Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
From NotMax
Okay, folks. Taking all comments about a NYC meet-up into consideration, how about this?
When: Saturday, August 31st.
Where: Pershing Square Cafe (across the street from Grand Central).
Time: 5 p.m. until ??
This meetup post is in the sidebar so you can easily continue the discussion after the post is off the front page.
Open thread!
Eugene Robinson, at the Washington Post — “Harris plants her flag in Chicago: The future is now”:
It is Kamala Harris’s Democratic Party now. The United Center here has had its roof blown off before, but seldom as explosively as it did on Thursday night. When Harris accepted the Democratic convention’s nomination for president, the hall erupted the way it did when NBA legend Michael Jordan would commit some jaw-dropping violation of the law of gravity.
She and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will lead the party in a crusade that Harris called “a fight for America’s future.” The beginning of Harris’s speech was autobiographical and the end was political, but a good deal of the middle was prosecutorial: She laid out the case against ever allowing Donald Trump back into the White House.
The arena was perhaps at its loudest when she led the crowd in what has become a rallying cry: “We’re not going back!”…
Harris is the embodiment of the nation’s diversity, complexity and multiculturalism. She is a mirror, reflecting not America’s future but its present. The election might hinge on whether Trump can make voters feel unnerved or frightened by what they see.
Much of the evening was clearly aimed at independents and Trump-weary Republicans, offering reassurance and creating a permission structure allowing them to vote for a Democrat. This moment is “a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism and divisive battles of the past,” Harris said. “I know there are people of various political views watching tonight. And I want you to know: I promise to be a president for all Americans.”…
Around midday on Thursday, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was hurrying along the suite-level corridor of the United Center, fresh from a television appearance, family entourage in tow. I asked how she thought the convention had gone so far, and she answered with a big smile. Then, she put on her game face and leaned closer.
“Now, we have work to do,” she said. “There is a lot of very important work that has to be done.”…
shorter Times: Harris now faced with ominous surplus of momentum and joy. pic.twitter.com/htjZFliLqH
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) August 23, 2024
Saturday Morning Open Thread: Going ForwardPost + Comments (340)
I like that Anne Laurie referred to the afterglow from the convention, because that is how I have felt all day. I have not felt this good since… I want to say the night in 2008 when we counted the votes and Obama had won. Should we be able to pull it off and win, and I hope to everything we do, I can not imagine how good I will feel then. But because of the fuckery of Republicans and the Court and the built-in obstacle of the electoral college, we need to have an absolute fucking blowout. Just completely bury them.
I started this post at 8 pm, fell asleep, woke up, it is now 12:30 and time for bed. So I guess this is now a late night open thread.
(Image by NEIVANMADE)
Three quick housekeeping notes. First, Rosie is doing great. She’ll be off through next week before starting the fourth and final round of chemo. Thank you for the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.
Second, the new bed frame is assembled, in place, and the bed is all put back together. When I was getting everything out from under the old, taller frame I kept pulling dog hair out. It was like one of those magician’s never ending handkerchiefs. I am wiped though and I’ve been offline most of the day, so I’m going to try to keep this on the briefer side.
Third, the 23 of August is Ukrainian Flag Day. Ukrainian Independence Day is the 24th of August. While it is still the 23rd here in the US and will be for several more hours, it is already tomorrow in Ukraine. Since it’s the 23rd where I’m at, I’m going to leave the Ukrainian Independence Day material for tomorrow’s update.
A number of you have asked about Vice President Harris’s potential foreign, natsec, and defense policy preferences. I’ve been collecting some reporting on that over the past couple of weeks and will begin to work some of that in over the next week or so. From what I saw of the foreign affairs remarks in her speech last night, I think she was very solid. Let’s be honest, no candidate for president in the US is ever going to say they won’t support Israel, so let’s just set that aside. I think her remarks about what is going on in Gaza, what the Palestinians are enduring and suffering, and what needs to be done to rectify and remedy that suffering was very well done. Her remarks on NATO and Ukraine were also excellent. And that’s what I want to focus on a bit here. Nine days ago, Jennifer Rubin called out reporting by Fred Kaplan in her column about VP Harris. Rubin writes:
And in contrast to her opponent Donald Trump’s kowtowing to dictators, invitation to Russia to attack NATO countries that haven’t “paid up” and clear willingness to bargain away Ukraine’s independence, Harris is an unabashed internationalist. Fred Kaplan at Slate writes that she did more than superficial protocol when she “visited 21 countries on 17 foreign trips, met with more than 150 leaders, and led the U.S. delegation at three Munich Security Conferences.” She was an active participant in the president’s daily briefings. He shares this nugget:
In February 2022, when the [President’s Daily Brief] revealed new, highly reliable intelligence that Russian President Vladimir Putin was about to invade Ukraine, officials who were present say that it was Harris who suggested that the intel be shown to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a face-to-face meeting — then made the trip to do so herself. One official recalls, “This was some of the most detailed intelligence sharing, outside of intelligence channels, that I have been party to. And her presentation of it, along with options of what we could do about it, was compelling.” Harris has since met with Zelensky five more times.
If we include tonight’s post, I have now done 912 of these updates. I spend a lot of time reading about what is going on in Ukraine, Russia, Europe, and DC in order to do them. While I knew she received the president’s daily briefings, that’s been standard for vice presidents for a while now, this is the first time I’ve seen it reported that VP Harris proposed providing the intel to President Zelenskyy and that she then went and did the briefing herself. Because if I’d seen this reported, I’d definitely have included it in an update before now. This is a good indicator that she has excellent strategic thinking skills and good natsec instincts. More to follow on this topic.
Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.
War for Ukraine Day 912: Ukrainian Flag DayPost + Comments (19)
Been a long week, I’m gonna bask a little this weekend!
Tonight, @KamalaHarris showed the world what I have known to be true. She is ready on day one to be President and represents the best of America. Let’s get to work. pic.twitter.com/b4fejucl7F
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 23, 2024
We’re joyfully telling the conman that he’s going to hell. https://t.co/31dRYfgdwv
— DSA Kamala Harris Bonapartism Caucus ?????? (@FurstvonWrede) August 22, 2024
Unsung hero of the night: the man who crushed the open primary gambit pic.twitter.com/KAd4NCXcVK
— Ragnarok Lobster ?? (@eclecticbrotha) August 23, 2024
(me, a savvy politics knower) very solid speech, i like positivity, some of the air went out of the room during the trump attacks, i give it an A-
(me, a californian) that’s how we do it on the west coast, bitches, i will die for kamala harris, fuck all of you. next president, deal with it.— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) Aug 22, 2024 at 11:19 PM
That was the speech we needed, whether we know it or not. She did the job. https://t.co/uCK31mosYz
— David Simon (@AoDespair) August 23, 2024
I wrote a book on campaign speeches and this speech was one of the best I’ve ever heard. An absolute tour de force
— Michael A. Cohen (NOT TRUMP’S FORMER FIXER) (@speechboy71) August 23, 2024
Trump has taken Republicans so far off the deep end as to leave the American mainstream wide open
Harris and Democrats spent this effective convention claiming it – on broadly-shared values, on decency, on love of country
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) August 23, 2024
Why does Vance have terrible advance work: tiny crowds, a “spontaneous” trip to a donut shop where nobody knew he was coming, appearing on a podium stacked with cardboard boxes?
Why was the Republican convention a low-key, muted, partially empty, boring event, especially when compared to this week’s Democratic event?
It’s because Trump (and his wholly-owned subsidiary, the RNC) isn’t raising money, and he’s not spending the money he has raised:
Since the start of 2023, Trump’s official campaign committee has spent a total $117 million, compared to $330 million from the Biden-turned-Harris operation over the same period. (That doesn’t include fundraising expenses from joint fundraising committees, or funds directed to other Trump groups for his legal bills.)
Trump continued to be massively outspent in July: His campaign reported spending $24.3 million, compared to $80.7 million in spending from the Biden-turned-Harris campaign committee.
More than half of the Trump campaign’s July spending, $14.1 million, went to paid media buys, $13.5 million of which came after Biden dropped out and endorsed Harris on July 21. Direct mail ($3.4 million) and air travel ($3.3 million) accounted for the Trump campaign’s next-largest expense categories. The campaign also spent just shy of $1 million on polling.
The July spending total was a substantial increase for Trump’s operation, which had spent just shy of $10 million in June. Advertising — including TV, digital and mail — is among the easiest expense categories for campaigns to scale up in a relatively short time frame. Campaigns also get lower TV ad rates than outside groups in the months before an election.
But the totals for July were far less than what Trump was spending when he was seeking reelection four years ago. In July 2020, amid an election cycle altered by the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump’s campaign committee spent $65 million — including $34 million on placed media and $13 million on online and text message advertising. At that time, his campaign committee and the Republican National Committee also had a combined nearly 800 staffers on payroll, according to a POLITICO analysis of FEC data.
This July, the Trump campaign and the RNC had just over 300 staffers on payroll, FEC filings show. Meanwhile, the Harris campaign and the Democratic National Committee had a combined roughly 1,100 staffers last month.
The Democratic convention was clearly an expensive event, and it should have been — the free media and attention garnered by a convention probably pays back the investment on the convention ten- or hundred-fold. I realize I’m in a bit of a bubble, but I sure don’t remember the Republican convention making much of an impact — it was a real “going through the motions” event. As for Trump’s campaign spending, I’ll bet there are Senate campaigns that spent $10 million in June. It’s just a pathetic effort.
The Trump superpacs are spending, of course, but some of them are run by billionaires with their own personal agendas, and if anything’s been clear in the past few years, it’s that the average Master of the Universe billionaire can barely handle assembling a ham sandwich left to their own devices, nevermind a political campaign organization.
None of this is to say that Trump’s underfunded campaign will lead to a Harris victory, but it’s hard for a bloodsucker to detach from the host once it’s gotten a good grip. Instead of draining the RNC dry, he’s going to have to run a real campaign, and that’s a big stretch for an old man with a tiny staff.
Toward the tail end of the last thread, I mentioned I was baking banana bread. Tada!
My secret ingredients are extremely ripe bananas — you want them to be half a hour from so rotten they’re fit only for hurling (along with other spoiled produce) at a stage occupied by lying creeps — and macadamia nuts. The latter are spendy but worth it!
***
Still coming down from the high of the convention. I’ve watched a lot of them, including two previous during which I was genuinely excited about the nominee (Barack Obama and then Hillary Clinton). Nothing came close to this one.
The near-flawless execution is all the more remarkable when you consider the timing constraints. Kay is right; the Democratic Party is an American institution that has proved its resilience in this nutso timeline.
Talk about whatever!
