FINALLY! Our attention can be focused one hundred percent on one day - NOVEMBER 5!
Remember everyone, Simon’s optimism was not just about Biden, it’s ALWAYS been the party as a whole. The public is on our side overwhelmingly - we just need to make sure they know that.
Also, I feel compelled to point out - I mention the one big day but early voting starts in just two months and that’s when we start going full strength and don’t let up. (Except for those who have already started going full strength, God bless ‘em.)
Register more Democrats. FT 6's secret weapon: the first-of-its-kind database containing 9 million unregistered likely Democrats in swing states. The basis for all digital outreach! FT6 uses every outreach method there is: email, text, phone, geofencing, direct mail, targeted ads, social media storms, postcards, and live voter drives.
In this video, eminent historian Heather Cox Richardson analyzes yesterday’s dramatic developments. I encourage everyone to watch it. This is uplifting – pure Hopium!
Heather makes the point that President Biden’s timing is pure genius! It leaves the Republican Party and their ticket stranded high and dry. All their attack points are suddenly irrelevant. In fact, their claims that Joe is "old, weak and unfit" have now boomeranged against Donald Trump – the oldest American presidential candidate ever!
Wow! I had never read any of her posts before. And really, the timing is genius whether Biden decided to wait till after the R convention or not. What a lot of talking points we have now...
I strongly recommend subscribing to Heather’s "Letter From an American", which I receive in my Inbox almost daily. It’s free or you can donate. Generally, I read Heather and any new Hopium before the news.
I also read them first! I also really respect and like former Illinois GOP representative Adam Kinzinger, and I get his newsletter. His website is Country1st: www.country1st.com. He's a veteran who voted for Trump's impeachment, served with Cheney on the Jan. 6 committee, is a Never Trumper, and has already said he's endorsing Biden. He's putting out a video tonight, and I'd be surprised if he didn't endorse Harris as well.
Yes, he's already receiving death threats on him and his family/young son. Terrifying. So all who challenge Trump are courageous, from the Adam Kinzingers to the election workers to all of us who put ourselves out there. Which we must!
And ArcticStones, weren't you just on Hopium's paid subscriber video by Simon? I thought I caught your name among the 1,000 or so scrolling chats, LOL! I always feel better and energized after listening to Simon, he's amazing!
She is a brilliant professor and historian who's specialty just happens to be the Republican Party from just before the Civil War through the early 20th Century. She's now becoming an expert on how the party of Lincoln has become radicalized in the past few decades. Her most recent book, Democracy Awakening, is a MUST READ for anyone wondering how we got to where we are and how we now get out of this.
Actually, I am a Civil War historian who is now looking for a number of homes in a rural area of my town and finding a number belonged to the Underground Railroad. I would have been a Republican in the 19th century.
But as a young teen I listened to JFK's inaugural address where he said "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." Though I was only 12, I thought those were words to live by. I've always been a Democrat.
Heather Cox Richardson has been helping me to stay sane since I first discovered her in the summer of 2020. I love how she stays rooted in fact-based reality. She also weaves in relevant events in American history in such a natural way. I've had many "aha" moments as I've listened to her speak and read her writing.
I agree that she is an excellent commentator and historian. I have never studied a lot of history, so learning from her that many of our current conflicts have been recycling throughout our country’s history has been very eye opening.
You can google her and get in her DAILY mailing list. Every daily event is placed in historic perspective. She spoke at length about the urgent concern for a scotus to place anyone above the law. She is all in for this election.
Yes, it certainly looks like the timing of Biden's announcement was brilliant -- after the R's convention when they had laid out their arguments and plans to defeat Biden. Now those arguments and plans, as ArticStones notes, are "suddenly irrelevant."
yeah it really does make me wonder how much of this was planned. Obviously I doubt Biden intentionally self-sabotaged his debate performance as some kind of 4D chess move, but I do have to wonder how far back they’ve been putting this all together.
I love Richardson's "Big Picture" comments, bringing her historian credentials to the race. Her assertion (that Biden's timing on this was perfect) really surprised me----but her articulate explanation of why it was great timing made so much sense. However, it saddens and amazes me that Trump has hauled in even more money/support SINCE his conviction, so my fear is that Richardson's logical analysis about where Trump/Vance/MAGA are in trouble will only encourage Trump voters more----otherwise, why would the election be so close?
the election is close I think mostly because there are a significant number of people who don’t like Trump, but didn’t want Biden either, “double-haters”, so to speak.
Now I do think there was more than one issue with Biden, but the most consequential crits were always inflation (which has improved), the border (which has been receiving less attention lately), and Biden’s age (which is obviously now a moot point), so I suspect with a bit of work on Harris’s end, the democrats can close the gap and the race will be less close than it is right now, people just need a non-Trump candidate they can truly trust to beat him.
Also, while I don’t think this is the full story, I have consistently argued this to be the case: there are certain ingrained issues in data collection for polling that bias it toward people with more right-leaning views in many cases, so I suspect like 2022, the democrats will outperform polling expectations (in every special election since they also have).
Basically, I strongly suspect the race is not actually as close as it appears, and Trump’s ceiling remains low (meanwhile Biden had been close to his floor for many months, and I think Harris can get a lot higher). This should not be an excuse for complacency, not by any means, but there’s quite a bit of evidence suggesting it. Like I said yesterday, polling has been largely inaccurate for 4 out of the 9 general elections that have happened in my lifetime, which I think is telling.
I was reading Michael Podhorzer this morning and he does a deep dive into the "double haters" who are the sort of folks who turn up for Dems after Rs have screwed things up....as in the Great Recession, the pandemic etc. IMO things have been relatively calm but not perfect, so high prices have them grumbling and they just were not gonna show up for us ( his theory ) and they do not like trump, but they are not that worried about what he might do. Swing states are really just red states that have more of these people; if we make the case that MAGA is extreme, we will win them over, and win the election. If we run as a normal kind of economic argument, he thinks we will lose. People do hate MAGA but they have to be shown that it is a real threat. I think we can do this. I have admired Joe since 1988 and think he was treated poorly; but I'm all in for Harris. Excited even.
Greedflation! Team Biden-Harris have to underscore what they have done and are doing to rein in corporations that have greedily padded their profit margins. The Administration must also put highly-visible new measures on the table.
Americans who are feeling the money squeeze need to feel that Team Biden-Harris is squarely on their side!
The problem is that economists and ordinary consumers understand "inflation" in two very different ways.
Consumers are not reassured that inflation "right now" is low – they are looking at *cumulative* inflation! In other words, how much do things cost today compared to what they did two or three or four years ago. Because that is what they and their wallets are noticing!
Also, if the inflation measure excludes gas and rent, then that will fail to reflect many American families’ lived reality.
That may be the only major thing for which I fault Team Biden-Harris, as well as the Democrats in general: failure to sufficiently impact and control the narrative.
Perhaps the starkest example is how the proportion of Republicans that believe the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen has actually *increased* markedly since January 6th. How is this not a Democratic failure to impact the narrative?
It’s not only during the campaign season narrative control is vital; in fact, by then it may be too late. And with better narrative control, Team Biden-Harris would surely be getting far more credit for its great accomplishments!
I think there’s enough time between now and November that, assuming inflation continues to follow the same downward trend, people will mostly have forgotten about it by the time of the election (with probably the exception of Trump voters, bc it’s one of the only arguments they have left; “remember how bad inflation was?”), people’s perception of the economy tends to take a couple months to sink in.
One positive sign is that polling that asks what people think is the biggest issue with the country right now has consistently seen “inflation/the economy” fall in relevance since the start of the year (when it consistently ranked as the top concern), and those (relatively few) polls that actually include “threats against democracy” as a concern have usually find it to be close to the top, or at the top.
A lot of the young voters who were down on Biden have often consistently been concerned with the economy (as well as reproductive rights), so improvements in inflation will help a lot there, and I don’t think most of *that* demographic is likely to ever break for Trump, same with black and Latino voters (admittedly the situation with Latino voters is complex, as “Latino” is a very broad category, which actually includes a lot of people who also ID as white, are several generations removed from the migrant experience, and some specific Latino communities have trended right wing for a while now, like Cuban-Americans in South Florida, so as a demographic they’re a very mixed bag), so I trust that improvements in inflation and the issue of Biden’s age being rendered moot will lead to some significant gains in those demographics, possibly all the way back up to 2020-levels, or maybe even beyond.
Oh yeah, another possible thing to consider with the polls supposedly showing lots of Latino voters suddenly breaking for Trump: one of the issues Pew Research found with online opt-in surveys earlier this year is that, since a lot or people who do those surveys do them as part of services that pay them for each survey completed, and because very often these surveys pay extra for Latino respondents, lots of people straight up lie about being Latino on them, and this is in addition to the larger right wing bias in who tends to fill them
out the most, so that also may contribute to the apparent shift.
Thanks for the info; for some reason I cannot like comments here, and a few others have also noted this, but nothing has been done to address it.Thought maybe I was just banned from it for some reason.
After Dobbs, I expect their sexist memes to boomerang. Except for Trump’s MAGA base, Americans strongly dislike viciousness. Moreover, sexist attacks against Kamala will only further infuriate tens of millions of American women voters who are already pissed off over Trump & SCOTUS taking away their reproductive rights.
Amen! All they have is fear-mongering, racism and xenophobia, sexism, and hate. Kamala is going to eat Trump's lunch in that debate. He is going to be schooled--no Orange Mr. Jaws circling the debate stage this time!
I wouldn’t be so sure, Trump is really cocky, and even now thinks he’s invincible, he thinks Harris is going to be easy to beat, never underestimate how delusionally self-assured he is (and unlike Biden, his campaign team really do just go along with everything he says, I think).
Like it would’ve been a smart strategic move for Trump to pick a female and/or non-white running mate, given women and POC are two demographics he’s struggling with, but did he? Of course not, he picked a pro-Putin white guy. He feels like he can’t lose, and that makes him behave foolishly.
He doesn't know how to debate!! He just Gish Gallops! Here's what Heather said; "This was not a debate. It was Trump using a technique that actually has a formal name, the Gish gallop, although I suspect he comes by it naturally. It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them.
It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has. It is similar to what Trump did to Biden during a debate in 2020. In that case, though, the lack of muting on the mics left Biden simply saying: “Will you shut up, man?” a comment that resonated with the audience. Giving Biden the enforced space to answer by killing the mic of the person not speaking tonight actually made the technique more effective."
It’s funny, I experienced the Baader-Meinhof effect (where you encounter a new term or concept, and then it’s like suddenly you start seeing it everywhere) really strongly with the term “gish-gallop” in the past few weeks. I encountered the word independently of Trump’s debate performance a couple weeks beforehand, and then the debate happened and I’ve been seeing it mentioned all over the place lol.
I do worry about people leveraging the country’s latent racism and sexism against Harris, but at the very least there’s a much stricter unspoken limit (at least among non-fascists) about how far you can publicly go with open racist and misogynistic attacks, whereas going after the age and ability of Biden was a free-for-all (it probably shouldn’t be that way, but it sadly is).
Still, be on the lookout for dog whistles (the new favorite racist dog whistle among the MAGA crowd is “DEI”, although it’s hardly even a dog whistle, they practically use it like a straight up racial slur).
Turn it on its head. I guess they don't know that dei in Latin means God. Imago Dei means Image of God. So, for all the Christian Nationalists out there, I would tell them that maybe DEI is ordained by God. They should rip up their pictures of a white, European Christ. He was a person of color. He would believe in DEI. Just sayin' since I teach Bible Study. I am so sick of their perversion of the Bible.
Whoever the historical Jesus was, not only was he not European, he would’ve been a Middle Eastern Jew, meaning that if someone were to transport him into the modern day, racist Christo-Fascists would probably call him a “terrorist” based on how he looked.
yeah Twitter (I’m not calling it X, you can’t make me) was a hellscape last night (then again, when isn’t it?), it was like half obvious concern trolls, half people who have literally no idea how American politics works (like there were people saying that now the GOP were going to replace Trump; they literally can’t they already nominated him).
For quite some time I have been impressed with how clearheaded, insightful, and even-handed Kamala Harris is as a national leader. To me, she is a remarkable person and we have been blessed to see her up close and personable. How would we have ever known her if Joe Biden had not elevated her to the vice presidency? It was easy for me to see in another 4 years her ascending into the presidency. With that experience under her belt, it seemed like a given to me. But now I am being rushed to decide what to do: should I back this woman of integrity or sleazy Joe Manchin. Duh!
PLEASE STAY FOCUSED PEOPLE. DO NOT TAKE THE BAIT TODAY, OR IN THE WEEKS TO COME. THERE IS GOING TO BE A LOT OF NOISE, A LOT OF BS, A LOT OF CHAOS. STAY FOCUSED. DO NOT GIVE INTO DISTRACTION. DO NOT DISTRACT YOURSELF. STAY FOCUSED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
yeah I was gonna say, I literally can’t think of a more unpopular democrat politician (at least among democrats). Personally, I’ll never forgive Joe Manchin for killing federal LGBT rights in congress when the dems had the trifecta after 2020, so much of my community has suffered because of it, as it has opened the doors to red states doing stuff like entirely banning healthcare for trans youth.
Honestly though, if he did somehow turn out to be the only one to contest Harris (he’s not, he’s said he’s not running), that would actually be a relatively preferable outcome, as I can’t imagine a single delegate choosing that man over Harris.
Especially since he is not a Democrat any longer. He identifies as an Independent so I doubt that he could challenge her. However, he did say he would not run.
actually after posting this comment I did some research and found that he is *considering* re-registering as a democrat and challenging Harris at the convention, but if he does this, my point still stands. Honestly, even still, what a complete and utter tool, like I’ve *never* liked or trusted him as long as I’ve been aware of him, and once again despise him for killing a whole bunch of really important democrat legislative items, so this idea just further cements that he straight up has it in for the party and wants to wreck things so he can help his republican buddies out.
I honestly don’t know why he was ever even a democrat in the first place, he’s in a state where being a democrat is nothing but a political liability, unless it was just to be a fox in the henhouse. Few people know this, but I remember reading that his political mentor was one of the old school “Dixiecrats” who opposed the civil rights movements, and I think that tells you all you need to know. He’s a political fossil in the worst possible way, from a time when the Democratic Party was more like the republicans of today.
I am ALL IN! Happy to know what the plan is, I was hesitant to donate until I had a better idea what was going on. $34 yesterday and more to come!
I'm loving how terrified the Republicans are, they have nothing but racism and sexism to run on. Social media is a cesspool of Republicans defaulting to posting incel garbage about Kamala Harris.
That's the best part of this. Biden played the whole Republican apparatus for absolute fools.
Republicans spent the past 3.5 years attacking Biden, making sure this would be an election where everyone disliked both candidates. They were so confident, they picked a hard right VP because they didn't think they needed help with moderate voters. Just for Biden to drop out, wipe out any bump the Rs got from their convention, and leave Rs holding the bag without their boogeyman to bash.
Plus, President Biden deftly switched attention away from tfg’s status as a supposed martyr, to his own resignation AND his endorsement of Harris. Timing is everything!
Time and time and time again, Grandpa POTUS steals the Republican's lunch money. Whether it was hecklers at the State of the Union, or agreeing to a budget to avoid a government shutdown, or getting foreign aid passed. Even after Newt Gingrich warned his people not to underestimate Joe Biden, they do. Sublime timing, Mr. President. Sublime.
Biden wrote an incredible letter to America. There is not one fiber in blustering, bloviating, word-slurring, rambling nonsensically, lying and supremely narcissistic grifter trump that could even begin to conjure such a letter (it doesn't help that trump's vocabulary is stuck at a fifth-grade level).
Reading Biden's very heart-felt letter, I was thinking of how the two men completely contrast: Biden, at every chance in that letter, talked about "we" and "us" and "our"-- words that invoke team/working together/working for others. Those words are not in TFG's vocabulary.
In hindsight, I'm less shocked than I thought I would be. I feel like the Democratic Party (including yourself) has done a good job of preparing for this moment.
Part of why I thought it would be better for Biden to stay in is because I thought him dropping had a high chance of causing a battle over the new nominee, but the Democratic Party seems to have successfully united behind Harris. With the benefit of hindsight, I'm glad it turned out this way!
I, too, was worried about a switch-- that it would cause a repeat of the missteps of 1968, 1980, & 2016 within the party. My guess is there have been many, many conversations behind the scenes about all kinds of options since the debate and perhaps even before, prepping for this possibility. And as soon as I heard the news yesterday, I knew Simon must have had an inkling b/c he kept telling us to stay open to Joe's decision whatever that might be. Very grateful to have discovered Simon and this community just a few months ago! I woke up this morning more energized than I've been in weeks, and ready to put my head down and get to work!
Been expecting the birth of the next human Renaissance for many years. The day Joe chose Kamala, I’ll bet a round of beers that he knew exactly what he planned to unleash. He has touched all of humanity in one moment. This is the best day of my life as a member of We, the People.
The Washington Post is keeping a running tally of governors and members of Congress who have endorsed Kamala Harris. Almost no-one is calling for an "open primary" or contested convention. As of 10am this morning, Kamala has 191 endorsements:
yeah when I first heard they’d opted for an open convention I initially was really dismayed, thinking they’d just shot themselves in the foot by doing the one thing I hoped they wouldn’t do, but so far the reaction has been positive, and the simple fact that Mike Johnson wants Biden to resign makes me think that maybe they dodged a bullet by not doing so (when the MAGA House members want something, it’s probably a bad idea).
what makes me most hopeful for party unification is that so far there is no dark horse “dream candidate” who has any interest in contesting Harris’s nomination, and hopefully is anyone does pop up, they’ll be some largely irrelevant left field weirdo who won’t get more than like maybe one or two delegates at most.
Also worth noting that, apart from Michelle Obama (who hasn’t expressed even the slightest hint of interest in running), *no one* polls better than Harris against Trump right now.
I'm all in for KAMALA HARRIS. Are you? Huge amounts of donations + overall vibes are HOT HOT HOT + Charli XCX + all that.
President Biden is an American Hero. Like George Washington, he knows how to bring the country together, knows when it is time to step back, and honestly, he's going to be considered one of the greatest presidents of all time.
Now... I've got a lime green Kamala Harris sign in my window while I wait for my new HARRIS 2024 signage. (Don't get the lime green or the coconuts? One is a reference to Charli XCX saying "Kamala is brat" and the coconuts is a reference to Harris's mother's guidance)>
Just ordered new sign :CHOOSE DEMOCRACY ☑️ over dictatorship. VOTE HARRIS.
Our (very lonely) Biden/Harris sign will remain in place until new signs received. Dark Brandon 🕶️sticker on Camera Is Watching You sign will remain in place!💙
I have a multiracial niece who turns 1 this year. If we elect Harris, my niece’s first memories of the president will be of someone who looks like her. To me, that’s a future worth fighting for!
I always thought Joe would do something to outmaneuver Trump & MAGA. This is it. They were not expecting him to drop out, because they simply have no concept of country over party. They made noise about taunting him to drop out but they did not think he would actually do it. Now they are stuck with a 78yo demented rapist at the top of their ticket, LOL!
Anyway did anyone catch the moment in Joe’s NAACP speech last week where he tested out Kamala-as-pres with the audience? Seems like he’s been cooking this up since a week or more – “She’s not only a great vice-president, she could be President of the United States” with a smirk: https://youtu.be/nLdcEE_SGPQ?si=KEZWunUXBrQDh51a&t=604
yeah, while I personally didn’t expect Biden to actually bow out, I’ve been telling people for weeks that if he *were* planning to, his campaign likely already had a fully mapped out exit strategy, and it seems like I was right.
This is why I strongly contested the borderline conspiratorial “Biden is selfish and delusional” narrative that took hold, like he’s surrounded by experts, it’s not like he’s a dictator surrounded by sycophants, that would be the other candidate.
We have about 100 days to save democracy and the planet; ballots start going out in September, about 6 weeks away.
This is not a dress rehearsal. The troops have landed at Omaha Beach and we need to fight with everything we’ve got, or this will be the last election of our lifetimes. We have global stability, our freedoms, democracy and the future of the planet to work for. What will you do?
I stand with the Democratic Party and its platform. I give my full support to our leader Kamala Harris and whomever she chooses as her Vice President. Women have waited for a female President their entire lives, and the stakes are MAGA high.
FINALLY! Our attention can be focused one hundred percent on one day - NOVEMBER 5!
Remember everyone, Simon’s optimism was not just about Biden, it’s ALWAYS been the party as a whole. The public is on our side overwhelmingly - we just need to make sure they know that.
Let’s go win!
Heck yeah!
Also, I feel compelled to point out - I mention the one big day but early voting starts in just two months and that’s when we start going full strength and don’t let up. (Except for those who have already started going full strength, God bless ‘em.)
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https://www.fieldteam6.org/
Millions should be invested in this by the Democratic Party and its deep-pocket donors. Seriously!
In this video, eminent historian Heather Cox Richardson analyzes yesterday’s dramatic developments. I encourage everyone to watch it. This is uplifting – pure Hopium!
https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/videos/507646105045285
Heather makes the point that President Biden’s timing is pure genius! It leaves the Republican Party and their ticket stranded high and dry. All their attack points are suddenly irrelevant. In fact, their claims that Joe is "old, weak and unfit" have now boomeranged against Donald Trump – the oldest American presidential candidate ever!
Took the lead right out of Trump's proverbial "pencil".
and dried up his sharpie
I spit out my tea reading that!
His very very small pencil!
Indeed!
Wow! I had never read any of her posts before. And really, the timing is genius whether Biden decided to wait till after the R convention or not. What a lot of talking points we have now...
I strongly recommend subscribing to Heather’s "Letter From an American", which I receive in my Inbox almost daily. It’s free or you can donate. Generally, I read Heather and any new Hopium before the news.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/
I receive her daily newsletters and love them - always a clear eyed analysis of what's going on with a healthy dose of history included.
I also read them first! I also really respect and like former Illinois GOP representative Adam Kinzinger, and I get his newsletter. His website is Country1st: www.country1st.com. He's a veteran who voted for Trump's impeachment, served with Cheney on the Jan. 6 committee, is a Never Trumper, and has already said he's endorsing Biden. He's putting out a video tonight, and I'd be surprised if he didn't endorse Harris as well.
Thanks! I have deep respect for Adam Kinzinger. He did his patriotic duty well aware of the price he’d probably have to pay.
Yes, he's already receiving death threats on him and his family/young son. Terrifying. So all who challenge Trump are courageous, from the Adam Kinzingers to the election workers to all of us who put ourselves out there. Which we must!
And ArcticStones, weren't you just on Hopium's paid subscriber video by Simon? I thought I caught your name among the 1,000 or so scrolling chats, LOL! I always feel better and energized after listening to Simon, he's amazing!
Yes! A great session tonight.
I agree. Heather Cox Richardson is a historian and a genius at linking the past to current events. I read her Letters first also.
She is a brilliant professor and historian who's specialty just happens to be the Republican Party from just before the Civil War through the early 20th Century. She's now becoming an expert on how the party of Lincoln has become radicalized in the past few decades. Her most recent book, Democracy Awakening, is a MUST READ for anyone wondering how we got to where we are and how we now get out of this.
Actually, I am a Civil War historian who is now looking for a number of homes in a rural area of my town and finding a number belonged to the Underground Railroad. I would have been a Republican in the 19th century.
But as a young teen I listened to JFK's inaugural address where he said "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." Though I was only 12, I thought those were words to live by. I've always been a Democrat.
Heather Cox Richardson has been helping me to stay sane since I first discovered her in the summer of 2020. I love how she stays rooted in fact-based reality. She also weaves in relevant events in American history in such a natural way. I've had many "aha" moments as I've listened to her speak and read her writing.
I agree that she is an excellent commentator and historian. I have never studied a lot of history, so learning from her that many of our current conflicts have been recycling throughout our country’s history has been very eye opening.
And she makes it interesting and understandable on a layperson's terms!!
I've learned so much from her!!
A hero. :-)
You can google her and get in her DAILY mailing list. Every daily event is placed in historic perspective. She spoke at length about the urgent concern for a scotus to place anyone above the law. She is all in for this election.
Yes, it certainly looks like the timing of Biden's announcement was brilliant -- after the R's convention when they had laid out their arguments and plans to defeat Biden. Now those arguments and plans, as ArticStones notes, are "suddenly irrelevant."
yeah it really does make me wonder how much of this was planned. Obviously I doubt Biden intentionally self-sabotaged his debate performance as some kind of 4D chess move, but I do have to wonder how far back they’ve been putting this all together.
I love Richardson's "Big Picture" comments, bringing her historian credentials to the race. Her assertion (that Biden's timing on this was perfect) really surprised me----but her articulate explanation of why it was great timing made so much sense. However, it saddens and amazes me that Trump has hauled in even more money/support SINCE his conviction, so my fear is that Richardson's logical analysis about where Trump/Vance/MAGA are in trouble will only encourage Trump voters more----otherwise, why would the election be so close?
the election is close I think mostly because there are a significant number of people who don’t like Trump, but didn’t want Biden either, “double-haters”, so to speak.
Now I do think there was more than one issue with Biden, but the most consequential crits were always inflation (which has improved), the border (which has been receiving less attention lately), and Biden’s age (which is obviously now a moot point), so I suspect with a bit of work on Harris’s end, the democrats can close the gap and the race will be less close than it is right now, people just need a non-Trump candidate they can truly trust to beat him.
Also, while I don’t think this is the full story, I have consistently argued this to be the case: there are certain ingrained issues in data collection for polling that bias it toward people with more right-leaning views in many cases, so I suspect like 2022, the democrats will outperform polling expectations (in every special election since they also have).
Basically, I strongly suspect the race is not actually as close as it appears, and Trump’s ceiling remains low (meanwhile Biden had been close to his floor for many months, and I think Harris can get a lot higher). This should not be an excuse for complacency, not by any means, but there’s quite a bit of evidence suggesting it. Like I said yesterday, polling has been largely inaccurate for 4 out of the 9 general elections that have happened in my lifetime, which I think is telling.
I was reading Michael Podhorzer this morning and he does a deep dive into the "double haters" who are the sort of folks who turn up for Dems after Rs have screwed things up....as in the Great Recession, the pandemic etc. IMO things have been relatively calm but not perfect, so high prices have them grumbling and they just were not gonna show up for us ( his theory ) and they do not like trump, but they are not that worried about what he might do. Swing states are really just red states that have more of these people; if we make the case that MAGA is extreme, we will win them over, and win the election. If we run as a normal kind of economic argument, he thinks we will lose. People do hate MAGA but they have to be shown that it is a real threat. I think we can do this. I have admired Joe since 1988 and think he was treated poorly; but I'm all in for Harris. Excited even.
Greedflation! Team Biden-Harris have to underscore what they have done and are doing to rein in corporations that have greedily padded their profit margins. The Administration must also put highly-visible new measures on the table.
Americans who are feeling the money squeeze need to feel that Team Biden-Harris is squarely on their side!
The problem is that economists and ordinary consumers understand "inflation" in two very different ways.
Consumers are not reassured that inflation "right now" is low – they are looking at *cumulative* inflation! In other words, how much do things cost today compared to what they did two or three or four years ago. Because that is what they and their wallets are noticing!
Also, if the inflation measure excludes gas and rent, then that will fail to reflect many American families’ lived reality.
All good points; I think they were trying, but the media was not buying it or reporting it.
That may be the only major thing for which I fault Team Biden-Harris, as well as the Democrats in general: failure to sufficiently impact and control the narrative.
Perhaps the starkest example is how the proportion of Republicans that believe the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen has actually *increased* markedly since January 6th. How is this not a Democratic failure to impact the narrative?
It’s not only during the campaign season narrative control is vital; in fact, by then it may be too late. And with better narrative control, Team Biden-Harris would surely be getting far more credit for its great accomplishments!
I think there’s enough time between now and November that, assuming inflation continues to follow the same downward trend, people will mostly have forgotten about it by the time of the election (with probably the exception of Trump voters, bc it’s one of the only arguments they have left; “remember how bad inflation was?”), people’s perception of the economy tends to take a couple months to sink in.
One positive sign is that polling that asks what people think is the biggest issue with the country right now has consistently seen “inflation/the economy” fall in relevance since the start of the year (when it consistently ranked as the top concern), and those (relatively few) polls that actually include “threats against democracy” as a concern have usually find it to be close to the top, or at the top.
A lot of the young voters who were down on Biden have often consistently been concerned with the economy (as well as reproductive rights), so improvements in inflation will help a lot there, and I don’t think most of *that* demographic is likely to ever break for Trump, same with black and Latino voters (admittedly the situation with Latino voters is complex, as “Latino” is a very broad category, which actually includes a lot of people who also ID as white, are several generations removed from the migrant experience, and some specific Latino communities have trended right wing for a while now, like Cuban-Americans in South Florida, so as a demographic they’re a very mixed bag), so I trust that improvements in inflation and the issue of Biden’s age being rendered moot will lead to some significant gains in those demographics, possibly all the way back up to 2020-levels, or maybe even beyond.
Oh yeah, another possible thing to consider with the polls supposedly showing lots of Latino voters suddenly breaking for Trump: one of the issues Pew Research found with online opt-in surveys earlier this year is that, since a lot or people who do those surveys do them as part of services that pay them for each survey completed, and because very often these surveys pay extra for Latino respondents, lots of people straight up lie about being Latino on them, and this is in addition to the larger right wing bias in who tends to fill them
out the most, so that also may contribute to the apparent shift.
Thanks for the info; for some reason I cannot like comments here, and a few others have also noted this, but nothing has been done to address it.Thought maybe I was just banned from it for some reason.
Excellent, as always, and inspiring. thanks for the link.
What a fantastic take on these events! I’m gonna share this everywhere!
Thanks for sharing that--she's excellent!
Yay-our marching orders! PS More Russian bots on Facebook trying to keep Dems from unifying—don’t waste time responding!
I don't think the bots and chuds posting sexist memes will have the effect they want come November.
After Dobbs, I expect their sexist memes to boomerang. Except for Trump’s MAGA base, Americans strongly dislike viciousness. Moreover, sexist attacks against Kamala will only further infuriate tens of millions of American women voters who are already pissed off over Trump & SCOTUS taking away their reproductive rights.
Amen! All they have is fear-mongering, racism and xenophobia, sexism, and hate. Kamala is going to eat Trump's lunch in that debate. He is going to be schooled--no Orange Mr. Jaws circling the debate stage this time!
I'm guessing he won't debate her. I would love to see a Prosecutor debate him, but he/his team will find an excuse not to.
I wouldn’t be so sure, Trump is really cocky, and even now thinks he’s invincible, he thinks Harris is going to be easy to beat, never underestimate how delusionally self-assured he is (and unlike Biden, his campaign team really do just go along with everything he says, I think).
Like it would’ve been a smart strategic move for Trump to pick a female and/or non-white running mate, given women and POC are two demographics he’s struggling with, but did he? Of course not, he picked a pro-Putin white guy. He feels like he can’t lose, and that makes him behave foolishly.
He doesn't know how to debate!! He just Gish Gallops! Here's what Heather said; "This was not a debate. It was Trump using a technique that actually has a formal name, the Gish gallop, although I suspect he comes by it naturally. It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them.
It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has. It is similar to what Trump did to Biden during a debate in 2020. In that case, though, the lack of muting on the mics left Biden simply saying: “Will you shut up, man?” a comment that resonated with the audience. Giving Biden the enforced space to answer by killing the mic of the person not speaking tonight actually made the technique more effective."
It’s funny, I experienced the Baader-Meinhof effect (where you encounter a new term or concept, and then it’s like suddenly you start seeing it everywhere) really strongly with the term “gish-gallop” in the past few weeks. I encountered the word independently of Trump’s debate performance a couple weeks beforehand, and then the debate happened and I’ve been seeing it mentioned all over the place lol.
whatever happens, definitely can’t say I’m not excited to get to see Harris castrate Trump live on stage (figuratively, of course)
I do worry about people leveraging the country’s latent racism and sexism against Harris, but at the very least there’s a much stricter unspoken limit (at least among non-fascists) about how far you can publicly go with open racist and misogynistic attacks, whereas going after the age and ability of Biden was a free-for-all (it probably shouldn’t be that way, but it sadly is).
Still, be on the lookout for dog whistles (the new favorite racist dog whistle among the MAGA crowd is “DEI”, although it’s hardly even a dog whistle, they practically use it like a straight up racial slur).
SO, SO true Tricia!
Turn it on its head. I guess they don't know that dei in Latin means God. Imago Dei means Image of God. So, for all the Christian Nationalists out there, I would tell them that maybe DEI is ordained by God. They should rip up their pictures of a white, European Christ. He was a person of color. He would believe in DEI. Just sayin' since I teach Bible Study. I am so sick of their perversion of the Bible.
Amen to that!
Whoever the historical Jesus was, not only was he not European, he would’ve been a Middle Eastern Jew, meaning that if someone were to transport him into the modern day, racist Christo-Fascists would probably call him a “terrorist” based on how he looked.
yeah Twitter (I’m not calling it X, you can’t make me) was a hellscape last night (then again, when isn’t it?), it was like half obvious concern trolls, half people who have literally no idea how American politics works (like there were people saying that now the GOP were going to replace Trump; they literally can’t they already nominated him).
I do not have twitter
For quite some time I have been impressed with how clearheaded, insightful, and even-handed Kamala Harris is as a national leader. To me, she is a remarkable person and we have been blessed to see her up close and personable. How would we have ever known her if Joe Biden had not elevated her to the vice presidency? It was easy for me to see in another 4 years her ascending into the presidency. With that experience under her belt, it seemed like a given to me. But now I am being rushed to decide what to do: should I back this woman of integrity or sleazy Joe Manchin. Duh!
Who wants Joe Manchin?? I haven't heard anyone except for him expressing support for him.
Manchin just said he’s not going to try and run for P.
PLEASE STAY FOCUSED PEOPLE. DO NOT TAKE THE BAIT TODAY, OR IN THE WEEKS TO COME. THERE IS GOING TO BE A LOT OF NOISE, A LOT OF BS, A LOT OF CHAOS. STAY FOCUSED. DO NOT GIVE INTO DISTRACTION. DO NOT DISTRACT YOURSELF. STAY FOCUSED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
yeah I was gonna say, I literally can’t think of a more unpopular democrat politician (at least among democrats). Personally, I’ll never forgive Joe Manchin for killing federal LGBT rights in congress when the dems had the trifecta after 2020, so much of my community has suffered because of it, as it has opened the doors to red states doing stuff like entirely banning healthcare for trans youth.
Honestly though, if he did somehow turn out to be the only one to contest Harris (he’s not, he’s said he’s not running), that would actually be a relatively preferable outcome, as I can’t imagine a single delegate choosing that man over Harris.
Especially since he is not a Democrat any longer. He identifies as an Independent so I doubt that he could challenge her. However, he did say he would not run.
actually after posting this comment I did some research and found that he is *considering* re-registering as a democrat and challenging Harris at the convention, but if he does this, my point still stands. Honestly, even still, what a complete and utter tool, like I’ve *never* liked or trusted him as long as I’ve been aware of him, and once again despise him for killing a whole bunch of really important democrat legislative items, so this idea just further cements that he straight up has it in for the party and wants to wreck things so he can help his republican buddies out.
I honestly don’t know why he was ever even a democrat in the first place, he’s in a state where being a democrat is nothing but a political liability, unless it was just to be a fox in the henhouse. Few people know this, but I remember reading that his political mentor was one of the old school “Dixiecrats” who opposed the civil rights movements, and I think that tells you all you need to know. He’s a political fossil in the worst possible way, from a time when the Democratic Party was more like the republicans of today.
I am ALL IN! Happy to know what the plan is, I was hesitant to donate until I had a better idea what was going on. $34 yesterday and more to come!
I'm loving how terrified the Republicans are, they have nothing but racism and sexism to run on. Social media is a cesspool of Republicans defaulting to posting incel garbage about Kamala Harris.
That's the best part of this. Biden played the whole Republican apparatus for absolute fools.
Republicans spent the past 3.5 years attacking Biden, making sure this would be an election where everyone disliked both candidates. They were so confident, they picked a hard right VP because they didn't think they needed help with moderate voters. Just for Biden to drop out, wipe out any bump the Rs got from their convention, and leave Rs holding the bag without their boogeyman to bash.
Brilliant!
Plus, President Biden deftly switched attention away from tfg’s status as a supposed martyr, to his own resignation AND his endorsement of Harris. Timing is everything!
Withdrawal from the race – NOT resignation!
Right! Sorry about that!
Time and time and time again, Grandpa POTUS steals the Republican's lunch money. Whether it was hecklers at the State of the Union, or agreeing to a budget to avoid a government shutdown, or getting foreign aid passed. Even after Newt Gingrich warned his people not to underestimate Joe Biden, they do. Sublime timing, Mr. President. Sublime.
Biden wrote an incredible letter to America. There is not one fiber in blustering, bloviating, word-slurring, rambling nonsensically, lying and supremely narcissistic grifter trump that could even begin to conjure such a letter (it doesn't help that trump's vocabulary is stuck at a fifth-grade level).
I would put it at second grade level and that’s being generous, something that he certainly doesn’t deserve.
Reading Biden's very heart-felt letter, I was thinking of how the two men completely contrast: Biden, at every chance in that letter, talked about "we" and "us" and "our"-- words that invoke team/working together/working for others. Those words are not in TFG's vocabulary.
In hindsight, I'm less shocked than I thought I would be. I feel like the Democratic Party (including yourself) has done a good job of preparing for this moment.
Part of why I thought it would be better for Biden to stay in is because I thought him dropping had a high chance of causing a battle over the new nominee, but the Democratic Party seems to have successfully united behind Harris. With the benefit of hindsight, I'm glad it turned out this way!
Time to move forward and win!
I, too, was worried about a switch-- that it would cause a repeat of the missteps of 1968, 1980, & 2016 within the party. My guess is there have been many, many conversations behind the scenes about all kinds of options since the debate and perhaps even before, prepping for this possibility. And as soon as I heard the news yesterday, I knew Simon must have had an inkling b/c he kept telling us to stay open to Joe's decision whatever that might be. Very grateful to have discovered Simon and this community just a few months ago! I woke up this morning more energized than I've been in weeks, and ready to put my head down and get to work!
Been expecting the birth of the next human Renaissance for many years. The day Joe chose Kamala, I’ll bet a round of beers that he knew exactly what he planned to unleash. He has touched all of humanity in one moment. This is the best day of my life as a member of We, the People.
Love this. Absolute poetry.
The Washington Post is keeping a running tally of governors and members of Congress who have endorsed Kamala Harris. Almost no-one is calling for an "open primary" or contested convention. As of 10am this morning, Kamala has 191 endorsements:
– 33 senators
– 143 representatives
– 15 governors
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2024/kamala-harris-endorsements/
Kamala Harris has got this! She is unifying the party!
The unity I've seen in the past day has been awesome. Completely erased my fears of dropping Biden.
yeah when I first heard they’d opted for an open convention I initially was really dismayed, thinking they’d just shot themselves in the foot by doing the one thing I hoped they wouldn’t do, but so far the reaction has been positive, and the simple fact that Mike Johnson wants Biden to resign makes me think that maybe they dodged a bullet by not doing so (when the MAGA House members want something, it’s probably a bad idea).
This is what I’ve been hoping to hear. Hopefully this continues and no one does anything stupid (like deciding to contest her nomination)
QUESTION: What do these seven prominent Democrats have in common?
– Gretchen Whitmer, Governor of Michigan
– Josh Shapiro, Governor of Pennsylvania
– Gavin Newsom, Governor of California
– Wes Moore, Governor of Maryland
– JB Pritzker, Governor of Illinois
– Andy Beshear, Governor of Kentucky
– Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation
ANSWER: All have been mentioned as potential presidential candidates – and every single one of them has now endorsed Kamala Harris for President!
(Heck, even Dean Phillips has endorsed Harris.)
what makes me most hopeful for party unification is that so far there is no dark horse “dream candidate” who has any interest in contesting Harris’s nomination, and hopefully is anyone does pop up, they’ll be some largely irrelevant left field weirdo who won’t get more than like maybe one or two delegates at most.
Also worth noting that, apart from Michelle Obama (who hasn’t expressed even the slightest hint of interest in running), *no one* polls better than Harris against Trump right now.
And any one of these would be an excellent choice for VP.
Endorsements update 7:10 pm – 252 endorsements (only 34 total to go)
– 42 senators (9 to go)
– 187 representatives (incl. Pelosi)
– 23 governors (all on board!)
Thank you! I was having trouble finding the breakdown among the endorsements.
I just edited my post with updated figures.
New edit.
More importantly, WaPo is also tracking the delegates to the convention who have pledged to Kamala and it’s looking great.
Thanks, I found it. And now they appear to have added detailed info about state delegations’ endorsement of Kamala Harris.
We have a lot of work to do, but it feels good to have clarity.
Time to educate ourselves, our friends and our family about Kamala. We will put in the work volunteering and fundraising.
We will rally, we will fight, and we will win this thing together.
I'm all in for KAMALA HARRIS. Are you? Huge amounts of donations + overall vibes are HOT HOT HOT + Charli XCX + all that.
President Biden is an American Hero. Like George Washington, he knows how to bring the country together, knows when it is time to step back, and honestly, he's going to be considered one of the greatest presidents of all time.
Now... I've got a lime green Kamala Harris sign in my window while I wait for my new HARRIS 2024 signage. (Don't get the lime green or the coconuts? One is a reference to Charli XCX saying "Kamala is brat" and the coconuts is a reference to Harris's mother's guidance)>
(And PS - I'm in the air right now, so doing this from my phone means you get SMS-style posts here)
Just ordered new sign :CHOOSE DEMOCRACY ☑️ over dictatorship. VOTE HARRIS.
Our (very lonely) Biden/Harris sign will remain in place until new signs received. Dark Brandon 🕶️sticker on Camera Is Watching You sign will remain in place!💙
I have a multiracial niece who turns 1 this year. If we elect Harris, my niece’s first memories of the president will be of someone who looks like her. To me, that’s a future worth fighting for!
I always thought Joe would do something to outmaneuver Trump & MAGA. This is it. They were not expecting him to drop out, because they simply have no concept of country over party. They made noise about taunting him to drop out but they did not think he would actually do it. Now they are stuck with a 78yo demented rapist at the top of their ticket, LOL!
Anyway did anyone catch the moment in Joe’s NAACP speech last week where he tested out Kamala-as-pres with the audience? Seems like he’s been cooking this up since a week or more – “She’s not only a great vice-president, she could be President of the United States” with a smirk: https://youtu.be/nLdcEE_SGPQ?si=KEZWunUXBrQDh51a&t=604
yeah, while I personally didn’t expect Biden to actually bow out, I’ve been telling people for weeks that if he *were* planning to, his campaign likely already had a fully mapped out exit strategy, and it seems like I was right.
This is why I strongly contested the borderline conspiratorial “Biden is selfish and delusional” narrative that took hold, like he’s surrounded by experts, it’s not like he’s a dictator surrounded by sycophants, that would be the other candidate.
YES YES, AND AGAIN, YES! KAMALA 2024💙💙💙💙🗳🗳🗳🗳
We have about 100 days to save democracy and the planet; ballots start going out in September, about 6 weeks away.
This is not a dress rehearsal. The troops have landed at Omaha Beach and we need to fight with everything we’ve got, or this will be the last election of our lifetimes. We have global stability, our freedoms, democracy and the future of the planet to work for. What will you do?
LET”S GET TO WORK. If you haven’t done anything yet, now is the time. Pick AT LEAST one activity. https://linktr.ee/getup_GOTV2024?utm_source=linktree_profile_share<sid=d62f3735-d64a-4217-add4-485b665e71eb
or https://www.mobilize.us/
Just received my postcards for North Carolina. Will be doing some every evening.
Thank you for this meta link. Very helpful! I’m sharing widely.
Thank you again for your wise words.
I stand with the Democratic Party and its platform. I give my full support to our leader Kamala Harris and whomever she chooses as her Vice President. Women have waited for a female President their entire lives, and the stakes are MAGA high.
And for those of us who loved Hilary, here is a great chance or payback.
Can't help but notice how Bill and Hillary were first on the Endorsement Train!!!! Revenge is best served cold.
A model message, Deborah. I am using it to call office holders who have not endorsed Kamala Harris. Thanks