Open and Shut

Harris has enough delegates to secure the nomination

July 23: Harris locks up the nomination … Some Dems not endorsing yet … Netanyahu meeting … RFK Jr.’s pitch to Trump …

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Vice President Kamala Harris delivers her first remarks as a 2024 presidential candidate in an address to his her staff at his her campaign headquarters in California Washington Wilmington, DE. (Screengrab / Biden Harris campaign video.)

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) convention-rules committee will meet tomorrow to finalize the rules for nominating a presidential candidate via a virtual roll call.

As of last night, Vice President Kamala Harris had already sewn up the support of enough delegates to win the nomination. Perhaps just as importantly, no one’s turned up any sign of anyone challenging her.

In other words, the DNC is holding an open convention after all, but it won’t matter because Harris has already closed the deal.

The DNC has said it will complete its virtual voting by Aug. 7, 12 days before the start of its convention. As Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) said last night, Harris’s rapid unification of party leaders “doesn’t mean this process isn’t open. Anyone can run.”

So, since it’s only July 23, in theory, there’s still time for yet another political upheaval if, say, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) decides to run. (Too soon?)

The Holdouts

Sanders won’t actually be running, but he also hasn’t endorsed Harris yet. As the Washington Post notes, Sanders also played hard to get with Pres. Joe Biden, holding out his endorsement until after Biden proposed or at least articulated a slate of progressive policies:

• Expanding Social Security

• Expanding Medicare to cover hearing and dental

• Forgiving medical debt

“He’s looking for a similar commitment from Harris,” the Post says, without saying how it knows that.

Conservative Democrats, however, warn Harris about the risks of endorsing wildly popular ideas before Donald Trump — already an occasional defender of Social Security and Medicare — outflanks her on the left.

“Don’t go veer to the far left,” said one unnamed House Democrat who would never in a million years have the sand to tell their constituents they oppose crazy, radical, unpopular ideas like expanding Social Security and easing the oppression of predatory medical costs.

Also holding out, in a different policy space, is Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), a potentially important backer for Harris because what part of -MI don’t people understand? Michigan is a swing state with a ton of Arab American voters displeased about Biden’s almost condition-free, illegal arming of Israel, which has now killed more than 39,000 of Gaza’s roughly 20,000 Hamas fighters.

Tlaib wants to talk to Harris about “ending the genocide.”

While Harris is said to be in lock-step with Biden — a job requirement for any vice president — she was the first administration figure to call for an immediate (albeit not forever) cease-fire. And she’s skipping tomorrow’s congressional address by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Harris has so far said what both sides want to hear: Support for Israel’s right to self-defense…which no one is disputing…and calls to aid Palestinian civilians who have no self-defense. That’s the easy part.

Where we don’t have much insight is on the key, actionable issue of arming Israel…despite laws and U.S. policy preventing the government from doing what it’s doing right now: Supplying weapons that are being used against killing civilians.

Harris and Netanyahu will meet separately at the White House, so expect to learn at least something about Harris’s position — and the possibility of daylight between her and Biden — afterwards. As always, let’s manage expectations, shall we?

On Board

The rest of The Squad is now on record backing Harris, as is Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) helped lock up the nomination by delivering California’s delegates last night. MoveOn and Indivisible quickly moved on from Biden to become indivisible from Harris. Her union support includes the still-big and still-powerful AFL-CIO, United Farm Workers, SEIU, and the American Federation of Teachers.

In addition, the Biden-Harris¹ Harris-Someone campaign said this morning that between her campaign announcement Sunday and last night, she had raised more than $100 million.

That money came from more than 1.1 million individual donors. Sixty-two percent of them were first-time donors, who had never given to the ticket before.

The implication, of course, being that Harris is already bringing in voters who hadn’t backed Biden with their wallets.

On the Fence

Our corporate overlords don’t know what to make of Harris, Politico reports. Increasingly right-leaning tech bros might get an ally in their fellow Californian. Wall Street’s masters of the universe have no fucking clue, with, as Politico notes, both big-pocket donors and watchdogs praising Harris.

Then there’s Big Oil. “Oil and gas executives fear they’re about to have a bigger target on their back,” Politico says. Of course, that wouldn’t be hard, since the “target” Biden put on their back was to help him know where to send federal subsidies, tax breaks, and drilling permits.

BIG OIL Both sides of the killing-our-planet debate expect Harris to take a tougher line against the use of fossil fuels and the growth of the infrastructure to extract it. Not necessarily before the election, mind you.

Back in 2019, however, Harris came out for a fracking ban, which may hurt her among Pennsylvania voters who don’t give a shit about the shit they’re poisoning their groundwater with. And Oil Change International U.S. Program Manager Collin Rees said he expects “some pretty high-profile decisions — if Kamala does win in November — on fossil fuels pretty early.” Early would be better, scientists note, because the human ecosphere is shrinking, and that’s where we keep humans.

During the 2020 race, Harris also promised to ban new drilling on federal lands. Biden made the same promise, but was lying, which advocates for Earth hope Harris is not.

While Biden has done tons on the side of pumping money into green initiatives, he’s been a net negative when it comes to curbing Big Oil, which he has not. Although he did pause (temporarily) new natural-gas projects, he also okayed major projects in Alaska and West Virginia.

WALL STREET As a senator, Harris pushed for a tax on transactions of stocks, bonds, and derivatives. Wall Street manservant Grover Norquist has predicted that “nobody [would] want to bank in New York” and “It would make everybody in Hong Kong and London rich” if such a tax is imposed.

Which is personally hilarious to me, given that I’ve reported on how Wall Street already masquerades trillions of dollars of derivatives trades as overseas transactions, thanks to paper shell companies that only exist in the record books and allow the already rich Wall Street traders to escape regulatory oversight and transparency.

Trump Now Really Old

The Washington Post reports (gift link) that Trump is now not only the oldest presidential candidate, he’s also less transparent about his oldness and bulging decrepitude than the previous oldest presidential candidate was.

Trump has refused to release any bloodwork results that might shed light on his heart issues, obesity, or the light shed by his face.

Heart issues? Obesity? In the model of modern manhood? That’s right. According to info that Trump himself released, meaning it might be disinfo, in 2020 he weighed 244 pounds, making him officially obese. 

In 2018, Trump reported/misreported a coronary calcium score, whatever that is, of 133, almost four times higher than it was in 2009. CNN reported that the score means Trump has heart disease, and not just the metaphorical kind that obstructs his empathy.

Trump has yet to release the results of his supposed, alleged cognitive test, but has graciously agreed to share the compromised nature of his mental state by talking and shitposting without restraint.

Polling Bullshit

Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson writes for the New York Of Course Times with some preliminary thoughts on what previous polls tell us about how the electorate is likely to view the new contest. A whopping one quarter of voters supposedly were what Anderson calls “double haters” who wanted alternatives to the 2020 rerun. Harris gives them that.

But Harris also gives voters the stability they’re craving after the long year of political thunderbolts we’ve experienced this month. And she notes that most voters are utterly unfamiliar with the bizarre caricature of Harris that’s emerged from the memes and shitposts of the extremely online right wing. That disconnect could discredit whatever remaining credit today’s far right still has among voters.

There’s not a lot of polling to give us a false sense of future-knowing about Harris’s potential vice-presidential pick, but Anderson warns that it’s unlikely to move the needle nationally, even if it might mean a crucial points in the running mate’s home state.

Speculative Vice Presidential Bullshit

Much of the corporate media has anointed four Democratic politicians as the front-runners for Harris to pick as her running mate, based on non-existent reporting pulled out of the Beltway’s collective ass.

They are:

• Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY)

• Gov. Roy Cooper (D-NC)

• Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ)

• Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA)

The one hitch with tapping any senator is that Democratic control of the Senate is fragile as can be, and plucking a popular senator away threatens that control. Shapiro is seen as giving Harris a leg up in Pennsylvania, while Beshear and Cooper could help bleach Harris nationally for racism-curious voters who’ll sleep better at night if her running mate is a dude who sometimes says “yall.”

There’s a wild card possibility being floated in the form of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and I’ll probably post something way too long about this alleged floating and about his record that I probably won’t email out because a ton of you are gonna hate me for it and unsubscribe as soon as you see it. So, if you’re open to critiques/warnings about Dems — which you should be as a sophisticated Newsfucker! — keep an eye out for it and I’ll include a link in the newsletter if/when I do post it.

The Emerging Trump Administration

Trump’s not in office yet and already he’s killing jobs. No, I’m not referring to the wholesale economic devastation of his proposed threatened tariffs. This was retail-level, bespoke job-killing.

In this case, it turns out that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., reportedly tried to sell Trump his endorsement in return for a job. Trump, however, prefers to get things for free and nixed the idea of Kennedy’s proposed job.

The job that Trump will not be creating is Kennedy’s proposed position overseeing a portfolio of medical and health issues. Kennedy is an expert in medical issues, according to Kennedy. He is a certified licensed respected doctor of immunology epidemiology law.

Because he is currently not licensed to practice medicine, Kennedy is only legally qualified to serve as Trump’s personal physician. Kennedy’s expertise in pharmacology, for instance, is limited to his childhood drug abuse.

Speaking to the Washington Post yesterday, Kennedy misdiagnosed his own campaign, saying, “We are in it to win [sic] it.”

TCB

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1. I don’t know why I went nuts on the strikethroughts today, but I did. Sorry not sorry.