In the Olympic week that was Kamala scored a perfect 10 capping it with her Vice Presidential pick, folksy charismatic Governor Walz from Minnesota. Her campaign continued to gain joyous momentum making a stark contrast with the humorless dark vision projected by the MAGA Trump/Vance team. Meanwhile Trump was still smarting from his implosion at the Association of The Black Journalists Convention where he savagely illustrated that he was unprepared for the Harris candidature. He resorted to his lifelong playbook of racism and misogyny. Among other verbal disasters he claimed that he was the greatest president for “Black Jobs” and the hundreds of thousands illegal immigrants were taking “Black Jobs” which entity he simply couldn’t define.
The 45th President was visibly and verbally seething at being questioned by black female journalists. While he directed his bile to the uppity blacks on the stage he attempted to delegitimize his Democratic opponent conspiratorially revealing that Kamala was not black, she was Indian!
America, while hardly being post racial, had evolved since Trump in 2008 became the face of the conspiracy “birther” theory that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Obama took the bait and the whole outlandish saga assumed gigantic proportions with Obama finally producing his full birth certificate. Kamala was not about to let the jaded cognitively impaired geriatric grumpy old white man get under her skin. She dismissed his smear as being the same old same old “divisive and disrespectful” garbage and labelled him and his Vice Presidential pick as “weird”.
But there was so much more in the week that was that saw a dramatic change in fortunes for both the MAGA and the new Democratic nominee for President as well as her Vice Presidency pick. As far as “Black Jobs” were concerned Simone Biles the American Olympic phenom, bedecked with the Stars and Stripes flag, proclaimed that what she was doing was a “Black Job” while Biden’s Vice President Harris made it crystal clear that she was Black and agreed joyfully that The Presidency was too, a “Black Job”.
Kamala’s honeymoon is projected to extend to at least mid August when the battle for The Presidency will continue in ugly earnest.
TRUMP THE NEWEST GERIATRIC
Suddenly Trump became the only geriatric in the race. The seventy- eight year old was on a projection to become the oldest president in history, by far. While 86 percent of those that had been surveyed a few weeks ago thought Biden too old, 60 percent thought likewise of the MAGA contender. More significantly 65 percent of the Independents signified as such. He was experiencing a let down from his Convention where he had been deified, In his hubris he had appointed the political neophyte JD Vance who was meanwhile doubling down on his disdain for childless women.
TRUMP FACES UNPRECEDENTED PUSH BACK ON HIS MISOGYNY AND RACISM.
The Trump interview with The Association of Black Journalists was one for the ages. He inter alia defended his hapless VP pick as simply being a supporter of family. Most disturbing was his racist and misogynistic comments which caused his fellow MAGA acolytes to cringe. The Defender in Chief of the Faith of 2020 election denial, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson had previously sent an urgent memo to House Republicans only to attack Kamala Harris on policy: The memo never reached the MAGA chief.
Down the line there was distancing from the MAGA nominee. Adding to the House chorus was a string of Senators led by no lesser cult enabler than Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina who had a few good words to say about the new Democratic challenger a well as adamantly bellowing that she should only be attacked on her policies. All this falling on deaf ears as Trump pounded off on his social media platform a picture of Kamala in a sari.
TRUMP GOES TO ATLANTA
Trump followed Kamala to the Georgia University Athletic stadium and immediately felt the difference in crowd sizes. The Democratic nominee packed the venue to the rafters with 10,000 outside who couldn’t get in. Trump bewailed the fact that they weren’t allowing hundreds outside presumably to occupy the glaring empty seats. Then he explained that his opposition depended on pop stars to fill the setting. Second only to Taylor Swift, icon Beyonce headlined Vice President Harris’s appearance in Georgia, Trump of course has loss of short term memory as at his Convention a few days earlier he featured Amber Rose, Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock. But never mind.
The Donald was on a riff. He attacked the popular Republican Georgia Governor Kemp and his wife. This was politically calamitous. He had lost that Red Republic State to Biden in 2020 then exacerbated his disconnect with their voters by trying to pressure the popular Kemp and Secretary of State Raffensberg to find him 11,780 votes, “which was one more than he needed”. His unpopularity then extended to two Senate races that followed where the Democrats beat his chosen nominees to take The Senate. The Governor’s wife announced that she was not endorsing or voting for him while her husband told the MAGA Chief to back off attacking his family. Suddenly the Democratic path to victory included Georgia. As a bonus Trump laid into Georgia University whom he claimed were prejudiced against him.
Most ominous was Trump's calling out three election deniers who had been appointed to Georgia's electoral boards. There is more and more evidence that Plan B for the accused in the attempt to overturn the 2020 election is more of the same. If an election board does not ratify the election then predictable chaos will follow. Apparently similar activity is being reported in other swing states.
Off course Kamala’s name was deliberately mispronounced and the back up speakers made it a thing to claim she was not black. But as Trump had confessed earlier they had difficulty defining his opponent so apparently for the meantime they were sticking with the Jim Crow stuff.
TRUMP BECOMING A RISK FOR DOWN BALLOT
Besides the uncoupling of the legislators from the racist and the misogyny stuff Trump’s cardinal agenda item, a sweeping Tariff on all foreign goods, was getting grief from the MAGA nominees for Congress. So they simply just dissociated themselves from that pillar of stupidity. Then his congratulating of Putin for the Biden/Harris complicated prisoner swop made the hawks in the party wince. That together with his backing of the Russians in the war of Ukraine is not endearing him to those who supported the long time commitment of America to be Reagan's“ shining light on the hill”. Added to the racist attacks was a gratuitous slur to Jews who would be “fools” to vote for the Democrats.
.FULL COURT PRESS ON TRUMP
With the campaign in a new mode the opposition against another dark Trump Presidency juiced up. In the forefront was the cohort of former Republicans whose opposition to the orange combatant has been the most vitriolic. Either independently or in well defined organizations they produce up to the minute reporting and comment on the race. Their excitement is palpable. The proponents include former campaign managers and policy makers. All are ad idem with over 95 percent of the 45th President's cabinet and WhiteHouse inner circle that Trump must be stopped. Steve Schmidt, Charlie Sykes, Bill Kristol, Tim Miller, Sarah Longwell to name a few are all celebrated former Republican operatives manning platforms such as The Bulwark and The Lincoln Project. Then there is the “Republicans for Harris” which replaced Harris for Biden jacking up involvement with the change.
Most interesting is the newly formed organization, “AntiPsycho.org", which was founded by the famed conservative lawyer George Conway. The latter better known for his acerbic commentary on Trump’s illegality donated 343,434. 43 dollars as seed money for the project. The numbers repeat the number of felonies Trump has been convicted off, (34). Conway lays out in detail the diagnostic criteria for sociopathic and malignant narcissistic personality types which he proves Trump has in abundance. The media refuse to go there but Conway asserts that having an impulsive, self loving, conscience free, vengeful, ignorant, criminal, misogynystic racist untethered man with his finger on the nuclear button, this time without any restraining influences, represents an existential threat to America and the world.
But back to his Democratic opponents.
KAHMALA’S EXTENDED HONEYMOON.
To Trump’s chagrin “Laughin crazy liberal, KahMAla” is hogging the limelight. The polls have seriously tightened, the majority showing a statistical dead heat and even a few with the Democrat ahead. She netted a record 321 million dollars in just two weeks from small donors and enticed literally hundreds of thousands volunteers. The Democratic ground game is way ahead of the MAGA crowd. Trump cleaned out of all personnel on assuming control of the former Republican National Committee. He seems chronically short of money - must all be going to his lawyers. The Democratic ticket is set to spend far more in the seven swing states than MAGA.
The Vice Presidential pick demonstrated the depth of the Democratic bench. She obviously played it safe and stuck to Hillary Clinton's playbook, "Do no harm". She has to feel very confident to have ignored Shapiro who would have buttoned up the crucial state of Pennsylvania with its 20 electoral votes or Kelly who would have done likewise in Arizona,
The selection of a Vice President garnered all the oxygen in the room and is to be followed by the dual appearances in the seven battlegrounds that will hopefully herald the new administration in Washington. The tussle between the various factions as to which “white male dude” was to be selected will settle soon - the stakes are too high. The extended honeymoon will continue as the team go straight into the Convention. There will be at least three Democratic Presidents on the stage. Jay H. Ell believes that “Mamala’s” non biological children and their significant others are unlikely to occupy PrimeTime like they did in Milwaukee. The event will be a celebration unlike the dark boring ear covered funereal like doomsday MAGA affair.
The new ticket has opened the field. Biden had concentrated on a narrow victory in the three Rust Belt states. The path to victory has widened to include, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Arizona with Trump making life harder for MAGA everywhere.
So it will be mid August before Kamala's extended honeymoon ends and the media hungry Trump can even begin to emerge. Then the fight will begin in earnest for the soul of America and the world.
AT THE END OF THE DAY
Trump has moved on. He grudgingly accepts that The Presidency can be a “Black Job”. His moan is that Harris isn’t black.
America has evolved in that they are celebrating a woman of color as a Presidential candidate. Hopefully they will go the whole way and elect her. Go even further and close out the Civil War for the next generation at least.
No comments:
Post a Comment