Politics

Welcome to Thunderdome. The month of Kamala Harris’s rise has been marked by a few major factors, but none has been more significant than the total buy-in of the decrepit husks of media organizations desperate after so many years to find someone, anyone, to elevate in opposition to Donald Trump. They love to love this candidate, who is in almost no sense of traditional terminology a candidate — no platform, positions thoroughly malleable, an operation in branding and vibes at a moment when branding is dying and vibes are utterly out of step with the demands of the moment — she is more machine now than woman, and this embarrassingly inadequate media is loving every minute of it.

The 2024 primary season is slowly coming to a close — and last night’s marquee election saw a rare big win for the left-wing Squad in the House of Representatives: Congresswoman Ilhan Omar vanquished an underfunded opponent in the Democratic primary to avoid the fates of Congressmen Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman.Following the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, the pro-Israel community was galvanized to challenge some of the most openly anti-Israel members of Congress. It successfully trained its fire on Bush and Bowman, who both carried major liabilities unrelated to foreign policy.

Vice President Kamala Harris is set to unveil her policy platform this week after criticism that she has failed to say what she would actually do as president in the weeks since becoming the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee.The process does not appear to be going well. Harris said her platform will “be focused on the economy and what we need to do to bring down costs,” which is a bit puzzling as she is the number two executive in the Biden administration, which has repeatedly assured us that “Bidenomics” is working to heal the economy post-Covid. Harris will face this conundrum with all of the policies she puts forward; why hasn’t she done it in the past four years? Will she blame a divided Congress? President Joe Biden?

Vice President Kamala Harris is almost three weeks into her presidential campaign and not only has she failed to hold an unscripted press conference or sit for a media interview, she also has zero policy positions on her campaign website. Democratic strategists have repeatedly assured me that she will adopt whatever platform comes out of the Democratic National Convention, which certainly won’t help the perception that she is a manufactured candidate willing to do whatever it takes to seize power, but I digress. The clear indication we are getting from the early stages of the Harris-Walz campaign is that it is all about “vibes” and the idea that Harris is selling “joy.

Welcome to Thunderdome. Kamala Harris’s selection of Tim “MSNBC Dad” Walz as her running mate came as a surprise to many in the Acela-corridor set who had expected her to pick the rising talent, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, a far more centrist choice in a critical swing state viewed by many members of the Democratic elite as the future of the party.

Missouri trims Bush Talk about Squad goals: another of the most progressive members of Congress lost her Democratic primary last night, as Cori Bush was beaten by Wesley Bell in the race for Missouri’s 1st district.Bush first won her seat after playing a prominent role in the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson and the post-George Floyd protests in St. Louis — with one local particularly pleased to see the back of her.“Bye bye Cori Bush,” tweeted Mark McCloskey, co-star of the infamous viral gun-toting photo with his wife Patricia, taken as they faced down the Bush-led protest outside their house. “You may have torn down my gate, but the people of St. Louis tore down your career. And I ‘spat on your name.

Hurricane Debby is barreling through Florida, America's economy is crashing, US troops were injured in Iraq Monday and conflict in the Middle East is on the brink of a dangerous escalation — sounds like the perfect time to ban the use of plastic cutlery, right?!  Instead of addressing the multiple crises the nation is currently grappling with, the Biden administration decided it was time federal government workers stopped using plastic forks. The Biden administration announced it is launching a plan to "phase out" the "procurement of single-use plastics from food service operations, events and packaging by 2027, and from all federal operations by 2035," according to the White House.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, admitted this Saturday to cheating on his first wife following an explosive report that he once got their nanny pregnant. “During my first marriage, Kerstin and I went through some tough times on account of my actions. I took responsibility, and in the years since, we worked through things as a family and have come out stronger on the other side,” Emhoff said in a statement provided exclusively to CNN. The report indicates that more than a decade ago Second Gentleman Emhoff cheated on his then-wife with a blonde nanny, Najen Naylor, who taught at the Willows, a Californian private school attended by his two children.

Despite the sharp polarization of American politics, there is surprising agreement on what went wrong with capitalism. Whether the writer or politician is coming at this question from the left or right, the blame often falls on four decades of “small government” ideology and free market orthodoxy since Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Whether the flaw in question is slowing productivity growth, the rise of oligopolies, the export of jobs, or income and wealth inequality, its source is traced to excessive faith in the “magic of the market.” Capitalism’s flaws are “market failures.” The problem: this narrative is wrong on the facts.

You’ve got to hand it to President Biden — even in his diminished state he still has a few tricks up his sleeve. You might think that as our octogenarian commander-in-chief is dragged kicking and screaming from office, amid the ignominious fumes of family influence-peddling no less, the last things he would shine a spotlight on are judicial term limits and ethics rules. But in fact his latest attack on the Supreme Court is the next logical battle in a war Biden launched decades ago and which Vice President Harris now plans to fully embrace and run with. What is being peddled as judicial “reform” is in fact the left’s continued effort to seize the remaining branch of government that has slipped from its grasp.

Welcome to Thunderdome. The essential divide between Republican insiders on how to attack Kamala Harris is stuck, swinging back and forth between the question of inauthentic climber or authentic leftist. Is she an untrustworthy chameleon who was against fracking before she was for it? Or is she a San Francisco Democrat elitist who was the furthest senator to the left? When the George W. Bush re-elect had to tangle with John Kerry, they went the unreliable flip-flopper route — something Chris LaCivita is very familiar with as the then-media advisor to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — to great success.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner,” Donald Trump began at this afternoon’s National Association for Black Journalists annual convention in Chicago. ABC News’s Rachel Scott had asked why black voters should trust him in light of his prior attacks on black journalists. “First question, you don’t even say ‘hello, how are you?’” Trump continued. “Are you with ABC? Because I think they’re a fake news network, a terrible level.” Trump went on query his opponent Kamala Harris’s racial ethnicity when asked about her being a DEI hire. “I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black. She was always of Indian heritage and she was only promoting Indian heritage.

President Biden unveiled his outline for changes to the Supreme Court, which includes term limits for justices and a new code of ethics. He also called for a constitutional amendment saying former presidents do not have immunity from any federal criminal indictments, trials, convictions or sentencing — a direct dig at the Court’s recent immunity ruling in Trump’s favor. The plan comes amid a series of landmark decisions by the Supreme Court that favored conservatives, such as the overturning of Chevron and rulings on abortion and affirmative action, that sparked Democrats to criticize the 6-3 conservative controlled-court for an alleged lack of impartiality.

The Secret Service’s worst week since John Hinckley Jr. failed to gun down President Ronald Reagan continued with some buggy problems just days after the organization’s embattled director announced plans to step down following bipartisan condemnation.Fresh off of failing to adequately protect President Donald Trump from a deranged gunman, the Secret Service failed to secure the Watergate Hotel where Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was staying and allowed a pro-Hamas organization to pour live maggots all over a room where he was alleged to be dining. “BON APPETIT!! MAGGOTS RELEASED ON THE CRIMINAL ZIONIST’S WAR TABLE!” the Palestinian Youth Movement posted on Instagram, along with a video of insects crawling all over the Watergate’s grounds.

Welcome to Thunderdome. Last night, something that a month ago was unthinkable happened: Joe Biden announced from the Oval Office that he would stand down as his party’s nominee and pass the torch to a new generation of Democrats in Kamala Harris. The speech was blatantly political with the normal Jon Meacham high-school civics elements instead of sounding the type of deeply personal notes that marked the better aspects of Biden’s career. It was delivered with a world-weary tone, the old man being put out to pasture by a party and their media allies who deliberately chose to knife him at his weakest moment, despite lauding his achievements as historic for the past several years.

Today Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu became the first world leader to address a joint session of Congress four times, surpassing the previous record jointly held by him and Winston Churchill. And the anti-Israel protesters, not unlike the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, drastically inflated their numbers ahead of Wednesday’s proceedings. Despite concern that more than 10,000 anti-Israel protesters would descend on the nation’s capital, only a small group that carried Hamas flags and shut down multiple streets showed up. That’s not to say there was no drama, however. There was “absolute chaos” in the streets of the capital by the protesters who did show, with some activists pepper-sprayed and arrested by the Capitol Police.

Does anyone else feel like an entire year has happened in the last week? Last Monday, former president Donald Trump arrived at the Republican National Convention after being a quarter-of-an-inch away from assassination (and losing part of his ear in the process), Jack Smith’s classified documents case against Trump was thrown out by a federal judge, President Joe Biden caught Covid and, finally, yesterday Biden announced that he is not running for re-election and endorsed his vice president Kamala Harris to be the new nominee. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Today’s edition of the DC Diary includes multiple items that will hopefully help you feel more prepared for what may come next.

The Republican National Committee’s memorable four-day convention came to an end in Milwaukee last night. With an unusual performance from Kid Rock, a shirt-ripping Hulk Hogan and dozens of Trump-humanizing speeches, the RNC managed to throw a party that drew some attention, some laughs and certainly some tears — from worried Democratic strategists and enamored Trump-fans alike.It was, as The Spectator’s James Heale put it, “the first convention in twenty years where polls suggest the Republicans are on course to win the White House, producing an air of expectation and excitement.