Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Every day Vance writes another chapter in the book called “Worst VP Pick Ever”.

So many bastards, so little time.

In my day, never was longer.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

The lights are all blinking red.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Kamala Harris for President / Friday Evening Open Thread: It’s Good to Be A Democrat (Especially Now)

Friday Evening Open Thread: It’s Good to Be A Democrat (Especially Now)

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  8. 8.

    Mousebumples

    @Hungry Joe: nice work! Thanks for postcarding.

    I’ve got more to work on tonight for the Wisconsin August primary. Thanks for the reminder!

  9. 9.

    SiubhanDuinne

    What’s the story about Vance and the four-year-old kid? Haven’t come across that one.

  11. 11.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Both of those ads — “We Must Win…For Them!” and “We’re Not Going Back!” are great. I’d like to see them in heavy rotation. Just terrific.

  12. 12.

    Leto

    @SiubhanDuinne: I’m sure it’s going to be he literally snatched candy from a 4 y/o, pushed the kid down, laughed at him, and then mocked him as he cried. Idk, the dude is just so fucking weird and it keeps getting more weird each day. The Republican puke mill will surely put something out worse soon enough.

  14. 14.

    ArchTeryx

    So much stuff coming out about Vance now that he’s not just running for red-state Senator. Either Tim Ryan was just that bad of a campaigner, or it’s the klieg lights of a national campaign that finally are collecting some oppo on this slimy little fascist. What flies in as red a state as Ohio is now ain’t gonna fly nationwide – didn’t DeSatan already find THAT out the hard way?

  17. 17.

    VFX Lurker

    In Aliens (1986), a traumatized Ripley tells Carter Burke: “I said NO, and I mean it! I am not going back…”

    That’s been my internal monologue for some time, Ripley shouting, “I am not going back.”

    I much prefer the joyful and determined crowds at Kamala Harris’ rallies shouting, “WE ARE NOT GOING BACK!” Way more positive.

  18. 18.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    I donated to his campaign. I so hope he wins his race. He’s great, even though we disagreed about some things lately. I still think Democrats should hire him as an adviser.

  20. 20.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    He gets attacked on Twitter now about arcane details of Minneapolis housing policy due to his candidacy and he is just as fierce on that as on everything else :)

  21. 21.

    Chet Murthy

    @VFX Lurker: I remember seeing it with a bunch of friends when it came out.  We all cheered when she said “get away from her, you bitch!”  And at the end, we all clapped.  Just because.

  22. 22.

    Geminid

    @SiubhanDuinne: “We’re Not Going Back” has a lot of reach, I think. It speaks to Democrats but it could resonate with Independents as well. Independents might be confused about the issues, but they know Trump was a chaos agent and I think they won’t want four more years of chaos.

  24. 24.

    dmsilev

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    What’s the story about Vance and the four-year-old kid? Haven’t come across that one.

    We’ve reached the JD Vance equivalent of a Poe’s Law singularity, where nobody can tell if a particular story of Vance being horrible, weird, or horribly weird is real or a joke riffing off the actual examples.

    Look on the bright side: yesterday, we did get to have the in-retrospect essential conversation about whether couch-fucker or couchfucker was the proper form.

  25. 25.

    Geminid

    @Kay: Stancil has always attracted criticism. I’m not surprised housing policy is now a reason. I don’t follow housing issues very closely, but I’ve noticed the NIMBY/YIMBY debate resembles the Hatfields versus the McCoys.

    Stancil also picked up some right-wing trolls. It may have started when he criticized Elon Musk last year. Musk’s flying monkeys swarmed him fast.

  26. 26.

    cain

    @dmsilev: JD Vance is the ultimate self own – the gnashing of teeth of the GOP is awesome.

    Then there is shit like Trump saying “no need to vote, we have enough” lol. I’m sure it comes across of “if we don’t have enough, the Dems cheated” kind of thing – but they are the ones saying ‘Dont vote” – I bet Fox loves that.

    Then there is the entire “he’s sooooo ooooolld” lol. Biden had a lot more energy than this asshole.

  27. 27.

    hrprogressive

    It’s amazing how, not quite a week ago, I was furious and thought the billionaires had handed the election to Convicted Felon Donald Trump.

    Now?

    The excitement in the air makes me hopeful for a Harris landslide, by modern standards.

    Amazing, really.

  28. 28.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @cain:

    Yep, I noticed that too and liked it. Such a refreshing gesture after years of TCFFG’s tiny accordion hands.

  29. 29.

    piratedan

    @Geminid: i follow him on BlueSky and he’s owning his position on changing from Biden, i.e.. he was wrong  He was uncertain about if the change would fracture the party or not (seems reasonable knowing what we know about Democrats) but has been ecstatic to see the positive change in attitude in the campaign and has been astounded at the coalescence around Harris and the fundraising.

  33. 33.

    Geminid

    @Kay: Last I checked there were a couple other good candidates in the race so Will might not make it. I wonder who the local DFL Party endorsed. They seem to do that in Minnesota; local parties have mini-conventions before the primary and endorse one candidate.

    Very different from Virginia. Democrats here tend to look for endorsements from elected Democrats. We’re like, what does Tim Kaine think?

  34. 34.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Chet Murthy: I saw Aliens either on or near opening weekend in a packed house in a grand old movie palace in Boulder, Colorado. The moment when Ripley breaks out that power loader is one of the greatest audience freakouts I’ve ever seen. We went INSANE.

  35. 35.

    Kay

    @Geminid:

    Sounds like you know more about it than I do! I didn’t care what he was running for – I think he’s great. I bet he keeps running until he makes it into one or another public office – he’s very…persistent :)

  37. 37.

    lowtechcyclist

    @dmsilev:

    Look on the bright side: yesterday, we did get to have the in-retrospect essential conversation about whether couch-fucker or couchfucker was the proper form.

    I think “Uncle Fucka” from the South Park movie needs repurposing:

    Shut your fucking face, sofa-fucker
    You’re the one that fucked your sofa, sofa-fucker,
    You don’t eat or sleep or mow the lawn,
    you just fuck your sofa all day long
    .

  40. 40.

    Eyeroller

    @piratedan: If I may be allowed to comment, I still believe Joe could have won but it would have required support from the party, which is something we don’t seem to do well if our candidates seem to falter, and it would have been stressful and a nailbiter and the rest of the party was panicking.  Given all that, Joe absolutely did the right thing.  I don’t think the coalescence around Harris was an accident.  There were quite a few forces, some serious and many not, that wanted a new “untainted” ticket, but that was overcome.

  41. 41.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Matt McIrvin: I remember Paul Reiser doing a bit back then on I think The Tonight Show, but could have been Letterman about watching Aliens with his grandma and her cheering along with the rest of the audience when his character got his come-uppance.

  44. 44.

    Scout211

    Republicans are not happy with the JD Vance pick and are in disarray!

    I read it in Politico so it must be true!

    Republicans are already souring on JD Vance

     

    . . . Vance’s change of fortune also collided with the rise of Vice President Kamala Harris, who has broken fundraising records and is on a glide path to receiving the Democratic nomination after President Joe Biden bowed out of the race. And Harris — who would be the first Black and South Asian woman president and is running a campaign with the unofficial slogan “we’re not going back” — has made the contrast with the Trump-Vance ticket even more stark.It’s all starting to get some Republicans worried — and frustrated. Some, like Arizona Republican operative Chuck Coughlin, conceded that Vance has had a “tough week.”

    “Nothing like a baptism by fire,” Coughlin said.

    Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro bluntly questioned whether Trump should have picked Vance, saying on his show: “If you had a time machine, if you go back two weeks, would [Trump] have picked JD Vance again? I doubt it.”

    Other Republicans also wondered aloud if the Trump campaign had truly anticipated the tidal wave of resurfaced comments, book writings and remarks that would come with picking a 39-year-old, recently elected senator who had grown up online and was firmly seated on the right of the Republican Party.

    “Of the people that were mentioned as finalists, he had the most risk, because he had never been vetted nationally,” said Bill McCoshen, a Republican strategist in Wisconsin. “Doug Burgum ran for president, he had been vetted, mostly. Marco Rubio has run for president, he had been vetted. JD Vance hadn’t. So there was risk in the pick. And we’re going to see over the next 102 days how he stands up to the bright lights of a national campaign.”

    One House Republican lawmaker suggested those vetting concerns weren’t just coming from the pundit class.

    “Find me one publicly elected official in the Senate who is pushing JD Vance other than Mike Lee,” said the Republican lawmaker, who was granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. “I’ll wait.”
    . . .
    “I’m a little surprised they didn’t vet him as thoroughly as they should have, or if they did, did they not know he was writing the forward to Kevin Roberts’ book,” said a Republican strategist and veteran of multiple presidential campaigns, granted anonymity to speak freely. “So, you’ve got Trump trashing this Project 2025, and Vance writing the forward.”

    And that’s not to mention the countless memes suggesting Vance had intimate relations with a couch in his youth following a disinformation post on social media, made worse by the fact that the Associated Press published an article with the headline “No, JD Vance did not have sex with a couch,” then retracting it because the story “didn’t go through our standard editing process,” according to AP spokesperson Nicole Meir.

    The couch is now famous.  I rest my case.

     

    ETA: clarity

  45. 45.

    dm

    @KatKapCC:

    Mastodon has been littered with screenshots of tweets from white dudes who forgot to put on their ”Black” X-persona before tweeting how they “were one Black Lady who would definitely NOT be voting for Harris”

    In afraid that was my first thought when I saw that tweet.

  46. 46.

    Geminid

     

     

    @Kay: The seat opened up unexpectedly, I think. A well-respected veteran announced his retirement in late winter and a half-dozen hopefuls jumped in. Stancil’s bid got the most attention because he has a national reputation. I checked out the field at the time but have not paid strention since. No one seemed outstanding but I remember there were a couple other promising candidates.

    It would be a great job for Stancil but I don’t think he’ll be too discouraged if he loses. Stancil seems happier now than he was two years ago. Maybe Will has a girlfriend!

  47. 47.

    Chris Johnson

    I’ve just had the pleasure of Harry Littman reinforcing a point I’ve been trying to make since the assassination, or ‘assassination’, attempt…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB8j3oDEq9Q

    So it’s nice to get a little echo out there in the world, and also a hint of how skullduggery is NOT just about Balloon Juice.

    Harry’s video talks about the investigation into the incident, which is very interesting. Includes the fact that the government can subpoena to examine Trump’s ear, as evidence in the investigation. (I have NOT been good enough for Santa to bring me THAT for Xmas XD ) And he ends by saying, in the video, that he’s spoken with friends that have forensic expertise and they told him that there could be no bullet wound: a third of the ear would be gone no matter how glancing the blow.

    Which is true. It’s nice to see a larger voice saying it. I can see why Trump doesn’t admit that part, because the very next question becomes ‘if there was not a bullet wound of any kind, where did the blood come from?’. Also, if there is absolutely no injury, well THAT is a hell of a thing, isn’t it?

    And then commenting on the video, I respond to a guy saying ‘he’s milking the injury for all it’s worth!’ with something to the effect of ‘if there even is an injury: if there isn’t, that begs the question of what happened since it wasn’t a bullet’.

    BAM. Comment instantly nuked from off Harry’s youtube channel because it was flagged as ‘hate speech’! Something that can lead to your own channel being deleted! A very heavy response to a perfectly ordinary and not even abrasive comment!

    Just goes to show you that Harry’s really on to something in the video I linked, if following his OWN line of reasoning can get your comments nuked through weaponization of the YouTube system. There’s bad actors watching what we do and if we step too close to dangerous territory, they fight back. Comment safely, everybody <3

  48. 48.

    rodwell

    I still believe that Joe would have beaten Trump this year.  But during this period when all the forces there was no mentioned of VP Harris as the nominee.  This convinces me that was a ratf*cking operation.  It was led by the news media, billionaires and Putin.  When Joe withdrew and designated Harris as his successor (who I fully support) and all the party rallied around her, it threw all of them of curveball that they are still processing.  The fact that Kamala and the campaign had an excellent rollout has really gotten them confused.  Also, it helps that JD Vance is really a weird person.

  49. 49.

    lowtechcyclist

    It’s Good to Be A Democrat (Especially Now)

    A hell of a lot better time to be a Democrat than this time last week, that’s for damn sure!

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    A friend of mine turned to me and said, “SHE’S A TRANSFORMER!”

    She’s certainly transformed the race!

  50. 50.

    piratedan

    @Eyeroller: I was not a proponent of JB stepping down…. initially.  No need to rehash that here.  Am I encouraged by what has happened since.  Damn straight.  I have no illusions that the problem is to defeat not just Trump, but the entire GOP and the people and organizations that give them substance.

    If Ms. Harris is the means by which we do so in the eyes of the majority, then I’ll man the barricades with everyone else and keep working for the end goals that we all want.

    let people be who they want, worship how they wish, love who they want and help those that need help.  It seems to me that if we’re the richest nation in the world, we can do these things AND have nice roads, fast internet service and bridges and buildings we can trust.

  52. 52.

    Starfish

    @Geminid: There is a lot of generational divide going on in the YIMBY/NIMBY debate.

    The NIMBYs are usually older and looking for their house to be a stock and go up in value aggressively. They may just not like change that they are seeing around them. They like to blame the YIMBYs for being in cahoots with those “greedy” developers.

    The YIMBYs are seeing their communities grow older and seeing their school districts shrink because people in their own age group cannot afford houses.  They want towns to be walkable like European cities that existed before cars.

  53. 53.

    artem1s

    @ArchTeryx: ​ 
    Vance was pretty much an unknown except for the book and movie. He carpetbagged his way into the Senate. Mandel had the GOP primary wrapped until Theil bought him TCFG’s endorsement. Ryan dropped the ball not canvassing in Cuyahoga and Summit counties enough. He thought he could swing white GOPer ‘I got mine fuck you’ retired steel workers – you know – Cletus safari diners.

  58. 58.

    Princess

    Here’s a concern about Harris I had that has gone *pouf* in the last week. I always thought her comms team was weak. Her social media presence was boring though serious and it didn’t reveal much of her personality. I realize now (as I sort of wondered) that this was a deliberate choice as VP, not to out-funny and out-personality the president. All her comms over the last week have been stellar – her slogans, her speeches, her social media clap-backs. Highly professional and well thought out. I always thought she’d be a great president but I wasn’t as sure she was a canny politician. No worries on that score now.

  59. 59.

    clay

    @Scout211:

    “I’m a little surprised they didn’t vet him as thoroughly as they should have, or if they did, did they not know he was writing the forward to Kevin Roberts’ book,” said a Republican strategist and veteran of multiple presidential campaigns,

    Well, Mr. Republican Strategist, if you’re surprised that the Trump campaign did a lazy, half-assed job, then you haven’t been paying attention over the past…. holy crap nine years?!?

  60. 60.

    danielx

    @Leto: ​
     

    The Republican puke mill will surely put something out worse soon enough.

    God’s own truth. I’ve seen the nastiest American politics to be seen for five decades and I suspect the next hundred days will by far the nastiest and ugliest with Republicans doing their best/worst cornered rabid rats impressions.

    On the other hand, considering how I felt a week ago with the way I feel today is night and day. I don’t know that Kamala will crush TFG like a grape, electorally speaking, but it sure feels that way.

  62. 62.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Starfish: The NIMBYs may also have memories of the opposition to terrible highway and “urban renewal” projects in the 20th century that make them intuitively think of this as the progressive side to be in.

  63. 63.

    lowtechcyclist

    @clay:

    Well, Mr. Republican Strategist, if you’re surprised that the Trump campaign did a lazy, half-assed job, then you haven’t been paying attention over the past…. holy crap nine years?!?

    Indeed!

    And any money for paying other people to do a good job for him while he plays golf is instead going to pay his lawyers.  Anyone paying attention would know that there’s hardly a campaign organization to do the work for him.

  65. 65.

    Geminid

    @Starfish: I catch a little bit of this debate through Twitter commenters like Samantha Hancock-Li. I think she writes longer-form pieces about housing and land use for an internet site.

    I like Hancock-Li’s sense of humor. She self-describes as a “NeonLiberal” in her Twitter heading. She once joked about the “Nudes in Bio” offer common to some sexy-woman Twitter accounts. Hancock-Li typed:

    □l□a□n□d□t□a□x□i□n□b□i□o□

  66. 66.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Princess: Black Twitter, IG and Tik-Tok got her back.  And they (and young people in general) are the biggest creators of viral memes.  We have a damn army of creativity on our side.

    A couple good IG Reels examples:

    JD Vance, “Let’s Go Couch Fucking”

    Fugly Jeans

    This shit is amazing!!

  67. 67.

    zhena gogolia

    @HumboldtBlue: I still won’t forgive him. Whatever was going on behind the scenes, Ocasio-Cortez and some others maintained dignity and decorum when speaking to the media.

  68. 68.

    Chet Murthy

    ugh.

    .@BernieSanders at West Lebanon N.H. town hall: “She (Harris) is not going to win this election and she is going to have a very difficult time winning unless she begins to speak forcefully about the needs of the long-neglected working class of this country.” #nhpolitics
    — Kevin Landrigan (@KlandriganUL) July 26, 2024

  69. 69.

    zhena gogolia

    @rodwell: Yes, I think people have memory-holed the fact that NONE of them was mentioning Harris as the nominee. And then there was “we don’t want a coronation.”

  70. 70.

    Eyeroller

    @Princess: It’s pretty much the same team.  As somebody put it (paraphrased), “maybe comms is a profession and you adapt your messaging to the client.”

  72. 72.

    wjca

    @The Thin Black Duke: A friend of mine turned to me and said, “SHE’S A TRANSFORMER!

    Comment soon to be picked up by all the media to the right of Faux News, edited to “SHE’S A TRANSFORMER!”

  73. 73.

    zhena gogolia

    @Chet Murthy: Do we know what comes before the first phrase? Was there an “if” clause as in the second sentence?

    I guess I can give up my brief admiration of Sanders, if not.

    ETA: Okay, re-reading it, I guess it’s an “unless” clause, which somewhat softens the first phrase. But God, STFU, Bernie.

  74. 74.

    Kay

    Fox News Wisconsin Senate Poll Tammy Baldwin 54% Eric Hovde 43%

    Fox News Michigan Senate Poll Elissa Slotkin 51% Mike Rogers 46%

  75. 75.

    Eyeroller

    @zhena gogolia: They did not need to humiliate Biden publicly and feed the conspiracy theories about his mental capabilities (which BTW VP Harris will be asked about at some point).

  76. 76.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Is there any way that we could avoid rehashing the “Biden out” drama in more threads today?

  78. 78.

    BR

    Folks shouldn’t take Ed Zitron seriously — he’s a really good at writing narratives that sound righteous and feel good but he’s not too different from NYT in that he picks his narratives first and then finds facts to fit them. Broken clocks and all that. (Also he’s a moral scold — lately scolding people about the couch jokes.)

  79. 79.

    trollhattan

    @rodwell:

    Was working on myself to have that belief too, given the months between now and the election and Donny’s propensity to mess up. The media, I believe were dialed fully into parsing Biden’s every waking moment and making each misstep the top of the fold story, until November. Donny expected a free ride and he was right.

    Dark Brandon’s pulling out completely erases the entire etch-a-sketch. Now Trump is in real danger of torpedoing his own campaign and has just the wingman to help.

  80. 80.

    trollhattan

    @Kay: Great news!

    I forget about Tammy Baldwin and then recall how frickin’ amazing she is. Nice to see her Cheeseheads agree.

  82. 82.

    Geminid

    @Kay: Unlike Eric Hovde, Mike Rogers ought to be a strong candidate. Looks like Rep. Slotkin is stronger.

    Slotkin is another talented member of the House Class of 2018. I suspect there will be more Senators coming out of that group, Maybe some Governors too. Rep. Spanberger will probably be both.

  84. 84.

    Eyeroller

    @zhena gogolia: So far the media has been unable to find a line of attack on Harris, but they will.  Our weak to nonexistent defense of Biden concerns me.  Harris is much more popular so has an advantage for now.  And I am hoping they won’t be able to zero in on anything before the election, because it takes some time for a Narrative to take hold.  But I can see them (especially the FTFNYT) casting around for something.  That’s the major issue here IMHO.

  86. 86.

    trollhattan

    @Omnes Omnibus: Do you reckon newly minted NMFTG Dark Brandon has some things in store between now and January? I’d like to think there’s a Round II To-Do list he’s eying.

  87. 87.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Chet Murthy: Ah, he’s just putting in a word for some old-fashioned class politics. Well, Bernie gotta Bernie. I know he and Biden are buds but I can’t imagine Harris *not* following through on Biden’s sympathy to labor.

  89. 89.

    BR

    @Chet Murthy: ​
    The problem with Bernie is he only believes that his own rhetorical style is the right way to talk about these issues. Harris talks about the needs of the working class constantly, but in her own language. And she does it for the *whole* working class, which is these days half non-white, whereas Bernie never figured out how to do that.

  90. 90.

    Harrison Wesley

    “Kamala!  What is best in life?”

    “To crush the MAGA, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of the New York Times.”

  91. 91.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Matt McIrvin:

    JD Vance once told a four year old that “he would fail at everything,” adding that he “could not wait to watch.”

    Such a funny joke. I’m slapping my knee, gasping for air, weeping with mirth, rolling on the floor. Those wacky, nutty, droll Republicans.

  92. 92.

    Starfish

    @Chet Murthy: I am skeptical of this quote. Sanders has been quite solid for a while (as has much of the left half of the Democratic Party), and I bet he is being selectively quoted by someone who wants to hate on him.

  94. 94.

    Chet Murthy

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Ah, he’s just putting in a word for some old-fashioned class politics.

    No, he didn’t say this about BIden, did he?  This is sexism, pure and simple.

  98. 98.

    Matt McIrvin

    @BR: He also lives in a very white, mostly rural state with a kind of unusual political situation, and he imagine what works there will work everywhere. It’s a good place for class-over-identity leftism.

  100. 100.

    The Thin Black Duke

    Here’s a thought:

    Besides Thiel’s money, maybe Trump’s crew figured that Vance would be the young hungry pitbull able to handle the rigors of the campaign trail, since Trump wasn’t physically/cognitively to deal with it anymore. Vance would be the face of the new generation of the GOP.

    Looks like the couch woulda done a better job.

  102. 102.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Old School: “#ADOS” is an old troll campaign from 2020 that means “Harris isn’t black enough.” I recall the Russians pumping it up.

  104. 104.

    sdhays

    @Chet Murthy: Bernie was doing so well, figuring out that pushing from inside the tent instead of hectoring the people inside the tent was a lot more effective. I guess it was mostly his good relationship with Biden.

    Sigh.

  105. 105.

    Old School

    @SiubhanDuinne: I think it’s a joke in the sense of “Everyday a story that’s equivalent of ‘Vance insults a 4 year-old’ comes out.”  Not that he actually did that.

  107. 107.

    KatKapCC

    FYI for anyone who signed up for the Sunday night organizing call, just got this email:

    Due to an unprecedented number of RSVPs, our First Women for Harris National Organizing Call will now take place on MONDAY, July 29th at 7:00 PM ET.
    If you signed up for the Sunday call, you DO NOT have to re-register. Please help us spread the word by sharing this event link with your friends and on social media.
    Thank you for your understanding and patience. We are going to win this election — together.
    – Rhonda Foxx, Harris National Women Engagement Director

  108. 108.

    rodwell

    @trollhattan:

    Yes, and plus the degradation of the Republican party apparatus under Trump.  Anybody who is competent has left or been pushed aside.  In 2016, Trump wanted Chris Christie as his running mate, which made no sense.  Two NY/NJ guys on national ticket.  I am from NJ and we hate Trump, but we really hate Christie.  As much as Paul Manafort is a traitorous POS, he is competent.  Picking Pence was the right call for 2016.

  109. 109.

    NaijaGal

    You know, that Kerri Strug vault clip with an injured leg from the 96 Olympics (in the Seneca Project ad) still makes me tear up all these years later.  We definitely must win this fall.

  110. 110.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Chet Murthy:

    What, aren’t multiple union endorsements good enough for him?

    And I understand his position and I see his point, but there were way better ways to phrase that

  111. 111.

    West of the Rockies

    I hope Vance follows DeSantis in terms of rollout:  from hyped to horrific, a litany of awkward interviews,  mannerisms, the creepy laugh, as it becomes clear that the more you know, the more repellant he becomes.

  112. 112.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: Sanders is a Marxist and has been since early adulthood. He knew he had to keep it on the down-low once he got a foothold in electoral politics.

  113. 113.

    zhena gogolia

    @West of the Rockies: He really is reminding me of DeSantis in this way. When you just read about the guy and haven’t seen a clip, you shake in your boots. And then 30 seconds of video and you realize there’s nothing but negative charisma. (Thinking of “Diet Mountain Dew,” which I think is the first video I’ve seen of him.)

  114. 114.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    I’m shocked! I’m shocked!  Bernie is hostile to women and POC – who could have known.

  117. 117.

    Sister Golden Bear

    For rikyrah if you’re up. Derek Guy (the Twitter men’s fashion guy) has a great thread about how Ralph Lauren’s Team USA uniforms connect to our heritage, culture and history via the language of dress. tl;dr version:

    The blazer and Oxford button down shirt are call outs to the more causal “natural” silhouette of American-tailored suits (i.e. the classic Brooks Brothers’ sack suit), as well as the Ivy League “rowing blazers” which were worn by rowing clubs for sports events and featured lapel trims and pocket patches in school colors.

    [W]hat do we see on the US Olympics team uniform? A club blazer traditionally worn for sport. The trim is striped with our national flag colors (our club). A patch on the right side shows this is for the Olympics team (and yes, I could do without the [Ralph Lauren brand] pony, but oh well)…

    Whereas tailoring represents the history of America’s upwardly mobile class, blue jeans represents the laborers…. Strauss made durable five-pocket pants from blue denim and copper rivets for the miners trying to strike a fortune during California’s Gold Rush. This was the birth of blue jeans—what would later come to symbolize a certain kind of working-class romanticism….

    The merging of the navy club blazer with blue jeans is totally natural, not just in terms of showing the two sides of American history, but also because Americans have always sought to dress things down. The American spirit is less formal than our European counterparts….

    This casual spirit is nicely carried through in their use of a knit tie [worn by men athletes] —the most casual form of traditional neckwear… Finally, we get to the white shoes, which are called white bucks because they were historically made from buckskin (nowadays more commonly made from calf suede). Like with the club blazer, this derives from elite campus dress common in the early to mid-20th century.

    So yeah, a bit old-fashioned, but very deliberately so. One can quibble over the WASPy focus, but that’s Ralph Lauren’s thing even if he himself is a Jewish kid from the Bronx..

  118. 118.

    TS

    I never thought Obama could win, even towards the end of that campaign, so I’m now convinced Kamala will win – except for the attempts to supress the democratic vote which will come from the red/purple states. I can still remember the queues in Florida at 1am with people still in line waiting to vote for President Obama. Given I have never waited more than 15 minutes to vote, those pictures are engraved on my memory.

  120. 120.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Geminid: It was casting aspersions on her Afro-Caribbean/Indian ancestry. Regardless, I recall “ADOS” failing miserably and Black people mostly laughing at it.

  121. 121.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Geminid: The weird way that a chunk of the supposed far left coalesced around reactionary anti-feminist politics in 2016 is something I’m not going to forget. Maybe it had more to do with him personally than I thought?

  122. 122.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Old School: I hear ADOS mentioned derisively on the black podcasts I listen to, all the time.  My understanding is that it’s part of the Hotep wing of Black Liberation that is super-misogynist and loves to shit on black women.  So of course they are hating on Harris.

  123. 123.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: The ADOS movement arose independently of Harris’s 2020 campaign, I think. A wedge operation with general application. Ragnarok Lobster likes bashing the “ashy Hoteps” who push it.

  124. 124.

    Anyway

    @Matt McIrvin: I remember Ann Coulter gleefully pushing ADOS in 2020 — they keep looking for the one trick that will peel away black voters from the Democratic party

  126. 126.

    Bill Arnold

    @Harrison Wesley:
    The exaltation of Inana (Inana B) (To be delivered by a Sumerian priestess.)

    …
    With your strength, my lady, teeth can crush flint. You charge forward like a charging storm. You roar with the roaring storm, you continually thunder with Ickur. You spread exhaustion with the stormwinds, while your own feet remain tireless. With the lamenting balaj drum a lament is struck up.
    …

  128. 128.

    Citizen Alan

    @Old School: He Is just such a gross individual that I would be hard pressed to not believe any bad thing.I hear about him. I mean, whether it was in his book or not, is the idea of him fucking a couch as a teenager that implausible? Or that he would be gratuitously cruel to a four year old child, for no reason?

  131. 131.

    Starfish

    @UncleEbeneezer: When I was an “on Twitter” person, there was one actual southern ADOS person who was not terrible. It was Leo Carney who writes articles for the Mississippi Free Press.

    The intent of the movement was that American Descendants of Slavery had an experience that was unique and different from that of first generation Black immigrants.

    There was some suspicion that ADOS was being propped up by Russian disinformation networks, but at least one paper suggesting that has been retracted.

    At the time I was reading a lot of Ragnarok Lobster bashing ADOS, like Geminid is talking about.

  132. 132.

    West of the Rockies

    @zhena gogolia:

    Vance just seems like a dour scold, a dreary and dull would-be moral policeman festooned in vanity and masculine toxicity.

  134. 134.

    Quinerly

     

    @Starfish: he was just on MSNBC saying the same thing. I think it’s his the second appearance today saying Biden is the only one of the two who understands the working class. Kamala and the Dem Party don’t.

  136. 136.

    MomSense

    @BR:

    Biden was Bernie’s only friend in the Senate.  The others all find him insufferable.  He had more influence and better committee assignments when Biden was president than before and he will not have them after.  His support of Biden was all self-interest.  He is not a team player.

  139. 139.

    Princess

    @Quinerly: Sounds like misogynoir to me. Not surprising from Bernie. He thinks the working class is white guys from Scranton and that’s it.

  142. 142.

    K-Mo

    @cain: Some entries from my Biden inauguration playlist:

    Never Going Back Again (Fleetwood Mac)

    Hard Times Come Again No More (Yoyo Ma, James Taylor etal)

    We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together ( Taylor Swift)

  143. 143.

    Aurora S

    @Eyeroller: I agree about Biden being able to win, if we would’ve all supported him. The very biggest problem of the whole affair was the incredibly public shitshow and pile-on led by the NYT, self-important podcasters, and various beltway media figures that panicked and knifed Joe Biden rather than addressing the obvious fascist in the room, all of FOUR MONTHS from Election Day. The house is on fire, yet true to form, the Dems have been standing outside slap-fighting about how best to put it out. It wasn’t an attachment to Joe Biden, but the shittiness and giant gamble with people’s lives this (still) is. If we may remember, many of these folks were also going on about how we just *needed* to knife Harris, too. Because Reasons.

    I won’t flush that down the memory hole, or give anyone “amnesty”, or any of that. All of that can wait until after Election Day—we need to present a United front to defeat the fascists before literally anything else. IF this gamble pays off, and it absolutely better, we need to have a big conversation about collective action and priorities and circular firing squads and the inappropriateness of throwing our own into the volcano and how to deal with a mainstream media that is not our friend. We need to do so even if it doesn’t. The people on our side that made Biden’s stepping down inevitable need to own up to the fact that they were playing fast and loose with people’s actual lives, even if we do get lucky and it pays off in the end. Will that happen? Absolutely fucking not, I fully expect victory laps and chiding about how we were wrong, they were right, everything turned out fine, and *we* were out of line for doubting their wisdom. I expect demands that *we* must declare “bygones”. And that’s already kind of happening, even though we’re not out of the woods by any means.

  144. 144.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    yimbys:

    Glibertarians wound up a crop of mostly young, white, entitled dudebros, who were already predisposed to be pricks and told them they’re doing the work of MLK Jr on housing.

    Stancil is one of those.  Hopefully he’ll lose and go back to being a 2nd rate Yglesias or Noah Opinion clown on twitter.

    FYI, the original astroturf group (and that’s what they are) in CA was massively funded by Peter Thiel.  More recently, a northern VA group working to ram thru zoning no actual resident wants in Arlington also turns out to get funding from one of Thiel’s groups.

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