2024

Thursday

Ben Domenech

Kamala Harris’s Frankenstein campaign

Welcome to Thunderdome. When the decision was made to shift from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris, the campaign staff was totally blindsided, with the entire Delaware operation shocked to learn about the president’s decision via social media — leading to the now infamous unnamed Democrat staffer’s line: “We’re all finding out by tweet.” It’s a sign of just how insular the Biden operation was, and how confined to the upper echelons of close, trusted staffers known for their tight lips and protective nature toward the old man. The Harris operation in 2020 was anything but that — leading to her epic collapse as a candidate and strewing numerous back-stabbing comments from staffers across the media on the way out the door.

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Harris
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.

Monday

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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Charles Lipson

Kamala Harris and that new car smell

If you felt the ground shaking, it was Democrats jumping for joy after dumping Joe Biden and settling on a new, more energetic replacement. Joe was the old clunker. Kamala has that new car smell. The switcheroo raises three fundamental questions for the election. First: how long will Harris’s novelty last? Answer: until Labor Day, but probably not longer. Second: how does Harris deal with the Biden administration’s policy failures? Answer: by emphasizing a hopeful future with few details and avoiding talking about her role in the administration’s mistakes. Third: how does Harris deal with her record of very progressive positions, on tape from her last presidential run?

Vice President new car smell kamala harris
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Amber Duke

What did Kamala actually do to address the ‘root causes’ of migration?

Nearly two decades ago, District Attorney Kamala Harris of San Francisco launched a criminal justice reform program called “Back on Track” that attempted to keep low-level drug dealers out of prison. San Francisco resident Amanda Kiefer learned the hard way that the program was open to illegal aliens: she suffered a fractured skull during a purse theft by a man released from lock-up under Harris’s program. Kiefer describes herself as a liberal turned Trump supporter: “When a policy negatively affects you, you wake up,” she told ABC News in July. Harris claimed in 2009 that the inclusion of illegal aliens in the “Back on Track” program was a “flaw in the design.” She has not commented on it since.

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Ashley Rindsberg

How Silicon Valley fell for Trump

Just weeks after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, the July 13 assassination attempt on Donald Trump radically shifted the election calculus yet again. Amid the intense, fast-moving news cycle, one event that would ordinarily have garnered wall-to-wall coverage went nearly unnoticed. “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” Elon Musk posted to X on the day of the assassination attempt. In recent weeks, a legion of tech giants from the deep-blue stronghold of Silicon Valley have broken ranks and openly pledged support for the MAGA leader. With each new backer comes a slew of mega-donations to his campaign.

democrats electoral college
John R. MacArthur

How — and why — the Democrats ignored the will of the people… again

See the wheels come off the Democratic machine as the party leader (who is also the current US president) displays to all the world his verbal and cognitive breakdown. See the party barons’ absurd race to circle the wagons with rationalizations as implausible as their praise for their boss’s historic “accomplishments.” See the media scramble to hide its complicity in the long-term cover-up of the president’s faltering tenure.

democracy
Daniel McCarthy

Is the fate of democracy truly at stake?

In a few months, the stolen election narratives will start in earnest. There was one in 2020, of course, but there had been another in 2016, a liberal myth about Russian interference stealing victory from Hillary Clinton. Disgruntled Democrats similarly said the Republican president before Trump was “selected, not elected” — put in office by the Supreme Court, not voters. Claiming that Barack Obama wasn’t a natural-born citizen of the United States, as “birther” Republicans did in 2008 and 2012, was another variation on the stolen-election theme. Even when elections run smoothly, ideologues easily find cause for complaint. Discontents can even apply to foreign elections.

Letters
The Spectator

Letters from Spectator readers, September 2024

The cunning of the Democrats’ lawfare Wow! A tour de force of snark! But wonderful for it. My late father-in-law would have said that instead of brushing his teeth in the morning, the author gets a file and sharpens his tongue. As depressing as this article is, it is likely an accurate assessment of what’s going on. Particularly the image of Trump and Biden essentially playing the roles of Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon in the Grumpy Old Men movies. Carry on, America. Down Under, we have our own problems, as well as being affected by yours, same as every other country. — David Gerber Tellingly prescient. The 800-pound gorilla the next generation will be forced to address will be unsustainable entitlement transfer payments.

Sunday

Amber Duke

Kamala’s ABC connection

Former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are at odds over where and when the pair will debate, with Trump rejecting a debate he had previously scheduled with President Joe Biden on September 10, hosted by ABC News. Instead, Trump says he will only debate Harris on September 4 in a debate hosted by Fox News: “I’ll see her on September 4th or, I won’t see her at all,” he wrote on Truth Social. Harris has accused Trump of “playing games” and is keen to stick with the ABC debate. Trump has given two reasons as to why the ABC debate is no longer on the table for him. First, he agreed to that debate with Biden, not Harris. Second, he is in active litigation against ABC News and anchor George Stephanopoulos (or, as Trump calls him, “Slopadopoulos”).

abc Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) speaks during the Democratic Presidential Debate on September 12, 2019 (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Sunday

Amber Duke

Biden has ended his reelection bid. What comes next?

President Joe Biden finally announced Sunday that he would not seek reelection weeks after a disastrous debate performance against former president Donald Trump that laid bare Biden’s physical and mental decline. As most things in life do, Biden’s exit from the presidential race happened slowly and then all at once. A few Democratic pundits and relatively small-time elected officials expressed grave concerns about Biden’s ability to carry on immediately following the debate, but it took weeks longer for top Biden allies — such as former speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Obamas and the Clintons — to privately reason with and publicly leak damaging information about their ol’ buddy Joe. This outcome was inevitable. Post-debate, the genie could not be put back in the bottle.

US President Joe Biden waves on stage (Photo by KENT NISHIMURA/AFP via Getty Images)

Thursday

Spectator Editorial

Safetyism and the 2024 election

"My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.” So spoke the nation’s first vice president. Of all the indignities that come with the office, the most insulting is being forced to stump for a beleaguered party mate in what was once safe territory. No one plays “Hail to the (Almost) Chief” as the 4,092nd most powerful leader in the free world — sandwiched between the prime minister of Nauru and the 2006 American League batting champion — enters the local rec center or middle school gymnasium.

safetyism
Ben Domenech

Trump has reshaped the GOP. What comes next?

From the outset, it was inconceivable. The idea that Donald J. Trump, limousine liberal, famed for bankruptcies both financial and moral, would triumph within a Republican Party less than four years removed from nominating Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan struck nearly every analyst as absurd on its face. Sure, there was a faction of support. Sure, he appealed to the populist wing. Sure, his message on immigration was more in line with the party’s base than the Wall Street Journal editorial page. But to win, in this crowded field, over so many leading lights of conservatism with the carefully constructed résumés designed to equip them for the nomination, if not the presidency? Inconceivable. Of course, in 2016, he did it — and by now we all know how.

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Biden
Spencer A. Klavan

The Biden-Trump rematch is a nationwide exercise in denial

Neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden is the other guy. This, we are frequently reminded, is their principal advantage in the eyes of many. It may be the only advantage Biden has left after decomposing in real time on the debate stage. Ironically, though, not being each other is one of the few important things these two men have in common. In 2024, a sizable portion of the electorate — maybe the majority — will vote not for a presidential candidate but against his opponent. It’s enough to make you wonder whether the whole affair is an apotropaic exercise, a mass effort to stave off something worse. Maybe we are scared — not just of Biden, or of Trump, but of what the alternatives might be. We have chosen to stick with the devils we know.

Biden
Bridget Phetasy

If Trump or Biden actually cared about America, they would step aside

I’ve written ad nauseam about how much I hate this election, about how Trump-Biden 2.0 is even more demoralizing than the first season of our never-ending reality show, Electile Dysfunction: America Has Gone Soft. “For me, the prospect of a Trump-Biden rerun makes me so disillusioned about politics that I find myself wanting to sit this election cycle out completely,” I wrote last October. Those feelings have only intensified since. Trump is now a Convicted Felon™, with more cases pending. He will likely be in court for the rest of his life. Hunter Biden, who has no problem with ED despite the heaps of cocaine he was on, is also a Convicted Felon™. Biden is, well, Biden. We are ruled by criminals and Olds.

Biden
Charles Lipson

Joe Biden, naked emperor

Sometimes, a fairytale provides the best description of a real-world crisis. That’s true of President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline. The best description, sadly, is the tale of the naked emperor, who parades through his kingdom without clothes but is never called out until a child cries out the truth. Once the child speaks, the crowd joins in. For Joe Biden, the yelling child was the split screen that kept his face on camera throughout his late June debate with Donald Trump. Observers could finally see — and call out — what the Biden team and the mainstream press knew for months but refused to say. In fact, the Biden communications team is still refusing to acknowledge the obvious. How can they and still claim Joe is fit to serve as president for another four-plus years?

Monday

Spectator Editorial

Can the GOP do normal?

"What’s made Milwaukee famous / Has made a fool out of me.” So sang Jerry Lee Lewis back in 1968, another election year with a lively summer of party conventions. Donald Trump, an infamous teetotaler, will not be sampling the city’s brews as he secures the Republican nomination this month, the first convicted felon to do so. But that’s not to say he’ll be able to steer clear of the foolishness of his party’s attitude toward its quadrennial colloquium. The selection of America’s Dairyland as host for the 2024 Republican National Convention is the punchline to an eight-year-old joke: Trump’s first opponent Hillary Clinton never bothered to visit the swing state, which could have cost her the election.

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RNC
Amber Duke

Who can right the RNC ship?

It was September of 2014 and Republicans were very nervous. A new poll showed Kansas senator Pat Roberts trailing his independent challenger Greg Orman by seven points. The GOP needed a net gain of six seats to win the Senate majority — and the last thing they needed to worry about was Democrats ousting one of their incumbents. The party called in Chris LaCivita, a retired Marine and longtime Republican operative with a reputation for taking no prisoners, to turn the race around. “Months out from Election Day, LaCivita went to the NRSC [National Republican Senatorial Committee] and said, ‘Tell me what I need to know about this race because I’m flying out tomorrow and we’re gonna fuck shit up,’” a GOP consultant recalled.

Wednesday

Roger Kimball

The cunning of the Democrats’ lawfare

It saddens me to admit it, but the evidence is too overwhelming to dismiss: Democrats are significantly more cunning than Republicans. I say “Democrats,” but that is an imprecise, even a misleading, designation. Party affiliation is not now, if it ever was, a really accurate predictor of ideological coloration. What I mean are those people, most of whom happen to belong to the Democratic Party, who have been bitten by the bug of extremism, who are fired by revolutionary fervor, who regard every opponent, every contrary opinion, as a “by-any-means-necessary” fire alarm. It is an attitude that has stirred their creativity, also their vindictiveness. Hercules had to undertake twelve supposedly impossible labors. Donald Trump is fast catching up.

Democrats
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Ben Domenech

The Trump trial tedium

Donald Trump was falling asleep. The former president of the United States was, as we have all been at one point or another, stuck in an interminably long and boring meeting. This one happened to be in a courtroom, one that he protested was being kept too cold — the presiding judge agreed but said that the choice with their limited thermostat was between too cold and too hot, and it was better not to swelter. So the room was cold, the talk was boring, and the former president was falling asleep.