I have been trying to avoid falling in love with Vice President Kamala Harris.
My political past is littered with love affairs with politicians. I felt such deep love for Nancy Pelosi during the Trump years. My love for Joe Biden was real and enduring.
But I’d like to think of myself as (theoretically) more rational and logical than the “cult of personality” Trump lovers.
So I really wanted to support Vice President Harris enthusiastically and fully but without strong emotion.
I failed.
I can tell you when I failed. It was during the debate. I don’t know the exact moment, but I know that by the end of the debate I kept thinking “God, I love this woman.” And I felt it. Love.
And I am not alone.
Here are the cheers for VP Harris at a rally on Thursday in NC. Watch the first 17 seconds of this and keep in mind that went on for over two minutes!!!:
That is love! The crowds were amazing! She did two different rallies — both to packed houses. People lined up at dawn for tickets.
It took N&O photojournalist Ethan Hyman 14 minutes to walk the line for this time lapse of the thousands of supporters lining up to see Vice President and Democratic nominee for president Kamala Harris at a rally in Greensboro, NC, Sept. 12, 2024.
It is fair to say that I am not the only one in love. I am not the only one beside myself with excitement about Kamala Harris.
Why?
Part of it is that she is amazing. She is smart and engaging and thoughtful and caring. What is not to love??!!
But another part of it — a part that I think made the debate so moving to me — is that she is reacting to trump just the way that we have all fantasized about. She speaks to him in the way he deserves to be spoken to. She looks at him the way he deserves to be looked at.
She has taken almost 10 years of frustration that we have all felt and she has finally — FINALLY — given us an outlet for it.
Yes, Nancy Pelosi took him on when she spoke about him or sat behind him at the SOTU.
But Kamala Harris did it right next to him. As an equal. She gave voice and expression to every emotion we have had in the last ten years. She did it decisively and clearly and without exception. She called him out to his face. She said all the things I have fantasized saying to him. And she said them clearly and without hedging and without fear. It felt amazing to watch.
I fell in love with Kamala Harris because she did exactly what I have desperately needed someone to do for a decade. She did what no one has been able to do — spend a full hour and a half putting that awful man in his place and showing the whole world who he really is, while he stood there impotent and pathetic, getting smaller and weaker by the moment.
I am so grateful to her for working her ass off in order to do it perfectly.
God, it felt good!
Now onto the good news!
Good News
Some very promising polling news
Good New Polling (all from after the debate)
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Harris 50 - Trump 45 (+5) Morning Consult
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Harris 47 - Trump 42 (+5) Ipsos/Reuters
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Harris 49 - Trump 45 (+4) YouGov/Times (likely voters)
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Harris 50 - Trump 47 (+3) Leger/NYPost
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Harris 48 - Trump 45 (+3) SoCal
This data suggests Harris has already gained a point or so coming out the debate.
We now have a 2-3-4 point lead in national polling. We are in a stronger position in the battlegrounds. We are leading in most Senate races outside of partisan lean, something that is going to be a bigger problem for Rs as we get closer to Election Day. We have meaningful financial, organization and enthusiasm advantages.
and overall, things are looking up for us and down for him
Trump is having a bad week, a really bad week.
Our candidate kicked his ass without a teleprompter. Our campaign’s big play to force debates and let his ugliness be on display for all to see has finally worked. Trump 2024 is not Trump 2016 or Trump 2020. He is uglier, more extreme, deeply unwell and wildly untethered. He is now a rapist, fraudster, traitor and a 34 times felon. He has become dangerously impulsive, continues to make enormous mistakes (like picking JD Vance), and can no longer speak in public without doing enormous harm to his campaign. The thrill is gone. His party has splintered, and he is driving critical parts of his coalition away. The grumbling from GOP leaders is getting very loud. They know they are losing, that he is a loser and it’s going to get super nasty now.
Donald Trump Had a Really, Really Bad Debate
If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Donald Trump by now, nine years into his career in public life, it’s that his ego invariably gets in the way of what others might consider political good sense. Before the start of his first and likely only debate with Vice-President Kamala Harris, the former President posted a video clip on his social-media feed, along with a quote from an admirer: “Donald Trump is probably the greatest political debater we’ve ever had in American History.” So much for expectations-setting.
By the end of the evening, prediction markets and the instant polls were calling Harris a big winner, Pete Buttigieg was dunking on Trump’s “crazy uncle vibe,” and, adding insult to injury, Taylor Swift decided to pick this night to endorse Harris in an Instagram post to her two hundred and eighty-three million followers. The historian Michael Beschloss concluded, “From start to end, Kamala Harris has just delivered what is easily one of the most successful Presidential debate performances in all of American history.” No wonder Trump’s son Don, Jr., was reduced to tweeting his fury at the moderators: “The Fake News is the enemy of the people!”
Harris’s bet was that Trump would say a lot of crazy and unhinged stuff if she got him going. It was a safe bet.
$47 Million Flowed Into Harris Campaign in 24 Hours After Debate
Vice President Kamala Harris raised $47 million in the first 24 hours following her debate with former President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday night, a sum that will likely expand a widening funding gap between the two campaigns.
That tally, shared by the Harris campaign with The New York Times, included donations from 600,000 people. It is her largest 24-hour fund-raising period since an initial burst of donations when she entered the race in July and raised $81 million on the first day.
Ms. Harris already had a significant financial edge over Mr. Trump entering September. Her operation said it had $404 million cash on hand, while Mr. Trump had $295 million. Ms. Harris’s campaign nearly tripled the Trump fund-raising in August.
JD Vance’s anti-Haitian bigotry could cost Republicans the Senate
Florida has the largest number of Haitian Americans in the country. Roughly 544,000 people of Haitian ancestry live there, or around 2.4% of Florida’s 22.2 million residents, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau. This is a heavily immigrant community, with lots of noncitizens unable to vote.
No one pretends politics in Florida is simple, and the Haitian diaspora in and around Miami-Dade County is no different.
Yet, with Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance and conservative social media gleefully engaging in overt anti-Haitian racism, the Haitian community could very well carry out the sweetest revenge—delivering Florida for the Democrats at both the presidential and Senate levels.
Republicans have every reason to fear Haitian voter participation. In 2020, 71% of voters of color went for Joe Biden and 26% went for Donald Trump, according to exit polls. That means that if there are indeed 408,000 potential Florida voters of Haitian descent, universal participation would net Democrats 183,600 votes.
More Black Americans are certain to vote for Harris, Post-Ipsos poll finds
Avalon Broaden didn’t vote in 2020, unmotivated by a pair of older male candidates that she felt didn’t really represent her values. Her feelings remained the same this year — until the race was upended in July and Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee.
“She’s a woman, she’s Black, and I like her. I genuinely think that means something for this country,” said Broaden, 24, a beauty adviser and freelance artist from Omaha. “I’d rather vote for something I strongly believe in rather than voting in spite of someone.”
A Washington Post-Ipsos poll finds that the commitment of Black Americans like Broaden to vote this fall has rebounded since Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee, with Black voters unifying around her candidacy despite lukewarm ratings of Biden’s presidency.
Harris support rises among some likely voters: POLL
As previously reported, Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump by a slight 4 percentage points, 50-46%, among all adults and registered voters alike, and by 6 points, 52-46%, among likely voters in the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll. While those numbers are virtually identical, closer assessment shows movement to Harris in some groups when comparing all adults with likely voters -- notably, those younger than 40, younger women in particular and Black people.
Harris' suggestion that Poland could be next if Ukraine loses the war resonates with Poles
Wanda Kwiatkowska eagerly read reports on Wednesday morning about the U.S. presidential debate — and they convinced her that a second Trump presidency would be a grave threat to her home of Poland and the larger region.
Former President Donald Trump twice refused to directly answer a question during the debate about whether he wanted U.S. ally Ukraine to win the war. Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris praised American and NATO support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia's invasion so far — and called for it to continue.
“Otherwise, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe. Starting with Poland,” she said. “And why don’t you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favor and what you think is a friendship with what is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch?”
Harris’ emphasis on the need to stand up to Putin resonated Wednesday in Poland, a nation of 38 million people whose geography makes it particularly sensitive to the debate. The NATO member is wedged between its European Union partners to the west and, to the east, the Russian region of Kaliningrad, Russian ally Belarus and Ukraine.
Taylor Swift drove 405,999 visitors to vote.gov in 24 hours after Kamala Harris endorsement
Taylor Swift's post endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for the White House on Tuesday drove 405,999 users to visit the site vote.gov over the course of the following day, a sign of the potential effect her decision to speak out could have on November's election.
Vote.gov is run by a federal agency known as the General Services Administration, in partnership with the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. The site includes information about how to register to vote and cast a ballot, and directs users to state sites where they can register.
Like Cheney, this guy is a total asshole, but we’ll take support from anyone who can sway people to vote for her:
Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Will Support Kamala Harris
As the United States approaches a critical election, I can’t sit quietly as Donald Trump — perhaps the most serious threat to the rule of law in a generation — eyes a return to the White House. For that reason, though I’m a Republican, I’ve decided to support Kamala Harris for president.
Turnout matters, but Trump’s barely working to get out the vote
Political conventional wisdom says that a good field operation is worth around 3 percentage points. In a tied race, the importance of getting out one’s voters becomes that much more critical. Yet while Democrats continue to build a robust field program, Republicans have failed to follow.
And now they’re starting to notice.
Literally the first thing Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump did after the former president’s takeover of the Republican National Committee in late April was fire everyone in its field operation, and scrap plans to open 40 field offices in the battleground states. The Washington Post further reported in August, that “Those now-discarded plans included 88 staff members and 12 offices, and goals to knock on 3 million doors and make 2.4 million phone calls, in Pennsylvania. In Arizona, the RNC’s plan called for 62 staffers and seven offices, aiming for 558,000 voter contacts.”
Field wasn’t glamorous enough for Trump, who would rather spend that money on his legal bills and his quixotic “voter integrity” effort, still pretending that he lost the 2020 election to some mythical fraud.
He needs this to end': Fox pundit delivers bad news to Trump after 'trainwreck' debate
Not long after Donald Trump finished his first debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, one Fox News pundit suggested it could not have gone worse for the former president.
Trump's performance, which was quickly derided after he went off on several rants that had his opponent watching on in amusement, was first trashed by a longtime Fox personality who started by calling it a "bad night," and then things got worse as the grim-faced Fox panel did their postmortem.
and some great inflation news:
Inflation: Consumer prices rise at slowest pace since early 2021
A closely watched report on US inflation showed consumer prices rose in August at the slowest pace in three years on an annual basis, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Wednesday morning.
Mortgage rates fall to lowest level since February 2023
Mortgage rates fell this week to the lowest point since February 2023, in a welcome sign for Americans grappling with a tough housing market.
The standard, 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.20% in the week ended September 12, mortgage financing giant Freddie Mac said Thursday. That’s down from last week’s 6.35% and well below the two-decade high of 7.79% in October 2023.
Mortgage rates started to drop early last month on news affirming lower interest rates in the future, specifically after a weaker-than-expected jobs report for July, and have gradually edged lower since.
On the Lighter Side — I Have a Concepts of a Plan Edition
for my fellow Bills fans (Go Bills and get better Tua):
What can you do to save democracy?
You can donate (please, please pick one and donate):
You can do something else:
there are many things that you can do. Now is the time to do them! Pick something and DO IT!! Seriously. Do something.
I am so proud and so lucky to be in this with all of you ✊🏼✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿 💙❤️💛💚✊🏼✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿
