area on Friday, at a campaign rally.In truth, the pair seem to have been in contact for weeks amid an apparent rapprochement.A leaked recording of a telephone call between them emerged last month during the Republican national convention – just days after Trump survived an assassination attempt – when the former president solicited Kennedy’s support and the two discussed the possibility of Kennedy joining a future administration.Trump also appeared to endorse some of the anti-vaccine theories, for which Kennedy has become noted, during the call.In an interview with NBC News, JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, acknowledged there had been a stream of “communication” between the two campaigns.“I haven’t spoken to RFK personally, but I know there’s been a lot of communication back and forth between RFK … [and] this campaign,” he said. “Our argument to RFK, and I’ll make it right now, because, of course, he hasn’t dropped out yet, is, look: if you want a Democratic party that protected American workers and stood for strong borders, maybe disagreed with Republicans on things like tax policy, that party doesn’t exist any more.”Kennedy initially sought the Democratic nomination before abandoning that attempt to launch an independent campaign.His presidential bid has been hit by a spate of damaging stories that have undermined his efforts to present himself as a serious figure.An allegation surfaced in a Vanity Fair article that he had groped a family babysitter, to which Kennedy responded not with a denial, but by saying: “I am not a church boy.”He added: “I said in my announcement speech that I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world.”A further embarrassing disclosure was unearthed by the New Yorker, which described how Kennedy once left the carcass of a dead bear cub in Central Park and placed a bicycle next to it to make it look like an accident.Kennedy pre-empted the article by posting a video on X of him admitting the episode in a conversation with Roseanne Barr, as the pair sat in a spacious kitchen.The campaign has also run into money troubles in recent weeks, as Kennedy’s poll standing has dropped. It reportedly ended July $3.5m in debt, while Shanahan – who has contributed her own funds to it – was recently given a $1m refund. More

    • 313 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Joe cried, Kamala cried and so did I. Can this be the Democrats putting on a better show than Trump ever did? | Emma Brockes

      by

      “He looks perkier,” said my nine-year-old, passing the screen as I watched footage of Joe Biden speaking on the first day of the Democratic national convention in Chicago. The president did, indeed, look perkier, borne aloft by the gratitude of 23,000 people in the hall and the millions beyond it for the fact he is no longer seeking re-election. By itself, this moment would have lifted the occasion above the norm. But the Democratic convention this year is so uniquely dramatic, so unprecedented in US history, that it rivals and possibly outstrips even President Obama’s nomination in 2008. And Biden’s heart-wrenching appearance was just the beginning.“When we fight, we win,” said Kamala Harris in her opening speech on Monday and there it was, that strange moment of realisation that what she was saying might actually be true. Strange because it’s the kind of thing Democrats always say and that, in recent years, has been accompanied by a terrible wah-wah downward arpeggio on the trombone. Limp, disorganised, outshone by Donald Trump; that had been the campaign to date. The speed of the turnaround and the sheer force of the narrative that now propels Harris forwards, has unleashed a psychic energy so strong that on stage in Chicago it practically gave off sparks. Democrats have the scent of blood in their nostrils and thank God, they’re finally chasing it.Watching footage from the first two days, I kept thinking of Joan Didion’s biting piece about the 1988 presidential race, in which she remarked on the emptiness of staged political events. Reporters, she observed, like to cover a presidential campaign because “it has balloons”. You know what she means, which only makes the genuine emotion witnessed in Chicago this week all the more thrilling. So rare is it for balloon-based political events to do anything other than bore or depress, that when one does, it lets loose not only a primary giddiness, but a second-tier hysteria triggered by incredulity at the presence of the first.And so it was here, in the form of wave after wave of what felt like history. President Biden, smiling, rueful, apparently much more cogent now that the need to perform has been removed, and deeply touching in his ability to do that rarest of things, act for the collective good at his own expense. The alleviation of anxiety in the audience even allowed for the return of some of that old Biden charisma. It was emotional! Friends on the east coast stayed up late watching, and cried. I cried! Harris, in the audience, had tears in her eyes, and Biden himself was emotional as he was led off stage by his daughter. The political obituaries in the US press the next day were elegiac, sentimental, all the things that would’ve been undone had he stayed in the race. Evan Osnos in the New Yorker called Biden “a man whose career describes a half century of American history”, and that was the feeling – a real “thank you for your service” moment.Biden left it to younger Democrats really to go after Trump, and boy, did they. On the first day, congresswoman Jasmine Crockett of Texas called Trump “a 78-year-old lifelong predator, fraudster and cheat” who “cosies up to his role model, Vladimir Putin”. On the second night, Michelle Obama, after the years-long failure of her mantra “when they go low, we go high”, came up with an absolute corker, referring to Trump as the beneficiary of “the affirmative action of generational wealth”.She gave high praise to working mothers – the kind of “unglamorous” labour that holds the country together – while her husband got a huge laugh off Trump’s “weird obsession with crowd sizes”. It was a throwback to the good old days of humour and levity in a party long mired in depression and panic. “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?” said Michelle and the crowd erupted.What struck you about all this was the way in which it seized for Democrats a dynamic that has lately been the reserve of Republicans. Trump’s success is a side-effect of his pure entertainment value and the fact he is “disruptive” in a way that, for large numbers of his followers, is simply a fun thing to be part of. Now that same sense of drama and disruption animates the other side. People at the convention chanted “USA!” while Hillary Clinton – for whom this moment must be bittersweet – graciously talked up Harris and generational unity came in via the rallying cries of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Bernie Bros.No successful production can do without at least a little hokiness, and here it was in the form of Doug Emhoff, in line to be the first “second gentleman”, should his wife win the White House, on stage doing his lovable dork act. Emhoff, with much aw shucks self-mockery, even described the first time he rang Harris to set up a blind date. It felt like a flex: look at this married couple who actually love one another compared with those estranged freaks on the other side.There were notes of caution and warnings against complacency. The stakes are so much higher now that we know who Trump is, and that, like a squirrel cornered in an attic, his desperation if elected is liable to lead to attack. But there was, this week, also a sense of let us enjoy the sense of glamour, and excitement, and youth, and – yes, hope – of this moment before we get to the terror of the next few months and the actual election.

      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Midwestern guys: Vance and Walz’s opposing views of being from the US heartland

      by

      For 30 years, Michael Bailey worked at the former Armco steel plant in Middletown, Ohio, eventually becoming president of a union that represented thousands of workers. Among them was James Vance, grandfather and sometimes stand-in father of the Republican party’s current vice-presidential candidate, JD, who worked as a skilled tradesperson at the plant.So Bailey, today a 71-year-old pastor at the Faith United church in downtown Middletown, says he’s confused by claims from Donald Trump’s running mate that he “grew up as a poor kid” in Middletown.“As a rigger, [James Vance] made good money. Where he lived, on McKinley Street, he didn’t live in poverty,” he says. “JD came up in a middle-income family. He didn’t come up on the rough side of town.”Politicians assuming working-class identities to attract votes is nothing new. But this year’s election pits vice-presidential candidates against each other – ostensibly picked for their “real American” chops – who hold contrasting views of what it means to be a boots-on-the-ground midwesterner.Endless corn fields, small towns and wide-open highways are characteristics of life in the midwest that most can agree on. Beyond that, experts say the region is far more complex.Cities such as Chicago, Detroit and Cincinnati are home to millions of people that, for a time during the 20th century, were among the most innovative in the world.“Midwesterners have historically been on the frontlines of progressive politics and education. Midwesterners also have been innovators in both an economic and cultural sense,” says Diane Mutti Burke, the director of the Center for Midwestern Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.But many agree there are a few features that typically set midwesterners apart.“Midwesterners also are said to be ‘nice’,” says Mutti Burke. “The idea is that midwesterners are often friendly and gracious to a fault.”Perhaps that’s why Democratic party vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz’s characterization of Vance and Trump as “weird” last month has struck such a chord with voters in the midwest, propelling the Harris-Walz ticket to a four-point lead in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin in a recent poll.As governor of Minnesota, Walz’s brand of “nice” saw him introduce universal free breakfast and lunch for K-12 students in the state last year. The move was informed by his previous firsthand experience as a high school teacher who saw that lower-income kids using different colored food tickets to others could end up being stigmatized.What’s more, Walz has asked to appear on Millennial Farmer, a popular YouTube channel run by a Minnesota crop farmer that depicts everyday, midwestern farm life, despite its host’s anti-Democrat leanings. That request has yet to be fulfilled.At his first rally with Kamala Harris in Philadelphia on 6 August, Walz went straight after Vance’s midwestern chops, saying sarcastically: “Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires.”Vance has defended his upward mobility as illustrative of having succeeded in achieving the American dream.For his part, Vance has said he’d like to increase the child tax credit, currently at $2,000 per child, to $5,000, and eliminate the upper income threshold, which currently stands at $200,000 for single tax filers and $400,000 for couples.However, this month Vance failed to vote on a bill to increase the child tax credit program, claiming it would have failed regardless of whether he had taken part or not. The day of the vote, Vance was at the border in Arizona falsely claiming that the vice-president was the current administration’s “border czar”. (Harris aides have said that she was never given the responsibility of policing the border.)While Vance visited with picketing auto workers in Ohio last October, those who have closely watched his 18 months in office as a US senator say that, compared to Walz, he hasn’t achieved anything substantial for midwesterners.“Walz has been a teacher, a coach, a governor [and] a congressman,” said Charles “Rocky” Saxbe, a former senior member of Ohio’s Republican party who opposes the Maga movement. “I think when you look at vice-presidential contests – to the extent that they matter – you want someone who can step into the role of presidency, if it’s necessary and you want someone who has leadership experience, which JD Vance has never had.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnsurprisingly, Vance’s camp disagree, citing his working with Democrats to introduce rail safety and banking regulation bills as evidence of his political achievements.Politics aside, there’s an obvious financial gap dividing the two candidates. While in 2022 Walz earned $127,629 as governor of Minnesota, Vance raked in more than $1m the same year through a salary and company profits at a venture capital firm, a property rental, book royalties and from a host of investments. The Wall Street Journal suggests Vance’s net worth could be more than $10m.For some midwesterners, however, it’s the rhetoric that most keenly separates the two.Last year, Vance lobbied against, and failed to defeat, an amendment to the Ohio constitution to enshrine access to abortion. His “childless cat ladies” comments resurfaced last month were almost universally panned.But Bailey says his first opinions of Vance were formed several years ago, when the senator was in town publicizing his 2016 book, Hillbilly Elegy.As a pastor and former president of a major workers’ union at Armco Steel, Bailey figured that someone of Vance’s emerging public persona meant that the senator might want to speak with him and other Middletown community leaders, so he gave Vance his business card.“I said: ‘I’d like to talk to you and if you’re thinking about running for office, we’d like to have your ear,’” says Bailey.“We’ve never had a response.”Despite Vance being elected nearly two years ago, his Middletown constituency office has no external signs or obvious indications highlighting the location for locals seeking to meet with him. A recent visit by the Guardian found the office door locked and the only communication made available by a staffer was through an intercom.Bailey says he thinks that rather than running for the benefit of Middletown and midwesterners at large, Vance is being used as a political stooge by the Silicon Valley billionaires who bankrolled his successful 2020 senate campaign.“I think they looked at someone with JD’s background,” he says, “and said: ‘We can use him to take away our democracy.’” More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Why did this conservative US judge endorse Kamala Harris? | Margaret Sullivan

      by

      J Michael Luttig has never endorsed a Democrat before. That’s no surprise since the well-respected legal scholar – a retired federal appeals court judge – leans well right of center.Appointed by the first President Bush in 1991, Luttig is from the old school of the Republican party. He once worked in Ronald Reagan’s White House and served as a law clerk to Antonin Scalia.But now, whatever his policy views or personal politics, Luttig has set them aside. He will pull the lever in November for Kamala Harris.Luttig wrote a withering statement about Donald Trump as he explained his decision to endorse the Democratic rival of the former president and Republican presidential nominee: “In voting for Vice President Harris, I assume that her public policy views are vastly different from my own, but I am indifferent in this election on any issues other than America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law, as I believe all Americans should be.”Although couched in restrained language, Luttig’s statement packs a punch.How remarkable to read his view that every American should be indifferent to policy differences between themselves and Harris. Right now, he argues, any such disagreements are not worth quibbling over.What really matters, in Luttig’s view, is getting past January of next year with US democracy intact. We can argue later about how to govern.With that in mind, he sees Trump as utterly unfit and existentially dangerous.Luttig’s statement ought to be a clarion call. It should be emulated by every conservative with a conscience and a sense of patriotism.Sadly, there are too many on the right who ascribe to the misguided view that Trump’s supposed policy positions (what – mass deportations? More tax cuts for the super-wealthy?) should come before the obvious truth that electing him could destroy the United States as we know it.These conservatives may criticize Trump, but they won’t endorse his rival.How many times have we heard from Republican politicians that while, yes, they disagree with Trump’s words and behavior, they still intend to vote for him? Or they stay silent on the alternative.Apparently, the notion of supporting a progressive Democrat such as Harris is beyond the pale.“Respect to Judge Luttig,” wrote James Fallows, the journalist, former presidential speechwriter and incisive commentator. He called Luttig’s endorsement “an instructive contrast” to a long list of prominent Republicans including John Bolton, Nikki Haley, HR McMaster and George W Bush.They and many others of their ilk have (so far) failed the integrity test. At this crucial time, they haven’t fully used their influence to make sure Trump can’t bring his wrecking ball to what remains of the US experiment.Luttig has a greater sense of history – and a truer moral compass. Nor is this the first time he’s proven it.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe famously helped to persuade Mike Pence to certify the 2020 presidential election, defying Trump’s vehement urging and not-so-veiled threats.In a series of tweets, Luttig set forth the rationale for the then vice-president to reject efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s legitimate victory. He publicly gave Pence a legal foundation for defying his boss.Pence, notably, has said he won’t endorse Trump, startling in itself for a former vice-president; but despite everything he’s been through and all he knows, he has not pledged publicly to vote for Harris. Maybe Luttig’s example will inspire him to go there.Two years later, Luttig endorsed Biden’s nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the supreme court. While Trump World was portraying Jackson as nothing but a high-level DEI hire, Luttig urged bipartisan support for the accomplished jurist, calling her eminently qualified. Jackson, of course, became the first Black woman appointed to the supreme court.In an interview with CNN, which first reported his endorsement, Luttig explained that arriving at his decision to back Harris wasn’t complicated.He described it as a simple matter of knowing right from wrong – not merely right from left.Simple? Maybe so, but also admirable. And at this singular moment for US democracy, all too rare.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

    • 125 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump calls his supporters ‘basement dwellers’, says former press secretary

      by

      Stephanie Grisham, Donald Trump’s former press secretary, excoriated the Republican presidential nominee at the Democratic national convention on Tuesday, saying: “He has no empathy, no morals, and no fidelity to the truth.”Grisham, a Republican operative who also served as a spokesperson to Melania Trump, offered firsthand accounts of the former president’s behavior behind closed doors.“I wasn’t just a Trump supporter, I was a true believer, I was one of his closest advisers. The Trump family became my family,” she said, saying she spent her holidays at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. “I saw him when the cameras were off … 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.”She continued: “He used to tell me: ‘It doesn’t matter what you say, Stephanie, say it enough and people will believe you.’” She repeated a story she has told before: that during the January 6 insurrection, she asked Melania Trump whether she could tweet that there was “no place for lawlessness or violence”, and the first lady gave a one-word reply: “No.”Grisham earned applause when she said she was the first senior staffer to resign that day. She ended her short speech with an endorsement of Kamala Harris, saying: “I love my country more than my party. Kamala Harris tells the truth. She respects the American people and she has my vote.”The Harris campaign and the Democratic national convention have been highlighting Republican voters who oppose Trump and are supporting the Democratic ticket.Before Grisham, Kyle Sweetser, an Alabama voter, told the convention crowd that he voted for Trump three times and repeatedly donated to the Republican: “He told us he’d look out for blue-collar workers.” But Trump’s tariffs policy negatively affected him, he said: “Costs for construction workers like me were starting to soar. I realized Trump wasn’t for me. He was for lining his own pockets.”Sweetster added: “I’m not left wing, 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. She’s tough. She’s going to tackle inflation. Trump will make it worse. I’m voting for Kamala Harris because she’ll make us proud to be American again.”Other Republicans due to speak at the convention include Olivia Troye, a national security staffer who worked for Mike Pence, the former vice-president; Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican representative who has been a vocal critic of Trump; John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona; and Geoff Duncan, the former lieutenant governor of Georgia.Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, also showed up at the convention on Tuesday night. He and Trump have fallen out, and Cohen served as a witness for the prosecution in Trump’s hush-money trial in New York. It was not exactly clear why he showed up, but when a reporter asked if he would speak at the convention, he responded, “Only if they let me” and, “Of course I would.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocratic convention highlights:

      Six key takeaways from day two of the Democratic convention

      Michelle Obama lauds Kamala Harris and takes swipe at Trump

      Bernie Sanders urges Democrats to improve lives of ‘struggling’ Americans

      Trump calls his supporters ‘basement dwellers’, says former press secretary

      Here are the rising stars and politicians to watch this week

      What to know about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Democrats warned to keep euphoria in check as election remains on knife-edge

      by

      Anxious Democratic strategists are quietly trying to douse the euphoria engulfing Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign by warning that her surge in popularity masks an election contest that is on a knife-edge and could easily be lost.As the vice-president basks in adulation and optimism at the Democratic national convention in Chicago, key supporters are cautioning that more trying times lie ahead after an extended honeymoon period following her ascent to the top of the ticket in place of Joe Biden.Fuelling the Democrats’ feelgood mood have been a spate of opinion polls showing Harris with a national lead over Donald Trump while also leading or newly competitive in battleground states, including southern Sun belt states where Biden had been struggling badly before his withdrawal from the race last month.A recent compilation of national polls by 538, a polling website, showed Harris leading Trump by 46.6% to 43.8%.But Chauncey McLean, the president of Super Forward, a pro-Harris Super Pac that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for Harris’s campaign, suggested that the poll figures concealed sobering realities.“Our numbers are much less rosy than what you’re seeing in public,” he told an event hosted by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics on the convention’s opening day on Monday.He described Pennsylvania, which he identified as the most critical of seven battleground states, as a “coin flip” between Harris and Trump.And despite the apparent resurrection in the Democrats’ prospects, the race overall remains as close as ever.“We have it tight as a tick, and pretty much across the board,” Reuters quoted McLean as saying. To win, he said, Harris must capture one of three states – Pennsylvania, North Carolina or Georgia. Recent surveys in the first two have recorded her with a narrow lead or neck-and-neck with Trump, while Trump leads by a wider margin in Georgia, a southern state that Biden won narrowly in 2020.McLean said Harris’s momentum stemmed from an early enthusiasm among young voters of colour in the Sun belt states of North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona.But she had yet to reassemble the coalition of Black, Hispanic and young voters that underpinned Biden’s victory four years ago. Internal polling shows that voters want more detail on policy.The cautionary theme was amplified by David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Barack Obama, who told the Guardian this week that the Harris campaign must guard against complacency.“I think that if the Harris campaign has one message it will try to get across during this convention, it’s that there is no room for complacency in this election,” he said.The vice-president has already faced scrutiny over her recent disavowal of liberal policy positions she assumed during her ill-fated campaign for the Democratic nomination in 2020, when she publicly opposed fracking and advocated a single-payer health insurance system that would ultimately have ended private health insurance.While subtly trying to stake out differences from Biden’s position on economic policy – a vulnerable area for Democrats – she has so far avoided one-on-one media interviews since being confirmed as the Democratic nominee, an approach that will need to be jettisoned as the campaign proceeds, thereby ushering in the dangers of public misstatements or policy pronouncements that prove unpopular.But in comments to the New York Times, Chris Murphy, the Democratic senator from Connecticut, said embracing ideas of economic populism that are controversial because they run counter to the prevailing free-market neoliberal orthodoxy might be necessary to win precisely because they are attractive to Trump supporters.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreen“I think that our coalition is bound to lose if we don’t find a way to reach out to some element of the folks who have been hoodwinked by Donald Trump,” he said. “We don’t have to win over 25% of his voters. We have to win 5 or 10% of his voters.”Fernand Amandi, a Democratic strategist who worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential election campaigns told the Hill that Harris’s campaign needs to weather a storm at some point.“Every presidential campaign in modern history has had to go through an unanticipated scandal, crisis or world event, and at some point, that political law is going to happen to Kamala Harris’s campaign,” he said. “Until she passes that stress test – and I’m confident she will – this election is still wide open. Anyone who is measuring the drapes at the White House needs a serious reality check.”Another strategist, Tim Hogan, told the same outlet: “Democrats are rightfully elated with the trajectory of the Harris-Walz campaign. But anyone politically conscious over the last decade – especially Democrats – knows that terrain can shift and events beyond our control can quickly change the nature of elections.”He added: “This is going to be a nail-biter.”Jim Messina, Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, told Fox News that the election outcome would be determined by undecided voters, which he estimated to be about 5% of the electorate. “And the question is, are some of those voters going to get out and actually vote,” he said.James Carville, the architect of Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 election campaign and a vocal advocate of Biden’s withdrawal after his flunked debate performance in June, cautioned about the dangers of over-optimism immediately after Harris emerged as his successor nominee last month.“I have to be the skunk at the garden party. This is too triumphalist,” Carville told MSNBC five days after Biden stepped aside on 21 July.“I think the vice-president, to put it in athletic terms, needs a really good cut man in the corner, because she’s getting ready to get cut. All I’m doing is saying, ‘Watch out people, don’t get too far out there.’ If we don’t win this, all this good feeling is going to evaporate and be all for naught, and that’s what I kinda think my role is right now.” More

    • 200 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Ex-Nikki Haley voters rally behind Kamala Harris: ‘I picked the side that had the least issues’

      by

      After the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley dropped out of the Republican primary earlier this year, some conservatives across the US continued to vote for her in subsequent primaries, casting ballots that indicated dissent within a party that has otherwise fully embraced Donald Trump.When Haley finally announced that she would be supporting the ex-president in the upcoming election, she said that it was on him to mobilize her loyalists.“Trump would be smart to reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me, and not assume that they’re just gonna be with him,” Haley said.But it was the Biden campaign, not Trump’s, that actively began engaging Haley voters. “I want to be clear: There is a place for you in my campaign,” Joe Biden wrote on Twitter/X alongside an ad targeting Haley voters.With the president out of the race now, some of those former Haley voters have organized behind Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in a political action group called Haley Voters for Harris.Craig Snyder, the campaign director for the Haley Voters for Harris Pac, told the Guardian that the impetus for the group came after seeing how other Haley supporters continued to support her even after she was no longer a candidate.“When we cast our votes in the primaries we weren’t really voting for her as an active candidate,” he said. “But we wanted to send a message that this was not the kind of Republican party that we wanted, that Trump’s period as the spirit-bearer of the party needed to come to an end.”Snyder wondered what would become of Haley voters in the general election, and homed in on those who have made the decision, however reluctantly, to support Harris.“For those of us in this group, our feeling has been that while we may disagree with the Democratic party on certain policy issues, the better choice is to continue our opposition to Trump by voting Democratic,” he said. “When President Biden made the decision to withdraw, we made the decision to continue along those lines and to support Vice-President Harris.”John “Jack” Merritt, a self-described “center-right” and “strict constitutional constructionist”, registered to vote as a Republican in 1972. He said that, as a “political junkie”, he subscribes to various-leaning political newspapers and watches all of the major news networks. Though he supported Haley in the primaries and has served as a committeeperson for the Republican party in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, Merritt has decided to vote for Harris in November.“I became incredibly disenchanted with the polarization of the two parties in the US,” Merritt said. “I picked the side that had the least amount of issues. I think [Harris and Walz] are more likely to ask for everything they want, but accept what they can get, especially if Congress turns out to be Republican this year. I’m looking for people who can truly govern, not just people who have ideological standards.”Former Haley voters, many of whom are in swing states, will be vital in determining the outcome of the election, according to Snyder. As a result, Haley Voters for Harris is primarily targeting center-right voters by engaging in direct communication and education on political issues.“We are developing the strongest arguments and factual accounts to give to voters to help them cross that last line,” Snyder, a registered Republican, said. “They’ve already taken their journey away from their Republican leaning. The question is: do they go the last mile and vote for the Democratic nominee? We want to get them across that last mile.”But Snyder understands the difficulty that lifelong Republicans might face in trying to stomach support for a Democrat. Still, he said: “There may be disagreements between these voters and a Harris-Walz administration on matters of policy, but they are not fundamental moral values disagreements.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn fact, some aspects of Harris’s history that may have dampened her appeal to progressives, such as her prosecutorial record, could work in her favor with Republicans.“Her greatest weakness to a lot of people turns out to be kind of a strength for winning over Republicans. [She’s] now been kind of leaning into the law and order persona. But I think it’s smart politics that she’s doing that,” said Emily Matthews, a ​co-chair of Haley Voters Working Group, a coalition of Haley supporters and volunteers.After Harris picked Walz as her running mate, Matthews said there was a lot of disappointment in the group, as they had favored Shapiro. But they’ve been focusing on Harris’s recent messaging as a bright spot.“The border is just really important to a lot of kind of more moderate Republicans and, well, Republicans in general,” she said. “We’ve seen a change in tone from Harris and that has been very welcomed.”Matthews is hoping Harris and Walz use this week’s Democratic national convention to share tangible policy shifts to the center, and to continue reaching out to disaffected Republicans and moderate voters. She said it’s important for the messaging to be clear about the Democrats’ more moderate and center successes.Synder agreed. “When our voters hear those kinds of facts – there’s been more oil production under the Biden-Harris administration than under the Trump administration, the Biden-Harris administration pushed forward a bill to increase the number of border agents far greater than what Trump ever proposed – that is the way to have people get over this obstacle,” he said. “There’s a whole variety of just plain facts about a more moderate kind of approach that Harris has shown compared to this crazy leftwinger that she’s going to be depicted as by the Republicans.”Last month, Haley’s lawyers sent a cease and desist letter to Haley Voters for Harris, urging the Pac to refrain from implying Haley’s “support for the election of Kamala Harris as President of the United States”.But the letter hasn’t deterred Snyder. “Our organization has formally responded through our attorneys, and as of yet nothing further has happened,” he said. “We are continuing our work. At no time have we misrepresented Governor Haley’s position on the race, which is well-known to be support for former President Trump. We are merely calling our group what we are: Haley voters who have decided to vote for Vice-President Harris.” More

    • 263 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on the Democratic convention: Kamala Harris must be the candidate of change as well as continuity | Editorial

      by

      A month ago, Joe Biden and his aides were beginning to draft a closing speech with which, on Thursday, he would top off this week’s Democratic convention in Chicago. The speech would seal Mr Biden’s bid for a second White House term and send his party out to do battle with Donald Trump in November. Instead, on Monday, Mr Biden did not deliver the convention’s closing address. He delivered his own.Mr Biden’s convention speech is one of his last big moments in the political spotlight, and the start of his withdrawal from the US political field after half a century. From today, the Democratic party belongs to Kamala Harris. It is she who matters now. For the next few days, Mr Biden will not be in Chicago or on the campaign trail, but on holiday.If Mr Biden had not withdrawn from the race, as he did last month, Democrats would undoubtedly have greeted him in Chicago with enthusiasm. But the misgivings about his age, his grasp and his ability to serve four years would never have been far away, not least in the media coverage. Nor would the growing and gut-wrenching expectation of defeat in November’s general election, a defeat that could change the United States – and the world – for ever, in irreparable ways.By stepping down, Mr Biden has turned that situation around, at least for now. Ms Harris has moved smoothly into the campaign driving seat. The party has quickly united behind her and Governor Tim Walz. They have been rewarded with a huge influx of cash and a Democratic poll uptick, both nationally and in swing states. Down-ballot Democrats are relieved too. Mr Trump still seems nonplussed. Expectations of a Democratic defeat have been replaced by expectations of a competitive contest that is winnable once again.All of this will have assured Mr Biden of a hero’s welcome in the appropriately named United Center on Monday night. The cheering comes from the party’s heart, and it is overwhelmingly deserved, the more so because it involved Mr Biden doing something he manifestly did not want to do. But he did the right thing. He deserves the plaudits.It will, however, be Ms Harris, more than Mr Biden, who defines the convention. Both have rightly made Mr Trump’s unquestionable threat to democracy and liberty the centre of their pitches. But the other key question for the week is how well Ms Harris positions herself as the candidate of change as well as continuity.Mr Biden, showcasing his achievements as he passes the baton to Ms Harris, implicitly casts her as the latter. Her own task, while embracing the Biden administration’s record, is to turn the page and become the former. The argument about Gaza, which is dominating Chicago streets as the convention starts, is the most emotive issue where this matters, but it is not the only one. A truncated campaign means Ms Harris arrived in Chicago with enthusiastic backing, but still without a domestic policy manifesto on her campaign website.Mr Biden has been a pivotal figure in the divisive 21st-century politics that emerged out of the Reagan era, 9/11, the banking crash, the rise of China and Black Lives Matter. He is also the man who saved his country once, by standing against Mr Trump in 2020, and may perhaps have done it again, by not standing against him four years later. As he leaves the stage, the US – and the world – should salute him. Ms Harris, however, must use this week to speak to America’s future too. More