Revolution doesn't have to do with smashing something; it has to do with bringing something forth. If you spend all your time thinking about that which you are attacking, then you are negatively bound to it. You have to find the zeal in yourself and bring that out.
-- Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation
Some thoughts I'm trying to put together over the past week since Biden dropped from the race and threw his support to Kamala Harris.
The quick shift between Biden to Harris was like a seismic turnaround. Where there had been guarded hope among the Biden supporters - shaken by the poor debate performance this June - there is unabashed enthusiasm now among the Democratic and Left-leaning voting base.
Within a day of the announcement that Biden was stepping aside in the campaign and throwing all his support to his Vice President, fundraising for Kamala went through the roof setting records throughout the week (via Aamer Madhani and Bill Barrow at AP News):
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has raised $200 million since she emerged as the likely Democratic presidential nominee last week, an eyepopping haul in her race against the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.
The campaign, which announced its latest fundraising total on Sunday, said the bulk of the donations — 66% — comes from first-time contributors in the 2024 election cycle and were made after President Joe Biden announced his exit from the race and endorsed Harris.
Over 170,000 volunteers have also signed up to help the Harris campaign with phone banking, canvassing and other get-out-the-vote efforts. Election Day is 100 days away.
“The momentum and energy for Vice President Harris is real — and so are the fundamentals of this race: this election will be very close and decided by a small number of voters in just a few states,” Michael Tyler, the campaign’s communications director, wrote in a memo...
Another thing that Biden's announcement did was undercut any momentum trump and the Republicans were hoping to get out of their just-finished convention in Milwaukee (which had turned into a rather dull, alienating affair). Instead of talking about trump's pick of JD Vance for his Veep, instead of talking about trump's bravado over surviving an assassination attempt... The mainstream media had focused on all the increased interest in Kamala (or worse, focused on how bad a pick Vance is turning into. But that's another story...)
As part of the fundraising pace, more and more social-media driven events crowded the attention. A "White Women for Kamala" Zoom call turned out 100,000 viewers and literally broke the chat app. Other Zoom events fed off the momentum of that, leading up to one that even I - and my cats - could partake: White Dudes for Kamala.
Childless Cat Guy ready for #whitedudesforharris pic.twitter.com/ODQCV0RnBa
— Witty Librarian 2024 (@PaulWartenberg) July 29, 2024
Jeff Bridges showed up! THE DUDE HIMSELF, AND HE ABIDES.
Luke Skywalker showed up. Every Democratic White Male - vying for the Veep spot - showed up. My cat Ocean rested on the sofa - or was trying to protect it from Vance (again, another story) - and watched alongside me.
Even the cats - and the hoomans they own - are excited in the shift towards Kamala as the Democratic standard bearer.
All that said, with all this zeal and raised hopes for the Democratic ticket, the realities of the campaign are still here.
Voter turnout is everything. The good thing about the Kamala Bump is how this excitement will get not only the Democratic base turning up at the polls in November, but also the undecideds and waverers who are no longer distracted by the "Biden's too old" hammering the GOP was inflicting on the national psyche.
This shift has noticeably caught the Republicans off-balance. Everything they've done since 2020 to negate any appeal for Biden has been for nothing. The grandstanding and impeachment threats from the GOP-controlled House since 2023 has turned into a meaningless joke. The one thing the Far Right had as an attack on Joe was his age: Now that becomes a liability for an obviously elderly, cranky, ill-looking, dementia-driven trump.
The Republicans will clearly stay on the attack, but the messaging is going to be so obvious and grating it ought to alienate any remaining Independent and undecided voters they needed to draw in. The wingnut media is already going after Kamala's birth status, trying to rehash the Birther conspiracy nonsense they tried against Obama. But it never worked against Obama in the first place.
They'll also try attacking Harris for her gender, bringing out the worst of the Far Right misogyny already on display with the GOP attacks on abortion rights, birth control, and women's roles in the workplace. They'll try all the stuff they used on Hillary Clinton back in 2016, dragging out all the fearmongering towards feminism they know to use. But Kamala isn't Hillary: Where the Beltway Media spent decades since 1992 turning Hillary into a hated figure on the national stage, Kamala doesn't have that disadvantage. Harris' favorables are already well above the dismal numbers Hillary had that reduced voter turnout for her.
That was the thing in 2016: Clinton won the popular vote, but not by much, and had lost voters in key battleground states to where the Electoral College flipped to trump. Hillary's unpopularity in those states - driven by constant negative reporting by the media - were her undoing.
Kamala Harris doesn't have that disadvantage: For all the noise the GOP can bring to the table, there are no realistic scandals to hit Harris with. Her dating life 20 years ago is already well-known and unrelated to her current situation as a happily-married wife. The Republicans can't effectively go after her history as a state prosecutor or State Attorney General without undermining their own (false) Law And Order ideology. They'll accuse her of being a "San Francisco Socialist" but that doesn't have much appeal outside of the already-rabid MAGA base.
All said, the enthusiasm - the zeal - for the Democratic voter base is truly alit and gaining momentum by the hour.
It's all a question now of getting voter turnout for the Democrats across all 50 states to make any attempts by trump and his cronies to steal the results impossible to pull off.
GET THE VOTE OUT FOR HARRIS, AMERICA. Your cats demand it.
