Kamala's First 48 Hours
History was made, in real time
Forty-eight hours after President Biden dropped out of the race, Vice President Harris had all but clinched the nomination, a feat in retrospect that boggles the imagination and sets the stage for the pace of the battle in the coming months. Even as the talking heads on the Sunday cable shows were trying to parse what exactly the Vice President meant in her statement about her intention to “earn and win the nomination,” she was already torching the phone lines with former Presidents, labor and advocacy leaders as well as current elected officials.
Already within 24 hours of Biden’s withdrawal, Harris had the endorsements of all 24 Democrat Governors (some of which, we cannot fail to note, were potential candidates themselves). According to AFP, Harris, the first Black, female and South Asian Vice President, spent the day at her official residence on the grounds of the US Naval Observatory in Washington, making over 100 calls, dressed in a hooded Howard University sweatshirt, sweatpants and sneakers. "The menu was salad and sandwiches for lunch, and pizza and salad for dinner. Danny Kemp writes. “The Vice President's pizza came with anchovies, her go-to topping."
And in an exhibition of what can only be properly construed as sheer moxy, Harris appears to have at present the backing of more than the 1,976 delegates she’ll need to claim the nomination on the first ballot. Two hundred and sixty-eight elected Democrat officials, from Congresswoman Alma Adams of North Carolina to Senator Ron Weyden of Oregon, have already endorsed her candidacy. Her fundraising totals, which doubled the campaign’s total amount, are nothing short of breathtaking. “Mr. Biden had reportedly made 20 calls to congressional Democrats in the first 10 or so days after the debate, while his candidacy hung in the balance,” writes Shane Goldmacher in the Times this morning. “Ms. Harris made 100 calls in 10 hours.”
Aside from giving voters the oomf they have ached for for months, such a vim-infused display of cold-calling serves also as a powerful disincentive to prospective challengers. Goldmacher continues, low key:
Within 48 hours, Ms. Harris had functionally cleared the Democratic field of every serious rival, clinched the support of more delegates than needed to secure the party nomination, raised more than $100 million and delivered a crisper message against former President Donald J. Trump than Mr. Biden had mustered in months.
Although nothing will be confirmed until the Democratic National Convention on August 19, the nomination is essentially hers to lose, without a single challenger of note in the gladiatorial fundament. The Clintons, sensing the shifting winds, were among the first of the party powerful to wholeheartedly endorse the Harris candidacy. And it is said the Obamas are close to endorsing as well, painstakingly careful not to cut into the current President’s leadership in the transition, particularly after what must have been a difficult weekend on his ego. “The people familiar with the discussions didn’t know the precise timing of his endorsement,” write Carol E. Lee, Jonathan Allen and Monica Alba for NBCNews.com. “One of them said Obama didn’t want it to overshadow President Joe Biden’s moment, particularly his Oval Office address to the nation Wednesday night.” It is also said that Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign advisor David Plouffe is in the lead to take over the Harris 2024 campaign.
Moreover, the Vice President’s glittering vitality — what else does one call it? — dazzles on social media, which was never a strong point with the current President (though his withdrawal Tweet drew 116 million views). Trump’s troll army — and the expected in-kind donations of cyber-assistance from Putin — always had the Old Media-centric Biden campaign at something of a disadvantage. The decision to leave the race occurred at 1:46 pm on Sunday, after the President spent the day previous conferring with family and close aids in Delaware. It is said that the President ultimately-eventually relented to the wisdom of the polls, which indicated that he had no viable path to victory. Also — Nancy Pelosi gets shit done.
By all accounts, Trump’s campaign infrastructure at present has its panties in a twist. How is the abrasive orgy of testosterone that is the Trump campaign supposed to pivot to soft when his opponent is a woman? Does he have enough political space to do so? Does Trump play the racial and gender card that is so familiar to him? The former President’s suburban women problem just got more complicated by a factor of ten. He must hasten carefully. "Now we have to start all over again. Shouldn't the Republican Party be reimbursed for fraud in that everybody around Joe," 45 wrote in a post Sunday night. According to ABC News, pro-Trump super PAC Make America Great Again Inc., had already spent more than $30 million on ad placements on the attack against the President. All gone.
Trump has unveiled some new, experimental attack lines against the Vice-President, however. In Charlotte, North Carolina, a few days after Biden’s withdrawal, Trump was spotted employing “Lyin’ Kamala Harris,” “radical left lunatic,” all the while repeatedly mispronouncing her first name. Which answers the question — Will Trump address the fist woman-of-color Vice President by her first name or official title when they debate? I ask because Trump has a problem with black women. We will leave unanswered here today the question of the karmic significance of Trump’s uncanny relationship with women prosecutors of color — Fani, Leticia and now Kamala — for the Vedic scholars of the future …
Can the Vice President win?
So far, the Trumpists and their fellow travelers at Russian State TV have focused on the Vice President’s laugh, in much the same way that Hillary Clinton’s voice (“shrill,” “abrasive”) became real a campaign issue in 2016. We won’t entertain the possibility that this is naught else but American sexism, pure and simple. “We stand with countries in deep sexist backlash mode, including authoritarian and authoritarian-adjacent states like Hungary and Russia, and theocracies like Afghanistan and the Gulf States and Iran, all places where keeping the boot on women’s necks is critical to the larger enterprise of maintaining a claque of insecure men in charge,” notes Nina Burleigh. Why is it that for every forward swing of the pendulum towards social justice in America, there is always such a powerful backlash?
There is reason for optimism, however. Harris is the second woman in less than a decade to win the nomination of a major party, the Democrat party, to be specific. Shane Goldmacher also notes in today’s Times that the window of opportunity to challenge Harris within the first 48 hours of the Biden dropout was a sum total of 27 minutes, which speaks to the strength of her political campaign and its closeness to Biden’s. That is the space of time — 27 minutes — between the President’s announcement that he was quitting the race and his endorsement of Harris, which thereafter allowed the Vice President to access their campaign war chest (which she helped raise), and the 1300-member campaign team (which she helped staff).
Two and a half hours after Biden’s announcement, the first paperwork making the formal transition was filed with the FEC. It should be noted that Trump, sour, as usual, has moved to block Harris’s access to the $96 million in the Biden-Harris campaign coffers, largely out of pique. “The Trump campaign argued that Harris undertook a ‘brazen money grab,’ according to the filing by David Warrington, the campaign's general counsel,” Reuters reported. Still, in the first 48 hours of the activation of the Harris campaign, Trump challenged her more forcefully than any of her potential rivals within the party, which is saying quite a bit regarding Harris’s legitimacy as a prime-time candidate. This, perhaps, in addition to the speed at which Harris closed the deal explains why Governor Newsom of California, who harbors an epic thirst for the highest office in the land, endorsed the Vice President even before the sun went down. The Trump-Harris fight began on Sunday, even as the echoes of the President’s words were still reverberating around family dinner tables across America. Governor Newsom’s “long game” got significantly longer on Sunday.
Finally, it looks like we are witnessing the end of Biden’s generation (Silent, but often mistaken for the Boomer) as a significant force in American government. The generational torch was passed by the President after half a century of service, it should be noted, while he was isolating in his Delaware beach house with COVID. “Joe Biden stayed a bit too long, but aren’t all of us Boomers guilty of that?” writes the often crabby Joe Klein, with just the faintest whisper of melancholy. “His car keys were taken, but they’re coming for the keys to our Toyotas and Mercedes, too.'“ And for our electric vehicles as well, eventually, because such is the nature of Life.
Just not today.
“Assad is a pariah on the world stage, but Russia has been his stalwart ally since a civil war erupted in Syria in 2011. Now, Russia may be trying to bring Assad back into the fold — one that Russia controls — as Putin positions himself as the de facto leader of an anti-Western world order. In that vein, Russia wants Syria to normalize relations with Turkey, which faltered after the civil war. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has also floated the idea of a trilateral meeting between the three men, which would be pivotal to achieving that goal. There is a growing intolerance toward Syrians in Turkey, partly fueled by the country’s disastrous economic situation — for Syrians, it’s become dangerous to cross the border with Turkey, and repeated attacks are pushing those who are already there to consider returning to their home country, Al Jazeera reported. That may also be one of the key reasons pushing Erdogan to reestablish ties with Assad — about 3.6 million Syrian refugees currently live in Turkey, and a deal to repatriate them could be an asset for Erdogan, The Associated Press noted.” (Marta Biino/semafor)
“China’s top diplomat Wang Yi has had a busy week in which two devastating conflicts have loomed large. Wang started by gathering 14 Palestinian factions for reconciliation talks in Beijing, including bitter rivals Hamas and Fatah, before meeting on Wednesday with Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba – the first time China has hosted a top Ukrainian official since Russia’s invasion nearly two and half years ago. The juxtaposed diplomacy – where talks were closely linked to the grinding wars in Gaza and Ukraine, respectively – came as Beijing vies to present itself as a geopolitical heavyweight in a world increasingly divided by both conflicts. In a meeting with Kuleba, Wang said Beijing ‘supported all efforts that contribute to peace’ – marking China’s latest effort to position itself as a ‘neutral’ peace broker in the conflict, even as it has ratcheted up ties with Russia.” (Simone McCarthy/CNN)
“Hollywood is like an ATM for Democratic politicians, who air-drop in to schmooze at celebrity-packed fundraisers and court wealthy entertainment moguls. Kamala Harris has a very different relationship with the city. It’s been her home—when she’s not in Washington, DC—since she wed LA entertainment lawyer Doug Emhoff in 2014 … Because Harris has become a presidential candidate so late in the cycle, there will be fewer opportunities for fundraisers. ‘Maybe she’ll be here twice between now and the election, given how little time there is, so everyone will just get on board,’ says Brown, the strategist. ‘You’ll have the old guard, but you’ll also have some of the new generation helping, like Shonda Rhimes, Greg Berlanti, Ryan Murphy, and Scooter Braun.’ Rhimes has already publicly announced her support for Harris, as have George Clooney, Barbra Streisand, Spike Lee, and Kerry Washington, among many others. There are some industry powerhouses ‘who privately are going to vote for Trump because of taxes or Israel,’ Brown says. ‘But by and large, I think all the usual suspects that supported Obama, Clinton, and Biden will be on board soon.’ Even DreamWorks cofounder Jeffrey Katzenberg, a major force in Hollywood political fundraising who stood by Biden in recent weeks, has jumped onboard the USS Kamala. He is now a cochair of Harris’s campaign.” (Joy Press/VF)
”It was October 27, 1994, and a day earlier, Israel and Jordan had signed a peace treaty in the desert expanse that straddled the once-warring nations. It was just a year after the Oslo Accords. Bill Clinton and his press corps were on the road to Damascus, where he would be the first president to meet strongman Hafez al-Assad in Syria in almost 20 years. When our charter flight touched down at Damascus International Airport, amid propaganda posters of Assad and plenty of menacing Syrian security forces, my friend Walter Shapiro asked me to snap a few photos. One Jewish kid from the New York suburbs to the other, we looked at each other with the same can-you-believe-this grin. What I can’t really believe is that Walter is gone, having died on Sunday morning after less than two weeks in a Manhattan hospital where he battled Covid-19, pneumonia, a brain bleed, and other ailments that came as a surprise to those who loved him. Walter was my friend for over 30 years, a surrogate parent, and a comrade to my son, Benjamin. He was an alumnus of the Washington Monthly, the little magazine where we both served under the legendary editor Charlie Peters (see James Fallows’s tribute here). We were colleagues and competitors who worked at the then-big weekly news magazines Newsweek and Time, as well as The New Republic, but never simultaneously.” (Matthew Cooper)