CHARDONNAY IS A HELLUVA DRUG: Nancy Pelosi blames President Biden for Trump’s victory.
Nancy Pelosi has blamed President Biden for Donald Trump winning the White House as a Democrat blame game intensifies.
The former House speaker, a party grandee who was instrumental in persuading the president to eventually step aside, criticised Biden for not dropping out of the race sooner.
She also said there should have been an internal process to decide on the candidate rather than the coronation of Kamala Harris.
Pelosi, 84, believes Harris would have “done well” in the primary and “been stronger going forward”.
Back in February The Hill was reporting: Pelosi says Biden ‘very sharp’: ‘He’s younger than I am.’
AP reported in July that the Democrats needed Kamala on the ticket to legally (read “easily”) transfer Joe’s war chest:
Vice President Kamala Harris has been one of President Joe Biden’s staunchest defenders following his shaky performance in last week’s debate, but she’s also emerged as a potential option to lead the party herself if Biden opted not to continue his campaign.
One big question is what would happen to the current campaign’s $91 million cash on hand, according to its most recent filings. (Combined with allied Democratic organizations, the reelection effort has access to $240 million cash on hand, the campaign said this week.)
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Since their campaign account was registered with the Federal Election Commission in the name of both candidates, Harris could use those funds for her own presidential effort if Biden were to drop out, according to Kenneth Gross, senior political law counsel at Akin Gump and former associate general counsel for the Federal Election Commission.
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What happens to the funds if neither Biden nor Harris is the nominee?
According to Gross, their campaign would have to give all the money back — sort of.
Any donations designated for the primary — which Biden won — would stay with the campaign, Gross said, something that technically could apply to any money taken in by Biden-Harris up until the Democratic National Convention in August.
“All contributions made prior to the August convention are deemed to be for the primary unless the donor designates in writing that the contribution is for general election,” Gross said.
According to Smith, if Biden left the race and Harris didn’t replace him as nominee, their former campaign could only transfer $2,000 of the money that had been collected to a new candidate.
No doubt, that was part of the calculus that led to the Sunday afternoon massacre in late July. About which, Jim Treacher writes:
By the way, we still don’t know why the president of the United States dropped out of the 2024 campaign on Twitter, during Sunday brunch, in the middle of a weeklong disappearance from the public eye. I want to know what happened to him that week, and who helped cover it up.
Maybe that’ll be Bob Woodward’s next book. He has nothing to lose now. The secret’s out.
In the meantime, America’s Newspaper of Record says that Pelosi has her eyes trained towards the horizon:
