Great article and analysis. I have been skeptical about Harris’ chances but now that she seems certain to be the nominee I actually feel excited. I had been hoping before this weekend for an open convention to choose a nominee, but now believe there is no time for that. Democrats best shot is to unite and rally behind Harris starting now. All of the enthusiasm of the last 24 hours has certainly been encouraging. I am so relieved that Democrats finally have someone who can make a credible case against Trump, plus explain to voters the good things the Biden administration has done. I just hope that Harris chooses well in a running mate. My preference would be Mark Kelly. He’s very likable and projects gravitas. And his wife is already well liked in the party and would certainly be an asset on the campaign trail.
I don't think Josh was saying that the move by itself was a problem, but that it could be (but hopefully isn't) a sign that she's going to run the kind of left-wing way-too-online campaign that caused her to crash and burn in the primary in 2020.
Yes, Kamala's campaign was extremely proud of all the social media enthusiasm they generated for themselves in 2019, gravely misunderstanding and overestimating its importance. There's nothing wrong with people being excited about you on social media. But she has a history of chasing clout on Twitter in ways that distract from the mission of actually winning votes.
TBF to Harris in 2019/2020 Biden and other better known names had alot of default support her only play was to generate enough buzz to get a bunch of media coverage.
Great analysis. Love these newsletters and the Serious Trouble podcast, but hope we get more Very Serious podcasts. Miss your conversations about the day-to-day politics.
Adm. McRaven as VP would be a stroke of genius. Everyone expects a relatively generic Governor or Senator, so a pick like him would be out of left field and would generate more than usual media coverage. Plus, it would help the campaign move to the center and help shed Kamala's image as this radical left-wing politician from her 2020 campaign. And his military leadership experience combined with Kamala's ability to speak clearly (low bar I know) would provide a perception of competence that neither Biden nor Trump were able to instill in voters.
I don't have insight into this pick beyond saying he was a solid chancellor of the University of Texas system, and that the pick would probably upset Greg Abbott.
Great article. I've been surprised by the level of enthusiasm—including my own—surrounding Harris over the past twenty-four hours. I think we all underestimated just how much people have been dying for a fresh, non eighty-year-old face.
I've said this on other platforms, but I suspect this upcoming DNC convention might be the most consequential convention since 1968.
I know there isn't really much a possibility of a brokered convention anymore*, but this is still the most unusual convention we're going to have in a long time. It's going to be what only a month after Biden dropped off the ticket. Plus there is probably going to be at least some intrigue as to whether there will be faithless delegates who will vote for some other candidate.
All in all, I just think the convention has a real possibility of pulling in the highest ratings for a very long time. So talk about an opportunity to get your message out there to a whole lot voters who don't have strong opinions on Kamala Harris yet.
Strong conventions speech + Fed rate cut in September = great opportunity for Harris to win. Dare I say, know hope.
*Let's be real, a huge part of coverage was the hope there would be a brokered convention and the ratings bonanza that would entail. End of the day, we all respond to financial/economic incentives and news orgs are now different. https://www.slowboring.com/p/when-trump-wins-so-does-the-media
It's so depressing that we live in such a shallow political culture, that people like you help foster, that somehow makes Biden's age and the fact that he had a cold one night so much more relevant than the fact that he was running against a child-r*ping, fascist, wanna-be dictator who was also very old and completely insane. Everybody on the internet today who's like, "OH YAS QUEEN KAMALA" blah blah blah while previously stating they couldn't vote for Biden because he's fucking old, despite the threat that Trump faces, just reinforces to me how unserious, immature, and spoiled this country is.
Biden is the best, most progressive, and most effective president this country has had in a century, but he was boring or whatever, so the NYT pinhead pundits threw him under the bus because Trump is actually better for their bottom line, and everyone else followed suit, and now we have Kamala. I hope to god the enthusiasm I'm seeing on the internet today sustains us to the finish line, but I am still extremely skeptical this country will collectively pull the lever for an ethnic minority woman, who, frankly, doesn't really speak that much better than Biden does. The media is 100% to blame for this mess, so I hope making a federal case out of Biden's age and stutter was worth it if we lose.
One needs to be ***very*** #online, and I mean that in the most disparaging way possible, to think that tens (hundreds?) of millions of Americans are/were worried about Joe Biden's age and potential feebleness because the NYT told them to.
Yes I'm aware of the dynamics, but that's exactly my point. Because the "media" focuses so relentlessly on only the superficial, it's impossible to engage in any kind of real campaigns. Biden easily could have beat Trump if the party had rallied around him the way they're rallying now around Kamala. The fact that the NYT editorial board was so desperate for this to be a competitive race, and then to completely spin the narrative away from Biden, just shows how completely unserious any of them are.
Noted pinhead Hillary Clinton, dancing as she always does to the jig of the corrupt New York Times, compared persuading Biden to step down to taking the car keys away from an elderly parent. True liberal stalwart Bernie Sanders cut through the spin and the buzz and stood with our President against the media's relentless superficiality.
Alas, most of the Democratic party's elected officials and grey eminences lacked Bernie's seriousness. They were intimidated by the NYT into letting three weeks pass without publicly saying Biden was up to the job, or into publicly saying he wasn't.
There's a small cadre of conservatives (or there was, they are pretty old now) who were very invested in the idea that Richard Nixon shouldn't have resigned, or that Nixon wouldn't have had to resign if he hadn't been thrown under the bus by Barry Goldwater and George Bush and William F. Buckley.
I guess we liberals are going to have an equivalent phenomenon of Biden dead-enders who will insist that Jo would have won if he hadn't been stabbed in the back by pinheaded political amateurs like Nancy Pelosi. Lucky for them, they'll never be proven wrong!
I actually think inflation may not be that strong of an issue for Trump. His preferred policies would spike inflation immediately and disastrously if implemented, as well as launching us into a deep recession as imports and associated economic activity crater.
Otherwise, great points per usual and I’ll be curious to see how the Harris campaign develops.
Your (overly nice) replacement at Left Right and Center ranted about Dems using the Vance/couch joke. I personally feel like stories like these are helpful on moving the needle against Trump/Vance - this is a "vibes" race more than ever before. How do you feel about Dems using the "dark arts"? I feel like "When they go low, we go high" was exactly how we got Trump elected in 2016.
Ana Cabrera reports that Vote.org saw a roughly 700% increase in daily new voter registrations, totaling over 38,500, in the 48 hours after Biden announced his exit from the 2024 race. Young voters (18-34) accounted for 83% of those registrations. Could this finally be the election tipped by young voters? Young people strongly favor Harris over Trump, and given how extreme the GOP has become, it won't necessarily take a tack to the left to keep young voters engaged.
I don't see how Harris overcomes those explicitly equality of outcomes videos and memes (which the opposition will put on endless loop), but I also don't see how Vance overcomes the cat ladies observation (which the opposition will put on an endless loop).
I don't see that video as that hard for Harris to deal with. All she needs to say is, "I was trying to say that equal ability (and effort) should result in equal outcomes" which is what the most natural interpretation of the video always was -- the problem wasn't one of the climbers was stronger than the other but started ahead of the other.
Is that not the core of her video problem? How do you define equal ability and effort without saying that everyone has equal ability and everyone makes equal effort? The choir already believes (and are therefore irrelevant), but how do you make that case to persuadable voters?
I don't think most voters really need a definition. Just say some vague and acceptable platitudes around it and it means the uncontroversial idea that hiring should be based on what you can do not where you came from.
Josh is wildly off-base in this piece. Kamala was a terrible candidate in the Democratic primary in 2020, blowing through scads of money before ignominiously dropping out before a single vote was ever cast. Perhaps best remembered for turning Kamala from a moderate into the Queen of Woke, Kamala's far-left activist sister and "senior advisor" Maya made many errors in that campaign but one of the worst wascreating a familial penumbra around Kamala where no bad news was allowed to penetrate. Maya, with Kamala's blessing, ran roughshod over campaign staff and ultimately bears a lot of the responsibility for running the campaign right into the ground. Expect nothing different this time either because that's how Kamala's built - she relies on the same people, even when they've proven their incompetence in the past again and again. And ultimately, she's a bad candidate - too tightly controlled, phony and off-putting. Nothing has changed in the four years she's been VP to offer even a hint she'll be any different this time than she was four years ago.
Great article and analysis. I have been skeptical about Harris’ chances but now that she seems certain to be the nominee I actually feel excited. I had been hoping before this weekend for an open convention to choose a nominee, but now believe there is no time for that. Democrats best shot is to unite and rally behind Harris starting now. All of the enthusiasm of the last 24 hours has certainly been encouraging. I am so relieved that Democrats finally have someone who can make a credible case against Trump, plus explain to voters the good things the Biden administration has done. I just hope that Harris chooses well in a running mate. My preference would be Mark Kelly. He’s very likable and projects gravitas. And his wife is already well liked in the party and would certainly be an asset on the campaign trail.
C’mon Josh, the ‘brat’ lime green stunt cost absolutely NOTHING.
If it locked in a small cohort of dedicated Karma Kamalians, then it was quite savvy.
I don't think Josh was saying that the move by itself was a problem, but that it could be (but hopefully isn't) a sign that she's going to run the kind of left-wing way-too-online campaign that caused her to crash and burn in the primary in 2020.
Yes, Kamala's campaign was extremely proud of all the social media enthusiasm they generated for themselves in 2019, gravely misunderstanding and overestimating its importance. There's nothing wrong with people being excited about you on social media. But she has a history of chasing clout on Twitter in ways that distract from the mission of actually winning votes.
TBF to Harris in 2019/2020 Biden and other better known names had alot of default support her only play was to generate enough buzz to get a bunch of media coverage.
Great analysis. Love these newsletters and the Serious Trouble podcast, but hope we get more Very Serious podcasts. Miss your conversations about the day-to-day politics.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/kamala-harris-running-mates-democratic-presidential-ticket-rcna162848
Adm. McRaven as VP would be a stroke of genius. Everyone expects a relatively generic Governor or Senator, so a pick like him would be out of left field and would generate more than usual media coverage. Plus, it would help the campaign move to the center and help shed Kamala's image as this radical left-wing politician from her 2020 campaign. And his military leadership experience combined with Kamala's ability to speak clearly (low bar I know) would provide a perception of competence that neither Biden nor Trump were able to instill in voters.
I don't have insight into this pick beyond saying he was a solid chancellor of the University of Texas system, and that the pick would probably upset Greg Abbott.
I'm skeptical. She's running against American First populists. I'd rather see Pete or a ticket-balancing governor.
Great article. I've been surprised by the level of enthusiasm—including my own—surrounding Harris over the past twenty-four hours. I think we all underestimated just how much people have been dying for a fresh, non eighty-year-old face.
I'm voting for anyone and anything that means I don't have to learn what brat or hawk tuat is
I've said this on other platforms, but I suspect this upcoming DNC convention might be the most consequential convention since 1968.
I know there isn't really much a possibility of a brokered convention anymore*, but this is still the most unusual convention we're going to have in a long time. It's going to be what only a month after Biden dropped off the ticket. Plus there is probably going to be at least some intrigue as to whether there will be faithless delegates who will vote for some other candidate.
All in all, I just think the convention has a real possibility of pulling in the highest ratings for a very long time. So talk about an opportunity to get your message out there to a whole lot voters who don't have strong opinions on Kamala Harris yet.
Strong conventions speech + Fed rate cut in September = great opportunity for Harris to win. Dare I say, know hope.
*Let's be real, a huge part of coverage was the hope there would be a brokered convention and the ratings bonanza that would entail. End of the day, we all respond to financial/economic incentives and news orgs are now different. https://www.slowboring.com/p/when-trump-wins-so-does-the-media
It's so depressing that we live in such a shallow political culture, that people like you help foster, that somehow makes Biden's age and the fact that he had a cold one night so much more relevant than the fact that he was running against a child-r*ping, fascist, wanna-be dictator who was also very old and completely insane. Everybody on the internet today who's like, "OH YAS QUEEN KAMALA" blah blah blah while previously stating they couldn't vote for Biden because he's fucking old, despite the threat that Trump faces, just reinforces to me how unserious, immature, and spoiled this country is.
Biden is the best, most progressive, and most effective president this country has had in a century, but he was boring or whatever, so the NYT pinhead pundits threw him under the bus because Trump is actually better for their bottom line, and everyone else followed suit, and now we have Kamala. I hope to god the enthusiasm I'm seeing on the internet today sustains us to the finish line, but I am still extremely skeptical this country will collectively pull the lever for an ethnic minority woman, who, frankly, doesn't really speak that much better than Biden does. The media is 100% to blame for this mess, so I hope making a federal case out of Biden's age and stutter was worth it if we lose.
Sir, this is an Arby's.
Sharty said it better but all those people want to defeat Trump and are afraid Biden couldn’t. It’s really not hard.
One needs to be ***very*** #online, and I mean that in the most disparaging way possible, to think that tens (hundreds?) of millions of Americans are/were worried about Joe Biden's age and potential feebleness because the NYT told them to.
Not because NYT told them to, but because they see it with their own eyes and hear it with their own ears. (Edit: as you were saying. oops).
Yes I'm aware of the dynamics, but that's exactly my point. Because the "media" focuses so relentlessly on only the superficial, it's impossible to engage in any kind of real campaigns. Biden easily could have beat Trump if the party had rallied around him the way they're rallying now around Kamala. The fact that the NYT editorial board was so desperate for this to be a competitive race, and then to completely spin the narrative away from Biden, just shows how completely unserious any of them are.
"Biden easily could have beat Trump if the party had rallied around him the way they're rallying now around Kamala."
Biden couldn't rally the party.
Noted pinhead Hillary Clinton, dancing as she always does to the jig of the corrupt New York Times, compared persuading Biden to step down to taking the car keys away from an elderly parent. True liberal stalwart Bernie Sanders cut through the spin and the buzz and stood with our President against the media's relentless superficiality.
Alas, most of the Democratic party's elected officials and grey eminences lacked Bernie's seriousness. They were intimidated by the NYT into letting three weeks pass without publicly saying Biden was up to the job, or into publicly saying he wasn't.
There's a small cadre of conservatives (or there was, they are pretty old now) who were very invested in the idea that Richard Nixon shouldn't have resigned, or that Nixon wouldn't have had to resign if he hadn't been thrown under the bus by Barry Goldwater and George Bush and William F. Buckley.
I guess we liberals are going to have an equivalent phenomenon of Biden dead-enders who will insist that Jo would have won if he hadn't been stabbed in the back by pinheaded political amateurs like Nancy Pelosi. Lucky for them, they'll never be proven wrong!
I actually think inflation may not be that strong of an issue for Trump. His preferred policies would spike inflation immediately and disastrously if implemented, as well as launching us into a deep recession as imports and associated economic activity crater.
Otherwise, great points per usual and I’ll be curious to see how the Harris campaign develops.
Your (overly nice) replacement at Left Right and Center ranted about Dems using the Vance/couch joke. I personally feel like stories like these are helpful on moving the needle against Trump/Vance - this is a "vibes" race more than ever before. How do you feel about Dems using the "dark arts"? I feel like "When they go low, we go high" was exactly how we got Trump elected in 2016.
Ana Cabrera reports that Vote.org saw a roughly 700% increase in daily new voter registrations, totaling over 38,500, in the 48 hours after Biden announced his exit from the 2024 race. Young voters (18-34) accounted for 83% of those registrations. Could this finally be the election tipped by young voters? Young people strongly favor Harris over Trump, and given how extreme the GOP has become, it won't necessarily take a tack to the left to keep young voters engaged.
I don't see how Harris overcomes those explicitly equality of outcomes videos and memes (which the opposition will put on endless loop), but I also don't see how Vance overcomes the cat ladies observation (which the opposition will put on an endless loop).
I don't see that video as that hard for Harris to deal with. All she needs to say is, "I was trying to say that equal ability (and effort) should result in equal outcomes" which is what the most natural interpretation of the video always was -- the problem wasn't one of the climbers was stronger than the other but started ahead of the other.
Is that not the core of her video problem? How do you define equal ability and effort without saying that everyone has equal ability and everyone makes equal effort? The choir already believes (and are therefore irrelevant), but how do you make that case to persuadable voters?
I don't think most voters really need a definition. Just say some vague and acceptable platitudes around it and it means the uncontroversial idea that hiring should be based on what you can do not where you came from.
Josh is wildly off-base in this piece. Kamala was a terrible candidate in the Democratic primary in 2020, blowing through scads of money before ignominiously dropping out before a single vote was ever cast. Perhaps best remembered for turning Kamala from a moderate into the Queen of Woke, Kamala's far-left activist sister and "senior advisor" Maya made many errors in that campaign but one of the worst wascreating a familial penumbra around Kamala where no bad news was allowed to penetrate. Maya, with Kamala's blessing, ran roughshod over campaign staff and ultimately bears a lot of the responsibility for running the campaign right into the ground. Expect nothing different this time either because that's how Kamala's built - she relies on the same people, even when they've proven their incompetence in the past again and again. And ultimately, she's a bad candidate - too tightly controlled, phony and off-putting. Nothing has changed in the four years she's been VP to offer even a hint she'll be any different this time than she was four years ago.
Biden failed twice before in presidential runs. It is possible for people to learn things.
Except she ran her VP office in the exact same manner in which she ran her campaign.
This time, she is relying on the Biden campaign. She put Biden's 2020 campaign manager in charge of her campaign today.
Wow, reassuring.
She’ll be fine.