In four years, you won’t have to vote again

Yesterday evening I watched all four hours of NBC’s presentation of the Olympic opening ceremony in Paris. I was wowed and delighted about how innovative it was. Instead of athletes entering a stadium we have athletes on boats cruising down the river (in the rain). Instead of orderly running the torch through the streets there is a masked character running across the rooftops and taking a zipline (I wondered how much of that was filmed ahead of time). Instead of the cultural display happening after the athletes enter they happen during and done from various buildings, rooftops, and bridges along the route. And the Olympic flame keeps a hot air balloon aloft (I wonder how they keep it fueled). I am pleased athletes represent 205 countries and pleased there is a refugee team of 37 athletes from 11 countries. This is a time and place for the world to come together. As for the actual sporting events... I don’t plan to watch. Sports aren’t my thing. I do plan to check out the break dancing competition. And then I’ll watch the closing ceremony. I hope it is just as innovative. When the torch came to where the dignitaries sat and then left again – and while there was a light show on the Eiffel Tower – I thought the ideal place for the flame would be atop that tower. I’m a little disappointed it wasn’t, but the hot air balloon is pretty cool. On Wednesday Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote about how much having Kamala Harris as the prez candidate has energized youth. High voter registrations and high donations. Both are helped by important social media voices. Errin Haines and Jennifer Gerson of The 19th, in an article posted on Kos, described the start of the Win With Black Women organization and their Zoom call that eventually included 44,000 women and raised $1.6 million for Harris. It’s quite a story. Kos of Kos takes a look at the likely choices for who Harris might pick for her VP. As part of that he discusses the role the VP nominee has in the campaign. The person can appeal to core groups in a way the prez. nominee can’t (see Dick Cheney as attack dog while Bush II played jovial frat boy). Or they can fill a gap in the resume, such as geographic balance or the vice nasty interfacing to the religious right. But mostly the VP choice makes little difference, unless it is evidence the prez. candidate made a bad choice. See Sarah Palin. Then add JD Vance to that category. So, naturally, pundits are suggesting white men from battleground states for the VP pick to “balance” the ticket for race and gender. This includes Sen. Mark Kelly from Arizona (he was an astronaut!), and Gov. Josh Shapiro from Pennsylvania. Also mentioned are Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina. Kos shared his opinions. A report today on NPR discussed VP pick betting pools (which are illegal in the US but people find ways to take part in the ones overseas). They’re usually more accurate than polls. (Alas, a link wasn’t available by the time I posted.) Sara McCammon of NPR reported that the latest insult Republicans are hurling at Harris is that she’s a DEI hire as a way to claim she’s not qualified. That’s only a tiny bit better than trying to label her as “weird” or has a strange laugh (at least she laughs!). In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a few interesting tweets. First one from Katie Rogers:

Kerstin Emhoff, Doug Emhoff's ex-wife, on Republican attacks on @KamalaHarris for not having children of her own. “These are baseless attacks. For over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I.”

To which Ashley Parker added:

I’ll just say: Endorsement as a stepmom from your partner’s ex is possibly… the hardest endorsement in the whole damn world.

Yeah, Harris is being criticized for not having children of her own. Sheesh. She’s being considered for the nation’s chief executive, not the nation’s mother. Chris Geidner, “Law Dork,” tweeted:

The best sign for the Harris campaign: The internet has been fun again for the first time in since, like, before the pandemic?

Charlotte Alter tweeted:

I covered the Clinton campaign, the Women's March, the anti-Trump resistance, the wave of women in the 2018 midterms... and the momentum for Harris over the last 5 days is basically like all of that rolled together. These organizers built muscle memory and it never went away.

Cartoons in the comments, posted by Denise Oliver Velez. One by Ann Telnaes shows two women walking. One of them, looking at her phone, says, “So, now the choice is between an old convicted felon who packed the Supreme Court and overturned Roe v. Wade... and a former prosecutor who supports a woman’s right to choose.” The other woman replies, “Is this a trick question?” David Michigan posted a meme of Biden dressed as Obi Wan Kenobi and holding a light saber with the words, “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.” Commenters quickly came up with “Joe B. Wan Kenobi.” Scroll down for a photo of Harris and her husband and stepchildren. That was followed by a reminder that George Washington also was childless and raised Martha’s children as his own. Then a meme posted by David Clay Johnson:

Imagine the media treatment of Kamala if she had five children by three different men. Then add in having sex with a porn star.

More tweets in another pundit roundup by Dworkin. From Acyn:

Trump: You have to get out and vote. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four years, it will be fixed, it will be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore.. In four years, you won’t have to vote again.

Rith Ben-Ghiat added:

Media: this should be *the* A1 story. I have studied dictatorship for decades and this is it-"you won't have to vote anymore." Trump will never leave office if he wins in November.

Heather Cox Richardson, tweeting yesterday:

About to post tonight's letter and it has just hit me how much we are trying to absorb. The rally shooting was just 12 days ago. Then the RNC. Vance. Biden refused the nomination just 4 days ago. Harris clinched the nomination 32 hours later. Now EVERYTHING has changed. Stunning.

Jonathan Weiler:

In its current parlance, DEI - as in "DEI hire" or blaming things like airplane crashes on DEI - is the new N-word. Everyone should understand it as such.

JD Vance made a comment, then doubled down, about childless cat ladies being the cause of various ills. That prompted Clay Jones to post a cartoon of Simone Biles doing her extraordinary thing at the Olympics as an elephant points to her and says, “Childless cat lady DEI-hire!” Pastor David Hayward, one of the good guys, posted a cartoon of one guy saying to another, “Welcome to the faith! Now, here’s our complimentary box, outside of which you should never ever think again.”