Ahead of November, the election denying activist group with ties to Donald Trump, “True the Vote,” is asking sheriffs across the country to monitor ballot drop boxes for supposed suspicious or fraudulent activity in swing states — an apparent attempt to revive conspiracy theories leftover from Trump’s campaign to question the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
Continue reading “MAGA Group ‘True the Vote’ Is Working With Sheriffs To Monitor Drop Boxes”Ok I Actually Need Your Help Here
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Inside the Galactically Over-Determined Story of Tim Walz’s Governing Ideology
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.
Let me start with a related observation.
Continue reading “Inside the Galactically Over-Determined Story of Tim Walz’s Governing Ideology”The Age Of Array
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.
Continue reading “The Age Of Array “Harris-Walz Ticket Debuts With All The Feels
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Dems Bask In It
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
Bringing The Dad Jokes
Watch: Tim Walz’s First Speech As Running Mate
For many of us, it was the first Tim Walz speech we ever heard:
When The Headline Says It All
Politico: Tim Walz calls Viktor Orbán a dictator. For JD Vance, he’s a role model.
LOLOL
The trolly right-wing conspiracist Charles Johnson shared with the WaPo the texts he and JD Vance exchanged over the encrypted app Signal.
Quote Of The Day
Dems in disconcerting levels of array
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY
Meanwhile …
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.
Don’t Hold Back
John Ganz: These People are Nazis
First Guilty Plea In Arizona Fake Electors Case
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.
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Kamala Goes Electric and Trump Melts Down
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.
Continue reading “Kamala Goes Electric and Trump Melts Down”Meet Tim Walz: Harris Rolls Out Her VP Pick
Vice President Kamala Harris announced Tuesday morning that she has chosen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.
The Democratic ticket made its first public appearance together at a campaign rally at Temple University in Philadelphia Tuesday evening.
Follow our live coverage below:
Progressives Are Very Excited About ‘Vibes Candidate’ Tim Walz
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.”
Continue reading “Progressives Are Very Excited About ‘Vibes Candidate’ Tim Walz”The Diet Mountain Dew Race To Be The Least Elite
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.)
Continue reading “The Diet Mountain Dew Race To Be The Least Elite”First Thoughts on the VP Pick
A few thoughts on today’s big news.
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.
Obviously, that was wrong.
Continue reading “First Thoughts on the VP Pick”