Democrat News

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Gov. Tim Walz showed us why he’s a serious contender to be Harris’ vice-presidential pick. On MSNBC Wednesday night, he swatted down Donald Trump and his fake populist running mate, J.D. Vance.

As you probably know by now, Vance has smeared Democrats in general and Vice President Kamala Harris, in particular, as “childless cat ladies.” It’s not working out too well for him.

There to pile on was Walz. “I’ll tell you what, go ahead and continue to denigrate people,” Walz said. “My God, they went after cat people. Good luck with that!”

“It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad,” Walz continued.

Then he got to a more serious point about Trump and Vance: “They see the least fortunate among us as scape goats and punch lines for them. Kamala Harris and Democrats see them as our neighbors.” That’s not just a big difference in character but a big difference “attacking real problems.”

“They don’t want to tackle things that are tough,” Walz added. He contrasted that with President Biden who is optimistic about taking on big problems.

“So good luck with them to bet against Vice President and soon-to-be President Harris because the American people are tired of that, it’s ridiculous.”

Walz ended by taking the kind of swing at Donald Trump that hit right at his showbiz heart: “That show has run out. If you were a TV show, it’d be canceled.”

“So, let’s just do it in November,” he concluded.

And a reminder…

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Not really sure what to say here, but….Thank you MAGA! Thank you Republican Party! Thank you Donald Trump! Thank you Donald Trump Jr.! Thank you Elon Musk! Thank you crazy, old cult-loving, under-educated, 4,000 sq ft basket of deplorables! And thank YOU JD Vance!

Thank you all for deciding to pick this numbnuts, John DeSantis Vance as your vice presidential candidate. And thank you, JD Vance, for wanting to do it, and being the most unlikable d*k this side of Ted Cruz. A virtual event horizon for charisma. You guys are doin great!!

PS If you enjoyed this video of my Cincinnati neighbor and certified woman hater and couch humper, JD Vance, Subscribe to Cliff’s Edge, where we’ll be making videos like this on him and his head-injury IQ’d GOP brethren!

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For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year’s subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

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“Polymarket has a political futures contract on whether Sen. J.D. Vance will remain as Donald Trump’s running mate.” noted Political Wire this morning. I think the odds of that happening are 0%, but some people don’t and are willing to put up real money that it will happen, despite the implications of such a decision.

We shall see.

Source: Business Insider

Sen. JD Vance of Ohio has had a rough week and a half since he was announced as former President Donald Trump’s vice-presidential candidate. While Trump insists he’s sticking with Vance, the senator’s poor polling combined with Vice President Kamala Harris’ momentum has led some to ask: Could Trump replace Vance? And if so, how would it work? For those wondering, the answers lie in recent history and the fine print of Republican Party rules.

It’s still technically possible that Trump could choose a new No. 2. But such a decision would have to happen very soon.

The Democratic and Republican National Committees have separate rules governing how they fill vacancies of presidential or vice-presidential nominees. Under Rule 9, the Republican National Committee explains how it fills a vice-presidential vacancy “which may occur as the result of death, declination, or otherwise.”

The rule allows the party to reconvene its national convention if it chooses or to move ahead with a vote of the smaller group of Republican National Committee members who would determine Vance’s replacement.

So, while technically possible, it would be “extraordinarily disruptive,” if not suicidal.

Crucially, the rule explicitly applies to a scenario in which Vance voluntarily steps aside, says Kenneth Mayer, a recently retired political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He told BI there was no precedent for forcibly ripping the nomination away from a vice-presidential candidate after the convention.

Mayer also said impending state deadlines posed a significant issue, and the complications would only snowball once ballots were printed. It would be, he said, “extraordinarily disruptive” both logistically and politically to replace Vance as the vice-presidential nominee.

One only needs to look at the Thomas Eagleton example in 1972 where Democrat George McGovern replaced him after only 18 days. McGovern went on to lose the election in a historic landslide and the electoral vote, 520-17.

Whatever happens, JD Vance is already making history, just not in a good way.

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Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg blasted frightened Trump and his campaign for pulling out of the agreed-upon debate in September because he’s afraid of Vice President Harris.

During an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Buttigieg explained the obvious.

Trump is all talk and bluster, filled with hot air and lies. (Let’s see if CNN puts Buttigieg on as much as they do the inconsequential Nancy Mace)

Q: Donald Trump and his campaign have suggested that he may not follow through with the debate in September that had been scheduled to be with President Biden. Now, of course, would be the vice president, assuming she does wrap up the nomination, as expected. What do you make of that?

PETE BUTTIGIEG: It’s extraordinary. Tough talk is this guy’s calling card, and there’s this extraordinary show of weakness.

He agreed to, you know, he said any time, any place, but more than that, he agreed to this specific debate on this specific network on this specific date.

And now he’s pulling out. And of course, it shows that he’s afraid.

It shows that he knows if the two of them are on a stage together, it’s not going to end well for him.

So, you know, this is a campaign that really has struggled to be about anything but Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And I think that’s the bigger pattern that you’re seeing here and part of why the Trump campaign is having such a hard time adapting.

Think about it.

Just in a matter of two or three days, our campaign adapted to literally the biggest possible change, which is a change in the top of the ticket.

And yet, you know, within a couple of days, that support consolidated and that message was clear.

They, meanwhile, have been flailing in a way that shows they’re unable to adapt.

Buttigieg thoughtfully puts his thoughts on air and simply for any average viewer to understand. Trump is running scared, and trying to run to Fox News to possibly carry a debate with Harris is weakness personified.

Earlier this week, I was interviewed along with Heather “Digby” Parton on The BradCast explained that even though I thought Buttigieg wouldn’t be the VP nominee, he would be a perfect complement to the Vice President and could appear on Fox News or any right-wing media outlet and destroy their talking points

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Trump’s former economic advisor claimed that the only entity that matters to the US economy is business.

Larry Kudlow considered the rise of Kamala Harris’s campaign, which has MAGA in panic mode.

Of course, because he’s Larry Kudlow, he took Kamala on as an enemy of the extremely wealthy. Larry also took the opportunity to bash the working class and unions, including a swipe at the teachers union as the ‘most regressive anti-kids, anti-education force in the country.’

What a charmer.

LARRY KUDLOW: I saw some of this speech. I didn’t see all of it.

But there she is, hammering away, we got to raise taxes on wealthy people and successful individuals and businesses.

By the way, businesses create jobs, unions don’t create jobs, businesses create jobs of all kinds.

Donald Trump’s going to do very well in the union vote.

As Kellyanne said, she had a chance to come out for a school choice.

She rejected that in favor of coming out for the teachers unions.

The teacher’s unions are among the most regressive, difficult, anti-kids, anti-education forces in this country in their far-left views of all this.

So I agree she’s getting a bump now.

Yes, she’s getting a media bump.

She’s getting a liberal media bump.

But she’s coming out four square on the far left.

That’s just make that as plain as can be.

And there’s a lot more where that came from.

And it isn’t going to be good.

Big business couldn’t function without a workforce, Mr. MAGA dummy.

By the way, people create jobs. People create small businesses, then bigger businesses, until they reach the corporate level, and so on. Unions help people get their fair share from greedy fucks like Kudlow and to live lives and maybe start families. They create an ecosystem and a synergy that supports the whole of the business and the workers.

Public schools and teachers are the bedrock of education without having greed and shareholders fuck over children.

The country received no benefits from Trump’s horrific tax cuts except for people like Kudlow.

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I wasn’t sure if we’d actually see a politician referencing JD Vance’s now infamous tryst with a sofa or not, but here we are. Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut was fired up when talking about the candidacy of Kamala Harris, all that positive energy with the Democrats, and then contrast that with the other side.

REP. JIM HIMES: “Open your social media, you can’t escape you know what young people are seeing in Kamala Harris, you can’t escape comments about couches and sofas with the vice president [JD Vance]. And I just highlight that to say young people for the first time, you know, in many, many months are actually engaged and excited about this election.”

Kaitlin Collins’ raised eyebrow said it all.

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I’ve written many times about the great work FTC Commission Chair Lina Khan is doing in the anti-trust and anti-monopoly area. So you can imagine my shock when I read this in Matt Stoller’s BIG newsletter this morning.

While the big push was happening to dump Biden, I said at the time I thought this was really about his policies — specifically, the new trade, antitrust, and labor policies put in place over the last five years or so. When Kamala Harris took over the Democratic nomination from Joe Biden, it was inevitable the pressure to go back to business as usual would pick up. (Billionaire Reid Hoffman says he’d like Harris to replace Khan in the above clip. Oh, and by the way, here’s a little something for your campaign!)

Now there’s a Silicon Valley fundraising tour for Harris being planned by none other than… Reid Hoffman. Ok, so it’s pretty stunning for an oligarch like Hoffman, with a net worth of a couple billion dollars, to publicly make such a demand. So why is he doing it? One reason is that there’s a lot of money involved. As the Lever reported, Hoffman is on the board of Microsoft, which is right now being sued and investigated by the FTC. It’s a pretty good gig, if you get to fire the law enforcer investigating your misdeeds.

[…] Still, there’s another reason. Hoffman is a sophisticated operator who wants to be a kingmaker in politics. The money is real enough, but he’s likely leaking the fundraising tour as a means of forcing Harris to be seen to do his bidding. Hoffman wants Harris to get rid of Biden policies which protect workers through trade and antitrust so that big business can do what they want. And he’s going to supply the financing for Harris’ campaign if she does what she’s told.

It seems like the Harris campaign might be listening, despite Harris a few days ago hitting Trump over very similar arguments about taking money from oil titans and doing favors in return. Yesterday, the New York Times wrote a campaign story on the candidate’s links to big business. Here’s the key passage:

As vice president, Ms. Harris has voiced support for regulating artificial intelligence. But she has expressed skepticism of Ms. Khan’s expansive view of antitrust powers, according to a donor who has spoken privately with the vice president.

(Oh, Madame Vice President. This is a shock. In case you don’t know this, working people really, really liked Joe Biden’s pro-worker policies.)

As Stoller points out, an anonymous secondhand conversation with a donor isn’t proof of Harris’ policy instincts. He says it’s possible that the Harris campaign set up these reporters with sources, and is trying to imply that she’s open to the demands of executives so that she can collect more campaign money from billionaires and dealmakers.

Stoller writes:

In other words, democracy really is on the ballot, but not in the way people imagine. An oligarch has explicitly and openly taken over policy because it conflicts with his small faction’s control of American society. And so far, most political leaders are silent.

The only upside here is that Hoffman is being very public, aggressive, and explicit about his demands. And he’s going to corner Harris until she kisses the ring, or refuses to do so. From his perspective, he’s not donating $10 million, he’s making a purchase. Or so he thinks. Now it’s up to Harris to make the choice. Does she have Silicon Valley donors, or Silicon Valley owners?

It’s a small world. If Harris agrees to get rid of Khan, it will leak. Stay tuned.

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Barack and Michelle Obama endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid in a video released Friday. Via CNN:

“Michelle and I couldn’t be prouder to endorse you and to do everything we can to get you through this election and into the Oval Office,” the former president told Harris on a phone call joined by his wife, according to the video.

Harris thanked the Obamas for their support and expressed gratitude for their decadeslong friendship.

“Oh my goodness. Michelle, Barack, this means so much to me. I’m looking forward to doing this with the two of you, Doug and I both. And getting out there, being on the road,” the vice president said.

“But most of all, I just want to tell you the words you have spoken and the friendship that you have given over all these years mean more than I can express, so thank you both. It means so much. And we’re gonna have some fun with this too, aren’t we?” she added.

Trivia: Although she did not join a sorority at Yale, Michelle Obama has since accepted an honorary membership in Alpha Kappa Alpha, the same historically Black sorority joined by Kamala Harris.

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So sick of this dance. Why on earth would you invite chaos into public funding, especially in an election year? It’s not as if Republicans have much else going for them, you’d think they’d want to look competent. But the Freedom Caucus doesn’t give a damn about the public, that’s why. Via Salon:

House Republicans, stumbling over demands from the right-wing Freedom Caucus, have failed to get even half of the 12 must-pass spending bills across the finish line, while the spending legislation that has passed is full of extreme provisions that Democrats in the Senate are certain to reject out of hand. Instead of working overtime, however, GOP leaders are canceling the remaining votes and sending House members away on summer recess — a week early — as the September deadline to avoid a government shutdown edges closer.

Initially, it looked as if House Republicans might succeed — GOP appropriators managed to get all 12 bills onto the House floor and strip an abortion pill ban amendment from an Agriculture bill that doomed its passage last year.

But the string of good fortune could not last, as Johnson now faces the same intra-party fighting that toppled his predecessor, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Far-right Republicans have vowed to vote against bills they argue do not sufficiently advance conservative priorities, forcing Johnson to pull several of them from the floor, including a bill to fund the legislative branch; the Energy and Water bill was also yanked away Tuesday, mere moments before a scheduled vote. Others, like an Interior Department and Environmental Protection Agency bill that would strip the latter’s funding by 20 percent, passed by the narrowest of margins due to largely united Democratic opposition and GOP defections.