Next Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris, who you might have heard used to be a prosecutor, will deliver her closing arguments for why American voters should elect a decent person as president, instead of a two-bit conman and felon who wants to be Hitler, who used to keep his personal copy of Adolf’s Favorite Sex Positions Speeches next to his bed while he slept.
Dunno if or how often he read them. Dunno if he can read. He might have just pawed around in his underpants while looking at the pictures.
Harris will deliver her remarks at The Ellipse, near the White House, which is notable because that’s where Trump addressed his MAGA terrorists on January 6 before a bunch of them did his will by storming the Capitol to try to overthrow the government and overturn the election Trump had just lost.
The Washington Post reports:
Officials said the vice president will present a final case from a place selected to emphasize a contrast between herself and Trump, a candidate who she has argued poses a grave threat to the country. As part of her remarks, Harris is likely to mention Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol, but her speech is expected to be broader than focused on solely what she deems Trump’s threat to American democracy, said the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the nonpublic plans.
One neat thing about this choice is that it’ll force the news media to say something about why Harris is standing where she’s standing. They’ll be forced, a week before the election, to say oh by the way, remember that time Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, and in response he mounted a months-long attempted coup to try to overthrow the United States government and overturn that result, and one climactic moment in that was when he incited a bunch of his followers to commit the largest-scale terrorist attack on American soil since September 11, 2001, and the target was the United States Capitol?
There are one million examples of why Harris has to force the media’s hand here, but one need look no further than their (lack of) coverage of John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, confirming out loud on tape that Trump is a fascist who loves Hitler. As Media Matters reported, out of all the nation’s large newspapers, only the Los Angeles Times saw fit to put that story on the front page, and that was on day two of the story. The New York Times, which did the interview with Kelly, buried it on page A12.
So Harris is going to the Ellipse. Perhaps she’ll get out a giant Sharpie and circle the exact spot where Trump ordered his troops to the Capitol. (We’re sure she’ll be careful to note the one time in the speech when he said “peacefully and patriotically,” in sharp contrast to his months of violence incitement to overturn the election on his behalf.)
Harris is also doing a rally tomorrow in Texas — featuring Beyoncé! — which we guess is a state she probably won’t win, unless Texas really applies itself and beats back Attorney General Ken Paxton’s voter suppression. But the Post says she’s doing that rally to really underline the abortion issue for the American people, as her campaign says Texas is “ground zero of the nation’s extreme abortion bans.”
(Maybe they have some internal data that suggests it’s worth going to Texas, too? We dunno, but that Colin Allred/Ted Cruz matchup sure is looking straight-up tied.)
Meanwhile, Donald Trump is doing a big rally at Madison Square Garden, in a state he’s definitely going to lose, probably because a bunch of Nazis had a circle-jerk orgy there in 1939 and what else are Trump and the MAGA movement, besides a big Nazi circle-jerk orgy?
America’s about to make a big choice on November. We sure hope voters don’t fuck this up.
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Remember, after we kick Trump’s ass, we get to watch him get dragged to NYC for sentencing.
TLDR: Go talk to your people today.
My mother, is a lifelong auto-republican (primarily because she's been anti-abortion - but mostly because she was living under the thumb of my father who passed away this February). I've talked with her in the past, and finally she decided to start listening to the messaging out there. A while ago she told me she couldn't in good conscious support Trump, but by that same thread, really couldn't bring herself around to voting to Harris - so was considering sitting this out.
I've kept pushing, and telling her to make up her own mind and listen to the candidates - and letting her know of the various campaign events (including the CNN Town Hall last night). Finally, after the broadcast, she called me up and said she'd decided to vote for Harris.
She said that the way Harris framed the abortion piece last night, not as not a matter of faith but freedom (for folks to do as they wish, but religious folks would still hold onto their beliefs) - was her tipping point.
It feels like there are a ton of other folks out there - never-again-trumpers who might be considering just sitting out, but need just that one thing that's going to make the messaging from Harris palatable for them. So go out there and have those discussions - it's a lot easier to get them to feel better about Harris when they're already actively sitting it out because they can't palate Trump.