2024 Presidential Election Archives - Page 23 of 60

Be Careful What Trump’s Lawyers Wish For, Superseding Indictment Edition

August 25, 2024/61 Comments/in 2020 Presidential Election, 2024 Presidential Election, January 6 Insurrection /by emptywheel

On Friday, first Bloomberg (Yahoo version), then NYT reported that Jack Smith “has decided against seeking a major hearing” to address which of the allegations charged against Donald Trump were official versus unofficial acts. Here’s Bloomberg:

Special Counsel Jack Smith has decided against seeking a major hearing to present evidence in the election-interference case against Donald Trump before voters go to the polls Nov. 5, according to people familiar with the matter.

The move means that it’s unlikely a so-called mini-trial, which would include evidence and testimony from possible blockbuster witnesses like former Vice President Mike Pence, would take place before the presidential election.

Such a hearing would have been the best chance for voters to review evidence about Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election result as he campaigns to regain the White House.

The decision is a win for Trump and his lawyers, who have fought efforts to reveal the substance of allegations against the former president. If Trump wins the election, the case would collapse as the Justice Department has a policy against prosecuting sitting presidents. Trump could also order the department to throw it out.

Instead, Smith and his team are carefully revising the case against Trump, according to the people familiar, who asked not to be named discussing a confidential matter. [my emphasis]

The emphasis here was on a supposed “win” for Trump’s lawyers, though they haven’t actually done anything to get that win. They haven’t filed a brief, they haven’t made any formal requests. This is a “win” that they did nothing — at least, nothing since SCOTUS rewrote the Constitution for Trump — to earn. Though the piece is right: If Trump wins the election, it seems impossible that this prosecution will lead anywhere, and Smith’s reported decision not to ask to explain the charges in more detail makes it less likely that such a mini-trial could have a bearing on whether Trump does win or not. (While Bloomberg states that “Trump’s lawyers didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment,” that description doesn’t rule out that this story was sourced to someone close to Trump, and the story does cite Trump’s spox, who seems to have just ranted about witch hunts.)

The NYT provides a better sense of whence the hopes for a mini-trial before the election came — from outside commentators (probably including me), not from anything Smith had officially said — which is important to making sense of this development.

Still, the ruling left open the possibility that Mr. Smith’s prosecutors could use a public hearing to air some of the evidence they had collected against the former president before Election Day. Several legal experts and commentators seized on the idea, saying that a hearing like that would almost resemble the trial itself — albeit without the finality of a jury verdict.

And yet such a proceeding was always going to be fraught with complications — not least if it ended up being held in the homestretch of an election in which Mr. Trump is seeking to return to the White House.

Neither of these stories mentions the last official thing we did hear from Jack Smith: that his team needed an extra three weeks, from August 9 to August 30, to consult with other DOJ components, as required by Special Counsel regulations.

The Government continues to assess the new precedent set forth last month in the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States, 144 S. Ct. 2312 (2024), including through consultation with other Department of Justice components. . See 28 C.F.R. § 600.7(a) (“A Special Counsel shall comply with the rules, regulations, procedures, practices and policies of the Department of Justice,” including “consult[ing] with appropriate offices within the Department for guidance with respect to established practices, policies and procedures of the Department . . . .”). Although those consultations are well underway, the Government has not finalized its position on the most appropriate schedule for the parties to brief issues related to the decision.

So two weeks before these stories, Jack Smith said, we need more time to talk to other people at DOJ to decide our “position on the most appropriate schedule … to brief issues,” though, as I noted here, Special Counsel regulations would not technically require consultation about the timing of hearings or briefs regarding the case in its current posture, especially given Jack Smith’s past representations that DOJ guidelines on elections would not have prohibited holding an actual trial in the pre-election period. And then, in the two weeks since, “people familiar with the matter” have decided, heard, or learned that the most appropriate schedule does not include a mini-trial, which is not something that Smith had ever publicly considered in the first place.

And neither of these stories fully address that, in most circumstances, this would not be Smith’s decision to make. Bloomberg says, “Chutkan could overrule Smith and order a major hearing prior to the election.” NYT describes that, “Judge Chutkan could in theory still order such a hearing to be held.” NYT does walk through the range of alternatives to do what SCOTUS ordered, that is, to sort through which parts of the indictment are official acts and which are not. But, in most circumstances, it was never Smith’s position to demand a public hearing, and nothing he ever said indicated he intended to do so. The goal of a mini-trial, as NYT reported, came from outside commentators.

There is one circumstance, however, where Judge Tanya Chutkan would not have a chance to weigh in. And it is one circumstance that is alluded to by both of these pieces, without addressing its potential implications. NYT states that prosecutors might seek what it assumes would be a pared-down indictment.

The prosecutors could also seek to bring a new, pared-down indictment against Mr. Trump focusing on charges they believed arose from acts undertaken in his private role as a candidate for office, not in his official role as president.

Bloomberg cites (and includes in its subhead) that prosecutors “are carefully revising the case.”

You can’t change a word in that indictment — you can’t take out all references to Jeffrey Clark’s role in subverting the election, the one thing SCOTUS said has to happen — without going back to a grand jury and superseding the original indictment. But even just doing that would put Jack Smith in the driver’s seat, effectively giving him the first shot at drafting what should and shouldn’t be included among unofficial acts that constitute crimes.

If Jack Smith is really doing what Bloomberg says — revising the case — then they have decided that they will supersede the indictment.

Now, as I suggested, even if you were doing nothing more than removing the Jeffrey Clark references, doing so would be smart in any case. Not only could Smith excise all the Jeffrey Clark materials, thereby giving Trump less surface area to attack the indictment, but he could tweak what is already there to address some of the other concerns raised by SCOTUS, for example, to clarify how candidate Trump’s reliance on fake elector certificates do not threaten Executive authorities. But minor tweaks, even the excision of the Jeffrey Clark stuff, would not require consultation with DOJ, and if Jack Smith were just excising the Jeffrey Clark stuff, he could have done that before DOJ’s election prohibition on indictments kicks in on roughly September 1.

So let’s talk about what would require consultation with DOJ, consultation requiring two full months from the immunity ruling, because it raises ways that Smith might supersede the indictment that would be a lot more interesting than simply excising the Clark stuff:

Consultation with the Solicitor General’s office regarding edge cases on official acts
Consultation with DC USAO on how to apply obstruction more generally
Approval from Merrick Garland for new types of charges against Trump on January 6 actions
Approval from Merrick Garland for charges pertaining to January 6 aftermath

Consultation with the Solicitor General’s office regarding edge cases on official acts: First, and least controversially, DOJ would consult with the Solicitor General’s office regarding any more difficult issues regarding official acts. Perhaps the most obvious of these — and one squarely raised in SCOTUS’ ruling — is the status of Mike Pence in conversations about certifying the electoral certificates. If Pence was acting exclusively in his role as President of the Senate, then Trump’s relationship to him would be as a candidate, and so under Blassingame, an unofficial act. But the Republicans on SCOTUS want to argue that some of these conversations were official acts, making Pence’s testimony inadmissible under their order. If DOJ is superseding an indictment to excise the things that need to be excised, DOJ would want the Solicitor General involved in such decisions not just because they’ll have to defend whatever stance Jack Smith adopts, but also so as to protect the equities of the Executive Branch, which DOJ traditionally guards jealously.

Consultation with DC USAO on how to apply obstruction more generally: More interestingly (and as I focused on here), if Jack Smith were to supersede the indictment against Trump, he would undoubtedly tweak the language on the two obstruction charges to squarely comply with the Fischer decision limiting it to evidentiary issues.

Since Smith got his extension, DOJ has started weighing in on a handful of crime scene cases where (unlike around 60 others) it thinks it can sustain obstruction charges under a theory that the defendant knew the import of the electoral certifications themselves and took steps to obstruct the actual counting of them.

Here’s what such an argument looks like in the case of Matt Loganbill:

At the time Fischer was decided, approximately 259 cases of the over 1,400 cases charged in the January 6 prosecution involved the application of §1512(c)(2). Some of the 259 cases were convictions at trial, while others were convictions through pleas. Some of those are currently pending trial, whereas other defendants have served their sentences of incarceration fully. As a result of Fischer, the government has endeavored to review cases – particularly those cases pending appeal, pending trial, or actively serving a sentence – in a timely and responsive fashion. Of those original 259 cases, the government has, as of the date of this filing, sought to forgo application of §1512(c)(2) – either post-conviction, pending appeal, or pending trial, in over 60 cases.5 The government continues to evaluate and/or litigate §1512(c)(2) in a variety of contexts. In this case, after a careful analysis of the Fischer opinion, the government contends that the defendant violated the statute and intends to proceed with the charge.

[snip]

On December 20, 2020, the defendant wrote to Facebook, “This would take place Jan 6 Witnesses should be 60 feet away while Pence counts the Electoral College votes . . . Pence should open all the envelopes and then stack all the EC ballots in a pile, he should then shred all the envelopes and burn the shreds.” Gov. Ex. 302.47.

On December 30, 2020, the defendant wrote to Facebook, “CALL SENATOR JOSH HAWLEY’S OFFICE T O D A Y AND LET HIM KNOW YOU SUPPORT HIS INTENT TO BE THE FIRST REPUBLICAN SENATOR TO CHALLENGE THE ELECTORAL VOTE ON JANUARY 6.” Gov. Ex. 302.49.

On January 6, 2021, at 1:20 p.m., the defendant sent a text message, “Are you watching what’s going on in the house/ elector certification.” Gov. Ex. 303.

On January 7, 2021, the defendant replies to a comment by another person on Facebook saying, “Why do you think we were trying every means possible to stop these idiots from stealing the presidency and destroying this nation.” Gov. Ex. 302.65

Evidence at trial showed Loganbill entered the Capitol, the location where the Electoral College ballots were located and where Congress and the Vice President were conducting the official proceeding.6 Gov Exs 101.1 and 701. Once inside, the defendant proceeded towards the Senate, where Congress would be handing objections to the Electoral College vote – attempting to obstruct Congress’ certification of the Electoral College ballots. The defendant knew where he was going. The government admitted a Facebook post by the defendant on January 7 and 8, 2021, he wrote, “They didn’t [let us in] at the chamber, we could have over run them, after 10-15 minutes of back and forth, we walked out” and “The only place [the police officers] wouldn’t give was the hallway towards the Rep. chamber.” Gov Exs 302.66 and 302.82, respectively. The “chamber” and “Rep. chamber” were where the Vice President and members of Congress would have been counting and certifying the Electoral College ballots. Gov Ex 701

[snip]

From this evidence, including the defendant’s express statement related to the destruction of the electoral ballots, the Court would be able to find, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant acted to obstruct the certification of the electoral vote, and specifically, that he intended to, and attempted to, impair the integrity or availability of the votes (which are documents, records, or other things within the meaning of Fischer) under consideration by the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.

Of course, with any retrial, both parties would be permitted to introduce new evidence, or start the record over anew. Indeed, the government would likely introduce additional evidence related to the ballots and staffers attempts to remove the ballots from the chambers when the riot started

5 The government’s decision to forgo charges should not be read as a concession that the defendant’s conduct does not meet the test as articulated by Fischer. Rather, we are evaluating the facts on a case-by-case basis, including whether the defendant committed other felonies, whether the criminal penalties of other applicable crimes sufficiently serves the goals of 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a), and whether additional litigation is warranted. This process is appropriately time-consuming.

6 According to the testimony of Captain Jessica Baboulis’ testimony, “[t]he official proceeding had suspended due to the presence of rioters on Capitol Grounds and inside the Capitol. ECF No. 31 at 23. As the Court said in its verdict, “It doesn’t matter to this count if he entered the building after the official proceeding had been suspended and Pence had been evacuated.” ECF No. 40 at 5. Loganbill attempted to and did obstruct the Electoral College vote, including the counting of ballots, the presence of members of Congress, and the presence of the Vice President.

DOJ is making the effort of trying to sustain the obstruction charges for defendants who can’t be charged with one of several other felonies (obstructing the cops or rioting), but whose conduct — DOJ believes — should still be a felony. They’re going to have to do this with some members of the two militia conspiracies, the felony convictions on which are often the primary felonies (though DOJ used the obstruction of cops with them too).

It’s fairly easy to see how this effort has to harmonize with however Smith revamps the obstruction charges against Trump. And given the evidence that Smith was moving to include the Proud Boys in Trump’s case, that harmonization may be key to sustaining obstruction charges against the Proud Boys.

Approval from Merrick Garland for new types of charges against Trump on January 6 actions: In my last post, I also suggested that Jack Smith could be considering adding insurrection charges against Trump. I argued that the three opinions protecting Trump — Immunity, Fischer, and Colorado — squarely permit such a charge. Notably, the immunity ruling said that acquittal on a charge, like the insurrection charge on which Trump was impeached, does not prohibit criminal charges for the same crime. And the Colorado decision noted that insurrection remains good law. If Smith decided he wanted to do this, it would require approval from Garland. I consider it an unlikely move (not least because some of the evidence to prove it would still be inadmissible under the immunity decision). So go read my earlier post for more on this.

Approval from Merrick Garland for charges pertaining to January 6 aftermath: By design, SCOTUS has made it really hard to prove the case against Trump, because it requires Jack Smith to successfully argue that Trump’s own speech — even his Tweets!! — are unofficial acts, when SCOTUS has made them presumptively official. Smith would not face the same difficulty for his speech as a private citizen. And a significant swath of the known investigation actually pertained to things Trump did after he left office: That investigating how he used donations made in the name of election integrity to do things entirely unrelated. It’s unclear why Smith dropped that side of his investigation, but it’s something that would face fewer of the challenges created by the immunity ruling.

Similarly, Smith had already asked to use statements Trump made after the period of the charged conspiracies (which go through January 7 or January 20) to threaten those who debunked his voter fraud claims.

In apparent response [to January 6 Committee testimony], the defendant then doubled down and recommenced his attacks on the election workers in posts on Truth Social. He even zeroed in on one of the election workers, falsely writing that she was an election fraudster, a liar, and one of the “treacher[ous] . . . monsters” who stole the country, and that she would be in legal trouble.

The Government will introduce such evidence to further establish the defendant and his co-conspirators’ plan of silencing, and intent to silence, those who spoke out against the defendant’s false election fraud claims; the defendant’s knowledge that his public attacks on officials—like those on his Vice President as described in the indictment—could foreseeably lead to threats, harassment, and violence; and the defendant’s repeated choice to attack individuals with full knowledge of this effect. It also constitutes after-the-fact corroboration of the defendant’s intent, because even after it was incontrovertibly clear that the defendant’s public false claims targeting individuals caused them harassment and threats, the defendant persisted—meaning that the jury may properly infer that he intended that result. Finally, evidence of the defendant’s encouragement of violence and the consequences of his public attacks is admissible to allow the jury to consider the credibility and motives of witnesses who may be the continuing victims of the defendant’s attacks.

Smith also asked to introduce evidence of Trump ratifying the violence of and promising to pardon those who engaged in it, other statements after he left office that would not be entitled to any immunity.

Of particular note are the specific January 6 offenders whom the defendant has supported— namely, individuals convicted of some of the most serious crimes charged in relation to January 6, such as seditious conspiracy and violent assaults on police officers. During a September 17, 2023, appearance on Meet the Press, for instance, the defendant said regarding Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio—who was convicted of seditious conspiracy—“I want to tell you, he and other people have been treated horribly.” The defendant then criticized the kinds of lengthy sentences received only by defendants who, like Tarrio, committed the most serious crimes on January 6. Similarly, the defendant has chosen to publicly and vocally support the “January 6 Choir,” a group of defendants held at the District of Columbia jail, many of whose criminal history and/or crimes on January 6 were so violent that their pretrial release would pose a danger to the public. The defendant nonetheless has financially supported and celebrated these offenders—many of whom assaulted law enforcement on January 6—by promoting and playing their recording of the National Anthem at political rallies and calling them “hostages.”

Any crimes that focus on things Trump has done since he left office to undermine democracy would not be entitled to any immunity.

In a presser the other day, Garland pointed to the number of prosecutions DOJ has pursued for January 6, arguing that the prosecutions have “shown to everybody how seriously we take an effort to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power: The last January 6, the coming January 6, and every January 6 after that.” Charging Trump for his continued efforts to undermine democracy would be one way to do that.

I’m not sure if Smith believes he could prove that these constituted crimes. But if he does, he would need Merrick Garland’s approval to charge them.

All that said, there’s the issue of timing. Usually, when DOJ is considering superseding someone, they tell defense attorneys. So I had been wondering, given Trump’s recent rumpiness, whether DOJ had indicated they would. If last week’s stories were sourced to people close to Trump, as opposed to people in DOJ, then it would seem Smith did not do that.

Which gets to another thing Jack Smith would have to consult on: If he were to supersede, when he could do that. And while he would have one more week to roll out an indictment to avoid DOJ’s pre-election deadlines, I think in this case, Garland likely would require Smith to hold off a superseding indictment itself until after the election.

We’ll learn more on Friday. But it’s possible we’ll learn that DOJ intends to supersede the indictment after the election, meaning everything would halt until then.

Update: Tweaked what I meant by Tweets being official or unofficial speech.

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The Second Amendment, as Applied

August 24, 2024/77 Comments/in 2024 Presidential Election, Federal Courts, Guns, SCOTUS /by Peterr

AM-15 Machine Gun, now apparently legal to possess in Kansas

The Second Amendment as written and ratified: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The Second Amendment, as applied by US Federal Judge John W. Broomes of the Kansas District: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, t [T]he right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

From the top of Broomes’ ruling on Wednesday tossing out a gun possession charge:

This matter is before the court on Defendant’s motion to dismiss based on Second Amendment grounds. (Doc. 26.) A response and a reply have been filed (Docs. 28, 29), and the court held a hearing to establish additional facts about the weapons charged. The motion is thus ripe for review. The court finds that the Second Amendment applies to the weapons charged because they are “bearable arms” within the original meaning of the amendment. The court further finds that the government has failed to establish that this nation’s history of gun regulation justifies the application of 18 U.S.C. § 922(o) to Defendant. The court therefore grants the motion to dismiss.

And just what were the weapons in question that were charged?

I. Background

Defendant Tamori Morgan is charged with two counts of possessing a machinegun [sic throughout] in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(o). (Doc. 1.) Specifically, Defendant is charged with possessing an Anderson Manufacturing, model AM-15 .300 caliber machinegun and a machinegun conversion device. It was established at the hearing that the conversion device is a so-called “Glock switch” which allows a Glock, model 33, .357 SIG caliber firearm to fire as an automatic weapon.

Making machine guns great again. Wonderful.

Just as the Alito-authored Dobbs spawned a host of ugly laws, regulations, and ripple effects across the country, the Thomas-authored Bruen is now doing the same. Welcome to the Federalist Society Judicial System.

Elections matter, people. Elections matter a lot.

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A Manufactured Fight over Incumbency Hides Trump’s Fascism

August 24, 2024/88 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, 2020 Presidential Election, 2024 Presidential Election, emptywheel /by emptywheel

Thinking of Trump in terms of presidential administrations — reading this race as a fight over incumbency — is a category error that serves to hide the threat Trump poses to democracy.

Yet a slew of reviews of the DNC have adopted that rubric in an effort to declare that Kamala Harris has positioned herself as a change candidate treating Donald Trump as an incumbent.

I first saw this argument from NYT’s Shane Goldmacher. Then, in response to a Tim Murtaugh tweet complaining about Harris, Josh Marshall wrote this column, in which he opined, “there’s little doubt that [Kamala making Trump the incumbent] is an accurate description of the campaign we are in the midst of.” Then Byron York wrote this nonsense plea for Trump to define Kamala (over a month after she joined the race) in which he claimed that her campaign argued, “the bad things that have happened in the last few years are the work of Donald Trump and not the Democratic president and vice president.”

Goldmacher adopted the rubric of Kamala as a change candidate from two sources (if not from the six paragraphs where Trump’s team complained about it). First, a misrepresentation of the directionality of the chants adopted from rally-goers and the secondary of two slogans chosen by the campaign, preferring “Forward” over “Freedom.”

With chants of “we’re not going back” ringing through a convention hall and her campaign’s “A New Way Forward” slogan plastered outside, the vice president is making a bold bid to position the same Democratic Party that now holds the White House as bringing a fresh start to the country.

[snip]

Forward has been the watchword for Democrats in Chicago, as the party embraces its most future-leaning posture since Mr. Obama’s first campaign in 2008. Delegates and supporters have circulated a new poster designed by the artist Shepard Fairey, who made Mr. Obama’s famous “Hope” poster in 2008. The refreshed Harris one features the word “Forward” at the bottom.

Even if you prefer “Forward” to “Freedom” (and ignore how much more central the latter has been to Kamala’s imagery), it still doesn’t invoke presidential administrations. Rather, it contrasts reactionary policy to moderate progressivism. Political movement does not require incumbency.

From there, Goldmacher invests his misinterpretation with great significance using the same tools that most mediocre campaign punditry masquerading as journalism does: polling.

The battle over the mantle of change is especially significant at a moment when polls show a sizable majority of Americans are unhappy with the state of the nation’s affairs.

Former President Donald J. Trump had established a clear edge as the candidate who would upend the status quo when he was still facing President Biden. He was the insurgent; Mr. Biden was the incumbent. But now Ms. Harris, a 59-year-old who would make history as the first female president, has altered the dynamics of a contest that had previously pitted two men seeking to break the record of the oldest president.

[snip]

In a New York Times/Siena College poll this spring of battleground states, an overwhelming 69 percent of voters said that major changes were needed to the country’s political and economic system — or that the system needed to be torn down entirely.

The problem for Democrats was that only 24 percent of voters thought Mr. Biden would do either of those things.

But recent polls of swing states in the Sun Belt show that voters do not view Ms. Harris the same way they do Mr. Biden. While far more voters still see Mr. Trump as more likely than Ms. Harris to make major changes — 80 percent to 46 percent — they are more divided on whether he would bring the kind of change that they want.

Exactly the same share of voters — 50 percent each — said Ms. Harris would bring about the right kind of changes compared with Mr. Trump. [my emphasis]

That is, Goldmacher is interested in this for horserace reasons. The electorate is disaffected, ergo whoever can adopt the mantle of change can win the election.

Like I said: building entire stories around polling makes for facile punditry.

The claim that Kamala is running as a change candidate fails once you look at policy. Goldmacher claims that, “she is trying to differentiate herself, both stylistically and with some new economic plans.” The story he links, claiming it describes an effort to “differentiate herself” from Joe Biden in fact quotes Kamala in ¶3 describing the economic vision she presented as one belonging to a third person plural, we. “One — ours — focused on the future and the other focused on the past.” Kamala did that in a speech where she repeatedly talked about the success of the Biden Administration, we.

And, today, by virtually every measure, our economy is the strongest in the world. (Applause.)

We have created 16 million new jobs. We have made historic investments in infrastructure, in chips manufacturing, in clean energy. And new numbers this week alone show that inflation is down under 3 percent. (Applause.)

And as president of the United States, it will be my intention to build on the foundation of this progress.

This situates the movement that Goldmacher has spun, with no evidence, in terms of administrations, as a joint movement, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, together pursuing policies focused on the future. Moreover, the story Goldmacher links admits that,

Much of Ms. Harris’s agenda represents an expansion of policies proposed by Mr. Biden in his latest presidential budget and during his re-election campaign.

This gets to one of the core things I think is leading people to get distracted about who is the incumbent. Journalists, especially those at NYT, largely ignored Joe Biden’s policy successes. They were too busy writing the twelfth Joe Biden Old story of the day to bother themselves with policy. And so simply because Kamala is new and younger and better able to pitch the very same policy — or natural extensions of that policy — all of a sudden journalists are labeling it as new, as Kamala’s effort to distance herself from Biden. Kamala is and will increasingly (especially assuming the Fed will cut interest rates next month) benefit from Biden’s successes, and the journalists who were too lazy to talk policy the first time will label it change. But that’s something that arises from journalistic laziness, not any effort by Harris to distance herself from Biden.

This is apparent even in right wing attempts to insist on continuity. When Byron York claims that Kamala is trying to distance herself, he cites a campaign video listing her accomplishments as VP.

Then came the section on Harris’s vice presidency. It claimed that she 1) capped insulin costs for older people, 2) helped replace lead pipes and provide clean water to communities, 3) helped create 16 million jobs, 4) fought gun violence, 5) “traveled the world to strengthen our national security,” 6) helped unite NATO in defense of Ukraine, and 7) “led the fight for reproductive freedom.”

Four of those things — insulin costs, gun violence, supporting NATO, and fighting for reproductive freedom — have been central in Kamala’s future policy promises; three figured prominently in her DNC speech. To a significant extent, Kamala claims she wants to continue the unfinished business of the Biden Administration.

Byron’s real complaint (as well as that of Murtaugh) is that Kamala is not capitulating to Trump’s primary digs against both Biden and her — inflation and immigration.

The two biggest items left off the list just happen to be the two biggest concerns of voters in 2024. One is Harris’s role in the disastrous Biden economic policy that helped feed inflation and made it far more difficult for millions of people to buy the basics of life, such as groceries. The other is Harris’s role in the even more disastrous Biden policy on the U.S-Mexico border, in which the administration allowed more than 7 million unvetted migrants to stay in the U.S. after crossing the border illegally.

As we saw in the North Carolina speech, when directly addressing actual inflation, Kamala would and did point to the ways that Biden has tamed it (which is what will lead to that interest rate cut next month). But on top of that, she’s promising ways to bring cost of living down, such as a child tax credit that failed under Biden but would become possible if (and only if) Democrats somehow keep their Senate majority after Ruben Gallego replaces Kyrsten Sinema.

Nor is there a discontinuity on immigration. Kamala is addressing immigration precisely the same way Biden did: by talking about how Trump tanked a bipartisan deal to fix it.

And let me be clear — and let me be clear, after decades in law enforcement, I know the importance of safety and security, especially at our border. Last year, Joe and I brought together Democrats and conservative Republicans to write the strongest border bill in decades. The border patrol endorsed it. But Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign, so he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal.

Well, I refuse to play politics with our security, and here is my pledge to you. As president, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed, and I will sign it into law.

You may not like that dodge. This effort to flip Trump’s favorite campaign issue back onto him may have limited success. But that’s not change. It’s more continuity.

And it goes to a point that Marshall makes as he puzzles through why there may be a sense that Trump is the incumbent. Trump is still acting like he’s president.

[T]here’s another paradoxical way that Trump himself laid the groundwork for this campaign, and made it possible for Harris to turn his own political heft against him. The centerpiece of Trump’s post-presidency is the wicked conceit that he never stopped being president at all.

[snip]

He still calls himself president. He demands and universally receives that billing from his followers.

He demands to be treated as president. More importantly, his demand for and policing of absolute loyalty is precisely how he was able to order the GOP to tank the immigration bill.

Immigration is not the only legislation that Trump tanked — a renewed effort to pass the child tax credit is another.

But the most lasting testament to Trump’s power as president, not mentioned by any of these men, may be the most important electorally: The decisions his hand-picked judges dictated to the American people. That starts with Dobbs, a policy on which both Trump and Harris believe he should get credit. Trump wasn’t president in 2022, but his judges were still dictating policy to half the country.

And it’s not just SCOTUS. By November I hope Kamala’s campaign points to all the other policies — student loan relief, a ban on non-competes, environmental regulations, and others — that Trump’s judges have vetoed to deprive Joe Biden of policy wins. Trump remade the way judges judge, blasting Stare decisis, and allowing a small number of judges in Texas and the Fifth Circuit to dictate policy for the entire country.

Which is one of the reasons I care about this: because so much of Trump’s lasting influence is about his lasting attack on rule of law. The insistence that this is about incumbency obscures the real threat Trump poses to democracy, whether or not he’s president.

Take this crazy Goldmacher paragraph.

For nearly a decade, Mr. Trump’s bulldozing approach has been premised on the idea that the nation was staring into an abyss and only urgent upheaval could save the country. The question for Ms. Harris is whether she can frame Democrats keeping power in 2024 as a break from that dark and divisive era.

It is true that Trump has been claiming that “only urgent upheaval could save the country.” But that was a fascist trope. It wasn’t true and even if it were, none of the policies Trump pushed would do anything but enrich people like him. Journalism should do more than observe that he made those false claims; it should explain why they’re false.

In the very next sentence, though, Goldmacher asserts that the challenge for Kamala (again adopting the dumb poll-driven assumption that she’ll only win if she is the change candidate) is by offering, “a break from that dark and divisive era.” What “era”? By reference, Goldmacher must mean that the near-decade in which Trump has told fascist lies is the “dark and divisive era” (though Trump’s racist birtherism started long before that). But it’s not an era. It’s a fascist belief, a means of exercising power, a means of dehumanizing your political opponents, one that had huge influence, but one that with the exception of the political violence it fostered, only held sway over a minority of the country (albeit a large one).

Look at how Goldmacher obscures this dynamic in the polls he cites. Of the 80% who responded that Trump would “make major changes,” 32% actually answered that he would, “tear down the system completely.” That’s fairly consistent with the 36% of people polled who believe that the changes Trump would make would be, “Very bad for the country.” (Those numbers are, respectively, 23% and 30% for Harris.) This is not a question about change. At worst, it’s a question about polarization, those who buy Trump’s fear-mongering against those who value democracy. For the 30-plus percent who believe Trump would destroy the country, it may well be a question about fascism. And in a piece where Goldmacher calls a man who launched an “insurrection” an “insurgent,” ignoring Trump’s assault on democracy while discussing those numbers is malpractice.

Trump’s assault on democracy also pervades the issues that Marshall points to in his attempt to understand this dynamic.

Marshall’s best example of Trump pretending that he remains President — that he continues to meet with heads of state — obscures the likelihood that when Viktor Orbán and Bibi Netanyahu meet with Trump, it served a multi-national effort to replace American democracy with authoritarianism. Trump is not meeting with Orbán to discuss possible policy towards the EU, he’s meeting with him as a key ally in a Christian nationalist project, one intimately tied to Putin, one committed to ending the Western liberal order.

Marshall situates Trump’s bid for revenge — which he claims is Trump’s entire platform — as a continued obsession about his ouster.

Trump’s entire platform is retribution — retribution for his 2020 defeat, which he lacks the character to recognize, and retribution for what he considers his mistreatment during his term as president.

[snip]

[A]t the most basic level it’s about the past, relitigating, being made about, wanting to fix things that happened in 2017, 2018, etc.

But even there, I think it’s a misstatement. Trump does pitch this as “revenge.” But the word is designed to obscure the degree to which even before his 2016 election, Trump led his mob to expect that he would use government to criminalize any opposition. Lock her up was the goal, not just beating Hillary at the polls. The word revenge is Trump’s way of legitimizing that assault on rule of law: it covers up how he criminalized not just Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden but also those who deigned to investigate him. It also undermines — is intended to undermine — the legitimacy of all his criminal prosecutions, sowing doubt that he really is just a fraud conning his followers. Using the word “revenge” is in fact a false claim that he didn’t start this, when even his first impeachment was an effort to do just that.

Of course, revenge is not Trump’s entire platform. There are other key ingredients, like tax cuts for people like him. But the other foundational policy in his platform is a draconian approach to immigration, one of two reasons why Murtaugh is so desperate to claim that Harris is dodging her role in the Biden Administration.

If Trump were to win, a fascist definition of citizenship (including an assault on birthright citizenship) would serve as the excuse to “deport” (or at least to round up and detain) broader swaths of the population. More importantly, the constant efforts to inflame voters about immigration — particularly crimes attributed to “illegals” — lays the groundwork, is intended to lay the groundwork, not just the kind of fearmongering politics that failed in the past, but for the kind of Internet-mobilized right wing thuggery first tested in Ireland (including, but not limited to, the Dublin riot) and then further perfected after the UK’s Southport stabbing, with the unabashed involvement of one of JD Vance’s biggest backers, Elon Musk.

This effort from Trump’s team to falsely claim that Kamala is trying to distance herself from the Biden Administration is only partly about policy. It is, just as importantly, about laying the groundwork to stoke political violence when electoral politics fails.

Look, I get it. There are reasons why it’s easy to interpret this moment as a fight over incumbency.

The nearly unprecedented situation, which original pitted two former presidents against each other
Kamala’s continuation of the successful Joe Biden policies the political press ignored because they were too busy writing their 137th Joe Biden old story
The ongoing damage Trump has done since he left the presidency, without the incumbency of the office, both with court decisions like Dobbs and with successful efforts to undermine political compromise
Kamala’s repackaged response to Trump’s fascist threat as a way forward

The last one is the one people aren’t seeing. But it’s right there in her speech, as it was in the speeches of all of the Republicans who endorsed Kamala at the convention. Kamala’s Freedom agenda — even her Forward agenda — is in significant part an attempt to protect democracy and rule of law.

And with this election, and — and with this election, our nation — our nation, with this election, has a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism and divisive battles of the past, a chance to chart a new way forward. Not as members of any one party or faction, but as Americans.

[snip]

In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man. But the consequences — but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.

Consider — consider not only the chaos and calamity when he was in office, but also the gravity of what has happened since he lost the last election. Donald Trump tried to throw away your votes. When he failed, he sent an armed mob to the U.S. Capitol, where they assaulted law enforcement officers. When politicians in his own party begged him to call off the mob and send help, he did the opposite — he fanned the flames. And now, for an entirely different set of crimes, he was found guilty of fraud by a jury of everyday Americans, and separately — and separately found liable for committing sexual abuse. And consider, consider what he intends to do if we give him power again. Consider his explicit intent to set free violent extremists who assaulted those law enforcement officers at the Capitol.

His explicit intent to jail journalists, political opponents and anyone he sees as the enemy. His explicit intent to deploy our active duty military against our own citizens. Consider, consider the power he will have, especially after the U.S. Supreme Court just ruled that he would be immune from criminal prosecution.

Kamala is running on democracy just as much as Biden did in 2020. It just looks different, because she has more successfully wrapped it in a bipartisan flag. Even there, there’s real continuity (don’t forget that one of Biden’s most important speeches about democracy in 2022, one that had a real impact on the election, was at Independence Hall).

Largely enabled by Trump’s ongoing effect — again, especially on Choice — Kamala has just found a way to make democracy matter more personally, more viscerally.

Kamala is not eschewing the incumbency she has Vice President. On the contrary, she is running on a continuation and expansion of Joe Biden’s successful policies (even if journalists are missing that). And she is running, just as Biden did, on defeating both Trump’s electoral bid but also the threat he poses to democracy itself.

Update: Swapped the featured image to show that Murtaugh continues to bullshit about Kamala distancing herself from the White House.

Update: Corrected Southport/Southgate.

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Fridays with Nicole Sandler

August 23, 2024/16 Comments/in 2024 Presidential Election /by emptywheel

Listen on Spotify (transcripts available)

Listen on Apple (transcripts available)

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To Become Leader of the Free(dom) World

August 23, 2024/75 Comments/in 2024 Presidential Election /by emptywheel

At the start of the week, WSJ began a profile of Kamala Harris’ tenure as Vice President with a review of concerns among her staffers about whether and, if so, how to properly return a salute.

In her first months as vice president, Kamala Harris’s staff faced a dilemma: When a military officer saluted her as she boarded Air Force Two, should she salute back?

Harris’s predecessors—including Joe Biden when he was vice president—routinely saluted back. But Nancy McEldowney, then her national security adviser, explained that military protocol didn’t require her to do so given that Harris wasn’t commander in chief and not in the military chain of command. Doing so could make Harris look like she was trying to inflate her role, former administration officials said.

Boarding one of her first flights on Air Force Two, Harris skipped the salute. Conservative commentators seized on the moment and accused her of disrespecting the military. Soon after, aides were told that Harris would salute going forward. An aide wrote up a memo on proper saluting protocol—including pictures of previous presidents who had gotten it wrong—and the vice president even practiced the gesture in private, people familiar with the matter said.

I thought about it as I was trying to process how and why we got Leon Panetta when we all thought we were getting Beyoncé.

I still expect we’ll get Beyoncé, one day.

I think it would have worked great (and absent her appearance, think organizers should have moved Pink to closer to Kamala’s speech). But the expectation that Beyoncé would show arose, first, from the earned arrogance that popular Democratic politicians can rely on the support of stars and most Republicans cannot. That expectation also arose, I think, from a conceit that we were getting a show for our benefit.

Expectations sky-rocketed after Lil Jon jumped out of the stands and led the entire stadium in a joyous rap. But that was during the Roll Call vote, a moment when delegates, committed Democrats, affirmed near-unanimous support for Kamala Harris.

But the hour in which the Vice President spoke was not, primarily, for our benefit.

Go back to what I said yesterday: This election will be won or lost on how much Kamala Harris can expand the reservoir of voters who might otherwise stay home. Returning to traditional Democratic levels of support among Black and Latino voters, inspiring a new generation of voters, further exciting the kind of people who want to see Beyoncé … that can get you to a two or three point lead in swing states that might be enough in a normal year for a white male candidate.

But for a Black person, a candidate aspiring to the first woman president, someone running against a desperate felon who has his own army of terrorists, it’s not enough.

Kamala Harris needs bigger margins to survive the shit Donny will throw at her. She needs to win enough states to squeak through if Trump manages to hang up two of them with some kind of frivolous legal challenge.

This hour, in which (with all due respect to my Governor, Big Gretch) Adam Kinzinger gave the second best speech, after Kamala’s, was for the sea of moderate voters with certain expectations about a Commander in Chief.

Kamala addressed this broader audience, fairly early in her speech, making a promise that defined much of what came later.

And let me say, I know there are people of various political views watching tonight. And I want you to know, I promise to be a president for all Americans. You can always trust me to put country above party and self. To hold sacred America’s fundamental principles, from the rule of law, to free and fair elections, to the peaceful transfer of power.

I will be a president who unites us around our highest aspirations. A president who leads and listens; who is realistic, practical and has common sense; and always fights for the American people. From the courthouse to the White House, that has been my life’s work.

She addressed principle.

The Commander of Chief challenge is one that faces every candidate who hasn’t spent a career, as Joe Biden has, accruing a track record on national security issues. Even former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a lifelong hawk, struggled with this issue because of her gender. Steve Bannon described that challenge in FBI interviews focused on how they approached the 2016 debates, how the one thing he needed to pull off was allowing people to imagine Donald Trump could be Commander in Chief. This convention was partially staged by David Plouffe, who sent Barack Obama to give a controversial speech in Berlin to acquire that kind of gravitas.

Kamala needed — or perhaps Plouffe believed she needed — someone to tell a story that afforded her the comparative seriousness of recent Democratic Administrations. In other circumstances, Joe Biden would have been the one to tell that story, to describe Kamala’s role in getting Evan Gerskovich home, to describe Kamala’s mission to prepare Volodymyr Zelensky in advance of Russia’s invasion. Other possible candidates are equally impossible. Tony Blinken, who might be permitted a political speech, has been tainted by Bibi’s warmongering. CIA Director William Burns and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, both true heroes of any Biden foreign policy successes, cannot play such a partisan role.

So Leon Panetta it was, according to Vice President Harris the glory of that goddamned raid on Osama bin Laden once again.

To be clear, given what she’s up against, I think it was a missed opportunity.

The Commander in Chief test is also wrapped up in America’s rusty sense of its own exceptionalism. At this moment, the threat to any claim of exceptionalism comes from within as much as outside.

Kamala is fighting America’s aspiring dictator, not just dictators overseas. The national security part of her speech defined herself in contrast to Trump’s abdication of America’s role in the world.

As vice president, I have confronted threats to our security, negotiated with foreign leaders, strengthened our alliances and engaged with our brave troops overseas. As commander in chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world. And I will fulfill our sacred obligation to care for our troops and their families, and I will always honor and never disparage their service and their sacrifice.

I will make sure that we lead the world into the future on space and artificial intelligence. That America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century and that we strengthen, not abdicate, our global leadership. Trump, on the other hand, threatened to abandon NATO. He encouraged Putin to invade our allies. Said Russia could “do whatever the hell they want.”

[snip]

I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists. I will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong-un, who are rooting for Trump. Who are rooting for Trump.

Because, you know, they know — they know he is easy to manipulate with flattery and favors. They know Trump won’t hold autocrats accountable because he wants to be an autocrat himself.

And as president, I will never waver in defense of America’s security and ideals, because in the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny, I know where I stand and I know where the United States belongs.

In many ways, these parts of Kamala’s speech — the ones addressed to those measuring up a possible Commander in Chief — echoed Kinzinger’s earlier speech.

His fundamental weakness has coursed through my party like an illness, sapping our strength, softening our spine, whipping us into a fever that has untethered us from our values.

Our democracy was frayed by the events of January 6th, as Donald Trump’s deceit and dishonor led to a siege on the United States Capitol. That day, I stood witness to a profound sorrow: the desecration of our sacred tradition of peaceful transition of power, tarnished by a man too fragile, too vain, and too weak to accept defeat.

How can a party claim to be patriotic if it idolizes a man who tried to overthrow a free and fair election? How can a party claim to stand for liberty if it sees a fight for freedom in Ukraine—an attack pitting tyranny against democracy, a challenge to everything our nation claims to be—and it retreats, it equivocates, it nominates a man who is weirdly obsessed with Putin and his running mate who said, “I don’t care what happens in Ukraine”? Yet he wants to be Vice President, yeah. How can a party claim to be conservative when it tarnishes the gifts that our forebearers fought for—men like my grandfather, who served in World War II, who believed in a cause bigger than himself, and he risked his life for it, behind enemy lines? To preserve American democracy, his generation found the courage to face down armies. Listen, all we’re asked to do is to summon the courage to stand up to one weak man.

[snip]

[D]emocracy knows no party. It’s a living, breathing ideal that defines us as a nation. It’s the bedrock that separates us from tyranny. And when that foundation is fractured, we must all stand together united to strengthen it.

Democrat and Republican agree on the challenge.

But if Kamala Harris succeeds in this race, American is long overdue for a reckoning on what these values mean. We got into this mess — Donald Trump’s demagoguery resonated with far too many people — not just because the financial crisis left so many behind, not just because of the racism bred into America from the moment of its founding, but because a War on Terror that left many damaged also poisoned much of the claim to American exceptionalism, leaving others devoid of their source of self-worth.

Kamala Harris has a story to tell about diplomacy and cooperation. One of the most interesting anecdotes came from someone who claimed that, while serving as California’s Attorney General, Kamala presided over a new kind of cooperation in law enforcement that has become the norm; in reality, she likely just happened to be the top cop for a country-sized state as the techniques of the War on Terror were adopted, with a big boost from Silicon Valley, to other kinds of security challenges.

If she becomes Commander in Chief, Kamala Harris would take over the helm not just of an oversized military, but also the manufacturing base that has armed Ukraine to defend itself and an information-sharing machine that provided European allies with a way to combat Russia’s sabotage.

These are still awesome, potentially monstrous, tools. That dragnet, in Trump’s hands, could quickly become the instrument of totalitarianism.

But Kamala Harris’ experience wielding them and her ties to their base in California may provide the roots of a different model.

America’s past mistakes — including its failures in Gaza — have tarnished the claims to principle. Decades of increasing reliance on coercion rather than cooperation created the opportunity for someone like Trump, who peddles a false claim that coercion makes you strong.

Kamala offered a clear sense of how she defines freedom within America. But if she’s promising to move forward from the danger of Donald Trump, she would do well to consider what it means to be Leader of the Freedom World.

This image, which Miles Curland created in response to the Shepard Fairey one, is available under Creative Common license.

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DNC Convention 2024: Day 4 — The Fight for the Future Begins

August 22, 2024/71 Comments/in 2024 Election, 2024 Presidential Election /by Rayne

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

It’s the final day of Democratic National Committee Convention 2024. Kamala Harris is officially the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee and will close the convention with her keynote acceptance speech.

With the end of the convention, the fight for democracy begins in earnest. There are 75 days left until Election Day.

Speaking of which, are you registered? Have you checked your registration? Have you helped someone get registered which may include getting identification? Do something!

DAY 4 CONVENTION SCHEDULE
Here’s today’s convention schedule (times shown are Central Time):

7 a.m.-9:30 a.m.: Delegation breakfasts
9 a.m.-10a.m.: Morning press briefing
9:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m.: Women’s Caucus meeting
12 p.m.-1:30 p.m.: Disability Caucus meeting
12 p.m.-1:30 p.m.: Youth Council meeting
12 p.m.-1:30 p.m.: Rural Council meeting
1:45 p.m.-3:15 p.m.: Veterans & Military Families Council meeting
1:45 p.m.-3:15 p.m.: Poverty Council meeting
1:45 p.m.-3:15 p.m.: Interfaith Council meeting
6 p.m.-10 p.m.: Main programming

MAIN PROGRAMMING
Main programming has already begun as this post publishes at 7:30 PM ET/6:30 PM CT

Tonight’s schedule (times shown are Central Time):

5:30 PM

Call to Order
• Minyon Moore, Chair of the 2024 Democratic National Convention Committee

Gavel In
• Rep. Veronica Escobar (TX-16)

Invocation
• Everett Kelly, National President of the American Federation of Government Employees
• Imam Muhammad Abdul-Aleem, Masjidullah Mosque, West Oak Lane, PA

Presentation of Colors
• Illinois State Police Honor Guard

Pledge of Allegiance
• Luna Maring, 6th Grader from Oakland, California

Welcome Remarks
• Rep. Veronica Escobar (TX-16)

Joint Remarks
• Becky Pringle, President of the National Education Association
• Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers

Remarks
• Sen. Alex Padilla, California

6:00 PM

Remarks
• Marcia L. Fudge, Former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
• Rep. Ted W. Lieu (CA-36)
• Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Wisconsin
• Rep. Katherine Clark (MA-05), U.S. House of Representatives Democratic Whip
• Rep. Joe Neguse (CO-02) U.S. House of Representatives Assistant Democratic Leader
• Mayor Leonardo Williams, Durham, North Carolina
• Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (IL-08)
• Sen. Bob Casey, Pennsylvania
• Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts

Remarks: “Project 2025—Chapter Four: Making America Weaker and Less Secure”
• Rep. Jason Crow (CO-06)

Remarks
• Rep. Elissa Slotkin (MI-07), U.S. Senate candidate
• Rep. Pat Ryan (NY-18)
• Reverend Al Sharpton, Civil rights leader

Joint Remarks from representatives of “the Central Park Five”
• Dr. Yusef Salaam, Member of the New York City Council
• Korey Wise, Activist
• Raymond Santana, Activist
• Kevin Richardson, Activist

7:00 PM

Joint Remarks
• Amy Resner, Former prosecutor and friend of Vice President Harris
• Karrie Delaney, Director of Federal Affairs at the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network
• Lisa Madigan, Former Attorney General of Illinois
• Marc H. Morial, President of the National Urban League
• Nathan Hornes, Former student at Corinthian Colleges
• Tristan Snell, Former New York State Assistant Attorney General

Remarks
• Gov. Maura Healey, Massachusetts
• Courtney Baldwin, Youth organizer and human trafficking survivor
• Deb Haaland, Secretary of the Interior
• John Russell, Content creator
• Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost, Florida
• Rep. Colin Allred (TX-32)

Joint Remarks on “A New American Chapter”
• Anya Cook, Florida
• Craig Sicknick, New Jersey
• Gail DeVore, Colorado
• Juanny Romero, Nevada
• Eric, Christian, and Carter Fitts, North Carolina

8:00 PM

National Anthem
The Chicks

Host Introduction
• Kerry Washington

Joint Remarks
• Meena Harris
• Ella Emhoff
• Helena Hudlin

Remarks
• D.L. Hughley
• Sheriff Chris Swanson, Genesee County, Michigan

A Conversation on Gun Violence
• Rep. Lucy McBath, Georgia

Joined by
• Abbey Clements of Newton, Connecticut
• Kim Rubio of Uvalde, Texas
• Melody McFadden of Charleston, South Carolina
• Edgar Vilchez of Chicago, Illinois.

Remarks
• Gabrielle Giffords, Former Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Arizona

Performance
P!NK

Remarks
• Sen. Mark Kelly, Arizona
• Leon E. Panetta, Former United States Secretary of Defense
• Rep. Ruben Gallego (AZ-03), U.S. Senate candidate
• Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan

9:00 PM

Remarks
• Eva Longoria, American actress and film producer
• Adam Kinzinger, Former Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Illinois
• Maya Harris
• Gov. Roy Cooper, North Carolina

Remarks
• Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States, Democratic Party presidential nominee and keynote speaker

Benediction
• Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt, Adas Israel Congregation (Washington DC)
• Rev. Amos Brown, pastor, Third Baptist Church (San Franciso CA)

Closing remarks and gavel out
• Minyon Moore, Chair of the 2024 Democratic National Convention Committee

Note: this list of speakers and performances is as published by DNC this evening after 6:00 PM ET. It doesn’t match the list Nonilex has in a thread on Mastodon; there may have been/will be changes to the lineup.

HOW TO WATCH
See Monday’s Day 1 post for the best channels on which to catch the majority of this evening’s programming.

DNC at United Center-Chicago will stream a live feed from its own website between 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM ET (6:00 PM to 10:00 PM CT) Tuesday through Thursday.

https://demconvention.com/

USA Today will also live stream Tuesday through Thursday.

https://www.youtube.com/@USATODAY/streams – main page

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d5-wtw4yuQ – tonight’s feed

The DNC’s convention feeds are:

https://www.youtube.com/@DemConvention – main page

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKNW_KHYrbY – tonight’s feed

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Five Ways to Find New Voters and New Activists

August 22, 2024/64 Comments/in 2008 Presidential Election, 2016 Presidential Election, 2024 Presidential Election /by emptywheel

In a tweet yesterday, Cook Political Report analyst Dave Wasserman explained how Kamala Harris has changed the dynamic of the Presidential race. Her lead among highly committed voters remains the same as Joe Biden had in May. But she has eaten into Trump’s lead among low and mid-engagement voters.

These voters include young voters, busy working class voters, but also Double Haters whose disgust by their choice of candidate might have led them to sit out.

Understanding that that’s how you break up a tie race — by motivating people who otherwise might not to come out to vote — explains a lot about what Democrats have been doing in the one month since Kamala took over from Joe. It explains why Tim Walz joined TikTok — and why Pete Buttigieg is bragging that he already has more followers on TikTok than JD Vance.

Below, I’ve laid out five ways that the DNC has tried to find ways to reach out to voters last night.

One group they are not fully reaching out to, though, are Muslims and Arab-Americans. At the end of yesterday’s convention, multiple people, including AOC, reported that the convention will not allow a Palestinian-American to speak on the main stage. We may learn more about the circumstances of this (I’m sure it doesn’t help that Biden and Harris are trying to pressure Bibi Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire this week); it was a failure of planning that it didn’t happen earlier in the week. We may never know the cost of this. But it is ethically and morally wrong to exclude some voice to speak for the people of Gaza.

Update: The UAW has issued a statement on the import of providing a platform for a Palestinian American to speak.

If we want the war in Gaza to end, we can’t put our heads in the sand or ignore the voices of the Palestinian Americans in the Democratic Party. If we want peace, if we want real democracy, and if we want to win this election, the Democratic Party must allow a Palestinian American speaker to be heard from the DNC stage tonight.

Coach Walz

You don’t need me to explain why Tim Walz expands the field of potential voters (though polling doesn’t, yet, show him helping, much, in rural areas). At the very least, he’s virtually guaranteed to ensure Harris-Walz wins the Omaha electoral vote that puts the ticket at 270 in a thin Blue Wall strategy.

There are three things about his speech that merit notice, however. First, bringing Walz’ football players on stage was great theater, just like having Kamala and Coach pack a Milwaukee venue and the Chicago convention at the same time. It continues to highlight a different kind of white masculinity, besides the toxic aggression Trump offers.

The image of Gus Walz weeping for his father is yet another expression of the love that has drenched the Democratic side this year, even as Melania has shied from Trump’s kiss.

There’s also a line in Walz’ stump speech — that Sarah Longwell, the publisher of The Bulwark who has been doing non-stop focus groups for the last two months — says works with all swing voters: “We made sure that every kind in our state gets breakfast and lunch every day.” Walz went on, “So while other states were banning books from our schools, we were banishing hunger.” A focus on schools — yes to food and books, no to guns — has the power to make sense of all this.

Notably, in Florida, Ron DeSantis’ efforts to pack school boards with people censoring books had a huge setback on Tuesday.

Oprah

After Oprah endorsed Barack Obama in 2007, there were scholarly and polling articles that tried to track the value of her endorsement. The answer was — at a time when she was at the height of her influence — it probably had more impact on the belief of those who might already vote for Obama that he could win, not in convincing others to vote for him. Oprah gave Obama credibility, and the timing and publicity of it gave him a way to match up to Hillary.

Obviously, Oprah’s endorsement of Hillary in 2016 was not enough to defeat Donald Trump.

More recently, Oprah’s influence has been more important in undercutting those whose careers she had launched, most notably Dr Oz when he ran against John Fetterman. That ought to concern JD Vance, whose Hillbilly Elegy Oprah platformed in her book club. Oprah quipped that when a house is in on fire, that homeowner’s neighbors don’t ask their religion or party before they move to help. “And if the place happens to belong to a childless cat lady, welp, we try to get that cat out too.” Equally important, for a woman who taught Middle America to read again, it matters that she warned against, “People who’d have you believe that books are dangerous, and assault rifles are safe.”

I think Oprah did one more thing. She paid tribute to John Lewis and spoke at length of the import of Tessie Prevost-Williams’ role in integrating New Orleans schools. Too many white people don’t know — haven’t had to think about — the import of school integration, or the impact of efforts to reverse it. Oprah used Tessie’s story to explain the import of Kamala’s role in integrating Berkeley’s schools. Oprah, who like Donald Trump built her credibility by joining Americans in their living rooms for years, broke ground for what might be far more focus on the historic opportunity of Kamala’s candidacy, including a tribute to Fannie Lou Hamer, like Oprah a Mississippian, who demanded she be seated as a delegate 60 years ago today.

Trump responded to Oprah’s speech by releasing the letter Oprah sent almost a quarter century ago when Trump wrote, in a book, that Oprah would be his first choice for a Vice President candidate.

Americans respect and admire Oprah for her intelligence and caring. She has provided inspiration for millions of women to improve their lives, go back to school, learn to read, and take responsibility for themselves. If I can’t get Oprah, I’d like someone like her.

I’m not sure how Oprah’s polite denial in 2000 helps him, since his description of Oprah as the ideal Vice President sounds so much like Kamala and nothing like JD Vance.

Geoff Duncan

The party has made a concerted effort to do what Trump hasn’t for anyone beyond Nikki Haley herself: reach out to Never-Trumpers. On Tuesday, former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham described how Trump attacks his supporters as “basement dwellers.” Before Geoff Duncan, former Homeland Security aide Olivia Troye described how she — a conservative Latina Catholic of the sort Republicans have been working hard to attract — was terrified if Trump would return to the White House.

Geoff Duncan made voting against Trump a matter of integrity. He looked into the camera and addressed, “the millions of Republicans and Independents that are at home that are sick and tired of making excuses for Donald Trump.” As all the Republicans speaking did, he described that voting for Harris didn’t make one a Democrat, but instead a patriot — reappropriating the term Trump’s thugs have adopted. And he described how, as his family was hunted by other Republicans sent by Donald Trump, his son reminded him of the family motto: “Doing the right thing will never be the wrong thing.”

[Update: Spelling of Duncan’s first name corrected. My apologies to him.]

Bill Clinton

Bill was self-indulgent, he went long, he occasionally mispronounced Kamala’s name, and — as someone younger than both Joe Biden and Donald Trump — he made it easy to understand how age can slow you down. “Let’s cut to the chase. I am too old to gild the lily. Two days ago I turned 78. Oldest man in my family for four generations. And the only personal vanity I want to assert is I’m still younger than Donald Trump.”

But 25 minutes in, the old white southern spouse of failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton warned against getting complacent.

As somebody who spends a lot of time in small towns and rural areas in New York and Arkansas and other places, I want, I urge you to talk to all your neighbors. I urge you to meet people where they are. I urge you not to demean them, but not to pretend you don’t disagree with them if you do. Treat them with respect. Just the way you’d like them to treat you.

I’m not Bill Clinton’s audience. But right now, Kamala is retaining a surprising amount of older white voters after Biden’s drop. And the kind of conversation Bill espouses is the kind of conversation that the Tim Walz pick makes possible, if people are willing to engage.

Pete Buttigieg

Buttigieg’s talent is well known from his Fox News appearances (which he joked about), but it was especially apparent in comparison with all the historic speakers at the convention. He still shone.

Buttigieg found a way to attack JD Vance for both his commentary about childless people and his attacks on Walz’ military record — by noting that, “When I deployed to Afghanistan, I didn’t have kids then. Many of the men and women who went outside the wire didn’t have kids either. But let me tell you: Our commitment to the future of this country was pretty damn physical.”

More importantly, he found a way to explain why politics matters. Without ever mentioning he’s gay or naming his husband Chasten, Buttigieg reminded that nothing about his nuclear family was possible two decades ago. None of it was possible without the political fight to win equality.

There is joy in it, as well as power. And if all of that sounds naive, let me insist that I have come to this view not by the way of idealism, but by way of experience. Not just the experience of my unlikely career — someone like me, serving, in Indiana. Someone like me, serving in Washington. Someone like me, serving, in uniform. I’m thinking of something much more basic. I’m thinking of dinner time in our house in Michigan. When the dog is barking and the air fryer is beeping and the mac and cheese is boiling over and it feels like all the political negotiating experience in the world is not enough for me to get our 3-year old daughter and our 3-year old son to just wash their hands and sit at the table. It’s the part of our day when politics seems the most distant. And yet the makeup of our kitchen table — the existence of my family — is just one example of something that was literally impossible as recently as 25 years ago when an anxious teenager growing up in Indiana wondering if he would ever find belonging in this world.

Since Walz has been chosen, several things have reminded me of my early involvement in a renewed sense of politics since the Iraq War. Like Tim Walz, I attended Wellstone Action. Folks I’ve known for decades — in VoteVets and from the new political spinoff from Daily Kos, The DownBallot — reminded that they backed Walz in 2006 and 2008, when his win was considered an impossibility. Rayne would kill me if I failed to mention Howard Dean in it all, which is where we got to know each other IRL.

As happened with Obama (and in response to the Iraq War), Kamala’s race has the power to convince ordinary Americans that they can be a different kind of citizen, and that kind of citizenship can improve people’s lives. There’s a lot of Democrats celebrating other Democrats at the convention. But there’s also a real effort to offer something for those low-turnout voters who could decide the race, or novice Democrats who could step up for the first time.

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DNC Convention 2024: Day 3

August 21, 2024/87 Comments/in 2024 Election, 2024 Presidential Election /by Rayne

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Welcome to Day 3 of Democratic National Committee Convention 2024.

The convention has an umbrella theme, “For the People, For Our Future,” with each successive day having a subset theme.

Day 1 — “For the People” — Joe Biden, keynote speaker

Day 2 — “A Bold Vision for America’s Future’ — Barack Obama, keynote speaker

Day 3 — “A Fight for Our Freedoms” — Tim Walz, keynote speaker <<– YOU ARE HERE

Day 4 — “For Our Future” — Kamala Harris, keynote speaker

Philip Elliot at TIME suggests tonight’s programming will be white man dense because white men were a key voting block which helped Biden win over Trump in 2020 and are still a critical variable in 2024.

Given how often minority groups and women have historically been given short shrift, this approach feels uncomfortable. But if the Democratic Party is to crush Trump and the GOP, no voting bloc should go without outreach, including the Never-Trumpers.

DAY 3 CONVENTION SCHEDULE
Here’s today’s convention schedule (times shown are Central Time):

• 7 a.m.-9:30 a.m.: Delegation breakfasts
• 9 a.m.-10a.m.: Morning press briefing
• 9:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m.: Black Caucus meeting
• 9:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m.: Hispanic Caucus meeting
• 9:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m.: AAPI Caucus meeting
• 9:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m.: Native American Caucus meeting
• 9:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m.: Ethnic Council meeting
• 12 p.m.-1:30 p.m.: Labor Council meeting
• 12 p.m.-1:30 p.m.: LGBTQ+ Caucus meeting
• 12 p.m.-1:30 p.m.: Small Business Council meeting
• 1:45 p.m.-3:15 p.m.: Environmental & Climate Crisis Council meeting
• 1:45 p.m.-3:15 p.m.: Seniors Council meeting
• 6 p.m.-10 p.m.: Main programming

MAIN PROGRAMMING
Main programming has already begun as this post publishes at 7:30 PM ET/6:30 PM CT

Tonight’s schedule (times shown are Central Time):

5:30 PM

Call to Order
• Alex Hornbrook, Executive Director of the 2024 Democratic National Convention Committee

Gavel In
• Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ)

Invocation
• Sri Rakesh Bhatt
• Sri Siva Vishnu Temple
• Bishop Leah D. Daughtry, The House of the Lord Churches

Pledge of Allegiance
• Students from Moreland Arts & Health Sciences Magnet School from St. Paul, MN

National Anthem
• Jess Davis

Presentation of Honorary Resolutions
• Jaime Harrison, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee

Joined by Vice Chairs
• Keisha Lance Bottoms
• Ken Martin
• Henry R. Muñoz III, Treasurer
• Virginia McGregor
• Chris Korge, Finance Chair

Remarks
• Mini Timmaraju, President and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All
• Alexis McGill Johnson, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund
• Cecile Richards, Reproductive Rights Champion
• Kelley Robinson, President of the Human Rights Campaign
• Jessica Mackler, President of EMILYs List
• María Teresa Kumar, Founding President and CEO of Voto Latino
• Rep. Tom Suozzi (NY-03)

6:00 PM

Welcome Remarks
• Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ)

Joint Remarks
• Aftab Pureval, Mayor of Cincinnati OH
• Cavalier Johnson, Mayor of Milwaukee WI
• Deanna Branch, mother and lead pipe removal advocate
• Rashawn Spivey, plumbing business owner and lead pipe removal advocate

Remarks
• Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE At-large District)
• Rep. Grace Meng (NY-

Remarks: “Project 2025—Chapter Three: Freedoms”
• Gov. Jared Polis, Colorado

Remarks
• Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-)
• Suzan DelBene, Chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
• Keith Ellison, Attorney General of Minnesota
• Dana Nessel, Attorney General of Michigan
• Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg, Parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin

Performance
• Maren Morris, American singer-songwriter

7:00 PM

Remarks
• Rep. Veronica Escobar (TX-16)
• Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT)
• Javier Salazar, Sheriff of Bexar County, Texas
• Pete Aguilar, Chair of the House Democratic Caucus

Influencer Remarks
• Carlos Eduardo Espina, Content creator

Remarks
• Olivia Troye, former Trump administration national security official
• Geoff Duncan, former Lt. Governor of Georgia
• Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (MS-02)
• Sergeant Aquilino Gonell, Retired United States Capitol Police Officer
• Rep. Andy Kim, (NJ-03)

Influencer Remarks
• Olivia Julianna, Content creator

Performance
• Stevie Wonder, American singer-songwriter and musician

Remarks
• Kenan Thompson, American comedian and actor and Guests on Project 2025

8:00 PM

Host Introduction
• Mindy Kaling

Remarks
• Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Leader
• Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States
• Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker Emerita (CA-)
• Gov. Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania
• Alexander Hudlin
• Jasper Emhoff
• Arden Emhoff
• Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV)

9:00 PM

Performance
• Amanda Gorman, National Youth Poet Laureate

Remarks
• Gov. Wes Moore, Maryland
• Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation

Performance
• John Legend, American singer-songwriter
• Sheila E., American singer and drummer

Remarks
• Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
• Benjamin C. Ingman, Former student of Governor Walz

Remarks
• Gov. Tim Walz, Minnesota, Democratic Party vice presidential nominee and keynote speaker

Benediction
• William Emmanuel Hall
• Lead Pastor of St. James Church in Chicago

HOW TO WATCH
See Monday’s Day 1 post for the best channels on which to catch the majority of this evening’s programming.

DNC at United Center-Chicago will stream a live feed from its own website between 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM ET (6:00 PM to 10:00 PM CT) Tuesday through Thursday.

https://demconvention.com/

USA Today will also live stream Tuesday through Thursday.

https://www.youtube.com/@USATODAY/streams – main page

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxBzoWNCWHo – tonight’s feed

The DNC’s convention feeds are:

https://www.youtube.com/@DemConvention – main page

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIoAq_BHNLU – tonight’s feed

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The Presidency Is a “Black Job”

August 21, 2024/157 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, 2024 Presidential Election /by emptywheel

You should watch the video of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, as they waited backstage in Milwaukee as the call of delegates was livecast in Fiserv Forum, packed to the gills, the same venue where the GOP held their convention a very long month ago. As Gavin Newsom, in Chicago’s United Center, cast the last votes making the Vice President the formal nominee of the party, Harris and Walz stood together.

It’s time for us to do the right thing, and that is to elect Kamala Harris as the next President of the United States of America. California, we proudly cast our 400 and 82 votes for the next President, Kamala Harris.

The range of emotions that registered on Kamala’s face started with, perhaps, anxiety or perhaps a sense of unreality. As Newsom cast the votes, she seemed to focus — Walz, standing next to her backstage, had begun to go nuts. She bent her head back and began to register some kind of joy.

But then there was a moment where her eyes got big. She got an almost childlike expression in them, as if she couldn’t believe what just happened, couldn’t believe the enormity of it all.

Then it began to settle. Perhaps pride came in.

Finally she turned to Walz, gave him a high-five handshake, a hug. It’s only after that hug where she came away with a full joyful smile.

As I watched that video, I couldn’t help but think to the significant number of people who, as they were trying to get Joe Biden to drop off the ticket, were inventing reasons to pass over Kamala Harris.

Many people, white and Black, progressive and not, opined with certainty that the country was not ready to elect a Black woman.

There has been almost no discussion of that since the day, exactly a month ago, when Joe Biden endorsed her.

To be sure: the fact that she would be the first woman president, the first Black woman president, the first Asian-American president — people keep talking about that (though as several stories on the Convention noted, particularly in comparison with Hillary, Kamala is not dwelling on that).

To be equally sure, the challenge it presents is not something anyone is forgetting. Certainly Michelle Obama addressed the challenge before us in her speech, which started with a tribute to the memory of her own mother, Marian Robinson, who passed away in May, and paid tribute to Kamala’s mother, along the way. (In his speech, Obama also paid tribute to Robinson, likening her to his grandmother.)

After declaring there is no monopoly on what it means to be an American, Michelle described what it’s like to grow up without the privilege Trump has enjoyed.

Because no one has a monopoly on what it means to be an American. No one.

Kamala has shown her allegiance to this nation, not by spewing anger and bitterness, but by living a life of service and always pushing the doors of opportunity open to others. She understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward. We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth. If we bankrupt the business or choke in a crisis, we don’t get a second, third, or fourth chance. If things don’t go our way, we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead. No. We don’t get to change the rules, so we always win. If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top. No. We put our heads down. We get to work. In America, we do something.

That wasn’t necessarily a comment on race. Few Americans enjoy the privilege that Trump has.

But what followed was about race. Michelle turned to the attacks Donald Trump had launched on her and Barack.

It was the first time Michelle named Trump.

we know what comes next. We know folks are going to do everything they can to distort her truth. My husband and I, sadly, know a little something about this. For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black.

Then she flipped it all back on Donald Trump. The office of the Presidency is a “Black job” now.

Wait, I want to know: Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those “Black jobs”?

Michelle moved from there to name Trump’s misogyny and racism as a substitute for his own inadequacy. Later, she returned to those “who don’t want to vote for a woman,” but prescribed “Do something” when it happens.

We cannot be our own worst enemies. The minute something goes wrong, the minute a lie takes hold, folks, we cannot start wringing our hands. We cannot get a Goldilocks complex about whether everything is ‘just right.’ We cannot indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala, instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected.

You can read the rest here.

The First Black First Lady warned everyone. The shit is going to fly. But when it happens, you just have to Do Something to push back on the lies and racism and misogyny.

I don’t know whether, in the month since Biden endorsed Kamala, people set aside the belief that America is not ready to elect a Black woman, or just recommitted to making this happen regardless of the racism and sexism of America, in spite of it. Or maybe, for some, that was always just an excuse to ask for someone else.

I responded, back when people said the US was not ready for the first Black woman president, that with Dobbs on the ballot, with fascism on the ballot, after several elections in which Black women voters saved the country, a Black woman candidate may be the most logical choice. Indeed, as Trump has struggled, and usually failed, to come up with some attack on the Vice President that didn’t turn his dog whistles into a clarion call of racism, his insecurities about running against Kamala have made it harder for the press to normalize his racism.

Being bested by a smart, beautiful Black woman may be precisely the Kryptonite to Trump’s power the country has been looking for.

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DNC Convention 2024: Day 2

August 20, 2024/23 Comments/in 2024 Election, 2024 Presidential Election /by Rayne

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

The second day of Democratic National Committee Convention 2024 has commenced.

DAY 2 CONVENTION SCHEDULE
Here’s today’s event lineup (times shown are Central Time):

7 a.m.-9:30 a.m.: Delegation breakfasts
9 a.m.-10a.m.: Morning press briefing
9:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m.: Women’s Caucus meeting
12 p.m.-1:30 p.m.: Disability Caucus meeting
12 p.m.-1:30 p.m.: Youth Council meeting
12 p.m.-1:30 p.m.: Rural Council meeting
1:45 p.m.-3:15 p.m.: Veterans & Military Families Council meeting
1:45 p.m.-3:15 p.m.: Poverty Council meeting
1:45 p.m.-3:15 p.m.: Interfaith Council meeting
6 p.m.-10 p.m.: Main programming

MAIN PROGRAMMING
Main programming has already begun as this post publishes at 7:30 PM ET/6:30 PM CT

Tonight’s schedule (times shown are Central Time):

5:30 PM

Call to order
• Jaime R. Harrison, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee

Gavel in
• Mitch Landrieu, DNC Night 2 Co-Chair and Committee Co-Chair

Invocation
• Rabbi Sharon Brous, IKAR
• Imam Dr. Talib M. Shareef, The Nation’s Mosque

Pledge of Allegiance
• Joshua Davis

National Anthem
• Aristotle “Aris” Garcia Byrne

Remarks
• Jason Carter, Grandson of President Jimmy Carter
• Jack Schlossberg, Grandson of President John F. Kennedy

Remarks: “Project 2025—Chapter Two: The Economy”
• Malcolm Kenyatta, PA state house of representatives
6:00 PM

• Kyle Sweetser, former Donald Trump voter
• Stephanie Grisham, former Trump White House Press Secretary
• Nabela Noor, Content creator
• Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI)
• Kenneth Stribling, Retired Teamster

7:00 PM

Roll Call
• Minnesota Delegation
• California Delegation

8:00 PM

• Ana Navarro, host introduction
• Sen. Chuck Schumer, Senate Majority Leader (D-NY)
• Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
• Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL)
• Ken Chenault, American business executive
• Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM)

9:00 PM

Keynote Remarks
• Angela Alsobrooks, Nominee for the U.S. Senate (D-MD); Long-time mentee of VP Harris
• Mayor John Giles, City of Mesa (R-AZ)
• Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL)
• Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff
• Former First Lady Michelle Obama

10:00 PM

• Former President Barack Obama, key note speaker

Benediction
• Bishop Samuel L. Green, Sr., African Methodist Episcopal Church, 7th Episcopal District
• Archbishop Elpidophoros, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

HOW TO WATCH
See yesterday’s post for the best channels on which to catch the majority of this evening’s programming.

DNC at United Center-Chicago will stream a live feed from its own website between 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM ET (6:00 PM to 10:00 PM CT) Tuesday through Thursday.

https://demconvention.com/

USA Today will also live stream Tuesday through Thursday.

https://www.youtube.com/@USATODAY/streams – main page

https://www.youtube.com/live/6n40S96nmv8 – tonight’s feed

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Be Careful What Trump’s Lawyers Wish For, Superseding Indictment Edition

The Second Amendment, as Applied

A Manufactured Fight over Incumbency Hides Trump’s Fascism

Fridays with Nicole Sandler

To Become Leader of the Free(dom) World

DNC Convention 2024: Day 4 — The Fight for the Future Begins

Five Ways to Find New Voters and New Activists

Coach Walz

Oprah

Geoff Duncan

Bill Clinton

Pete Buttigieg

DNC Convention 2024: Day 3

The Presidency Is a “Black Job”

DNC Convention 2024: Day 2

Interesting links

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