Democratic party

The candidate who said Americans should be “unburdened by what has been” is now a has-been. The irony will be lost on her.  Also lost was the traditional graciousness — and normative necessity — of conceding defeat clearly and publicly as soon as the loss is certain. When Donald Trump failed to take that step in 2020, after exhausting his court challenges, he violated that norm and deepened our national divisions. He deepened that chasm on January 6 and later by continuing to challenge the rightful winner. Those challenges threaten the peaceful transfer of power and undermine the public consensus that the winner holds office legitimately.  Kamala Harris learned from Trump’s mistake and repeated it.

State College, Pennsylvania Cockburn wandered curiously up a bustling College Avenue in State College yesterday toward the State Theatre, where Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was set to take the stage and stump for the Harris-Walz campaign. He was waylaid along the way by a group of Republicans waving flags and ringing a cowbell alongside a cardboard cutout of Donald Trump. The “counter-protesters,” as they described themselves, were garnering numerous supportive honks and thumbs-up from cars driving by. They told Cockburn only one person had yelled an obscenity. So much for the Divided States of America! Down the street, two lines had formed half an hour before AOC’s scheduled showtime.

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.

Vice President Kamala Harris was pushed to the top of the 2024 Democratic ticket more than a month ago — and it’s still not entirely clear how much involvement she had with the effort to force President Joe Biden to step aside from his reelection campaign. It’s a question worth clearing up as it turns out she has a history of leapfrogging her bosses. During her first sit down interview with CNN on Thursday night, Harris said she stood by her assessment of Biden’s cognitive ability after his debate against former president Donald Trump. But she was not asked if she played a role in the palace coup. Reporting indicates that Barack Obama, the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, among others, convinced Biden to step aside.

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!

So how exactly does a political candidate who fell on her face in the most dramatic way possible, whose campaign became a partisan joke, who turned comparisons to Barack Obama into comparisons with Sarah Palin, suddenly, in the blink of an eye, become the national savior of the Democratic Party, a generational talent, the princess that was promised? The answer is simple enough: members of the Democratic Party, unlike American conservatives, are totally fine with being told what to do. Belief is a transitional moment in time, unburdened by what has been.

Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently tried to arrange a meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris to discuss the possibility of serving in her administration, offering to drop out of the 2024 race in exchange for a position as cabinet secretary.   Kennedy’s campaign manager, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, told ABC News the Kennedy campaign had yet to hear back from Harris. RFK’s attempt to meet with Harris comes after the candidate met with former president Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last month, where he offered a similar deal that resulted in no agreement. Kennedy spoke about advising Trump in a second term on health and medical issues.

It’s not hard to recognize the sunny optimism that embodies the phrase, “Minnesota Nice.” You must be able to survive in a state where the land-locked upper Midwest weather vacillates between the stiflingly humid ninety-degree summers and dark, subzero winters. It’s those slivers of perfection between each season that make living here worthwhile; people flock to lakes with Native American names like Winnibigoshish and Minnetonka, whose purifying waters were made famous by Minnesota’s favorite native son, Prince. Our professional sports teams suffer from record-setting championship droughts, yet the fan base is never deterred.

The Democratic National Convention Committee announced last month that it has issued the same credentials as traditional news outlets to over 200 content creators from TikTok, YouTube and other platforms for the August convention in Chicago. The creators will be able to use dedicated workspaces at Chicago’s United Center and have access to party surrogates. They will also be able to attend related events in Chicago, such as third party panel discussions, and capture content there. The RNC also offered credentials to some content creators last month. @DemConvention shared a clip on X featuring multiple different left-wing influencers/content creators planning on attending the convention announcing their attendance.

Now that the Democrats have toppled the president in a bloodless coup, the bases of the Republican and Democratic parties have candidates they’re excited about. But both parties remain largely in denial regarding the unpopular leaders they’ve picked. According to the RealClearPolitics average of favorability polls, Harris is just over nine points underwater with 51 percent of Americans viewing her unfavorably, and Trump is just under nine points underwater, with 53 percent of Americans viewing him unfavorably. In nominating Harris and Trump, the devoted bases of both parties have essentially extended middle fingers at each other and to a swathe of independents who view both of them unfavorably.

It’s official. Kamala Harris has received the obligatory support of Beyoncé. The "kampaign" can finally begin in earnest. On Thursday morning, the vice president released her first campaign ad with an assist from the pop giant. Images of diverse Americans fly by as Beyoncé’s “Freedom” plays and Harris promises a utopian future free of poverty and violence. The campaign is undoubtedly hoping the choice ages better than Hillary Clinton’s overuse of “Fight Song.”  “In this election we each face a question. What kind of country do we want to live in? There are some people who think we should be a country of chaos. Of fear. Of hate,” Harris voices over in the ad. “But us. We choose something different. We choose freedom.

Even amid inner Democratic turmoil over his capability to stay in office, President Joe Biden refuses to step down. In terms of proving he is too diminished to run, Cockburn is not sure what more evidence the Democratic Party needs. Biden mumbled through his Complex news interview with Speedy Morman on Friday. A few people in the comments on the interview said they had to turn on subtitles to understand him. Biden also said, “In 2020 when Barack asked me to vice president...” Cockburn can forgive the guy for making a simple mistake, having been Barack Obama’s VP from 2009-2017. And yet with repeated evidence of memory mix-ups — not pertaining to normal, everyday mistakes, but to serious questions of mental acuity — each infraction is increasingly concerning.

After Thursday’s fiasco in Atlanta, Joe Biden faces two hard choices. The hardest — and grimmest — is whether to stay in the race. Staying in means ignoring the rising chorus of calls to withdraw, not from the opposing party but from flaks on his own side, led by the New York Times. The only groups that haven’t issued that call, so far, are his party’s leadership on Capitol Hill and the two former Democratic presidents. They see the same problems everyone else does, but they probably think it is too late to force Joe out without catastrophic costs — and may be impossible because Joe simply won’t leave.  Second, if Joe does stay in the race, his campaign strategy has to change.