In a little over two weeks, the Democratic Party has gone from "Biden/Harris" to "Harris/Walz," as their ticket has now been completed with Vice President Kamala Harris's selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate. But what's more astonishing than the lightning-fast schedule for all this unfolding is how utterly seamless it has all been. The party quickly unified behind Harris after President Joe Biden announced he was dropping his campaign, and from all indications today it looks like the party will further unify around the choice of Walz to round the ticket out. There are no simmering "Hillary Clinton supporters versus Bernie Bros" bad feelings tearing the party apart; instead, all the various factions seem content with the way things have worked out. That is an incredible accomplishment, for Democrats. Both progressives and centrists lined up to endorse Walz after this morning's announcement, with no hesitation.

As I wrote yesterday, Walz seemed like the best choice to me. Democrats are now on a crusade against weirdness, and Walz is about as normal a guy as you can imagine. He looks comfortable in the shlubbiest of clothing, he looks completely at ease with who he is, and his authenticity is going to go a long way towards perhaps repairing some of the damage Democrats have suffered with the rural, White regions in the country. Walz is from such a region, and it has made him who he is. He is "Minnesota nice" and will be incredibly hard for the Republicans to demonize him in any effective way. He does not look like some rabid lefty with "San Francisco values," to put this another way. He looks like a guy that runs a feed store in Podunk County instead.

Continue Reading »

We are now in the homestretch of the frantic and foreshortened race that's underway to become Kamala Harris's running mate. By tomorrow morning, the announcement will be made and then we can all avoid using the word "veepstakes" for another four years (I'm not a huge fan of the word, even though I do have to begrudgingly admit that it is pretty catchy...).

Harris is moving at warp speed in her presidential campaign, which was pretty much required by her later-than-ever-before entry into the race. She's only been at it a couple weeks and has had to take time out of that to figure out who her running mate was going to be (a process that is more normally spread out over many months). This was all likely driven by the initial filing date in Ohio, when candidates for both president and vice-president had to be listed in the official paperwork. That August 7th deadline may or may not exist any more (opinions differ, which inevitably would have led to a court battle), but even if it does the Democrats will be ready to meet it, before they even hold their national convention. Calling the rolls of each state's electors and how they vote during the convention will now be a symbolic and purely-unofficial celebration of something that has already happened.

No matter how we got here though, Team Harris has indicated that the waiting will be over early tomorrow. Then they're planning a joint rally with whomever gets the nod later in the day, in Pennsylvania.

Continue Reading »

It certainly already feels like a lot longer, but we aren't even done with the second week of Kamala Harris's presidential campaign. She hit the ground running in a big way and is already doing a fine job of drawing the distinction between her and the bizarreness of the other side. Meanwhile, Republicans are out there insulting "a bunch of childless cat ladies" as well as pretty much every minority group they can think of. Two weeks in, the race is now being defined between the childless cat ladies on one side and the total weirdos on the other. In other words, Silly Season has begun in a big way.

Continue Reading »

To dot or not to dot? That is the question....

Since it seems like a week for Silly Season columns, today I thought we'd examine an editorial quandary we've been faced with. Because the Republican vice-presidential candidate presents us with a challenge. He would now prefer to be known as simply: "JD Vance" -- sans punctuation, in other words. So do we respect his wishes or continue (as we started doing when we first wrote his name) with our standard style-guide form: "J.D. Vance"?

Continue Reading »

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.

Continue Reading »

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.

Continue Reading »

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.

Continue Reading »

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:

Continue Reading »

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.

Continue Reading »

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.

Continue Reading »