My biggest reaction to Joe Biden announcing that he was quitting the race was relief. Each day had been a little tense, wondering whether he might do or say something that would give further fodder to the endless speculation that he was too old and losing it. Suddenly, with his exit, that focus shifts to serial sex abuser and convicted felon Donald Trump (SSACFT) whose cognitive decline will now be under greater scrutiny now that he will be compared to the far more youthful-looking, energetic, and articulate Kamala Harris.
In speaking to the election campaign staff at their headquarters in Delaware yesterday, Harris did not disappoint. She gave a rousing speech that lasted about 18 minutes, with Joe Biden watching remotely and chiming in, that laid out the themes she will likely pursue during the campaign.
As this report says:
Harris’s delivery was lively, confident and joyful. Her campaign staff sounded energized. She is going to need that energy: she has a daunting to-do list.
She and her staff need to whip up a presidential campaign almost from scratch. It’s a process that usually takes months, even years. Harris has only about two months before early voting starts. That means she is in a rush to raise money, figure out a strategy, hire staff, win delegates, set up a website, make some ads, plan a convention and on and on. The checklist is long, but at least, as of Monday morning, she has a campaign logo.
Here are some of her key remarks.
“We who will fight for reproductive freedom, knowing if Trump gets the chance, he will sign a national abortion ban to outlaw abortion in every state. But we will not let that happen,” she said.
..“It is this team here that is going to help this November to elect a majority of members of US Congress who agree that the government should not be telling a woman what to do with her body,” she said to huge applause. “And when Congress passes a law to restore reproductive freedoms, as president of the US I will sign it into law,” she said.
…“I know Donald Trump’s type,” she said, referring to her job as California attorney general and a prosecutor. She paused for applause and cheers, “And in this campaign I will proudly, I will proudly put my record against his”.
…The “type” Harris was referring to? She said, “Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain.”
…“She repeated comparisons to her prosecuting people for sexual abuse, and Trump being found liable for sexual abuse by a jury, of taking on for-profit colleges and Trump starting one, her work on the foreclosure crisis, on environmental justice – Trump, meanwhile “stood in Mar a Lago and told oil companies he would do their bidding for a $1bn campaign contribution.”
Harris looks like she is eager to take the fight to SSACFT and that alone has rejuvenated Democrats who had been dispirited by the relentless focus on Biden’s age. I have no doubt that SSACFT and his allies sense the new sense of optimism and energy among Democrats, fear the danger posed to them, and will fight back viciously, and in doings so they will invoke the ugliest of sexist and racist rhetoric. His supporters have even attacked SSACFT’s vice-presidential pick JD Vance because his wife Usha Chilukuri Vance is the daughter of Indian immigrants and is a practicing Hindu. She was also a registered Democrat until 2014, the year she married Vance.
In the wake of Trump’s vice presidential announcement on Monday, numerous conservative and far-right figures have taken to social media to launch racist attacks against Usha Vance because of her Indian heritage and the assumption that her influence on her husband’s political career means the Republican Party will be softer on immigration.
“I’m sure this guy is going to be great on immigration,” Jaden McNeil, a far-right activist and the founder of America First Students, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, while sharing a picture of the Vances with their newborn baby.
Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home along with rapper Kanye West in November 2022, suggested that Vance would not be a “defender of white identity” because of his wife’s Indian heritage.
“Who is this guy, really?” Fuentes said on his podcast. “Do we really expect that the guy who has an Indian wife and named their kid Vivek is going to support white identity?”
Vincent James Foxx, who was present at the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, wrote on X: “JD Vance gets tapped as VP and immediately there’s a Hindu prayer at the RNC. Next we’ll see Sen. Mike Lee and JD Vance team up to convince Trump to let in 10 million Indian immigrants. Green cards on diplomas!”
Conservative commentator Stew Peters wrote, “There is an obvious Indian coup taking place in the US right before our eyes,” while sharing a screenshot of an article about the Vances’ three children.
These people cannot help being racist and sexist and xenophobic, even if it might hurt their hero SSACFT, because that is who they are to the core, and they believe he shares their views. If they can attack someone their own side like this, imagine what they are going to say about Harris.
It is going to get very ugly, very soon.
Living as I do in Oz, that just sounds silly.
(Two months of campaigning is only a small amount of time when campaigns are two years long)
Harris does not have to “whip up a presidential campaign almost from scratch.” She builds on the infrastructure of the Biden/Harris campaign.
Meh. Britain and France call “snap” elections now and then. Eternity election campaigns probably exist for the purpose of TV networks to line their pockets with ad money.
Racism: bring Sebastian Gorka to more TV programs, let him be the face of the modern Republican party. He is too vain to hide his views. And there are plenty of others who are almost as bad
-My ultimate dream is to sneak alcohol into Trump’s diet cola so he gets even more uninhibited in front of cameras.
[can’t resist]
How would you be able to tell?
“My biggest reaction to Joe Biden announcing that he was quitting the race was relief”
Ditto.
I’m even more relieved that the Dems haven’t done what I expected and started fighting over who’s to be the nominee. The rapid coalescence around Harris is a joy to see.
I was not so much tense as near despair -- it appeared obvious Biden was going to lose. And after the debate, there was no need for “speculation” that Biden was “too old and losing it” -- you had to make truly heroic efforts to avoid seeing that, although I admit that a surprising number of people did.
Obviously there were limits to the active preparations she could make before Biden withdrew, but I’m absolutely sure she had plans in place for a number of eventualities, from Biden dying suddenly (the guy is 81 years old, with significant medical history -- I didn’t know until very recently that he’d had two brain aneurysms back in 1988, and assassination is something of an American speciality) to him deciding for non-medical reasons to retire or not to run for re-election. And I expressed my hunch that he was going to withdraw @Pharyngula a week or two ago, just based on what was appearing in the mass media -- she must have been much better placed to make the same judgement.
John Morales @ 5
Well played, sir!
Conservative commentator Stew Peters wrote, “There is an obvious Indian coup taking place in the US right before our eyes,” while sharing a screenshot of an article about the Vances’ three children.
Party of Ramaslimy, D’Sousa, Ponnoru and Jindal says what?
birgerjohansson: It’s not about getting Trump to be “uninhibited,” it’s about getting our media to report it.