Hello!
Well, that was quite something, wasn’t it. Just as many of us were still reeling from Hulk Hogan’s appearance at the Republican national convention, Joe Biden succumbed to the inevitable and bowed out of the presidential race. Fears that Biden’s departure could spark an ugly mess as various Democrats fight for the nomination have so far proved unfounded, however, and it seems all but certain that Kamala Harris will be the Democratic nominee.
We’ll take a look at all that, but first here’s a recap of what’s been going on in the election.
Here’s what you need to know
1 Harris is the frontrunner after Biden drops out
Kamala Harris has cemented her position as the likely Democratic presidential candidate since she was endorsed by Biden on Sunday – having already won enough Democratic party delegates to win the nomination. The vice-president won the backing of people who had been seen as potential rivals and raised a record amount of cash in the few days since Biden dropped out. Harris gave her first campaign speech in the key state of Wisconsin on Tuesday, where she told supports the US was “not going back” to the “chaos” of the Trump presidency.
2 Trump and company mount attacks
At the their national convention last week, Republicans were already sharpening their knives. With pressure mounting on Biden, and rumors swirling that the vice-president could step up, many speakers looped Harris in with the president. On Monday. JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, told a crowd that “Kamala Harris is a million times worse” than Biden, while Trump has described Harris as “horrible and incompetent” and blamed her for the border crisis.
3 Biden to give first speech since dropping out
The president cut a sorry, invisible figure as he announced on X/Twitter that he will not run for re-election. Sequestered in his home in Delaware, where he is self-isolating after contracting Covid. It is not the way Biden would have wanted to bow out, but he will at least get a chance to speak to the American public on Wednesday night, when he is planning to address the nation from the Oval Office.
4 Secret Service director resigns
The attempted assassination of Donald Trump has taken a backseat to the Biden resignation in recent days, but an investigation is ongoing into security lapses, and on Tuesday Kimberly Cheatle, the director of the US Secret Service, resigned. A day after a contentious House hearing, Cheatle said in a statement that she takes “full responsibility for the security lapse” and said the agency “fell short” during the 13 July shooting.
Harris is in the driving seat … but Republicans prepare a barrage of attacks
It seems as if Kamala Harris is going to be the Democratic nominee for president.
The vice-president has secured enough delegates – party members who are chosen to vote for a candidate on behalf of their states – to secure the nomination at the Democratic national convention in mid-August, if not before.
Harris, a former senator, has also been endorsed by Joe Biden; by the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer; by the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries; in total by about 45 Democratic senators, all 23 Democratic governors and about 200 House members; and a number of liberal organizations.
It’s an impressive haul, and just as important is that Harris has been endorsed by Josh Shapiro, Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer – three rising Democratic governors who may have fancied a shot at the presidency themselves. In a whirlwind few days that seem to have revitalized Democrats, Harris has proved to be a hit with donors, too: she raised $81m, a record, in the first 24 hours of her campaign.
It all set the stage for Harris to give a robust speech at a rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, where she debuted what is likely to be her strategy if she wins the nomination, and stuck it to Trump in a manner that Biden has lately seemed incapable of doing.
“Before I was elected vice-president, before I was elected United States senator, I was elected attorney general of the state of California, and I was a courtroom prosecutor before then,” she told the crowd.
“And in those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds: predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type.”
It’s all going well so far then. Except, of course, that Harris will now become the main focus of Republicans’ ire. We had already seen a bit of that at the Republican national convention, where speakers frequently mentioned the “Biden-Harris” administration, but the attacks have quickly increased. Vance, Trump’s self-described “hillbilly” running mate, told a crowd in Virginia that “the border crisis is a Kamala Harris crisis”, and a Trump Super Pac released an advert blaming Harris for Biden’s policies.
But there have been suggestions that at least some of the GOP’s attacks could backfire. The Associated Press reported that Republican leaders had felt the need to tell their members not to use overtly racist and sexist attacks against Harris, a message apparently not heard by Tim Burchett, a Republican congressman, who attacked Harris as a “DEI vice-president” on Monday.
If that kind of thing could alienate voters, then it was also unhelpful that a 2021 clip resurfaced on Tuesday in which Vance characterized Harris and others as “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too”.
For all the chatter, however, it is still unclear whether Harris will perform better than Biden, who had been trailing Trump in polling. FiveThirtyEight reported that in polls since Biden’s disastrous debate, there is “little to no meaningful difference between how Harris and Biden” perform. Democrats’ hope, though, will be that Harris is capable of winning over voters in a way Biden apparently could not.
Lie of the week: Kamala destroys everything she touches
“Lyin’ Kamala Harris destroys everything she touches!” Donald Trump claimed on Truth Social on Tuesday.
This is false. A review of video footage shows that during her rally on Tuesday, Harris touched both the lectern and the torso of a campaign surrogate, neither of which were destroyed.
Out and about: Milwaukee
At Kamala Harris’s first rally as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee – a campaign stop at a high school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – spirits in the crowded auditorium were high.
“Oh my God, I think this is something long overdue – and she will do great,” said Pat Bridges, a 65-year-old retiree who attended the event on Tuesday.
The timing and location of the rally, which drew enthusiastic Harris supporters from across Wisconsin, was significant. Last week, thousands of Republicans from across the country descended on the Fiserv Forum, just eight miles away, for the Republican national convention. But this rally took on special significance for many in the crowd, given Harris’s already historic position as a Black woman and a presumptive nominee for president from either party.
“Seeing Kamala here … my granddaughter will know she can be whatever she wants, and do whatever she wants,” said Bridges, who is Black and attended the rally with her young granddaughter.
– Alice Herman is a politics and democracy reporter for Guardian US
Worst week: the Secret Service director
Kimberly Cheatle was less than two years into her role as Secret Service director when she resigned on Tuesday, calling the assassination attempt on Trump the “most significant operational failure” by the agency in decades. Corey Comperatore was killed in the shooting, and three people – including Trump – were injured. An independent review into the shooting continues.
