Republicans Won’t Even Pronounce Her Name

It’s ‘Comma La’ versus The Orange Menace

What a week, huh?

Vice President Kamala Harris hit the deck running, and it’s safe to say America was ready for what she was offering. On the other side, the Republican nominee has backed out of a scheduled September debate and is reportedly asking people if he can ‘fire’ his running mate.

I’ve never seen such unity among Democrats, and only former President Obama came close when it comes to street level enthusiasm. Money! Fame! Memes! Volunteers! Endorsements!

Former President Obama and Michelle Obama endorsed Harris via video call on Friday morning, putting to rest a Fox News talking point. They’ll be joining the candidate on the campaign trail. 

In fact, you could say the Harris campaign is zooming along. 

Win With Black Women rallied 44,000 Black women on Zoom and raised $1.6 million. About 20,000 Black men joined together on the app and rallied to raise $1.2 million. Thursday,  challenged to “answer the call,” 164,000 white women joined an event that “broke Zoom” and raised more than $2 million and tens of thousands of new volunteers. 

The Black queer men’s call featuring First Gentleman Doug Emhoff brought together almost 2,500 people. A climate and clean energy activist call, with Bill McKibben brought in more than $100,000. The Human Rights Campaign “Out for Kamala Harris” call brought together 20,000 people and raised more than $300,000.

Finally, a call for white women to engage “broke Zoom” with 164,000 participants raising more than $2 million.

In the two days after Biden dropped out, Vote.org saw its highest levels of new voter registrations of the whole cycle: 38,500 people signed up, a 700 percent spike and higher even than when Taylor Swift made an Instagram post. Most were 34 and under.

I’d guess there’s a plausible sense of relief in the left/liberal zeitgeist. The Harris campaign says they have 2300 events scheduled for this weekend.

Nobody wanted to say it out loud, but a lot of people were contemplating life under Trump2025, and it wasn’t hard to spot. 

Some were saying they were burned out by politics. Or hung over from COVID. Others were trying out their enthusiasm for down-ballot candidates; and if you think about it, that can be a real effort when it comes to elected officials with a record of compromise.  A couple of people I saw on Facebook were hoping they were low profile enough to avoid the mobs they envisioned once a true gangster took the White House. (Talk about white privilege!)

Publicly I was none of those things, but inside I harbored real doubts about where things were headed politically. After seeing the seemingly effortless crushing of (most) pro-Palestine protests, I knew how easy it was going to be for institutions to adapt to (if they weren’t already) an authoritarian victory.  

It was bad enough that once-proud institutions of the fourth estate were throwing in their lot before the election even happened, as if ending whatever democracy was to us was already a done deal. Only my dedication to one-day-at-a-time brought on by a hard-fought battle with cancer kept me off depression’s door.

Then President Biden gave up the good fight, saying he’d tend to business while voters addressed the threat facing this country. You know it had to be in the back of his mind that a victorious Trump would come after him; that as former president he’d be facing humiliation, jail, maybe even death. Some of y’all think Trump didn’t really mean all those things he said. But there were and are people who think they’d gain his favor by acting on those impulses.

Now it’s Kamala Harris, for the people; for freedom. I think she’s tough enough to take the abuse about to be heaped on her. I agree that she has to name and shame the evil lurking about in this land. I think that Project 2025 is a turd that Republicans won’t be able to polish. 

Via Mediaite:

• Data from Axios/Generation lab posted Thursday showed Harris polling with a massive 20 point lead over Trump among voters aged 18-34. The poll carries a margin of error of 3.5%, which wouldn’t have all that much effect on the Harris lead.

• Harris scored 60% against Trump’s 40% when voters were given the option between the two today. Asked the same question about Biden and Trump and that gap lowers to just 6%, with Biden scoring 53% and Trump getting 47%. Biden already announced he’s stepped down from his reelection campaign, and Harris has secured the needed delegates to move to the top of the ticket.

I see hope. I see promise, especially with the enthusiasm of the voter blocks we always wished we had on our side but never really did. I hope Kamala stays brat. I hope that Dark Brandon has a trick or two up his sleeve.

And I see the danger of heightened expectations worn down by the sheer amount of time and effort that victory for Kamala will take.

The main problem standing in the way of a better future is time. Remember how fast things changed just last week? 

One moment we were aghast about an assassination attempt, the next we were drowned in cheers for mass deportations at the GOP convention, via the hatred of old white ladies who had killed their cats long ago, and the next we were wondering if either candidate would pass a cognitive test.

All that changed when Joe, the man, decided that he loved his country more than the trappings of power. Bravo, Mr President! History will be kinder to you than you can imagine.

FBI Director Wray  –when he wasn’t giving conspiracy hungry Republican congress critters enough red meat– warned of his fears of an organization-backed terrorist attack in the near future.

OMG. Contemplate what would happen if….

Wait a minute! There’s nothing to be gained fretting about what might-could-maybe happen, And even if the unthinkable does happen, who can predict that a good effort toward electing Kamala Harris will go unrewarded?

Another danger is posed by the nihilists among us. Robert F Kennedy, Jr is lurking in the shadows, scheming on doing something to grab people’s attention. What-his-name, the so-called Young Turk influencer on YouTube, is already sowing seeds of discord. Bill Maher could get a bad batch of weed and do God-knows-what just to prove he’s whatever he thinks he is. And there are the purists who say unless a candidate ascribes to their 44 point program for peace and justice through Fearless Leader, people are wasting their time.

Be gone! To all of them! The antidote for their emptiness can be the fullness we all experience upon being involved in a community effort for a decent cause.  

Don’t delay! Do something today. We’ve lived for too long in a motion-picture/video fantasy world where change is driven by magic. YOU are the magic.

Wanna be an Official Democratic campaigner? Click here.

Can’t stomach the idea of all the compromises Dems have made? Click here.

• (Please DON’T give money in response to texts or emails that promise a fabulous match on your donation. Reply to texts with the word “stop” and they’ll be gone. )

Good thought from Jill Filipovic:

• As the summer wears on, and especially as summer turns to fall and the campaigns really ramp up, there will no doubt be many moments of despair and frustration and fear. There’s no need to be anticipatorily anxious about what’s to come. You do indeed exist in the context of all in which you live. And right now, that context feels much less like a funeral procession and more like summer jam.

***

Programming Note:

I will be on Vacation from August 1 to August 13. The series on Project 2025 will resume upon my return. Election coverage leading up to my annual voters guide will commence on Labor Day.

***

Friday Finds in the News World

***

Let the A.I. Games Begin By Oliver Darcy at Reliable Sources

• Both the International Olympics Committee and U.S. broadcast partner NBC plan to harness the power of artificial intelligence and infuse the summer contests with the rapidly advancing technology, which will be evident in ways both on and off camera.

• Most notably, NBC will create a daily highlight reel available to its Peacock subscribers that features the voice of legendary announcer Al Michaels. Michaels, however, will not be in a sports booth in Paris offering his trademark sports commentary. Instead, NBC said it had trained its A.I. on old video clips of Michaels. With his permission, the broadcaster will harness the technology to produce video packages using his iconic voice. 

• "When I was approached about this, I was skeptical but obviously curious," Michaels said in a statement. "Then I saw a demonstration detailing what they had in mind. I said, 'I’m in.'"

***

Don't think of a couch humper! Or a criminal by Gil Duran at Framelab

• During a speech at a recent rally, Trump said: "And then the campaign says: 'I'm the prosecutor, and he is the convicted felon."

• The Harris campaign posted a video snippet of him saying this, along with a message from the Democratic nominee:

• "I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message."

***

Unions and Antitrust Are Peanut Butter and Jelly  by Hamilton Nolan at How Things Work

• Global capitalism is a beast. Even if the US labor movement was twice as strong as it is today, it would be very hard to deal with Amazon or Google or other companies that span the globe and are worth hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars. There is a very real danger that multinational corporations supplant national governments as the dominant source of power on earth. This is the future that antitrust people are fighting against. 

• An interesting example of how this affects unions can be seen in the ongoing fight between Tesla and unions in Sweden. There we are seeing the clash between the mature and humane and long-standing Nordic system of labor rights, and the unyielding ultra-capitalist sensibility of Elon Musk. Neither side wants to break. The final outcome of that dispute will be a valuable data point regarding the question, “How capable are multinational corporations of bending entire national governments and cultures to their will, these days?” Fun!