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Right now we’re seeing a parallel race to define Tim Walz, much as we saw and were seeing with Kamala Harris beginning in the last week of July. The stakes of defining the veep nominee are nowhere near as high as they are for the race to define the person at the top of the ticket, where so far it’s gone all in Kamala Harris’s direction. But I wanted to note some of the dimensions of this battle to define. Paradoxically, it’s going on both between the parties and also within the Democratic Party. The Democratic left and the GOP both seem joined in wanting to portray if not Walz than the Walz pick as a sign of rising left-wing power in the Democratic Party or a de facto veto over any VP pick that would validate or express support for Joe Biden’s policies on Israel and Gaza. I don’t think either point is so much wrong as misleading and a simple misreading of the actual political dynamics which are shaping the current moment or politics going back the last six or seven years.
For years, the Democrats were defined by the bitter battles of the 2016 election where the feud between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders essentially split the party into a sharply defined progressive and moderate wing. Now, with the new leadership of Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, there are signs the party is entering a new era, where the demons of 2016 have been exorcized.
Day 1 of the Harris-Walz 2024 ticket was all about the visuals.
There was the carefully planned video of both sides of the offer-and-acceptance phone call between Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. There was the Walz intro video narrated by Walz himself. And of course there was the staged rollout in Philadelphia last evening where the ticket made its first public joint appearance.
But there were also the memes. So.many.Tim.Walz.memes. “Turkey’s meat” is probs my personal fave.
I’m not going to attempt to “analyze” all of this. Any effort to do so after a day like yesterday is doomed to be either overdone in finding real meaning in the visuals or to veer toward being a curdled spirit that refuses to get sucked into the enthusiasm. Make no mistake: There was a lot of enthusiasm among progressives.
For now, here’s a taste of the Harris-Walz debut:
The Introduction
VP: Since the day I announced my candidacy, I set out to find a partner who can help build this brighter future…. Pennsylvania I'm here today because I found such a leader. pic.twitter.com/ZrHwy17ytt
Donald Trump is crafting revenge fantasies … for Joe Biden:
2024 Ephemera
MO-01: Rep. Cori Bush lost to challenger Wesley Bell in a Democratic primary heavily influenced by the $9 million AIPAC poured into the race on Bell’s behalf.
If Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) wins the vice presidency, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan would become the country’s first Native American woman governor.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is launching its first round TV ads for the fall campaign, targeting GOP Senate candidates Kari Lake in Arizona, Eric Hovde in Wisconsin, Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania and Mike Rogers in Michigan.
Arizona Republican Lorraine Pellegrino, a fake Trump elector, pleaded guilty to a single charge of filing a false instrument — in this case, the fraudulent Electoral College certificate. She agreed to a sentence of three years of probation but no jail time.
👀
The FBI executed a search warrant Friday on the phone of Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) as part of an ongoing campaign finance investigation.
Great Question
Brian Beutler, on the bombshell WaPo report that Trump DOJ deep-sixed an investigation into the whether Egypt sent Donald Trump $10 million after he won in 2016: “Why wouldn’t Senate Democrats launch an immediate investigation of both the crime and coverup?”
International Murder-For-Hire Plot
A 46-year-old Pakistani man with alleged ties to the Iranian government was arrested in a sting operation last month by the FBI and charged in Brooklyn with allegedly trying to hire hitmen to carry out political assassinations in the United States in late August or early September. The purported hitmen were actually undercover law enforcement officers.
Last Thursday the Harris campaign began offering tickets for a campaign rally in Detroit the following Wednesday (tomorrow, August 7th). Over the first 24 hours they received 47,000 requests for tickets. 47,000. That spurred a multi-day search for a Detroit area venue that could handle the demand to see the Vice President. As Donald Trump never grasped, there’s no straight-line connection between rally attendance and votes. But at that scale they signal enthusiasm and energy that neither campaign (Trump or Biden) has seen at any time in this cycle. They demonstrate a purchase into the larger popular culture that President Biden never had and Donald Trump, for all his greater currency on social media, doesn’t either.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) had yet to have her first cup of coffee on Tuesday morning when her phone began “blowing up.” The news that President Kamala Harris had selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate broke just before 6 a.m. local time in Seattle, Jayapal’s home city. Despite the early wake up calls, the influential chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus told TPM she was “delighted.”
I did not know until recently, when Trump’s running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) made some confusing and poorly received joke about Democrats calling him racist for drinking Diet Mountain Dew, that people do not know about the culture surrounding the green elixir. (I still don’t really know what he was talking about, but it could have something to do with this or this.)
My first reaction was shock that it was Tim Walz and not Josh Shapiro. Not “shock,” disappointment, or “shock,” it was a bad decision. But “shock” in the simple sense that I really thought it was pretty much definitely Shapiro for the last week. There were lots of reasons I thought this but what sort of sealed it was hearing that Harris would do the roll out in Philadelphia. Just didn’t add up to me she’d roll out anyone but Shapiro in the state where he’s governor and in what is essentially his home town.
Vice President Kamala Harris has reportedly picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) to be her running mate, according to multiple news outlets. A formal announcement is expected soon.
Walz, 60, was first elected governor in 2018 and re-elected in 2022. He previously served six terms in Congress, initially winning his seat in the Democratic wave of 2006.
A former teacher and coach and longtime National Guardsman, Walz has not been a prominent figure on the national Democratic stage. He was not known to have presidential ambitions. But in the weeks since President Biden ended his re-election bid, Walz’s solid record as a progressive governor, his perceived appeal in the critical Blue Wall states, and his direct, folksy manner had catapulted him into the top rank of vice presidential contenders for Harris.
Not since Sen. Edmund Muskie (D-ME) was picked by Vice President Hubert Humphrey as his running mate in 1968, following President Lyndon Johnson’s abrupt withdrawal from the race, has a political figure taken this surprise route to the ticket.
The new Democratic ticket is scheduled to make its first public appearance later today at Temple University in Philadelphia before embarking on a five-day campaign tour of key swing states – Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada – before Harris ends up back home in the Bay area on Friday.
2024 Ephemera
Kamala Harris formally clinched the Democratic Party nomination for president in a pre-convention virtual roll call that sought to sidestep any state-level ballot access issues she might encounter.
Maricopa County, Arizona public schools have opted out of serving as polling places for the 2024 election due to the chaos and misinformation Donald Trump has fueled around the proper administration of elections.
Mother Jones: JD Vance Reiterates False Claim That Democrats “Tried to Kill” Trump
Man Charged With Making Online Threats Against Harris
A Winchester, Virginia man was arrested Friday on federal charges of making threats against Vice President Kamala Harris on the social media platform GETTR. The FBI cited some 4,359 online threats allegedly made by the man over the past year. “The threats included promises to kill Ms. Harris and her family, to pluck out her eyes with pliers and to burn her alive,” the NYT reported.
Quote Of The Day
I wasn’t asking him to step down. I was asking for a campaign that would win. And I wasn’t seeing that on the horizon.
Nancy Pelosi, on her role in getting President Biden to end his re-election bid, during an appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America”
Yet Another Undisclosed Clarence Thomas Trip!
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) revealed a previously unreported 2010 round-trip flight that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas took between Hawaii and New Zealand aboard the private jet of billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow.
Jenna Ellis Is Cooperating In Arizona Fake Electors Prosecution
Former Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis, who pleaded guilty in the Georgia RICO case, is now cooperating with prosecutor’s in Arizona’s fake electors prosecution, according to Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes.
Ellis was one of the 18 co-defendants indicted in April in the Arizona case. Nine felony counts will be dropped and Ellis will avoid jail time in return for her full cooperation.
How Will Trump’s NY Conviction Fare Before SCOTUS?
Roger Parloff takes a close look at Trump’s use of the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision to launch a new line of appellate attacks on his New York hush money conviction. It’s a very difficult assessment to make, as Parloff deftly notes with this grim passage:
It is impossible to predict outcomes with any confidence, given that Trump’s motion is based on doctrines that were unknown to American jurisprudence until about 10:29 a.m. on July 1, when the Supreme Court unveiled them. In addition, and as the briefing amply reveals, the Supreme Court’s ruling is opaque, vague, and ambiguous. When Justice Merchan retrospectively applies that Court’s decision to the trial record of the Trump prosecution, his ruling will consist of wall-to-wall holdings of first impression.
The New Yorker article that prompted Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to comically “get ahead of the story” by posting a video account of his bizarre dumping of a bear carcass in Central Park a decade ago is now out and includes photo evidence.
Ex-Police Chief To Be Charged In Newspaper Raid
The former Kansas police chief who oversaw last year’s raid on the office of the Marion County Record will be charged with a felony of interfering in the judicial process, according to special prosecutors.
Federal Judge Rules Google Is An Illegal Monopoly
U.S. District Amit P. Mehta of Washington, D.C., found that Google has illegally quashed competition against its internet search monopoly in a major anti-trust win for the Justice Department.
MONDO!
PARIS, FRANCE – AUGUST 05: (EDITORS NOTE: Image was captured using a robotic camera positioned above the field of play.) Armand Duplantis of Team Sweden competes during the Men’s Pole Vault Final on day ten of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Stade de France on August 05, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)
You can’t beat that Cajun-Swedish combo. The greatest pole vaulter who ever lived capped his gold medal performance at the Paris Olympics with another world-record height, beating his own prior record(s).
To give you some sense of Mondo Duplantis‘ domination of pole vaulting, here are the top vaults (click “All” next to “Best by Athlete”) ever recorded:
For those not familiar, Duplantis was born and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana, by a Cajun father and Swedish mother. He has competed internationally for Sweden since 2015.
