Archive for 2024

I CAN IMAGINE WHAT WILL BE, UNBURDENED BY WHAT HAS BEEN: As Glenn noted a few minutes ago, the DNC-MSM will now begin marching in lockstep behind Kamala. So watch any negative reports about her suddenly stop.

But before they’re “unburdened by what has been,” here’s a flashback to the London Daily Mail in December of 2021: ‘You put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism’ says former Kamala Harris staffer. Harris is branded a ‘bully’ by ex-aides who claim she refused to read briefings, then scolded them if she was slated for being unprepared as ‘FOUR’ staffers head for the exit:

  • A former underling of Kamala Harris she routinely refused to review briefing materials and would then scold employees when she appeared unprepared

  • The ex-employee likened the vice president to a workplace bully

  • Even more staffers are considering leaving Vice President Kamala Harris’ office, people familiar with the conversations revealed

  • Four top aides to Harris will exit in the span of about a month

  • Harris ‘staff are leaving because they’re burned out and they don’t want to be permanently branded a ‘Harris person,’ Axios reported

  • Among those leaving are her chief spokesperson Symone Sanders

  • Peter Velz, director of press operations, and Vince Evans, deputy director of the Office of Public Engagement are also expected to leave

  • Ashley Etienne, Harris’ former communications director, left last month

Exit question: Can Kamala Harris shake off her weaknesses to beat Trump?

UPDATE: Biden Endorses Kamala to Ride the Bomb Down Instead of Him.

But at the very least, he has formally stepped down from the presidential race, in a statement that reads like it was written by his aides for him at gunpoint, and perhaps without his direct knowledge. There was a later, weirdly separate endorsement of Kamala as his heir-perhaps, almost as if he’d made a last-second decision to switch his place with her atop the Dr. Strangelove H-bomb, the one plummeting toward November. But there was no stirring rhetoric, and certainly no immediate national address — they’re going to need to make sure ol’ Joe is the proper “headspace” for that one, to put it delicately — just a limp, rhetorically hollow “so long, and thanks for all the fish.”

In late July. After the primary. After the first debate. A month before the Democratic convention. With no agreed-upon successor, nobody vetted, nobody remotely acceptable to all factions of the Democratic Party. Party delegates are enraged, disunited, and confused. Protesters are out in the streets. And it all heads straight for my hometown of Chicago, come late August — where I expect our mayor to be cheering the rioters on, rather than suppressing them.

Perhaps following the instructions of “Dr.” Jill, Team Biden seemed to really have it in for Harris, burdening her with a thousand projects she was clearly unqualified for. Is “riding the bomb down” their final going away present?

JUST WATCH HOW THE PRESS, WHICH HAS NEVER LIKED KAMALA, WILL SUDDENLY BUILD HER UP. A saint, a warrior queen, a wise woman for our time, a loving shepherdess for our troubled flock.

UPDATE:

SO IF BIDEN’S UNFIT TO RUN A CAMPAIGN, HOW IS HE FIT TO RUN A COUNTRY?

Related:

UPDATE:

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: President Joe Biden drops out of 2024 presidential race.

President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he will end his presidential re-election campaign, bringing an abrupt and humbling conclusion to his half-century-long political career and scrambling the race for the White House just four months before Election Day.

Biden, 81, could not reverse growing sentiment within his party that he was too frail to serve and destined to lose to Donald Trump in November.

—NBC News, today. Curiously, all that “too frail to serve” talk was dismissed by NBC News as “cheap fakes” as recently as June 19th.

THE OBAMA HANGOVER. Or, How We Got Here:

● Shot: Biden’s Obama grudge drives 2024 resolve.

President Biden’s lingering regret and anger from when Democrats pushed him not to run in 2016 is fueling his determination to stay in the race in 2024, current and former Biden aides told Axios.

Why it matters: Several people close to Biden said they believe his bitterness toward former President Obama, and the congressional Democrats now trashing him, is making the president more determined to continue his campaign even as some of his own aides think an exit is inevitable.

  • Many Obama advisers pressured Biden to not run in 2016 and Biden’s resentment over that episode has diminished Obama’s influence with Biden as the president contemplates his path forward.

  • If Obama directly pushed Biden to not to run this time, Biden aides told Axios it could make Biden even more resolved to remain the nominee.

  • A former Biden aide said: “Obama already used that chit in 2016 when his team lobbied him against running. You don’t get to do that more than once.”

Axios, today.

● Chaser: Watch: Inside the Night President Obama Took On Donald Trump.

It was April of 2011. For weeks, Donald Trump had been fanning the flames of the “birther” movement and attacking President Barack Obama on television — demanding that Obama produce his birth certificate, implying that he was not born in the United States, and questioning both his religious identity and the legality of his presidency.

But on April 30, the tables were turned. Trump was the recipient of President Obama’s jokes at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — and Trump political adviser Roger Stone tells FRONTLINE in The Choice 2016 that the dinner was a turning point for Trump.

“I think that is the night he resolves to run for president,” Stone says in the opening scene of FRONTLINE’s two-hour documentary on Trump and Clinton, which premieres on Tues., Sept. 27 at 9 p.m. EST/8 p.m. CST on PBS stations nationwide.

“I think that he is kind of motivated by it: ‘Maybe I’ll just run. Maybe I’ll show them all,’” Stone adds.

—PBS’s Frontline, September 22, 2016.

● Hangover: Aaron Sorkin: Democrats should pick Mitt Romney to beat Trump.

Playwright and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has today encouraged the Democratic Party to nominate Republican senator Mitt Romney as its presidential candidate.

In a guest essay for the New York Times Sorkin, who created political drama series The West Wing and won an Academy Award for writing the screenplay of The Social Network, argues that former GOP presidential candidate Romney “would peel off enough Republican votes to win, probably by a lot” against Donald Trump. Sorkin adds that nominating the Utah senator would be “a clear and powerful demonstration that this election isn’t about what our elections are usually about, but about stopping a deranged man from taking power”.

Sorkin has been a steadfast supporter of the Democratic Party for several decades. Between 1999 and 2013, he is on record as having donated $289,400 to party campaigns, while he wrote campaign ads for the Democrats during the 2004 presidential election.

When Trump beat Hillary Clinton to the presidency in 2016 Sorkin published an open letter to his wife and teenage daughter, calling the result “truly horrible” and Trump “a thoroughly incompetent pig with dangerous ideas, a serious psychiatric disorder, no knowledge of the world and no curiosity to learn”. He added of the Republican’s supporters that “the Klan won last night. White nationalists. Sexists, racists and buffoons,” and suggested that “there is a party going on at ISIS headquarters.”

In today’s NYT article, Sorkin similarly labels Trump “a dangerous imbecile with an observable psychiatric disorder” and “a dump truck of ignorance and bad intentions”. He also accuses the GOP nominee of “treat[ing] the law as something for suckers and poor people” and of being “a hero for white supremacists”. Arguing that “there isn’t a Democrat who is polling significantly better than Mr. Biden”, Sorkin claims that nominating Romney to take on Trump “would not just put a lump in people’s throats with its appeal to stop-Donald-Trump-at-all-costs unity, but with its originality and sense of sacrifice”.

UnHerd, today.

Given Romney’s entire career as the ultimate RINO, I could understand him wanting to finally make it official, not to mention his lingering Stockholm Syndrome after how the DNC-MSM ran him through the wringer during the 2012 election. But why would black Democrats vote for a man whom the current president angrily shouted was going to put them “back in chains?”

Incidentally, while the Axios headline today is “Biden’s Obama grudge drives 2024 resolve,” how much of a grudge do you think Barry is still carrying over Joe?

I DON’T BLAME HIM UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES, BUT IT’S A MAJOR LOSS: UF President Ben Sasse steps down to care for ailing wife.

University of Florida President Ben Sasse on Thursday announced he is stepping down from his role as president to take care of his ailing wife, who was recently diagnosed with epilepsy and memory issues, and to spend more time with family and their 13-year-old son.

“I’ve got two spectacular callings in life right now: First, I’m a husband and dad. Second, I’ve been blessed to serve as president of the best dang public university in America – Go Gators! – and I’ve loved the challenge of giving this university everything I’ve got,” Sasse posted on X.

“But here’s the bottom line: Those callings are significantly at odds with each other right now. Gator Nation needs a president who can keep charging hard, Melissa deserves a husband who can pull his weight, and my kids need a dad who can be home many more nights.”

Sasse took the helm of UF in 2022. A news release on the university’s website states Sasse will transition to a teaching and advisory role and the board will work to quickly identify an interim president. Sasse’s last day as president is July 31.

“In recent months, Melissa has been diagnosed with epilepsy and has been struggling with a new batch of memory issues. It’s been hard, but we’ve faced it together. A lot of late nights, a lot of hard decisions, and a lotta ‘what matters most?’ conversations,” Sasse’s statement read.

“I’m going to remain involved in serving our UF students — past, present, and future — but I need to walk arm-in-arm with my dearest friend more hours of every week.”

Praying for her recovery.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: South Korea’s new space agency outlines plans. “South Korea’s new space agency, less than two months old, is laying out ambitious goals in spaceflight as part of its efforts to serve as a ‘control tower’ for the county’s growing space presence.”

THEY’RE ONLY SCARED THAT PEOPLE WILL RESPOND TO THEIR VIOLENCE VIOLENTLY. They’re not against violence in general.

OH, NOTHING THAT GOOD: Dems return to Tammany Hall tactics with backroom dealings to boot Biden: Smoke-filled rooms? Should Biden opt to step aside, it is far from certain that Vice President Kamala Harris would be the automatic stand-in on the party ticket. “I certainly was not the first person to notice Biden’s obvious lack of capacity and capabilities. Indeed, Republicans, and other independent media have been pointing it out literally for years. But they were viciously attacked for doing so because it threatened the Democrats’ power.”

A friend texts:

Repub msg for 2024 is pretty simple, no matter who the Dems run: “They saddled you with a dementia patient.”

Longer form: “They saddled you with a massively corrupt, career incompetent dementia patient, with a cackling buffoon for a backstop. This only became a crisis for them when you noticed. Why trust them now?”

Yes, their problem isn’t that Joe is unfit. Their problem is that too many people noticed.

FROM THE HOME OFFICE INSIDE THE BIDENBUNKER: Narrative Buster: Top Ten Reasons Biden Will Fly to Hawaii This Month.

So the celebrity fundraisers haven’t come to an end for Biden. The AP reports that Biden has fundraisers still scheduled for every day of the month, starting on Monday. Will those be as lucrative as the bash that George Clooney hosted and where Barack Obama appeared?Probably not, but contrary to reports, Dem big-ticket donors aren’t locking the checkbooks in their Maseratis either.

This supports what I have said all along. All Biden has to do is ride out the next three weeks and the Dump Biden movement will collapse. If he’s still raising money, and if Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez still support him, Biden has no reason to get out … unless he and Democrats and the entire Protection Racket Media are willing to admit that he’s senile and has been for the past two-plus years at the very least. And then admit their complicity in a conspiracy to cover up that fact and defraud the American public.

Until then, Democrats are stuck with Biden, and will shortly return to the gaslighting of the last two-plus years. The media will crank up the Republicans Pounce®! and Cheap Fakes! narratives. But no one will forget that the emperor’s new clothes were a scam and that they’ve seen Biden naked.

Keep fighting, Joe!

UPDATE: Christian Toto takes a shot at drafting his own list: Top 10 Reasons Letterman Is Headlining Biden Fundraiser. Late-night icon signs on for starry night, but will Biden still be on ticket by then?