2024 campaign

Friday

Cockburn

Will Kamala actually appoint a Republican to her cabinet?

Will Kamala actually appoint a Republican to her cabinet? A rare surprise in the otherwise routine Harris-Walz interview on CNN last night: when asked if she’d appoint a Republican to her cabinet, Kamala said, “Yes I would.” This is perhaps in response to two Democratic presidential candidates from the last decade — Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — endorsing Trump and joining his transition team. President Biden appointed a few Republicans to ambassadorial positions — notably Arizonans Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain — but Harris appears ready to go a step further. The likeliest option would be to appoint a serious-minded ex-military Beltway figure to a role like director of national intelligence or defense secretary: Mark Esper, for instance.

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Grace Curley

The Harris-Walz CNN interview offered voters no clarity

I hate to use the Democratic Party’s favorite word against them, but the Harris-Walz tag-team interview on CNN was… well, weird. The two grinning progressives sat side by side and tried their best to handle Dana Bash’s steady stream of softballs. Unfortunately, the starlets' most recent experience answering questions is when they are asking them of each other for schmaltzy social media videos, so to say they were rusty is an understatement. Bash first asked Kamala what she would do on day one if elected. Harris, never one to divulge any concrete courses of action, instead waxed poetic about optimism, hope and a “new way forward.” Back it up. A new way forward?

Thursday

Stephen L. Miller

Don’t expect much from Dana Bash’s tag-team Harris-Walz interview

The last time the country saw Kamala Harris give a meaningful live interview, she was sent out as cannon fodder to clean up Joe Biden’s disastrous debate night. She has yet to explain to the country which she is hoping to govern, in any capacity, what she knew beforehand of Biden’s clear cognitive decline due to age or some other undisclosed ailment. That is the kind of question she should have to answer when she speaks to the media… but don’t expect that, or much else, when she sits for a tag-team interview with her running mate Governor Tim Walz tonight. The entire point of being interviewed as a pair is to blunt and neutralize any remotely tough or revealing question with which CNN’s Dana Bash might present them.

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Wednesday

Amber Duke

RFK thinks he’s the guy who can ‘Make America Healthy Again’

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his presidential campaign in swing states on Friday and officially endorsed former president Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Electorally, this was a potentially pivotal moment: RFK was pulling about 5 percent of the total electorate, according to the RealClear average, and an even higher percentage in some swing states. If Kennedy was right when he told Dr. Phil that 57 percent of his voters would go to Trump if he left the race, then his exit and endorsement could prove a significant boost to Trump. Since RFK Jr. and another former Democrat, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, endorsed Trump, both have been added to the former president’s transition team. Culturally, RFK Jr.

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Grace Curley

Jack Smith’s superseding Trump indictment shows that norms are meant to be broken

With seventy days until the election, Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a superseding indictment against former president Donald Trump on Tuesday. You know what they say: if at first you don't succeed... try, try again. “Smith simply re-indicted on same four criminal counts with less evidence,” legal scholar and George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley wrote on X. “He removed factual claims that clearly would trip the wire on the recent presidential immunity ruling of the Supreme Court…” In other words: meet the new indictment, same as the old indictment. But is anyone surprised? The Justice Department has been choosing quantity over quality in pursuit of their white whale Donald J. Trump for years.

Monday

The Spectator

Trump honors fallen soldiers of Abbey Gate

Former president Donald Trump made a surprise appearance at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday to lay a wreath and pay his respects to the thirteen American service members who were killed during a suicide bombing amid the military withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is the third anniversary of the Abbey Gate attack, which was a tragic source of national embarrassment as America left the twenty-year long war and has been a continuous political thorn in the side of President Joe Biden. While Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris both released statements recognizing the fallen service members, Biden is currently at the beach (in fact, he is on vacation all week long) and Harris has no public events on her schedule.

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Charles Lipson

Two successive 2024 campaigns in a very strange election year

This is one very strange presidential campaign.  That’s not just because it seems to go on forever. This one seemed to begin shortly after Eisenhower left office. It’s also because there have been two general election campaigns in a row. The first pitted Donald Trump against Joe Biden and ended with Trump’s decisive victory. The clincher was Biden’s humiliating debate performance, which showed the world what his aides, his party and a compliant media had been hiding: the president was suffering serious cognitive decline.  Once voters had peeked behind the curtain, they were convinced Biden could not serve another four years. Indeed, it was questionable whether he was competent to serve now. That question still hovers, unanswered, over the White House.

Friday

Cockburn

After dark at the DNC

Chicago Big Little Lies season three is happening, says Young Sheldon Convention guests looking to play a game of IRL “Who? Weekly” were best off hanging out at the CNN-Politico Grill, which served free booze and local delicacies all week. Smoking was forbidden, sadly. On Thursday Cockburn caught up with Iain “Young Sheldon” Armitage — who confirmed that a third season of Big Little Lies is “happening” while he was mixing an ice cream float — and spoke to Dean Norris, AKA Hank from Breaking Bad. “I’m having a blast,” said Norris, “I’m having a brat summer.

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Thursday

Elisenne Stoller

Trump holds first outdoor rally since assassination attempt

In his first outdoor rally since his July 13 near assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump spoke to a crowd in Asheboro, North Carolina, Wednesday, surrounded by panes of bulletproof glass. The rally was held between hangars at the North Carolina Aviation Museum. Storage boxes were stacked around the perimeter to create additional walls and to block sight lines, and snipers were positioned on all the roofs.  During the rally, Trump spoke of the Biden administration’s national security failures, notably the botched Afghanistan withdrawal and the Russia/Ukraine and Gaza wars. Trump said that if he wins the election, he will ask for the resignation of every senior military official involved with the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

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Wednesday

Matt McDonald

Why the kids are manifesting a Kamala presidency

Chicago “Something wonderfully magical is in the air, isn’t it?” Michelle Obama told the DNC Tuesday night. “America, hope is making a comeback.” The former first lady’s remarks tied into a theme the party theme of the week: with Kamala Harris, 2024 is 2008 all over again. The chrysalis-like flowering of the Harris campaign happened virtually overnight, out of nowhere, as party bosses who had moved to oust President Biden swiftly fell in line behind the vice president to head of the prospect of a messy contested convention. And it worked: in recent purple-state polls: a round from New York Times/Siena College this weekend gave her the edge over Trump in Arizona and North Carolina.

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Ben Domenech

How RFK Jr.’s looming exit could rain on Kamala’s parade

There are multiple reports, still unconfirmed at the moment but from reliable sources, that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will end his independent candidacy at an event this Friday in Phoenix, Arizona. If so, regardless if he decides to throw his support behind Donald Trump, it will serve as a politically meaningful boost to the Republican campaign in multiple battleground states where Kennedy has gained ballot access in the past few months. The rationale for the RFK campaign was always dependent on the vast number of "double haters" — people who were strongly opposed to both Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

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Zack Christenson

Obamas skewer Trump and laud Biden on DNC night two

Chicago Night two of the Democratic National Convention began with a recurring issue for this convention — a logistics mess. The line snaking down the street to get into the convention hall stretched for blocks and blocks and blocks, with very few entrances into the building actually open. One person I spoke with waited in line for two hours to get into the United Center. Inside the hall, the night’s festivities and order of business kicked off with the delegate roll call and votes, to a soundtrack provided by DJ Cassidy with each state getting its own song selected by the delegation, often showcasing a homegrown song.

Tuesday

Juan P. Villasmil

Trump talks family, pharma and cocaine with Theo Von

As Democrats met in Chicago for their party convention, Trump made his latest podcast appearance on Theo Von’s This Past Weekend. The Republican nominee showcased his intention to make the election less about vibes and more about policy, while showing a side of himself that’s not often on display at his rallies or press conferences. One great part of the podcast focuses on Trump’s relationship with his family, which even Hillary Clinton once praised. He talked about his brother Fred, who passed away twenty-five years ago, explaining how his experiences — and advice — are the reasons for why he has never had a “drop of alcohol,” drugs or even a cigarette. “What’s something that you miss about him?” Von asked. “He was wise in a sense,” Trump responded.

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Elisenne Stoller

Trump and Vance tour swing states to dim DNC limelight

While the DNC is in full swing in Chicago, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are spending the week traveling to battleground states as part of their campaign’s way of counterprogramming. Trump’s schedule is packed this week, with more events than he’s done in several weeks. Today, Trump made an appearance in Howell, Michigan, to “deliver a strong message on law and order, making it clear that crime, violence and hate of any form will have zero place in our country when he is back in the White House,” according to Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt. Trump came under fire from Democrats for choosing Howell, part of Livingston County, which was rocked by white supremacist demonstrations last month with some chanting “Heil Hitler” and has links with the KKK.

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Ben Clerkin

Tim Walz’s misleading IVF story could prove fatal

For years, Tim Walz has claimed that he and his wife Gwen used in-vitro fertilization to conceive their two children Hope, twenty-three, and Gus, seventeen. The Minnesota governor has weaponized his emotional journey to attack Republicans opposed to the procedure and used it to lockdown the VP slot on Kamala Harris’s protection of reproduction rights ticket.   But the New York Times reports — giving Walz the softest of soft landings — that in fact his wife had intrauterine insemination, or IUI, to conceive, not in vitro fertilization, or IVF.  There is a huge difference between the two procedures, as Walz knows. Principally that there are no moves by Republicans to use the overturning of Roe v. Wade to ban IUI.

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Ben Domenech

A Joe Biden convention with Kamala Harris layered over it

Chicago Even for someone used to the idea of mass media lies, the dichotomy between the way the 2024 DNC is depicted in mass media versus the way it feels in practical terms is astonishing. On camera and according to a host of commentators, this event in Chicago is one marked by joy, a vibe shift, the turning of the page, the passing of the torch, the way of the future. In person, it feels like an elderly boomer white lady tripping over her orthotics while wearing a Charli xcx shirt because she was trying to send a selfie to her twentysomething daughter. How do you do, fellow kids, don't you also enjoy James Taylor? The reason for this, when you consider the facts, is rather obvious: this is still a Joe Biden convention. It just has Kamala Harris layered over it.

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Matt McDonald

Biden bids a late-night farewell to the DNC

Chicago Monday night at the Democratic National Convention served as a protracted thank you and farewell to President Joe Biden from his party — one that ran very, very, long.  In a final act of cruelty to a president who works best between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., Biden didn’t take the stage at the United Center until 10:25 p.m. He was introduced by his daughter Ashley — tearing up as he took the stage — and he followed on from laudatory remarks by his successor as Delaware senator Chris Coons and a presumably truncated First Lady Jill Biden. And the adoring crowd dragged the night out further  — pausing the president with whoops and cheers of “we love Joe!

Monday

Ben Domenech

Kamala’s DNC team is saying the quiet part loud

From the moment Kamala Harris ascended to the status of 2024’s bringer of joy, the vice president has navigated a world where the media has been overwhelmingly positive about her presence at the top of the ticket. But if there’s one thing we know about the media, they dislike being ignored. It’s a sign of disrespect, you see — we helped Joe Biden off the slow ramp, we praise you to high heaven as and the deal is you sit down for an interview — quid pro quo, Kamala! Obviously, the Harris-Walz ticket hasn’t done this — and it’s starting to get under the media’s skin.

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Spectator Editorial

The Democrats’ coming winter of discontent

Kamala Harris is enjoying her honeymoon phase as the “Not Donald Trump” candidate. She has been rewarded with a polling surge after meeting what seems to be the Democratic base’s bar: proving she is, in fact, alive. The party has curiously decided to celebrate in true 2020 fashion with a series of Zoom calls — nationwide rallies of overpaid professionals eager to be subdivided into identitarian roles and open up their wallets: Deadheads for Kamala, White Dudes for Kamala, Munchausen Wine Moms for Kamala. Victoria’s Secret frontwoman Megan Rapinoe and Mayor Pete have been leading the charge of goosing the ActBlue numbers, which Bridget Phetasy explores on p.33. The candidate herself has been absent from these multi-hour rallies cum struggle sessions.

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Roger Kimball

The ‘real’ Kamala

I write at the end of July, just on the threshold of the “silly season,” “the months of August and September, when newspapers supply the lack of real news by articles or discussions on trivial topics.” I think the season may have come a bit early this year. That, anyway, is how I am interpreting the sudden tsunami of gossip, prognostication, animadversion and speculation about certified female-of-color Kamala Harris. By the time you read this, some of the frenzy surrounding Harris may have abated. But for the time being the news is full-to-gagging with puppies and unicorn stories about how strong, dynamic and potentially transformative she is. Also, it may not be amiss to point out, she is not Donald Trump. Watching the makeover has been partly amusing, partly alarming.