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Democrats, rather astonishingly, seem to have JD Vance on the ropes already. He's been getting horrible coverage for over a week now, mostly about his rather unique ideas on how childless Americans should be treated as second-class citizens. What seems to be in order right now is a knockout punch. And I've got a doozy of an idea to suggest.
Things are getting weird in politics. Or, to be more accurate, lots of people are now commenting on how weird things have gotten. Democrats have newly fallen in love with the word "weird," to describe Donald Trump and his running mate. Which, of course, reminded me of the best weird quote of all time, Hunter S. Thompson's immortal: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."
Maybe it's just because Silly Season is upon us -- that time when Congress blows off an entire month and the punditocracy is left with very little to talk about. During these dog days of August, all sorts of silly things get blown monstrously out of proportion, just because there's nothing else for the political commentators to comment on. Of course, this year is also a presidential election year, so there's always the horserace to obsess over, and in a few weeks the Democrats will launch their own national convention and dominate the airwaves for a solid week. So there's that to look forward to, at least.
President Joe Biden wrote a piece for the Washington Post today where he lays out three reforms he now supports: a strong code of ethics for the Supreme Court, term limits for Supreme Court justices, and a constitutional amendment that clearly states that presidents are not above the law. All are good ideas and having the president get behind them is even better. But forgive me if there's also the feeling that Biden's move comes way too late to change anything any time soon. It feels like nothing more than political posturing, at this point.
Last week, we wrote our third Friday Talking Points column in a row that dispensed with our usual format and was solely devoted to angst and calling on President Joe Biden to drop out of the race. This week, we are happy to say, things have changed for the better. And that's putting it mildly!
Vice President Kamala Harris is now the presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee. Joe Biden is now officially (through his own decision) a lame duck. And Democrats by the millions have been astounded that they are now feeling genuine hope and actual enthusiasm about an election that was shaping up to be pretty grim indeed.
The change is monumental, and it came from the top. Kamala Harris is going to run a completely different campaign than Joe Biden would have. Sure, they'll be almost identical on the actual issues, but the style and energy of her campaign is going to be off the charts. Here is just one example -- a press release sent out by Team Harris (emphasis in original) after Donald Trump recently appeared on a friendly news show to do his usual mix of rambling aimlessly and lying shamelessly:
What a week it has been....
Last Thursday night, America watched Donald Trump accept his party's presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention. Republicans had owned the news cycle all week long as they put on their quadrennial extravaganza, topped off with a full hour and a half of Trump rambling on about this, that, and the other. Traditionally, presidential candidates get a "convention bump" from all the free media, so perhaps Team Trump was looking forward to skating for the upcoming week, and just riding out the wave that the convention brought.
To put it mildly, this is not what happened. Instead, President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he was dropping out of the race and handing the reins over to his vice president, Kamala Harris. This launched an absolute whirlwind of activity on the Democratic side, as the party eagerly leapt to fall in line behind Harris. No other plausible Democrat even challenged her for the party's nomination, and in a little more than 24 hours she had enough delegates behind her to sew up the nomination (Harris also raised an eye-popping $100 million in donations during the same period). Since then, it has been Harris who has gotten a ton of free (and mostly positive) media attention. Last night, Biden (recovered from his bout with COVID-19) gave a primetime address from the Oval Office to pass the torch to Harris.
That headline is not technically accurate, since President Joe Biden will doubtlessly deliver some sort of farewell address at the end of his term next January. But history will mark tonight as the one that counted -- the one where Biden informed the American public that he will no longer seek a second term in office and will thus be a lame-duck president for the next six months. Which, again, is not even strictly accurate, since Biden made his initial bombshell announcement last Sunday. But he was sidelined with a case of COVID-19 and wanted to wait until his voice had recovered, so tonight was chosen for Biden's true swansong speech.
By selflessly choosing to step aside in favor of his much-younger vice president, Joe Biden made history. His legacy is now secure. Had he continued his run against Donald Trump and lost, many angry Democrats would have blamed Biden for the hubris of assuming that only he could beat Trump. That is no longer the case. Kamala Harris will either sink or swim on her own, and nobody can say Biden selfishly failed to make way for someone else to prosecute the case against Trump.
Vice President Kamala Harris is now the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. She clinched this status yesterday, only a little more than 24 hours after President Joe Biden announced he would be ending his re-election bid. Convention delegates in state after state quickly met and then proudly announced they were unanimously behind Harris. This completely precluded the idea of a "mini-primary" (which many pundits had been hoping for), since no other viable Democrat even came forward to challenge Harris. So with remarkable speed, the Democratic Party has now unified behind Harris as their standard-bearer. Within the same 24-hour period, a jaw-dropping $81 million was donated to her campaign (the total is now well over $100 million). People are already volunteering to work for the campaign by the tens of thousands. Numbers aside, though, Harris has already achieved a remarkable feat -- she has excited voters.
After three weeks of angsty Democratic nail-biting, all of a sudden it is a whole new race. No longer will voters be faced with the same two old men as last time. Now they have someone younger, someone historic, and someone with plenty of energy to make her case to the people. Today Harris held her first rally as the presumptive nominee in Wisconsin. By all accounts it was an exuberant event. The campaign said Harris pulled a bigger audience than they've had for any previous events in the entire campaign (for either Biden or Harris) -- which is a very good sign indeed. Democrats are now energized in a way that simply wouldn't have been possible with Biden still at the top of the ticket. They see hope and possibilities with Harris -- the chance to completely redefine the race as one now filled with enthusiasm (instead of dread).
Members of the Republican Party, from Donald Trump on downward, were all caught pretty flat-footed by the announcement yesterday that President Joe Biden was bowing out of the presidential race. The only thing they could agree upon, at least in the initial hours after it happened, was a knee-jerk reaction that is just a monumentally stupid position for them to take (politically-speaking). Because if they got their wish -- if Joe Biden immediately resigned the presidency -- then Donald Trump's chances of winning the race in November would go down even further. But not many of them seem to have realized how self-defeating their calls on Biden to resign truly are.
Thank you, Mister President.
You did the right thing.
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
The political message of this week was that Republicans are unified behind their presidential nominee Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Democrats are increasingly fractured, unsure of who they even want at the top of their ticket.
The Democratic dam didn't exactly break today, but it is getting a whole lot weaker as time goes by. A third sitting Democratic senator called for President Joe Biden to step aside and make way for someone else to run, in addition to nine more Democratic House members -- the largest one-day total yet. To date, a full 35 congressional Democrats have now done so. Biden is currently quarantining at his home in Delaware (suffering from his third case of COVID-19), and so far shows no signs of heeding the call to turn the reins of the campaign over to anyone else.
[Note: while writing this column, two more Democrats joined the call for Biden to step down, including a fourth Democratic senator, Sherrod Brown. This puts the total at 37, as we write this.]
