Democratic primaries 2024

The support for Kamala Harris within the Democratic Party springs eternal. Last night, activist Shannon Watts organized a “white women for Kamala Harris” Zoom call, surpassing 100,000 attendants with guests such as pop star P!nk and Megan Rapinoe in attendance. Voting for Harris is now being called an act of “self-love,” according to actress Connie Britton. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, also on the call, echoed her thoughts, sharing a slightly disturbing anecdote of her and Britton drinking toad venom to recover from seasickness. “We survived,” said Gillibrand. “Connie’s an extraordinary role model for women and girls and people everywhere.” Because she is a woman, Harris will be a better listener and empath, Britton claimed.

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.

The speed at which politics moves in 2024 is enough to give the American citizenry a massive case of whiplash. It was just over three weeks ago that Joe Biden took the stage in a CNN debate that left the nation and the world shocked at his incapacity — leading to a massive freakout in the media, the donors and the Democratic base. But in the time since, it appeared the president, his inner circle and his family had dug in, insisting against all efforts to dislodge him that the president intended to continue to run and win in November.  The mood among Democratic circles was dejected, the attitude among the Donald Trump campaign ebullient — and that was before a failed assassination attempt just a week ago, a successful convention and the naming of J.D.

Days after a radio host admitted to using the Biden campaign’s pre-selected questions in her post-debate interview with the president, another "journalist" committed credibility hari-kari. Earl Ingram, the host of Wisconsin-based radio show Civic Media, confessed to editing an interview with Joe Biden... at the request of the president’s campaign, naturally.  Ingram conducted the interview with Biden on July 3, following his disastrous performance in the presidential debate on June 27, airing the interview a day later.   The Biden campaign reportedly called the radio station right after the interview was recorded asking for two edits to be made. Civic Media did not specify who exactly made the report.

The Democrats are not just caught between one dog and one hydrant. They are caught between three — and the water is coming down hard on their legs.  The first dog, obviously, is the president’s physical and mental condition and his status as the presumptive nominee who won near-unanimous support in the primaries and secured enough votes to win the nomination on the first ballot. Those victories leave Biden alone in charge of staying in the race. Others can pressure him, offer him carrots and sticks, but Biden and his family control the decision.  The second dog is Biden’s nearly impossible battle to recover public trust after his disastrous debate against Donald Trump. Voters simply don’t buy the White House explanation that it was “one bad night.

Joe Biden didn’t make any major mistakes in his Friday interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. That’s the best you can say. He helped himself only because, after a dreadful week, he didn’t hurt himself. No hits, no runs, no errors.  Stephanopoulos concentrated almost entirely on two topics: Biden’s health and his dreadful poll numbers, which threaten not only Democratic control of the White House but also their chance to control the House or Senate. The best characterization of down-ballot Democrats today is “hair on fire.” Joe Biden’s interview didn’t douse the flames.

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.  “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”  Those were Hemingway’s words in 1926's The Sun Also Rises.   A century later, they apply to Joe Biden, not financially but politically. For him, the sun is not rising. It’s setting.   “Gradually and then suddenly” is the story of Joe Biden’s physical and cognitive decline. “Gradually and then suddenly” is how his army of enablers in the media, the Democratic Party and the donor base abandoned his defense.

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.

The upcoming June 27 presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden will be the first of its kind — a former president debating a current president, with a massive list of subjects to animate the discourse. But there is one topic in particular that moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash must bring up if this debate is to have any respectability from the voters: they must confront Joe Biden about his lies in the 2020 debates. These lies have been acknowledged publicly by Tapper at least, and by Bash to a lesser degree.

President Joe Biden is the presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic Party after his victory in the Georgia primary pushed him passed the threshold of 1,968 delegates. Donald Trump also passed the threshold of 1,215 delegates to become the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party, following his triumphs in Georgia, Mississippi and Washington. "It is my great honor to be representing the Republican Party as its Presidential Nominee," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "Our Party is UNITED and STRONG, and fully understands that we are running against the Worst, Most Incompetent, Corrupt, and Destructive President in the History of the United States. Millions of people are invading our Country, many from prisons and mental institutions of other Countries.

Donald Trump is cleaning up in the Republican primaries on Super Tuesday. The 45th president has secured victories in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia. Nikki Haley's sole victory is in Vermont. President Biden also bagged easy wins in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont and Virginia. The Democrats also held caucuses in American Samoa and Iowa on Tuesday. Biden won Iowa with 91 percent of the vote, but lost American Samoa to unknown businessman Jason Palmer.

President Joe Biden is planning to use his upcoming State of the Union address to “reset” his image with voters — and if the jobs section of his campaign website is any indication of his priorities, he’ll be leaning a lot on celebrity backers. Amid an onslaught of speculation about a potential second Taylor Swift endorsement of Biden, The Spectator scrolled through the Biden job board and found several interesting open positions, including a director of celebrity outreach role that will pay a lucky applicant up to $120,000. In a tenor befitting of a scatterbrained president, the job posting is pretty confusing: it says that it is for the director and deputy director role in different places.

The US primaries are over. Trump whacked Nikki Haley in New Hampshire; if she could win anywhere it was there, and she didn’t, so she’s done. Joe Biden didn’t even bother. The result? The most inadequate, boring primary season in living memory. North Korean elections are more unpredictable than this. For those of us who love politics, primaries are usually more interesting than the November general election. In the general, candidates run to the center; in the primary, they run to the edges, articulating a philosophy and galvanizing its constituency. You get contests of insider versus outsider (Clinton versus Obama, 2008); establishment versus radical (Clinton versus Sanders, 2016).

Manchester, New Hampshire The Republican and Democratic primaries in New Hampshire are two sides of the same coin. New polls released this morning show the 45th and 46th president leading their respective fields comfortably. The latest Boston Globe/Suffolk survey has Donald Trump on 55 percent, with Nikki Haley on 36 percent and Ron DeSantis on 6 percent. The new CNN/UNH poll is a similar story: Trump on 50 percent, Haley on 39 percent, DeSantis on 6 percent.

You’ve probably seen a clip of Cenk Uygur, founder and host of the progressive online news network the Young Turks. Whatever clip you watched, he was probably shouting. Rarely soft-spoken or caging for clarifications, Uygur is a perennially viral figure in the online drama of right versus left; a passionate progressive advocate who GOES OFF on CORRUPT ELITES and so forth, as such videos are titled, or a hyper-emotive epitome of the “triggered-lib,” who MELTS DOWN to the tune of hundreds of thousands of views for the online right. In the clips and tweets, Trump is a fascist, his supporters are racists, Israel is genocidal, “Establishment” Republicans are corrupt and establishment Democrats are no better.

Not enough people are asking a pretty obvious question: will 2024 be the last cycle where Iowa and New Hampshire are the first states in the nation to vote on the presidential nomination? Democrats have already ditched them. The decision by party leaders to move away from the Iowa-New Hampshire schedule for the first caucus and first primary in the nation was motivated by a recognition that the two states no longer represent the populations at the center of their current coalition. In other words: there are too many white people in these places. So South Carolina is now their first real state that counts, at least for this cycle — but probably for the foreseeable future, as Democrats shift toward their coalition of black Americans, single women and college-educated suburbanites.

Joe Manchin’s decision to retire from the US Senate is not surprising. The tea leaves have been there for a long time. But what is surprising is how immediately and explicitly he made clear that he is entertaining the possibility of entering the 2024 presidential contest. It is a decision that could prove monumentally important to the 2024 outcome — and unlike most third party candidates, Manchin has a real shot at being more than a protest vote. For the last true independent-minded moderate in the Democratic Party, it should be an easy choice: he has every reason to run. The Republicans and Democrats are both headed toward nominating two of the most unpopular politicians in America. The challenges they face are unique and unavoidable.

Had you blindfolded me yesterday morning, led me to the front lawn of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, removed my blinder and asked me to guess where we were, I would have said, “A James Taylor benefit concert for NPR.” In the crowd on this sunny fall day was a heavy contingent of the boomer delegation, of various stripes and checks. There were even some traditional tweed, and, with blazers out in full force, on both men and women, paired mostly with denim — though late-season red chinos and season-rushing corduroys were on display, too — and invariably some statement eyewear, leather dress shoes, and baseball caps keeping flowy silver hair tamed and sun-spotted skin safe. It was plain from their collective style that this group was at least self-aware.