2024 election

Dr. Raul Garcia seems to follow a long Republican tradition in Washington State. He’s a fifty-three-year-old, Cuban-born ER physician who’s emerged from the primaries to challenge the four-term Democratic incumbent Maria Cantwell for her US Senate seat this fall. On the face of it, Garcia’s candidacy is just the latest in a line of plucky but ultimately doomed bids by a GOP outsider to unseat a tenured politician in this part of the world. A couple of years ago, a self-described farm girl from the Seattle suburbs with the striking name of Tiffany Smiley gave Washington’s other senator Patty Murray a run for her money, but in the end the incumbent scraped through for her sixth turn at the public trough.

Another day, another spat between White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Fox News’s Peter Doocy. This time Jean-Pierre, dressed in an outlandish pinstripe suit, snatched up her fastidiously labeled binder and walked out after attempting to answer Doocy’s questions about hurricane relief funds, which she claimed were based on “misinformation.” Karine Jean-Pierre faced reporters Tuesday in an oversized gray — male? — suit and a bright purple collar shirt. After giving her “topper,” which mainly memorialized lives lost on October 7 and addressed the devastation and conspiracy theories surrounding Hurricane Helene, Jean-Pierre took questions from reporters. “Thank you, Karine,” Peter Doocy said in minute forty-four, after thirty or so minutes of questions.

America has a peculiar — indeed, unique — way of deciding national elections. Instead of a cumulative national vote, the president and vice president are determined by fifty separate state elections. The top ticket in each state (except Nebraska and Maine) receives all that state’s electoral votes, no matter how slim the margin of victory. Each state’s electoral votes are equal to its number of House members plus its senators. The winner needs 270 electoral votes.  What if, in this razor-thin election, both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris fall one vote short? Fortunately, that’s only a remote possibility, but it’s not impossible. It all depends on how some six or seven closely divided “swing states” split between the two candidates.

The Harris-Walz team has a plan to coax Trump into another debate. According to NBC News, the Democratic National Committee will accuse Trump of being a chicken in the hopes of getting under his skin: “The chicken billboards, which will first appear at Trump’s rally Monday in Indiana, Pennsylvania, include a digitally altered image of Trump in a chicken suit alongside the words ‘There’s no debate: Donald Trump’s a chicken.’” The tactics here aren’t subtle, but considering Trump’s penchant for taking the bait, it just might work. But if Operation Chicken lays an egg, then the last big televised event of this campaign season is next week’s vice presidential debate, when Ohio senator J.D.

Democrats have an Israel problem that isn’t going away any time soon. Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer illustrated why this weekend in a CNN appearance that had her dodging the actions of her fellow partisans. At issue is the actions of Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, who is Jewish — and who has targeted eleven campus protesters from the University of Michigan, several of whom allegedly engaged in acts of violent obstruction against police officers charged with clearing their illegal encampment. The blowback against Nessel’s decision to charge the protesters, seven of them with felonies, led to Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan to accuse her and her office of anti-Palestine bias: We’ve had the right to dissent, the right to protest.

One of the entertainments that every election season brings revolves around polling. Every season seems to bring more and more and more frequent polls. The measure registered voters and (for all I know) unregistered ones. They register people who are designated “likely voters” and they claim to filter for gender(s), age, race, ethnic back, party affiliation or non-affiliation, ZIP code, income, and favorite pastimes, and what seems like a thousand other things.    Like everyone else who is interested in politics, I pay fretful attention to the results of these surveys and questionnaires beginning about a year out from the election itself.

Vice President Kamala Harris met with the National Association of Black Journalists for an interview this afternoon. Instead of going back-to-back with Donald Trump for his explosive interview with the NABJ in July — she spoke to a historically black sorority instead — Kamala rescheduled for September. And bless Politifact’s heart, they partnered with the NABJ, per a tweet before the interview, to fact-check her. These ruthless and cut-throat journalists would not let Kamala get by without a real grilling. Harris avoided many pointed questions. The journalists — who included Politico’s Eugene Daniels, a big Harris fan — seemed to think Kamala’s policies weren’t radical enough.

The messaging in the 2024 election has devolved into a contest to determine which campaign is more online, to their detriment. In 2019 (she never made it to 2020), the first Kamala Harris presidential campaign infamously imploded because, among other reasons, her staff and communications strategy were "way too online" — obsessed with the constant progressive social media flashpoints above and beyond the issues fundamental to the primary electorate. Instead of talking to voters about their priorities, Harris’s campaign was too focused on trending topics, memes and crafting the best clips of their candidate for the online audience.

One man is in custody after shots were fired at former president’s Donald Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida Sunday afternoon. At the time of the shooting, the former president was golfing. The FBI is investigating the incident as an assassination attempt.  The former president's website sent out an "alert from Trump" shortly after the incident that reads: “There were gunshots in my vicinity, but before rumors start spiraling out of control, I wanted you to hear this first: I AM SAFE AND WELL!” Law enforcement sources have identified the would-be shooter as Ryan Wesley Routh. The FBI said in a statement that it “has responded to West Palm Beach Florida and is investigating what appears to be an attempted assassination of former president Trump.

The main takeaway from the ABC News ambus— er, presidential debate last night? That someone should sue the network for creating a hostile workplace environment.  The evening was supposed to offer Kamala Harris and Donald Trump an opportunity expose themselves to the public and explain their positions on various policy matters that are important to the public.   In the event, it was an event in which the immoderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, repeatedly pecked at and corrected, or pretended to correct, one candidate, Donald Trump, while passing over lie after lie after lie emitted by Kamala Harris.  Trump did not say “there were fine people on both sides” at Charlottesville. He did not “incite an insurrection” on January 6.

Cockburn knew Taylor Swift was trouble when she walked in. Too much time in Hollywood (Cockburn saw it coming when she switched genres from country to pop), has turned the Tennessee Christian girl into a "childless cat lady" who just endorsed Kamala Harris for president. Swift took to Instagram immediately after presidential debate to declare: Like many of you, I watched the debate tonight. If you haven’t already, now is a great time to do your research on the issues at hand and the stances these candidates take on the topics that matter to you the most. As a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything I can about their proposed policies and plans for this country.