2024 presidential election

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.

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.

The Harris-Walz campaign is depending on Americans feeling so rushed this election that they don’t pay attention to the vice president’s dramatic evolution. Last week, CNN’s Kasie Hunt interviewed Harris-Walz campaign senior spokesperson Ian Sams and discussed polling that shows Democrats are losing working-class voters. “What is it about what you guys have been doing for the last three-plus years that explains that?” Hunt asked. Sams’s attempt at a non-answer was actually quite revealing. “We’ve got sixty days until the election,” he replied, exasperated. “You know, we don’t have time to sit around and think about why, over the last few years, certain things may have happened or may not have happened.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.