Some news day yesterday, huh? And I had to pick yesterday to meet my kids in the city for dinner and a movie. I was on the train to Grand Central when I heard someone say Biden had dropped out, so I checked my phone, and lo, it was true. And my heart breaks for President Joe Biden, because he didn’t deserve the way his own party has been treating him. But I also think this may be for the best.
So on the train back I checked my phone again and saw all manner of Very Serious People in media calling for an open convention, saying it would be good for the Democratic Party. “Vice President Harris may be the most likely replacement, but a contested convention is good for everyone,” opined the Washington Post editorial board. As of this morning, this Very Serious Opinion had almost 5,000 comments, roughly 99 percent of which said, “Screw you, WaPo. It’s Kamala. Deal with it.”
I think it’s fairly obvious to most of us that we don’t need more weeks of Democratic Party infighting right now. And it’s also obvious to most of us that the Dems didn’t dare pass over a woman of color to nominate one of the usual white guys. I’m seeing a lot of social media comments calling for a “dream ticket” of Kamala Harris and Gretchen Whitmer, in fact. Hey, Trump has the He Man Women Hater’s Club sewn up; why not? And today a lot of headlines are declaring that much of the Dem party is rallying around Kamala. Because most of us want to get on with the campaign to beat Trump.
I understand that the Republicans are dumbstruck; this isn’t what they expected. Trump’s entire campaign was built around tearing down Biden as old, senile, and corrupt. And now they’ll have to start from scratch. Gee, I wonder how Trump will run against a Black woman? Josh Marshall:
Donald Trump and Chris LaCivita are about to hit Kamala Harris with an avalanche of racist and sexist attacks and a ton of slut-shaming. Democrats across the board need to be saying now what we all know, which is that this will bring out the very worst of Trump. Racism and sexism are his brand. Charlottesville is his brand. You can’t just be on the receiving end of this stuff. Trump is about to show the kind of gutter white nationalist and racist pol he is. Force the press and all observers to see this totally predictable move through that prism.
Trump is losing the campaign he wanted to run, the one he and his campaign have spent years planning to run. There’s now going to be a furious race to define Harris first. Of course Trump will go there, and these attacks and those attacks can be very damaging. But Trump the racist bully and gangster is what kills him in the suburbs. It’s what embarrasses people.
Any normal person would have already been embarrassed by Trump, but whatever.
Even more typical of Trump: He’s now demanding a “refund” of money he spent campaigning against Biden.
“So, we are forced to spend time and money on fighting Crooked Joe Biden, he polls badly after having a terrible debate, and quits the race. Now we have to start all over again,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday night.
“Shouldn’t the Republican Party be reimbursed for fraud in that everybody around Joe, including his doctors and the Fake News Media, knew he was not capable of running for, or being, President? Just askin’?”
On Sunday morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson declared that President Biden absolutely, positively had to run for another four years as president.
“It’s not possible to simply just switch out a candidate who has been chosen through the democratic, small-d democratic process,” he told ABC News’s “This Week.”
On Sunday afternoon, Johnson proclaimed that Biden absolutely, positively could not remain in office for even one more minute.
“He must resign the office immediately,” the Louisiana Republican said in a statement.
Confused? The Republicans certainly are.
I understand Johnson is not the only Republican calling for Biden to resign the presidency immediately. The right-wing Washington Examiner is actually pretending that Republicans had already been calling for Biden to be removed from office per the 25th Amendment, which is certainly the first time I’ve heard of this. Exactly why they want to run against Kamala Harris as the sitting president isn’t clear to me. Maybe they think this would temporarily weaken the Dems’ majority in the Senate. Maybe they think they could block the appointment of another Vice President, which would make Speaker of the House Johnson next in line. But this isn’t going to happen, and the Republicans know it. So it’s just about finding another avenue to bash Democrats.
Recommended Commentary
Nikki McCann Ramirez writes at Rolling Stone that Trump is having a meltdown over the prospects of facing Kamala Harris instead of Joe Biden.
“It’s not over! Tomorrow Crooked Joe Biden’s going to wake up and forget that he dropped out of the race today!” the former president wrote on Truth Social late Sunday night, hours after Biden announced he would be suspending his campaign in an open letter on social media. …
… Trump’s musings became more unhinged as the night went on. In another post, he suggested that Biden was faking a recent Covid-19 diagnosis. The rant extended into the early hours of Monday morning, when Trump accused Democrats of having stolen the nomination from Biden. “They stole the race from Biden after he won it in the primaries — A First! These people are the real THREAT TO DEMOCRACY!” He wrote.
Marcy Wheeler writes that Biden’s announcement is undercutting Bibi Netanyahu’s must-dreaded visit to address Congress. (He’s supposed to arrive tonight and stay for three days.) She also writes some insightful things about Biden Administration policies toward Israel and how Harris might have some space from them. Worth reading.
At The Atlantic, Tim Alberta writes This Is Exactly What the Trump Team Feared.
Republicans I spoke with today, some of them still hungover from celebrating what felt to many like a victory-night celebration in Milwaukee, registered shock at the news of Biden’s departure. Party officials had left town believing the race was all but over. Now they were confronting the reality of reimagining a campaign—one that had been optimized, in every way, to defeat Biden—against a new and unknown challenger. “So, we are forced to spend time and money on fighting Crooked Joe Biden, he polls badly after having a terrible debate, and quits the race,” a clearly peeved Trump wrote Sunday on Truth Social. “Now we have to start all over again.”
This and other articles I’ve read today are saying the Republicans didn’t believe Biden would step aside, and while they’d made some plans just in case, everyone’s marching order during last week’s RNC convention was to remain focused on bashing Biden.
At Popular Information, Judd Legum writes A guide to the coming attacks on Kamala Harris. Clip & save.
A Reminder
I am having a mini-fundraiser. My insurance dumped a big co-pay on me for an echocardiogram I had last month and some smaller co-pays for some other tests. I’m actually doing pretty well, but because of the TIA I had in 2022 I’m being monitored. And I would be happy to release the results of the echocardiogram if I can figure out how to get to them. The doctor just called me and said he didn’t see anything alarming, which is as much as I wanted to know.
So if you can spare some change, here is the gofundme link and here is the PayPal link. Thank you!
I put a few rubles in your go fund me, those bastards take a 10% tip!
"Shouldn’t the Republican Party be reimbursed for fraud"
Can you reimburse an organization for a concept they invented? Poor Stump, it seems to me that it would only be fair for him to run unopposed how can he be expected to win against someone 20 years younger than he is, not fair!
Speaking of money, I read that there's only been 2 times when ActBlue has hauled in more than $50 million in response to a news event. As of Sunday night, they received $52 million in contributions. Go Dems!!! I see, way off in the horizon, this beautiful blue wave gathering energy and heading toward America.
I'm a senior on limited income, and I've been grappling with how best to use my limited resources to help Team Blue win in November. My draconian, nascent plans have all been upended with the news of Biden's withdrawal. I feel like the pressure has lifted somewhat. I will be able to kick in some coin to help with your medical expenses.
As for dream tickets, I like Harris-Witmer, but think Harris-Shapiro would be an easier sell to more of the country. We're blessed with some good choices. Other good news: AOC has come out for Kamala, after being solidly behind Biden.
Watched some AOC clips on YT the other day where she explained her [pre-announcement] opposition to dumping Biden. Seemed like she had three main reasons:
1) The push to dump Biden seemed to come mainly from Big Donors.
2) None of the Dems could really describe a legally safe path to replace Biden on the ticket (and GOP could find ways to get their judges to kick the new Dem candidate off the ballot is several states)
3) Most of the push to dump Biden seemed to be coming from people who also want to dump Harris.
AOC's support (shared by other Squad/Progressives?) for Harris seemed mostly rooted in the identity factors (female POC), which worries me. I judge candidates mainly on (1) their political philosophy/framework and (2) "charisma", a kind of catch-all for a set of social skills. Harris seems to blow with the prevailing political winds, which makes for bad marks in both of my criteria.
Still, I'd agree with AOC, Maha & many others that an open convention or any other attempt to sideline Harris for some White Knight like Newsome would be worse than stupid.
I’d noticed also that the biggest “pushers” to get Biden off the ticket were the donors and the “centrist” crowd, not the progressives. Some members of the Squad are not happy with Biden for being too easy with Netanyahu, but I hadn’t noticed that part of the progressive Left saying much in the past few days. Bernie Sanders and AOC have been out in front supporting Biden, mostly because he’s been a good president for progressive issues.
O.T. my wife told me today that the magats are showing up at rallies wearing bandages on their right ears? What a bunch of fucking mental defects, once Stump loses I sincerely hope they crawl back under their rocks at resume their love of professional wrestling!
Exactly why they want to run against Kamala Harris as the sitting president isn’t clear to me.
I was wondering about this too, and then I realized: they want her in office to trash her, the same way they tried to trash Joe Biden – with phony investigations, impeachment and so on. As merely a candidate, she's protected from much of this, sort of like the difference between courtship and being in a marriage.
They would work to maximally damage her before November, is the whole point of it, and having her occupy the hot seat before November is the best position for them to do so.
That makes as much sense as anything else I can think of.
That and the fact that they want to discredit and destroy the Biden presidency. The Democratic party, officials and voters are behind Biden 100% for what he did and the selfless reasons he did it. Allowing Biden the credit he deserves for a god job as POTUS, undermines the Trump narrative that the sky is falling.
There's an underlying obsession in the GOP to do to Biden what they think is being done to Trump. They are not going to admit that Trump is in legal trouble in multiple states and with two federal indictments because….. drum roll… Trump broke the law repeatedly and deliberately in office, on the way out, and after he left.
Nobody in the GOP wants to accept Trump is in a mess that Trump made so the fantasy is… Biden did it to Trump. And under that hallucination, they are entitled and obligated to do the same to Biden. And now, it's not gonna happen.
I like Kelly as the VP. He checks all the boxes and appeals to a different demographic. I hate to lose him as my senator but his replacement would be appointed by a democratic governor.
I am hoping that like Biden, KH comes in as a centrist and moves left.
I like Kelly – his wife is Gabby Giffords who got shot a while back by a nut case. Together, they continue to keep swinging at gun control. I'd like that attitude in the WH. Arizona has 11 electoral votes. North Carolina has a popular Democratic governor. (I read +11.6 points in favorability according to 538.) And 15 electoral votes. But more importantly, if Harris can take NC from Trump, it narrows his paths to 270 because NC isn't commonly considered a state in play. Joe thought it is in play – I agree.
Suddenly Trump is very old. And senile. And stupid. Racist. Misogynist. Crazy. Incompetent. Far more into keeping campaign promises for the plutocrat instead of the populist he cons and grifts off of. A malignant narcissist who routinely goes full criminally insane retard. But at least he's still "strong".
About those MAGA bandaged ears… Would it be possible if they first shot themselves in those ears first, so those bandages wouldn’t be so obviously emblematic of their own cowardly hypocrisy?
I won't forget the folks who tried to shout down this happening from the moment it became obvious to everyone this is the direction it needed to go. Chipped in $10 bucks via Act Blue, my first donation since February 2020.
I won't forget the so called "liberals" who immediately took up the right-wing talking points that Joe is too old and feeble and has to go! I still think he should have stayed in the race and that it was a shameful display by so called democrats drumming out a sitting president of their own party. A sitting president who saved the world from a second Trump term and was about to repeat the same feat.
Yesterday I was glued on my iPad watching the final stage of the Tour de France in Nice and oblivious to any US news. Later in the evening when I found out I was shocked and upset. It was such a selfless act. President Biden has done so much for the country and it has not been acknowledged enough. Money interests are too strong in this country.
Talking about money interest I have a feeling that large donors, maybe like Elon Musk, have forced Vance as a VP for 45. Trump does not seem to like him. I also hear that Trump is freaking out about Kamala and is trying to find ways not to debate her. I wonder now if he is not so terrified as maybe to drop out of the race? Of course he would say he is sacrifying himself for the good of the country. Then later fleeing to Saudi Arabia or somewhere…, Oh la la, politics in this country is fun to watch (or scary…am not sure..)
"As of this morning, this Very Serious Opinion had almost 5,000 comments, roughly 99 percent of which said, “Screw you, WaPo. It’s Kamala. Deal with it.”
This is my unscientific read also. The news resulted in 81 million in the 24 hours after Joe made the announcement. Joe busted things wide open. I think Kamila is THE person to take the fight to Trump. I think Trump and Vance will lose their stuff pretty fast. By that I mean, they will go after Kamila with exist and racist rhetoric that will get the attention of voters who weren't excited by Joe Biden.
There's concern – maybe justifiable, maybe paranoid, that the unnamed big-money donors who were behind pressuring Biden to quit also want a white male Democrat to run against Trump. Because.
Democratic voters are saying – stuff that where the sun don't shine. And people don't give voters credit sometimes. Myself among them. I'm among the crowd (initially) who said, "I like Obama but a black man can't win." I was wrong. Harris isn't the result of affirmative action politics. She was sometimes devastating in the Senate while questioning Republicans working for Trump.
Any ambitious Democrat who offers to run against Harris in whatever the DNC rules committee invents needs to get POUNDED by Democratic voters with emails and text messages to withdraw and unite behind the candidate who is most qualified to take it to Trump. We don't have TIME for games.
Why do my comments disappear?
Sorry, but I have no idea. There are no posts from you stuck in the spam filter. Did they post and disappear, or did they just not post?