Harris Nails It

Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris has a problem, guys, with Donald Trump insisting that Democratic policies will unleash a nightmarish future for America if she and Joe Biden are elected in November.  That's why, she took to a podium Thursday afternoon to offer a "prebuttal" against Trump's anti-Biden nomination acceptance speech for the Republican convention (which I refused to watch).

She laid out the case like the lawyer she is, explaining how Trump always makes incendiary comments in the wake of police shootings of blacks to incite more violence that he can blame on the Democrats. She also went after Trump on the pandemic, making the case of how he bungled the initial response to COVID-19 back in January and tried to devolve responsibility for handling it to the states.

"Donald Trump froze. He was scared. And he was petty and vindictive," Harris said, adding that he was  "fixated on the stock market" and "caved" to the Chinese government in order to preserve his chances for re-election. 

Did I once say that she has a shrill voice?  Funny, it's suddenly sounding a lot more pleasant! :-D 

Harris's speech was a prelude to a two-minute ad that the Biden campaign aired on all three broadcast networks and on Fox News before the convention. The ad slams Trump for the way he's handing the issues while mainly putting a positive spin on Biden's accomplishments.

So if you'd been wondering if Biden and Harris were going to counterprogram Trump during the Republican convention, well, there you are.  Okay, maybe they should have done it sooner - Biden, by the way, went on MSNBC and CNN to condemn Trump just before Harris's speech, though with less energy - but better late than never.

Expect more of this from the Democrats.  And now we know why Biden chose Harris to be his running mate.  

Kenosha

There are a lot of horrible things that happened as the result of the even more horrible police shooting of Jacob Blake, Jr. in the back in Kenosha, Wisconsin last Sunday.  There were the subsequent protests that devolved into violence, some of it the result of black anger at the police but far more likely brought on by right-wing troublemakers.  There was one right-wing troublemaker in particular, Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two people with a long gun during the protests and was not arrested (he turned himself in to police, most likely because his image was caught on video).  There was the destruction caused by the riots that resulted from the actions of people like Rittenhouse, who was descried as "troubled," though a black man would have been called "violent."  But the most horrible thing, apart from the actual shootings, was particularly horrible.

The Republicans exploited it at their heinous convention, especially Donald J. Trump.

The Republicans tried to pin the riots on failed Democratic policies in cities and states under Democratic control, and they tried to tie this to Joe Biden, saying that this is what Joe Biden's America would look like.  No, no, no - this is what Donald Trump's America already looks like!

And there's been a pandemic, not to mention a hurricane in the Gulf Coast and severe thunderstorms in the Northeast (a couple of which generated tornadoes) souped up by climate change, which Trump denies.

There are some mitigating factors about what happened in Kenosha.  One is that Jacob Blake, Jr. is still alive, though he's likely to be paralyzed from the waist down, and as a survivor of a police shooting, he has some strong testimony to offer.  Another is that sports leagues, included the lily-white National Hockey League, temporarily suspended play in protest of the Blake shooting.  And the fact that Rittenhouse, the white kid, was ignored by police even after he killed two people even as Blake was shackled to his bed - not for medical reasons but for standing charge against him for sexual assault (which apparently hasn't been proven yet) - should make more people aware of the inconsistencies in policing in America.  (To be fair, Rittenhouse has since been charged with homicide.)

Alas, Kenosha seems to be helping Trump more than Biden, at least for the time being.  While Trump parades around with swagger and vowing to restore law and order in a situation his penchant for lawlessness and disorder has helped create, Biden has done little more than condemn the violence in low-energy, meekly presented social-media videos without addressing the larger question of whether the violence in Kenosha has made suburban voters and particularly voters in crucial Wisconsin feel less safe.  Democrats are now worried as to how Kenosha may play into Trump's hands despite his Orwellian efforts to deflect blame for violence happening on his watch as a result of his embrace of chaos to others.

Biden has nine weeks and change to sharpen his condemnations of violence that comes out of peaceful protests as well as call out rhymes-with-glass-poles like Kyle Rittenhouse for adding fuel to the flames.  He plans to hit the campaign trail after Labor Day with pandemic-restricted events, an acknowledgment that his basement campaign no longer works.  And I hope Kenosha is his first stop.  The virulent racism in These States may have helped Trump during his party's connection week (don't get me started on Mike Pence's comments), but, hopefully, it won't help him for long.

Here Comes Trump

Because the media want to be seen as fair and balanced, the rosy reviews they originally gave the Democratic convention have since been dramatically tempered by a lot of second-guessing.  I've counted as many as five or six commentators insisting that the Democrats did nothing to speak to the working-class Obama voters that defected to Trump in 2016, and not one pundit has seen fit to challenge that assessment.  Democrats now find themselves challenged about the apparent failure to present a clear agenda, and this third-degree treatment has been given to high-profile Democrats such as Pete Buttigieg and James Clyburn.  It's as if reporters and commentators at the TV news outlets, working for a Republican owner, are worrying about offending the boss and therefore are giving Donald Trump a springboard from which to leap forward and over Joe Biden.

Not really.  Trump (above) continues to lie and spread rumors and innuendo about the Democrats while providing misleading rhetoric about the issues of the day - especially COVID-19. And a lot of TV pundits, from Jake Tapper on CNN to Mark Shields and David Brooks on PBS and just about everyone on MSNBC, are calling him on them.  It is in that milieu in which the Republican convention starts tonight and in which Trump, after having seen Joe Biden speak softly and carry a big stick, threatens to speak loudly - every night of the convention, in fact! - and carry an even bigger stick, by which to beat Biden on the head with. After the Democrats' positive message of hope and light, Trump and the Republicans hope to bury their lofty rhetoric with angry defenses of God, the flag, guns, whitebread Middle American values, and all that other exclusionary claptrap commonly associated with the John Birch Society and the Tea Party.

Trump spent the week of the Democratic convention counterprogramming a message against Biden's, with some noticeable effect; like other obnoxious, minimally talented celebrities, he stays relevant buy getting people to pay attention to his outrageous schtick.  I wish I could say that Biden will be as effective in counterprogramming a message against Trump as Trump was in going against Biden, but I can't.  Democrats just don't have the ability to divert and distract from the Republicans' message in the same way that the Republicans - not just Trump, but Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes - have the ability to divert and distract from the Democrats' message.  But Mother Nature, God's bratty kid sister, could, in a brutal and nasty way, give the Democrats some help in creating a diversion.  Having set California on fire again, she is now sending two tropical cyclones to the Gulf Coast.  She recently blew a ferocious windstorm across Iowa and is threatening to send thunderstorms of similar severity and viciousness across the Northeast tomorrow.  (Alert: I might lose power again, and any posts will see may have been programmed to self-publish in advance.  In which case, expect more typos than usual! :-p)   If people talk about all that instead of Trump's empty-headed rhetoric, it will not only help Biden, it will highlight the necessity of addressing climate change.

And the day after convention ends, my area could get more severe thunderstorms.