Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

This blog will pay for itself.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

“woke” is the new caravan.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

When I was faster i was always behind.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Kamala Harris’ Concession Speech

Wednesday Evening Open Thread: Kamala Harris’ Concession Speech

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114Comments

  1. 1.

    japa21

    Only caught the end couple minutes.  A very bittersweet moment.  Still able to laugh.  I doubt I could.

  3. 3.

    lowtechcyclist

    It was a good speech, but I had to click away after six or seven minutes because I was getting depressed – not because it was a depressing speech, but it brought home the reality of what’s about to happen.

    Right now, I’m self-medicating with alcohol, so I’m feeling no pain. But I would say the election of Trump to a second term, in the full knowledge of who he is and what he intends to do, is the worst thing that’s happened to this country in the 70 years I’ve been alive.

    Props to Kamala for being able to hold it together long enough to give that speech. That’s way more than I could have done.

  8. 8.

    Belafon

    Would FDR had made it to his second term if the stock market crash had occurred on October 29, 1932, even if he had done everything else the same during his four years?

  10. 10.

    New Deal democrat

    From Gabriel Milland:

    https://bsky.app/profile/gabrielmilland.bsky.social/post/3laayms5dxt2z

    “Been in love with America much of my life. From films before I lived there, then from the kindness and warmth I encountered from that time and dozens of subsequent trips. I did two degrees in American history. But tonight, I’m out of love.”

    On another topic, if you are in a same sex marriage, assume that it will be voided by the Supreme Court in the next two years. Check your State laws: do they, and most importantly, your Constitution, ultimately grant the right to marry the same sex? If not, get your marriage legitimized by such a State, and have contingency plans to move to one.

  13. 13.

    frosty

    @schrodingers_cat: The only speech I watched in full was the one on the Ellipse because I was there. Somewhere in the overflow, on a big TV screen, through the trees and the tall people. It was good.

  15. 15.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I don’t know what’s next for MVP. She’s still on the young side, and I hope she stays active in public life. Don’t know whether it would be an elected position or something like a university president, or CEO of an NPO/NGO, or what — but I want her to be doing something that intersects somehow with my life. Of course, if she wants to take a few months out of public view in order to write a memoir of her years in the vice-presidency/presidential candidacy, I have no objection. And I would definitely pre-order the book!

  16. 16.

    cain

    I do find it interesting that a male influencer like Rogan seems to have a larger voice than Beyonce and Taylor Swift and a host of female music singers.

    With all these influencers, our team didn’t show up. I’d love to know why that is.

  19. 19.

    RaflW

    I got and read her email a bit ago. I think she ran an excellent campaign, and is a very good politician. I don’t think I can watch the video, though. I wish her well, and I hope she’s really in for the fight. It’s gonna be rough.

  26. 26.

    RaflW

    @Baud: If it’s about his ‘Dems abandoned working class people’ I dunno what to say other than something needlessly rude to Bernie.

    Biden did more for union workers than any Dem in my living memory. Hourly wage growth under Biden was very good. Fucking Manchin killed the child tax credit.

    That he didn’t do enough to make Sanders shut up is just not of any interest to me.

  27. 27.

    Old School

    It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change.And they’re right. pic.twitter.com/lM2gSJmQFL— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) November 6, 2024

  31. 31.

    Baud

    @RaflW:

    Yeah, I don’t care about anyone but my own. People have a right to make their own decisions, and if they decide Republicans are better for them, I respect that.

  34. 34.

    frosty

    @Baud: I read the quote below. Give me a fucking break. Abandoned the working class? Just to start with, I staged all my GOTV out of the IBEW hall. Fuck him sideways.

    ETA And with that, I’m off for awhile. I’ll see some of you at 8 EST maybe.

  37. 37.

    E.

    Her speech was terrifying. Maybe it’s just me but the part about the “dark times” ahead was really eerie, like it is the line future historians will quote to help explain what happened next. I am so troubled by all this and am grasping for reasons my fears are overblown, but there has been an inflection point. I cried when she started to speak. She could have been the president.

  38. 38.

    Joy in FL

    @ActiveDad: Thanks. I clicked the link and read enough to want to subscribe to the newsletter. (comment #20)  It’s mostly too intense and raw for me to take in much for now, but I think going forward it will be a good resource.

  40. 40.

    Elizabelle

    She is my President.

    Thank you, Anne Laurie.  I can’t watch it yet, though.  So grateful she and Tim Walz ran, and much love and respect for Joe Biden.

  44. 44.

    Geminid

    @frosty: Bernie Sanders’ experience in the working class was as a part-time jackleg carpenter back in the 1970s. Even then he spent most of his time driving around Vermont talking up some third party.

    Bernie Sanders is a member of the chattering class. When Sanders first made his way into Congress with the NRA’s help, that was the second real job he’d held for more than a few months, the first being Mayor of Burlington. And he was over 50 years old!

    Since then he’s been nothing but talk and ego-driven troublemaking. Without the platform Vermont voters keep giving him, Sanders would be a nobody. So what the hell does Bernie Sanders really know about the working class?

  46. 46.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Old School: apparently Bernie hasn’t read Project 2025. I am sure getting rid of overtime and collective bargaining is a good thing for workers. Even the fucking Teamsters whose pensions Biden saved with Harris’ tie breaking vote couldn’t endorse Harris. What did Bernie do about that?

  47. 47.

    catclub

    @cain: With all these influencers, our team didn’t show up. I’d love to know why that is.

     

    I would say that apparently a quarter of the voters who voted for Biden in 2020 were simply pissed at Covid and Trump for Trump not fixing it.  But they cared nothing for Biden or the Democrats.

     

    Now they are pissed about the price of eggs.

  49. 49.

    Quinerly

    I am sure this will appeal to at least 3-4 commenters here:

    “Philadelphia Democratic Chair Bob Brady blamed Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign for what looked like the lowest performance by a Democratic presidential candidate in the city in the last two decades and said he felt no responsibility for the red wave that descended on the state.

    ‘They never dealt with us. They didn’t show us any respect. I never talked to the lady, and she’s the candidate,”’Brady said of Harris.

    He said he thought President Joe Biden should probably have remained the candidate.

    He argued Gov. Josh Shapiro should have been Harris’ vice presidential pick. He said Democrats needed a ‘better candidate,’ referencing Harris.

    And he said ward leaders in the city felt disrespected, implying that could have impacted how hard they worked for her in the city.”

    https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/live/2024-election-pennsylvania-results-updates-news-20241106.html/card-1681963278

  50. 50.

    eemom

    My blood pressure was doing reasonably well today until media fuckscum and others started blaming Kamala Harris for the white supremacy and misogyny that wrought this horror.

  51. 51.

    Quinerly

    @Quinerly:

    All we need is one of Trump’s songs from his pilfered playlist. “It’s a  Man’s, Man’s Man’s World.” Cue James Brown.

  53. 53.

    PsiFighter37

    @Quinerly: Bob Brady sucks ass. He sucked when I went to college in Philly 20 years ago, and apparently he still sucks now. He’s a long-past-sell-date machine politician.

  54. 54.

    Chris

    @Old School:

    God, fuck that asshole.  He did exactly the same thing in 2016, the minute Hillary lost he was on the air scolding her about how it wasn’t enough to just say “vote for me I’m a woman,” and then spent the next four years sniping from the sidelines and refusing to pull his weight on anything.

    Somewhat to his credit he’s never been the active saboteur that centrists like Manchin, Sinema, or Lieberman have.  He endorses come election time and he supports Democratic presidents when in office.

    But being better than Manchin or fucking Sinema is a pretty low bar.

  56. 56.

    Chris

    @catclub:

    Now they are pissed about the price of eggs.

    It’s so fucking ridiculous.  The excuses people come up with to not vote Democrat just keep getting more and more piddling, and we’re still all supposed to nod and play along and pretend that the asshole whining about the price of eggs should be treated like a traumatized refugee who got his limbs blown off.

    I’m economically anxious too.  I buy groceries too.  It’s higher than it was, but it’s nowhere near the fucking Weimar Republic it’s being portrayed as; most of it is just “things get more expensive over time, like they always have.”  I remember when I first started to drive and I could fill up my tank with twenty dollars.  Some years after that, it was thirty dollars.  Because even in the Great Recession, prices rose.  Even as ridiculous as politics were getting, nobody thought to blame it on the President.

    Where the fuck does it end?

  57. 57.

    Quizzical

    A fine speech.. but the speech of a loser. That’s not really the speech you want to hear.

    The lessons of this election are not complex or obscure; they are in plain sight. Trump barked every day for years about everything that regular people were pissed off about and many that he simply invented  and he got daily news coverage for doing it. Right or wrong, honest of deceptive, nice or mean – doesn’t matter.. the press gave him space. His name was on every single news feed multiple times every single day.

    Biden sat in silence for four years in his own world.

  58. 58.

    Quizzical

    @Chris:

    It’s the economy, stupid. All the moral goals, fairness goals, save-the-planet goals are fine things but the engine of politics is not a high-minded thing. It is down to earth basic. Sometimes it may rise above that but that’s an exceptional thing.

  63. 63.

    Quinerly

    @frosty: I am now off down a rabbit hole looking for info on HRC’s loss in PA in 2016 for comparison and for this Brady assshole.

  67. 67.

    sab

    @Quinerly: It seems to me that local political leaders bear a big reponsibility for getting out the vote in their own town. If the voters didn’t come out he and his folks failed her and us, not vice versa. Or he sabotaged her. More of the male “respect” games.

  69. 69.

    Harrison Wesley

    @Quinerly: Fast Eddie?  Dunno about today.  Back when he was mayor, one of my drinking buddies was a cop who knew the cops on Ed’s security detail.  They told him most of Eddie’s buddies were Republicans.  Yeah, I know, third-hand rumor…..

  70. 70.

    Ramona

    @Trivia Man: Ooh, ooh, she could pardon Hunter and all those on federal death row and preemptively pardon Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Stormy Daniels and all those on Hitler II’s enemy list.

  71. 71.

    Jay

    I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

    “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

  72. 72.

    KatKapCC

    I can’t watch it. I feel like a traitor but I can’t. I’ve spent the whole day crying and I’m trying to find some way to pull it together. Fuck this fucking country. Let North Korea nuke us for all I care.

  73. 73.

    rebelsdad

    In August a social worker in New Jersey had to pay $6 for a box of cereal, so she switched from Biden to Trump. She actually said this to me.

  74. 74.

    Ramona

    @KatKapCC: don’t feel guilty about finding something to do that will give you a little pleasure. I just now started listening to this excellently narrated audiobook of Iris Murdoch’s, “The Sea, the sea”. You are a part of this community and in the days that follow, we shall collectively figure out what to do. I think it was Max Weber who said that politics was the slow boring of boards. We and future generations will be engaged in it for as long as human life continues on this planet and there are still many useful and effective things there for us to learn. Madam VP is oh so right when she tells us not to give in to despair.

  80. 80.

    Mai Naem mobile

    The single solitary silver lining I see in this loss is that I’ve been thinking we’re due for a recession and its going to happen under a GOP administration. Ofcourse TFG will try to blame it on Biden but in general people blame the person who’s in power. They won’t care about who TFG will blame it on.

  83. 83.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @geg6:

    He’s throwing Biden under the bus with this BS statement too when he did so much workers, the middle class, and the poor. He never mentions that this is a troubling trend worldwide and isn’t unique to the United States. It’s he’s still operating in a pre-2016 world

  84. 84.

    TheflipPsyd

    @Quinerly: Bob Brady has been an ahole for a very long time. As someone who lived in Philly until I was 35, the democratic machine and party is and has been corrupt as f***. Most of the party leaders are only out for themselves.

    Edited for clarity

  85. 85.

    Jackie

    Eugene Vidman’s the declared winner of his congressional seat. That’s a shimmer of good news.

  89. 89.

    Harrison Wesley

    @Quinerly: Knew about his wife being a judge.  Didn’t know about the divorce (although not surprised) nor the Parkinson’s (which I wouldn’t wish on anybody).  Sometimes I forget that I’m an Old.

  90. 90.

    Harrison Wesley

    @TheflipPsyd:  “All our municipal governments are more or less bad.  Philadelphia is simply the most corrupt and the most contented.” – Lincoln Steffens, 1903

    Apparently that’s changed; in the last few years, Philly has become one of the least corrupt major cities.  Maybe because I left?

  91. 91.

    Harrison Wesley

    @TheflipPsyd: I do remember that he had a problem keeping his hands (and maybe other parts) off of women.  I know after he was guv he went pundit, but I never followed him there, so all info is pretty dated.

  92. 92.

    Betty

    Was notified by the ACLU today that my overseas absentee ballot in PA is being challenged. This is apparently part of a mass challenge. Some counties have already rejected the challenges, but mine, Cumberland County, has not. It probably has no impact on the election, but it sure angers me. They suggested I write to the elections bureau to confirm my right to vote. These ugly people!

  93. 93.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Jay: oh, yeah. I’ve been having an ongoing discussion with a couple of friends for a couple of years now because of this crazy economy. One of them is into history and thinks these past few years are the go-go twenties to be followed by a great depression.  I keep on meaning to read books about the economic period as from around ww1 to the great depression and have not gotten around to it.

  94. 94.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Harrison Wesley: i just remember him being quite anti-Obama when HRC was running. Him and Bob Kerrey left a really bad taste in my mouth. I remember seeing Bob Kerrey on Morning Joe calling Obama ‘Barack Hussein Obama.’

  96. 96.

    Jay

    @Mai Naem mobile:

    Project 2025 is going to destroy the US Workforce, the tariffs will triple and quadruple costs costs for everything, deportations will destroy ag, construction and small business and of course, nobody is going to want to be a US Trade Partner or Security Partner.

  98. 98.

    Lily

    @Betty:  Suppress the vote and slow down the count  is the modern GOP substitute for local GOTV work.

    Timothy Snyder (on substack) wrote

    It appears that Russia communicated bomb threats to polling stations in five states: Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.  We are talking about dozens of actions, all in all. I don’t think the details of all of these threats have yet been reported, let alone assimilated.

    In Fulton County, Georgia, no fewer than thirty-two polling stations had to deal with bomb threats.  We know that five polling stations in Dekalb County, Georgia, were targeted by bomb threats. 

    Wisconsin and Michigan each had to deal with multiple bomb threats. We know that a polling place in West Chester, Pennsylvania was evacuated, and that another threat targeted Clearfield County, Pennsylvania.  In Arizona, four sites in Navajo County were targeted.  Presumably there was more and we will learn more.

    In some of these cases, there was consideration disruption.  We do not know how many people left lines and did not return.  We do not know how many people were frightened away from voting.  The only way to find out is to provide an adequate remedy.  Some polling stations were kept open a bit longer.

    It seems to me that, in every county where this happened, the vote should be extended by a full day, through Wednesday.

    https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-russian-bomb-threats

  101. 101.

    mrmoshpotato

    @KatKapCC:

    “We want to congratulate President Trump and Senator Vance on their victory.”

    Fuck off, Obama. Easy for your rich ass to say.

    Thirded!

  103. 103.

    mrmoshpotato

    @KatKapCC: No need to feel bad about not being able to watch Kamala’s concession speech.  Especially not so soon after.

    Eight years later, I still haven’t watched Hillary’s concession speech, nor listened to it, nor read a transcript of it.  And I probably never will.

  105. 105.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Jay: its the security part that concerns me. I don’t think Americans have a clue as to how privileged we are as having the safe haven currency. We lose that and our wonderful credit economy goes up in flames. I’ve been on Kiva the micro lending site for 20+ years and its a real eye opener when you look at the rates the lending orgs charge the borrowers. Keep in mind these are non-profit NGOs trying to stimulate economic development and self sufficiency. They charge 20-60% interest! They don’t get to buy new cars with 8% loans and houses with <7% 30 yr loans.

  107. 107.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Lily: and magically they only affect Dem leaning sites. Not one bomb threat called into a GOP heavy  site. Oh, and the FBI is worthless. After the Kavanaugh stuff and the stuff that came out of the NY Trumplandia office, my trust in the FBI is zero.

  109. 109.

    Aussie Sheila

    @zhena gogolia:

    Re Bernie.

    Hard agree. He’s the Jeremy Corbyn of Jeremy Corbyn’s.

    At this point his schtick is as narcissistic as you know who.

    Far from assisting working class organising he spends all his time undermining any decent political coalition that might deliver something. I know he was supportive of Biden, but really, Biden didn’t need him.

  110. 110.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Jay: i forgot crypto. I was listening to a history piece on Charles Ponzi and how the Ponzi scheme went down. Crypto may not be a Ponzi scheme but it is a scam. I expect a huge crypto scam scandal go down during TFG’s term.

  111. 111.

    TooManyJens

    God damn, the Harris campaign didn’t pull any punches responding to Brady’s bitching:

    Brendan McPhillips, a senior adviser to the Harris campaign in Pennsylvania, said in a statement that the vice president’s team “knocked more than two million doors in the weekend leading up to Election Day, which is two million more doors than Bob Brady’s organization can claim to have knocked during his entire tenure as party chairman.”

    McPhillips added: “If there’s any immediate takeaway from Philadelphia’s turnout this cycle, it is that Chairman Brady’s decades-long practice of fleecing campaigns for money to make up for his own lack of fundraising ability or leadership is a worthless endeavor that no future campaign should ever be forced to entertain again.”

    https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/kamala-harris-campaign-criticism-bob-brady-20241106.html

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