With Harris’ presidential campaign in high gear and the Democratic Party on fire, we have a good idea of where the focus of the campaign is — but whether that focus will win the election is another matter entirely.
First, Vice President Kamala Harris kicked off her campaign with a bang, a call to vote recorded for “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
It’s still early days and there’s plenty of room for a reboot, but is Harris the politician who can make it happen?
And on Thursday night, a shaky, two-hour Zoom call for “White Women for Kamala” began with a poet dressed like beatnik Steve Urkel confronting his privilege, before a woman asked, “Are we acknowledging that we’re white now?” The call then went dead, and when the campaign resumed, the pop artist Pink called in from a private jet on her way back from Sweden. Soccer activist Megan Rapinoe also showed up.
Meanwhile, on the West Coast, No. 2 Rep. Doug Emhoff initially missed the news that President-elect Joe Biden would not run because he was out with gay friends at SoulCycle in West Hollywood during a video call with a Black gay queer man who supports Harris.
What you interpret from these stories is up to you, but all three suggest the following: That’s where Harris and the reconstituted Biden team are finding their political priorities. After weeks of dwindling energy and rising anxiety, these loyal Democrats are eager to join a campaign they believe can actually win. That white woman’s Zoom call, for example, raised more than $2 million despite multiple crashes.
The combination of 1) activist backing, 2) a ferocious effort by the press to rewrite Harris’s record of failure and even her Senate voting record, and 3) social media algorithms pushing the Kamala Is Cool campaign as hard as possible to kids gives you a big boost, but not necessarily a win. You can rally voters in California and Massachusetts all day, but if you don’t make a difference in the “Blue Wall” Rust Belt battleground states of Pennsylvania and Michigan, you’re in trouble.
The problems this poses for the Harris campaign have not gone unnoticed. “Harris is strong among younger voters and voters of color, but weaker among older and white working-class voters,” a New York Times newsletter noted on Friday morning. “Battleground states are disproportionately older, white and working-class, making Harris more likely than Biden to win the popular vote and lose the election.”
It will take another week or so to get a clear picture of how Harris’s return to victory will affect the polls, but early numbers have her just behind former President Donald Trump and about on par with her boss before the debate. If she ends up there after a blind media release, the euphoria will start to fade (and it’s hard to imagine Democrats changing their nominee again).
It’s still early days, with plenty of room for a reboot, but is Harris the politician who can get it done? In 2019, GovTrack ranked her further to the left than Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts (before the site removed those pages this month). For every video or recording of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) talking about the Cat Lady, there are five of Harris. Talk about Defund the police, abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, cut off America’s energy supply, decriminalize illegal border crossings, mandate gun buybacks, and give the Boston Marathon bomber the right to vote.
Put it all together and Harris’ Big Gay Rollout begins to seem more like a feature than a bug — and like a bubble the men at West Hollywood’s SoulCycle don’t even realize they’re living in.
Sprinter: Democrats’ “instinct to victimize their most enthusiastic voter groups”
Blaze News: Peter Doocy confronted the KJP with evidence of a coordinated attempt to protect Kamala Harris from her “border czar” record.
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Fires Burn: The New Standard: The Great Ghost
The Labour Party is undoubtedly in the lead in the UK, and for good reason. Few parties have delivered on their voters’ mandate as effectively as the Conservatives. But Labour’s arrival poses a great danger to one of Britain’s remaining great links to the past. As Andrew Roberts, Lord Roberts of Belgravia in the House of Lords, warns:
… we are surrounded by ghosts in this Chamber, ghosts of great men. One of the people speaking for the Liberal Caucus in this debate is the Viscount Lord, a member of the House of Lords. Thurso. In May 1940, at a crucial moment for the survival of our nation, his grandfather, Sir Archibald Sinclair, put aside party differences and installed as Prime Minister an old comrade from the trenches, Winston Churchill. Churchill had been Air Minister during the Battle of Britain. Just three months after Churchill left that important post, the person who took over was a decorated RAF officer, Viscount Stansgate, grandfather of, of course, our noble Viscount Stansgate.
Some of the families represented in this House date back to the founding of our country. The first Duke of Montrose, and we heard a moving speech from the 8th Duke, played a central role in the Act of Union which created the United Kingdom.
The greatness and drama of our country are vividly embodied in this Chamber in a way that is not found in any other Parliament in the world. Once that connection is severed, it cannot be restored. To quote Burke again, “The age of chivalry is over; the age of sophists, economists and calculators is over.” Fellow Members of the House of Lords, when the time comes to say farewell to your hereditary peers, I hope that you will do so with heartfelt gratitude to them and their families for the service they have given to this Parliament and this country over the centuries.
