2020 election

Kamala Harris is no radical. Indeed, no matter how vaguely inclusive the label ‘progressive’ may be, Harris’s long record as a California prosecutor makes it difficult to shoehorn her professional career under that rubric. The real Kamala Harris is a liberal careerist with no deep convictions whose ability to woo wealthy supporters allowed her to win a seat in the Senate.Harris’s story bears extensive similarities to that of Barack Obama. Born biracial to two academically-gifted parents, a contentious divorce found young Kamala being raised by her mother in a linguistically foreign country — French-speaking Montreal, rather than Indonesia. And, like Obama, Harris’s younger sister is named Maya.

Kamala Harris’s selection as the Democratic vice presidential nominee has been touted as the remarkable success story of a daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica. It is that. But it also represents the dramatic ascendency of a subset of the Democratic party that used to be dismissed as the ‘loony left’ of politics: the ‘San Francisco Democrats.’ The phrase ‘San Francisco Democrat’ was coined by Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ronald Reagan’s UN ambassador, who brandished it as a weapon at the 1984 GOP convention in Dallas. San Francisco was where the Democrats nominated Walter Mondale to challenge Reagan.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar may have to eat her words after declaring last year that Donald Trump will 'never win Minnesota'. A new Emerson College poll released Tuesday shows the President trailing Joe Biden by just three percentage points. The poll has Trump within the margin of error, meaning the state is effectively a toss-up at this point. The President is reportedly planning to visit the state on Monday in an attempt to provide counter-programming for the Democratic National Convention, which was meant to take place across the state line in Wisconsin, and to capitalize on his recent gains in the polls. The prospect of winning Minnesota is certainly giddying for Trump, who frequently laments that he just barely lost the state in 2016. Hillary Clinton carried the state by a mere 1.

The romantic plans of a Kazakh bodybuilder named Yuri Tolochko have become one more casualty of the coronavirus pandemic. He was going to marry his ‘fiancée’, Margo, a silicone sex doll, in March, but they both agreed on the need to delay. ‘My baby supported me on this. We are determined and our mood is good.’ His Instagram feed depicts their domestic idyll: a bald, muscle-bound man gazes adoringly at a pneumatic blonde who, it must be said, stares back somewhat blankly. You might already know this if you get your news from Russian outlets like RT — Russia Today — or Sputnik. Their websites have an unerring eye for the human-interest stories that make for irresistible clickbait.

News of Kamala Harris’s selection as Joe Biden’s running mate was greeted by everything but the popping of champagne corks by my right-wing friends at lunch. The consensus of the policy wonks, policy makers, businessmen and journalists at my table was that Harris is good news for Donald Trump. ‘She’s unlikable’ and ‘she’s a cop’ were the instant reactions — though if Harris really were a cop, and not a former prosecutor, she might find some support among Americans horrified by the riots in Chicago, Portland and everywhere else that’s succumbed to left-wing Democratic control. I expected Harris all along, ever since Biden imposed a sex test on his list of potential running mates.

Why would a benevolent God deny us the prospect of a debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump?As the first head-to-head between the two presidential candidates approaches, leading voices on the center-left have been making the case that Biden should not debate the President.In the New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman argued that Biden should only agree to a debate if Trump released his tax returns and if there were real-time fact-checking. ‘That kind of debate and only that kind of debate would be worthy of voters’ consideration and Biden’s participation,’ wrote Friedman. ‘Otherwise, Joe, stay in your basement.

Donald Trump has been tight-lipped about his second-term agenda, preferring to speak about the past accomplishments of his administration when making the case that voters ought to re-elect him. Fox News host Sean Hannity gave the President two opportunities to lay out a second-term objective during interviews in June and July. At his second at-bat, Trump said he wanted to beat the coronavirus, rebuild the economy, negotiate new trade deals and appoint more federal judges. The list still didn't feel specific when compared to some of his 2016 promises: build a wall and make Mexico pay for it; renegotiate NAFTA; withdraw from TPP; repeal and replace Obamacare; renegotiate the Iran Deal, and cut taxes.

Not everyone appreciates the extent to which the Democrats pushing Joe Biden for president are students of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. For those of you who think low, let me say straight away that I am not thinking of Coleridge’s penchant for laudanum. No, I am thinking of that other goad to fantasy, Coleridge’s idea, articulated in his book Biographia Literaria (1817), of ‘the willing suspension of disbelief’. (But speaking of thinking low, if we enlarge our gaze to encompass Joe himself, we might also trespass upon the subject of plagiarism. Coleridge cribbed wantonly from the German philosopher Friedrich Schelling just as Joe did from Neil Kinnock and others.

Joe Biden has reportedly narrowed his vice-presidential search, with Sen. Kamala Harris and former national security adviser Susan Rice taking the top two spots and Rep. Karen Bass trailing in third. The choice carries more weight than a normal running-mate selection, because whomever Biden picks could very well take over the presidency at some point. Biden has not committed to running for a second term if he wins the presidency, saying 'let’s win this election then see where we are. Let’s see what happens,' potentially leaving the door wide open for his vice president in 2024 race. Of course, the choice is nearly as pressing for the Trump campaign.

A consensus has formed about this presidential election: it is Joe Biden’s to lose. As long as his vice-presidential nomination doesn’t backfire, or he does not spectacularly bungle the debates, the soon-to-be-confirmed Democratic nominee will be in the White House by the end of January. Just look at the polls.Well, do look at the polls, and you’ll notice that Biden is losing ground. He’s still ahead, and comfortably, but the race narrowed in July, just as the media started to discuss a Biden presidency as if it were a fait accompli. Trump’s job approval rating is rising slightly, too, from 41 percent on June 29 to almost 44 percent today, according to the RealClearPolitics tracker.

Kamala Harris is Joe Biden’s pick for vice president. Has he lost his mind? Wait, maybe don’t answer that. Still, the Biden campaign’s decision is utterly bewildering. As Politico carefully reported on Tuesday, ‘Biden called Harris "a worthy opponent and a worthy running mate", alluding to the pair’s rivalry during the earlier stages of the Democratic primary.’ Perhaps the former vice president goes by a different definition of ‘worthy’ than the ones in Merriam-Webster: ‘having worth or value; honorable, meritorious; having sufficient worth or importance’. He remembers who Kamala Harris is, right? Again, don’t answer that.