77 thoughts on “Democrats in Array as Harris Consolidates Support”

  1. Just to be clear: Our friends on the right have repeatedly asserted that the only reason to vote for Biden (in 2020 or 2024) was that he isn’t Trump. Not true. That was always a sufficient reason, but never the only one.Report

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        1. I always want some reporters to go to diners in the rust belt, promising to talk to blue collar voters in real America about Trump, and talk to the Hispanic guy washing dishes in the back whose parents illegally crossed the border in ’97 and Trump is threatening to deport.Report

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            1. No, the point of the article would actually be more a parody of those sort of articles. Well, not a parody exactly, do it entirely straight, but it’s a parody of the premise of those articles, pointing out how weird and pretentious they are.

              I don’t know, at this point it’s possible we have ridiculed these articles so much that they aren’t actually being written anymore.Report

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              1. “Nobody is giving reasons for voting for Trump!”
                “Here’s an article where people explain why they voted for Trump.”
                “That article is stupid.”
                “Okay.”
                “Anyway, nobody is giving reasons for voting for Trump!”Report

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              6. That’s why I made the comment.
                There are plenty of self-described conservatives here, plenty of Anti-Biden people, and well, I really don’t know if there are any Anti-Harris people because nobody has so far made such a comment.

                But even after 8 years, no one at OT is willing to say “I support Trump!”

                Which is what people have been saying for a long time, that Trump has a hard floor and hard ceiling. His base of support hasn’t grown or shrunk appreciably in 8 years of being in the news every single day.

                What this seems like to me is that he can only be the fallback choice of “double haters”, or reap a sudden gust of dissatisfaction among low info voters with gas prices or whatever, or maybe get the benefit of an enthusiasm gap.Report

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              7. If you want me to brainstorm up some reasons to vote for Trump instead of Harris, I can probably come up with some without too much effort.

                But then that’s going to turn into “Why do you support Trump?” instead of arguing over the reasons themselves and… I haven’t the strength today.

                But here’s, oh, three that I can come up with on the fly:

                1. “Harris would be worse for business and Trump will be better for the economy.”
                2. “Undocumented Visiting got out of control under Biden.”
                3. “The DEI/CRT on campus thing was really, really, really irritating. I support Trump for the same reason I supported Gibson’s Grocery instead of Oberlin.”

                There. That’s off the top of my head.Report

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              8. You’re pretty much proving my point.

                Trump is so embarrassing a candidate that you don’t want to be seen as supporting him, so the best you can do is the old sockpuppet thing of “Oh, If I WERE a Trumpist which of course I’m not so don’t get me wrong, but if I WERE….” where you distance yourself from this imaginarygirlfriend in Canada Trump supporter.

                Who doesn’t exist here at OT!

                No one here at OT is willing to say these things in their own words and defend them.

                This seems really important to me.

                Chris made a good comment here the other day about the difference between this new form of fascism and the old 1930’s variety.

                In the 1930s Fascism was a powerful new idea that electrified even the educated classes. People all across Europe were proud to be associated with it and offer all sorts of erudite defenses of it.

                Today, no one who wants to be taken seriously is willing to support Trump or Vance or Project 2025.

                And this hasn’t changed in 8 years; The ceiling is hard as steel and doesn’t show any signs of softening. The ideas of Peter Theil of Bronze Age Pervert or John Eastman or the Claremont Institute are still toxic, the sort of stuff that you need to be in a tightly wrapped bubble to say out loud.

                Trump knows this, and you know this, which is why the best you and he can come up with is your list above.Report

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              9. Eh, you’re not seeing what happened, I don’t think.

                It’s more that your success at chasing off people who might vote for Trump is so absolute, you’re stuck with people who’d crawl over broken glass to vote for Biden even if he were proven senile and people who vote 3rd party.

                You don’t want to argue against reasons that people might vote for Trump, you want to drum out the folks who have them.

                But they’re all gone, Chip.

                It’s just us.Report

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              10. Chip Daniels chased off all the OT Trumpists??

                Where are they, the educated and intelligent Trumpists who can articulate a defense of Project 2025 that doesn’t make educated people giggle?

                People like Glenn Youngkin, Ron DeSantis, and now J.D. Vance were all heralded as the Respectable Face Of Trumpism.

                And yet….now, Kamala Harris can make attack ads by merely showing a video of Vance , in his own words, talking about how brave he is for drinking Mountain Dew.
                The proudest graduates of the Federalist Society, the six SCOTUS justices, are now issuing ruling that make even laypeople do a face palm.

                The Claremont Institute,, the Heritage Institute, and the Federalist Society have all been consumed with Trunpism.

                Does anyone here really want to point to any of them and say they are the Respectable Face Of Trumpism?

                And you know this. This is why you had to summon up your sockpuppet arguments about immigration and DEI, because you can’t point to Project 2025 or some white paper from Heritage and say “Yeah, there is a really good argument for Trumpism and I would co-sign my name to it!”Report

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              13. says the guy who does nothing but complain about other people’s comments…

                And look, I get it, Jaybird embarrassed you badly, so you’ve gone back to bullying someone who doesn’t bully back, but that’s because I don’t consider you worth reading or replying to. But having replied to Chip today, I may as well comment to you as well.Report

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              16. “No one here at OT is willing to say these things in their own words and defend them.”

                …wait, so you think that me and Jaybird and Pinky and…I dunno, who’s left? You think we’re all actually going to vote for Trump and we’re lying when we say that we aren’t?Report

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              17. No, I’m saying that no one here is willing to defend Trump, even though you all are self-described conservatives.

                And I believe you, which is why I am saying that Trumpism, i.e., neo-fascism is not an ascendent ideology.

                Even when it commands 70 million adherents, it isn’t growing in influence and respectability, and doesn’t appear to have any possibility to do so.

                As Jaybird has pointed out, it has “bad aesthetics”; It is unpopular with all the cool kids, and its attempts at earning respectability within the intellectual world have been total failures.Report

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              21. Just a day or two before he stepped aside, polling indicated he had not lost any ground to Trump. As did all the polling between the debate and that day. He has a stellar record to run on, and if anything his campaign was being too nice to the legacy media that were hammering him on things that weren’t exactly state secrets. I saw no reason for him to step down.

                Because part of TFG’s secret sauce for success is he “appears” to be a fighter. He “appears” to not care what anyone thinks or says, and he’s bullheaded and full of misogynistic bravado. Democrats, including Biden, always want to appear polite and play by the rules – When they go low we go high and such.

                Harris now leading the ticket will have both misogynistic and racist headwinds to buck, and while the initial polling looks promising, she has a very short time to completely reframe the election. She may be up to it but I have huge doubts the Democratic Party is up to it – especially with a semi-hostile 4th Estate.

                So no, I am unconvinced this was a good thing.Report

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              25. NO. I’m dead serious.

                I hope she wins. But I have too many family members, close friends and colleagues who will be harmed by a TFG win to lower my guard. For a questionable decision forced by biased media attention.Report

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              26. Well, I come at it from the position that Biden was behind, was obviously behind, and that the dems internal polls were showing that Biden was seriously *WAAAAAY* behind.

                The Newsweek poll that many people seem to think was proof of Biden’s strength was based on silliness from a Silverless 538.

                Like, if Biden stayed on, I’m confident that Trump would have won and won *HARD*.

                As such, I see stuff like the Democrats failing to defend Biden (or worse, rugpulling to ensure that Biden stepped down) as a smart move that made a win in November possible.

                Now I’m not saying that I think that Harris will win… I don’t know. I think that there are plenty of other candidates who would have a better shot (I’ve mentioned Pritzker before).

                But moving from Biden to Harris allows for possibilities that were just impossible with Biden.

                Even if Harris’s odds are slim, that’s hella better than none.Report

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              27. Polling across organization on Biden post-debate showed him within the margin of error against Trump in every swing state – and even ahead in Georgia (but still in the margin of error). Dumping him was unnecessary drama created by the media to keep engagement up.Report

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              28. Unnecessary drama always happens in political races, and this unnecessary drama has been almost entirely positive toward Harris.

                All you have to do is look at the donations to see what actually happened with Democratic support.

                And she has very quickly started paying attention to the actual things she needs to pay attention to, the Republican plans for the country.

                And the question wasn’t what Biden was currently polling at, the question is could he even keep up the campaign at the level he needed to keep it up. If he kept having public performances like he had.

                I also am extremely worried about this election, and that people I know will be seriously hurt by a second Trump term, and that’s why I’m very glad Biden stepped aside.Report

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              29. You are using the Stalinist/Russian propaganda definition of ‘fascism.’ It’s actually a moderate version of Leftism. It has nothing to do with American conservatism, the exact opposite, in fact.Report

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              30. Sure… if there’s an argument to be had, I think it has to do with what Harris’ role as a candidate will be.

                Is it to electrify the leftiest part of the base and win by overwhelming Trump’s low ceiling?
                -or-
                Is it to keep the left on board but in a box while winning the middle and giving Trump skeptics a reason to stay home?

                There are three types of voters…

                Given the reality of the electoral college profile, I’d argue #2 is a no-brainer… but #1 sure is more fun. Ironically, Biden was supposed to be #2 but he never really managed the left wing of the party. Will Harris do better?

                Interestingly, MattY compared/contrasted Dem/Repub attempts at ‘moderation’ in a way that I think is positively horrifying when you unpack the logic (that I don’t think he realizes he put out there).
                —
                9. To win, Harris needs to find ways to moderate her image, and critically, she is going to have to be allowed to do that by her supporters.
                10. Donald Trump is in many ways a bad politicians and a bad candidate. His numbers are terrible, his manner is off-putting, and his record is plagued with scandal. But his “be allowed to do that” score is off the charts. If it’s convenient for him to start saying nicer things about electric cars in exchange for Elon Musk’s money, he does that. If it’s convenient for him to pretend the Republican Party isn’t deeply committed to banning abortion, he does that.
                11. Every progressive I know recognizes that these Trumpian stabs at moderation are good for Trump, and that it’s good for the left to try to expose them as lies. The progressives who recognize that need to see the symmetry here.Report

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              31. I hear what you’re saying on MY but he also regularly says that an underrated part of politics is the participants actually in good faith believing what they say they believe or something pretty close to it at least. My take away from those points was less a call for the left side of the Democratic coalition to be as cynical and shameless as Trump and more an admonition. ‘If you believe Trump is as bad as you say he is you will understand that you need to withhold the kinds of litmus tests on Harris that could cripple her candidacy.’

                At a certain point how Harris handles this is going to depend on how talented a politician she is or can grow to be over the next few months.Report

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              32. One hopes.

                I think he’s walking a pretty thin line to simply lying in any direction he needs to rally support for his preferred preferences… when you keep score about all the times he advocates lying to one group or another.Report

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              33. I enjoy MY in a lot of ways and of the substacks I pay for I find his to be the best bang for the buck. But I think there’s a fair criticism of him along the lines of the one you’re making. I can never decide if I think it’s a flaw in writing style or if he’s tipping his hand to show a more disingenuous side to his thinking.

                While on this topic, I came across the below that I believe tackles the subject in a more forthright way.

                https://claireberlinski.substack.com/p/some-advice-for-the-democrats

                Now, the author is coming from a belief that Trump if is re elected he will be able to push the US into an Erdogan style flawed democracy, or maybe even a Putin style sham democracy. I am not entirely convinced of that, and I think some of the recommendations she makes would fall more than a little flat (LOL as if Americans will ever care about foreign policy). However I think it is worth reading in an ‘if you believe x then y follows’ sort of way. The parts urging the Kamala Kampaign to avoid getting bogged down in group think are pretty cogent in terms of the larger point being made about how she can win.Report

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              34. Thanks for the link, that was a… rollicking read.

                It’s still not clear to me that she’s much different; there’s a fundamental shift from making sub-optimal deals that you honor… and keep iterating until you can make a better deal for your team… vs. lying/pretending to make a deal so you can govern according to your will to power, er, preferred outcomes.

                Not that that’s what you’re advocating, but I really do think people misunderstand the line crossing from hard-nosed pragmatism to friend/enemy politics with backstabbing defections being the norm.

                Plus, you should never ever, ever triangulate to get John Bolton on your team. 🙂Report

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              35. I read her piece and it just sounds a classic of the Pundit Fallacy where they project their personal opinions as objective truth, like someone died and appointed her as the Voice Of Real Americans.Report

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              36. I’m not sure there’s any meaningful distinction between what you like to call Pundit Brain and Consultant Brain, or Administration Brain, or Election Manager Brain.

                If you hire the Pundit to be an Election Consultant, the displaced Election Consultant becomes a Pundit.Report

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              37. Glad you were entertained by it. I found parts refreshingly honest and others wildy obtuse. Sometimes it was both in the same paragraph.

                I think the line crossing thing is the result of all the contradictions in the broader left coalition. I read authors that speak in the terms in question as mostly operating in good faith, but I’m also a supporter of that coalition for what increasingly feel like small-c conservative reasons. I have no choice but to be charitable.Report

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              38. I believe that the people who would vote for Trump have all been run off, Chip.

                Leaving only the 3rd Party Voters and the people who would crawl over broken glass to vote for Joe Biden even if he has been demonstrated to be senile.Report

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              40. I didn’t say asking people why they voted for Trump as stupid, I said presenting ‘random Americans in rural town dinners as some sort of standard American that explains Trump’ was stupid.

                And it ignores an actual important thing: The defection of blue collar Americans from Democrats to Trump has almost entirely been a white phenomenon, so, you know, it might be relevant to discuss that fact. At minimum, maybe have a counterpoint interview of non-white blue collar people who have _not_ decided to vote for Trump and ask them why they were _not_ swayed. (Hence my point about asking the Hispanic dishwasher.)

                In fact, there’s a hell of a lot of focus on an _extremely specific_ category of people who have changed their voting pattern, with caveats that they are white, no college degree, not students, not retired, and are currently employed.

                It seems like if you’re going to pay attention to that shifting voting patterns, you might want to actually check across some of those boundaries and try to discern _the difference_ between the group with the changed voting patterns, and the groups that aren’t changing.

                You know, if you want to pin down what is ‘really happening’.

                And, to finish out my thought, the reason that’s not happening is that comparison almost certainly will identify what has caused that shift is increasing racial animus, but that’s something that doesn’t that doesn’t have to be addressed if you just interview a bunch of white people and take what they say about how they have ‘economic uncertainty’ at face value. That’s not reporting, that’s stenography.Report

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              43. NoHe’s not making very _much_ gains, they just look huge because if you describe them as the amount of black voters voting for Trump, because so few were doing that before. You could, if you wanted to, phrase it as Biden losing 5% of his Black voters, which sounds a lot less impressive.

                But you realize that that kind of proves my point? The media is hyper focused on one very specific group of voters that have moved Republican, and there has been other movement: College-age black voters

                The media should indeed interview some black voters who switched to Trump and ask why, of course that’s not going to really work with them sitting in barbershops or whatever because 9 out of 10 black voters are still voting Democratic, so… Somewhat harder to find.

                Likewise, interviews of suburban women who do normally vote Republican but have switched to Democratic thanks to Trump. That would have been a very interesting counterpoint, and they probably could have interviewed in the exact same rural diners. And somewhat undermined the stated reason for white men to switch.

                But they had a Narrative, and that Narrative was economic concern, and they had to make sure that that was the narrative that got out.Report

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            2. I would love to see that article. If Trump voters were able to articulate a reason to vote for him without using the word “they”, I might vote for him myself.Report

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      2. Because a president who is a felon, rapist, authoritarian, grifter and too old for the job (among other things) is okay, as long as it might benefit them in some fashion.Report

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  2. I’m not actually sure who the term ‘the Democratic Party’ is supposed to refer to in this post? I don’t think the party really decided anything.

    In every election, there are two sets of candidates:

    There are the ones who don’t think they have a serious chance of winning that specific election, but are running to get their name out there, to build support, to be in debates, and to end up with delegates that might be able to influence the actual outcome.

    None of that stuff is happening this year, so obviously none of them have stepped forwards.

    The only people who might consider stepping forwards are the people who seriously think they might win this time, and I’m not sure there are any of those people. Running against a VP that has gotten the support of the president is already difficult enough, and then a huge chunk of the rest of the party threw its support behind her before they had any chance to even try to figure out plans.

    In other words, I don’t think this is a decision that the party made, or that anyone has actually made for the good of the party, it’s just factually none of them has any incentive to challenge her, because none of them can actually win, so all they’d actually accomplish is dragging their own name through the mud by fracturing the party. They have no incentive to be a ‘pretend candidate’, unlike every other election.Report

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    1. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been hilarious watching the media stumbly over each other in confusion as the Democrats are not in disarray, and have instead put themselves full force behind someone and the election actually looks a lot better now, and it would be nice if this lack of disarray continued…

      … But let’s not give too much credit to Democratic leaders, the simple fact is there was no room for anyone else to insert themselves in a plausible manner into this election. There was no serious way that could happen.Report

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    2. There is a Qunnipac poll which has Trump up 2 but it also has 18-29 year old voters favoring Trump by crushing numbers and Harris doing better with 50+ voters than Trump and this kind of paradigm shift requires extraordinary evidenceReport

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      1. We can’t look at the polls until August 1st.

        The error bars for the error bars have error bars and we can’t even pretend that the map shows something in the ballpark of the territory until the dust settles.Report

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        1. Yes, but the polls also showed that sort of wild shift for Trump for young voters before, from Biden.

          This is extremely hard to believe, it’s actually easier to believe that young people have started pathologically lying to polls for the lulz.Report

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          1. “What would have to be true for this poll result to be true?” is always a fun question to ask.

            But we can’t look at the polls. Not until August 1st. They’re gateways to madness. Looking at them will make you mad. Not “angry”. The other mad.

            Don’t do it. Let things settle.Report

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            1. I second this.
              Right now there is a lot of news happening very quickly, a lot of shifting thoughts and opinion among Democrats and polling is struggling to keep up.

              What we will need to get a clear picture is are results among several polls that shows a consistent trend in one direction or the other.Report

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      2. Yeah I’ve seen plenty of criticism of the cross tabs in that Q poll, several indicators it may be an outlier. Which happens, I guess, but it’s weird that it would happen with this poll. I can believe Trump +2 but I just can’t believe younger voters made a 25 point shift from Biden ’20 to Trump ’24. Something’s fishy there, and it ain’t the chips.Report

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    3. RFK Jr has always hurt Trump. The whole premise of him being a spoiler for the Democrats sort of required no one to know anything about him or the complete wackadoodle things he believes.

      Luckily ( in the sense that it is extremely unlucky because it got us Trump), the media is perfectly willing to hyper focus a spotlight on political candidate who say stupid things. That might convince Republicans to vote for someone, but it doesn’t seem to work on Democrats. (I say, in apparently a completely neutral manner. One could surmise that the two parties actually have very different goals and purposes that people are voting for them)Report

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  5. Also, let’s be clear about why the press is having a sad. They wanted a blitz primary/brokered convention because they thought it would get lots of eyeballs and now they don’t get it.

    Lining up behind Harris was the smart move for a lot of reasons:

    1. Harris has access to Biden’s campaign resources and doesn’t have to start from scratch;

    2. She has grown since her campaign in 2020. Her speeches are amazing;

    3. Party unity after three weeks of bad feelings;

    4. She can be new blood and a continuance of the Biden admin for the 40 percent of Democrats who thought Biden should remain the nominee.Report

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    1. I’ve seen a lot more of… I don’t know what the best term would be… “relief”, maybe? among the press than I’ve seen actual disappointment.

      The only people I’ve seen argue that Kamala shouldn’t be the nominee are the Anti-Genocide Enthusiasts and the Republicans who, for some reason, think that it’s not “fair” that the RNC was all about Biden and now Biden dropped out and now they have to come up with new arguments about Kamala.

      Everybody else who is Democrat-aligned seems to be thrilled that they no longer have to sing the praises of the emperor’s outfit.Report

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    2. Who are you seeing people having a sad about it?

      To the extent I’m seeing anything less than totally positive on the moderate left it’s something like ‘I think the best thing to do would have been an open convention. There are much stronger candidates than Harris. However this is still a huge improvement, Harris has real strengths she can play to, and we have gone from a position of total despair to a fighting chance to win this thing.’Report

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      2. A bunch of pundits who are writing concern trolling pieces about how the coronation is a mistake and some of the rich donors who still thought they could get Manchin somehow.Report

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  6. If this message were boiled down into a 30-second advertisement, I would watch it and share it.

    Bottom line: For the next 3-1/2 months, I want Kamala Harris to refer to Donald Trump exclusively in one of three ways: “predator”, “perp”, and/or “convicted felon”. And I want Mark Kelly to be the VP candidate, and to refer to Trump is all cases as “traitor”.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3gU-OLyrEAReport

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