NATIONAL COUSINS DAY UPDATES
Celebrate With a Margarita, Because It's Also National Tequila Day!
-Is it time to move on from calling the Kamala Harris campaign a "rollout" and instead call it a "phenomenon?" Based solely on the numbers being generated in what is still not yet the first 100 hours of her campaign after President Biden stepped aside, a legit case can be made. Let's review ...
-First, the money. As of this morning the Harris campaign has raised $126 million from nearly 1.4 million small donors via Act Blue. Big-buck donors have also kicked in to the campaign's SuperPAC (it does different things like voter registration, issue ads, 'anonymous' attack ads, etc.) to the tune of $150 million. Added to what was already in the till for what was the Biden/Harris campaign (which is why it's kosher) and the campaign now has a staggering $366 million in cash on hand and growing. (That's damn near Shohei Otani money!)
-But wait - there's more! Add to that the campaign reporting that over 100,000 people have stepped up to volunteer for the campaign (and potentially other downballot Democratic candidates), nearly 2,000 job applications have been fielded, the formidable Divine9 network of Black fraternities and sororities engaged to help the campaign, and Vote.com reporting over 35,000 new voters have registered since Harris' announcement - most under the age of 35 - and, well, who'd'a thunk, right?
-Harris' first formal campaign speech in Milwaukee, WI - freshly cleaned from the MAGAGOP Convention and all who were resting from the off-the-charts use of Grindr last week - also went off smoothly. Engaging and funny with a flair for comic timing (while name-checking Project 2025, she tossed off "Can you believe they put this stuff in writing?!" as a perfectly-delivered zinger), Harris laid out what appears to be her two-tiered strategy to go after Republican nominee Convicted Felon Ex-President Trump (R-apist) and the MAGAGOP party: use Harris' prosecutorial skills to lay bare Trump's corruption with clinical savagery ("So hear me when I say - I know Donald Trump's type"), and clearly frame the election as a battle between one party wanting to take monies and rights away from multiracial America to a forward-looking country full of hope. As a last jab at Trump, she ended the speech by saying "When we FIGHT, we win! Are you ready to FIGHT?!" thereby sticking Trump's post-assassination photo vibe on its head.
-President Biden will speak to the nation tonight for the first time since his decision - a speech likely full of emotion and passion and one guaranteed to keep Harris' buzz going for at least another day and a half, more than likely (at least until the announcement of Harris' Vice President and the Olympics roll-out this week).
-And that leaves that old fat old cognitively-impaired old racist old sexist old egomaniacal old old OLD MAGAGOP pick ... if you can find him. Since Biden's announcement, Trump has ceded the stage to Harris with no campaign appearances, no major interviews, no op-eds, and only a string of desperate social media posts that all continue to address Biden as if Biden was still the candidate.
-While much of that could be the aforementioned degradation of whatever skills he once had, understand just how obsessed Trump has been with Biden. It began in the middle of his reign as President in 2017-18 when Trump attempted to blackmail then-new Ukrainian President Zelenskyy (SLAVA UKRAINI!) by withholding military aid in exchange for "dirt" on Biden, which was the basis of the first impeachment against Trump. Add to that reports which claim Trump was so fixated on Biden that walls inside Trump campaign headquarters have Biden quotes and Trump quotes about Biden painted on them. And when we say "Trump" and not "the Trump campaign," that is because like the GOPMAGA Party, they are one and the same - while there are professionals in the campaign that run the day-to-day grind of a national campaign, there is no campaign manager creating strategy. That, like everything else, is on Trump and his slumped fat bronzed shoulders.
-No number of articles which claim Trump was thinking about a possible pivot from Biden to Harris can cover up what the country is not seeing with the utter vacancy of any kind of response by Trump to the nascent Harris campaign. Not surprisingly, perhaps, other bad news about the campaign also started to come in. To wit ...
-The first national tracking poll post-Harris announcement from Reuters/Ipsos shows Harris with a 44%-42% lead - a lead that goes up two more points when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is also polled (though there are rumblings RFK is trying to broker a deal with Trump to 'drop out' in exchange for a position in a mythic second Trump reign). The campaign was told to end all outdoor campaign rallies in the wake of the assassination attempt - an announcement that will be upsetting because it will mean they will need to pay for venue rentals and security, something they were notorious for not doing prior to July 13. And a massive financial hole erupted when billionaire bag Elon Musk announced he changed his mind and will now not give Trump $45 million a month for Trump's campaign - monies that were allegedly going to go to expanding early voting efforts to reverse Trump's attacks on them for several election cycles.
-And then there's Vice Presidential nominee J.D. "Butthair" Vance (cue sad trombone) ...
-When MAGAGOP considered the race against Biden a foregone conclusion with a MAGA Wave poised to implement Project 2025 by Memorial Day 2025, the belief was that the choice of the pudgy author of the work of fiction misidentified as a memoir HILLBILLY ELEGY would drive MAGA's cherished white male vote through the roof, even if Vance was as charismatic as a pile of wet socks and only got the job thanks to sponsor Peter Thiel and the allegedly screaming exhortations of failsons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric "Eric" Trump (Daddy reportedly really wanted Doug Burgun, the former Governor of one of the Dakotas).
-Then Biden and Harris flipped the board, and when Vance needed to respond at his first full rally at his home town of Middletown, OH, he bombed. No lie - at its worst point, Vance attempted to put a zinger about MAGA's use of the "DEI" label as a substitute for calling Harris the N-word (let's be real here) by 'joking' that "I just had a diet Mountain Dew ... I'm sure they will call that racist!" What followed were the universal symbols of Bad Standup Comic Hell: a nervous self-laugh, a smattering of laughs, the sound of ONE clap in the distance of the crowd, and a desperate grovel to the audience ("I LOVE you guys!").
-The speech was so awful Vance was taken off the trail and taken to Silicon Valley for "training" and commentators in Russia who were previously agog over the Vance pick suddenly turning against the choice - and with polling showing Vance is the most disliked Vice Presidential nominee in modern campaign history and Republicans still so flat-footed about trying to pivot to Harris, there are already rumors that Vance may be replaced on the ticket. That move would be everything from deeply embarrassing to a clear sign of desperation, not to mention alienating to either the tech bros who pushed Vance and their monies (not to mention father-son relations in La Familia Trump) onto the ticket or the MAGA base who truly love the Vance choice for his ultra-hard-core abortion abolition status.
-What is left, as always for MAGA, is dog-whistle racism. The whistle being used most often at the moment is that Harris is a "DEI" candidate, there to fulfill unknown lib quotas for stupid concepts like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The term was highlighted in Congress yesterday when GA Rep. Tim Burchett first called her "One hundred percent ... a DEI hire" and was repeated by fellow MAGAt lowlifes Glenn Grothman (WI) and Harriet Hageman (WY) (not to mention talk show host Ben "What's WAP - Why Are You Crying, Dear Wife?!" Shapiro), leading to House Speaker Mike Johnson try to ask his minions not to use the term, as the term is already being noticed and is yet another drag on MAGA candidates throughout the country.
-Sad, right? Anyway, what did you have for breakfast - I had leftover steak and eggs!
-Amidst all of this, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in the US for a speech before Congress that was rife with controversy and potential wedge issues for Democrats - but today will serve as such a footnote to the political events here that the visit is already being labeled a failure in Israeli political circles. Harris announced months ago that she would not preside over Netanyahu's speech (though she will meet Netanyahu tomorrow), Biden will meet but is now a lame duck with an important speech to be delivered tonight), and while the White House continues to push for a cease-fire between Israel and HAMAS, the new political landscape in the U.S. is not good for the Trump-supporting Netanyahu.
-Let's end with a bit of Sportsball News! Soccer matches have begun, more or less starting the competitions of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris. The formal opening is this Friday, and it will feature something kind of cool if it can be pulled off - national teams marching into Olympic Stadium after sailing to the site on barges on the Seine River. The United States announced the flag bearers for Team USA will be tennis star Coco Gauff and men's basketball immortal LeBron James. The International Olympic Committee also announced the sites for the 2030 Winter Games (The French Alps, though a specific city center was not announced) and the 2034 Winter Games (Salt Lake City, UT).
-Cue the John Williams fanfare and let's get to our day - BUT NOT BEFORE ...
-CORRECTION: In the previous update, there were misspellings in the post about the 1943 events in Warsaw, Poland, in which Nazis began clearing citizens in that city and took them to the Treblinka consecration camp. This is the proper spelling and demarcation of the event.
-On this date in 1847, Brigham Young arrived in what is now Salt Lake City. On this date in 1915, the passenger ship Eastland capsized in the Chicago River, killing over 840 people. On this date in 1959, Richard Nixon and Nikita Khruschev faced off about the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. at an exhibition in Moscow in what became known as "The Kitchen Debate." On this date in 1967, The Beatles met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. On this date in 1969, the Apollo 11 astronauts splashed down, successfully ending its mission. On this date in 1974, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that Nixon had to turn over transcripts of secretly-recorded tapes to Watergate scandal Special Prosecutors.
-Debuts on this date: Marvin the Martian (1948), HIGH NOON (1952), DEATH WISH (1974), the film version of SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND (1978), LA BAMBA (1987), SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998), folklore (2020).
-Happy Birthday to Simon Bolivar, Alexandre Dumas, Frederick Law Olmstead Jr., Amelia Earhart, Chief Dan George, Zelda Fitzgerald, Peter Yates, William Ruckelshaus, Pat Oliphant, Mark Goddard, Ruth Buzzi, Dan Hedaya, Chris Sarandon, Robert Hays, Michael Richards, Lynda Carter, Gus Van Sant, Claire McCaskill, Julie Krone, Karl Malone, Kadeem Harrison, Nick Nurse, Kristin Chenowith, Jennifer Lopez, Rick Fox, Patty Jenkins, Rashida Tlaib, Yulia Navalnaya, Rose Byrne, Anna Paquin, Elisabeth Moss, Patrice Bergeron, Mara Wilson, and Kyle Kuzma.
-Rest in Peace/Rest in Power to Martin Van Buren, Mary Church Terrell, Peter Sellers, Isaac Bashevis Singer, William Brennan, Cotton Fitzsimmons, E. Lynn Harris, Chad Everett, Sherman Hemsley, Regis Philbin, Jackie Mason, and David Warner.
-Feed the Worms: notorious Irish gangster Bill the Butcher and steroid cheater Barry Bonds entered Earth on this date. Serial killer Andrew Cunanan bought it on this date.