Kamala harris

Chicago You get freedom, you get freedom, we all get freedom! At least that was the pitch from Oprah Winfrey who gave a surprise speech at the Democratic National Convention. The celebrity talk-show host and businesswoman received the most raucous applause of Wednesday night’s festivities and ignited the crowd like none other of the evening. But it’s still unclear exactly what “freedom” the Democrats are talking about besides the ability to terminate your pregnancy up until birth. Yet even Oprah couldn’t make us forget the enduring awkwardness of Joe Biden being forced out of his reelection campaign. Who could help but raise their eyebrows when President Bill Clinton claimed that Biden had “voluntarily” relinquished power?

For years, Tim Walz has claimed that he and his wife Gwen used in-vitro fertilization to conceive their two children Hope, twenty-three, and Gus, seventeen. The Minnesota governor has weaponized his emotional journey to attack Republicans opposed to the procedure and used it to lockdown the VP slot on Kamala Harris’s protection of reproduction rights ticket.   But the New York Times reports — giving Walz the softest of soft landings — that in fact his wife had intrauterine insemination, or IUI, to conceive, not in vitro fertilization, or IVF.  There is a huge difference between the two procedures, as Walz knows. Principally that there are no moves by Republicans to use the overturning of Roe v. Wade to ban IUI.

Chicago Even for someone used to the idea of mass media lies, the dichotomy between the way the 2024 DNC is depicted in mass media versus the way it feels in practical terms is astonishing. On camera and according to a host of commentators, this event in Chicago is one marked by joy, a vibe shift, the turning of the page, the passing of the torch, the way of the future. In person, it feels like an elderly boomer white lady tripping over her orthotics while wearing a Charli xcx shirt because she was trying to send a selfie to her twentysomething daughter. How do you do, fellow kids, don't you also enjoy James Taylor? The reason for this, when you consider the facts, is rather obvious: this is still a Joe Biden convention. It just has Kamala Harris layered over it.

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!