The Week Ahead

July 20, 2024

President Biden: "I believe it is in the interest of my party and the country to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president." He followed up minutes later endorsing Kamala Harris. He is a splendid man, a splendid human being, and will go down in history as one of our most important presidents. I am profoundly sad that he is out of the race. But he is a man who believes in putting the country’s interests first, over his own, and he did what he thought was right in the moment. A great man.

The endorsements have continued to roll in since Biden led the way, with President Clinton, Secretary Clinton, and Representative James Clyburn, the South Carolina Democrat who launched Joe Biden’s successful run in 2020, following suit. And as one of my friends pointed out, this means that so many of Trump’s “arguments” are gone in one fell swoop: President Biden’s age, Hunter Biden, the whole “Biden crime family” corruption allegations. All out the door.

This is the poetic justice the country has been looking for and richly deserves: A highly qualified, talented Black woman, a former prosecutor, will be the one to take down Donald Trump. Nothing says women refuse to accept second-class citizenship like electing one. I have no doubt she can do it, and I look forward to watching the support she receives from Hillary Clinton, her sorors, and pretty much everyone in America who loves democracy. We have work to do!

That, of course, includes Donald Trump, who despite the much vaunted claims by some people in the media that he has “softened” is the same old Trump, telling a crowd this weekend: "The only way I can lose is crooked judges. But we'll get it overturned, anything that happens." On Saturday night alone, Trump:

• Called President Biden “Crooked Joe,” a “feeble, old guy,” “low IQ,” and “stupid.”

• Called Vice President Harris “Laughin' Kamala,” “crazy,” and “nuts.”

• Called former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley incompetent.

• Called Democrats “enemies of the democracy” and attacked the “grossly incompetent people running our country.”

Don’t believe anyone who tells you Trump is going to change. Remember all those moments when he “became truly presidential”? The promises he would change? Trump is who he is, and that’s the one constant in his universe.

But who knows, maybe even Trump will fall in line. After all, both he and Ivanka donated to Kamala Harris’ campaign in the past.

We have a major legal moment this week, on Wednesday, when the Manhattan DA responds to Trump’s motion to dismiss his convictions on presidential immunity grounds. It will be a good moment for the country to confront the fact that the election is now one between a prosecutor and a convicted felon.

There are still open questions ahead:

• Will Democrats now line up behind Kamala Harris, or will there be a challenge? The hope is that the quick cascade of support for the Vice President makes clear that it would be political suicide to challenge her, but this is the Democratic Party.

• Will Republicans bring lawsuits challenging the validity of ballot names, whether they are meritorious or not, in order to create noise and confusion that interfere with the campaign and potentially give the Supreme Court a crack at the issue?

• Never-Trump Republican pollster Sarah Longwell found in her focus groups that many swing voters had “negative impressions” of the Vice President. But she also found that they weren’t “locked in.” There are reports that donations have come rolling in with the announcement and lots of excitement around Harris tonight. The question is whether she can keep that going.

• Who will the Vice Presidential nominee be?

How is everyone feeling now?

We all get that there is a lot at stake (pardon the profanity).

At the end of the day, it’s Trump who makes the strongest argument against Trump. Promising to immediately deport masses of people who are in this country without legal status, he said, “You are not going to teach a criminal not to be a criminal … That is why as soon as I take the oath of office, we will begin the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.”

Trump is not inevitable. Start making plans with your friends in real life and online to hold celebrations as you exercise your right to vote this November.

In a 2022 report, the 52% of eligible Americans who didn’t vote said it was because they didn’t like any of the candidates. Forty-eight percent said that a major or minor reason they didn't vote was because they were “too busy” or believed their vote didn't matter. Some said they didn't have time to research the candidates. Significant numbers of people had trouble with the mechnics of voting, with problems including:

• A lack of transportation to the polls

• Being required to vote in person

• Not knowing how or where to vote

• Registration issues including being registered in a different state, missing the deadline, and not knowing how and where to register.

Want to do something to help keep the Republic? Civil Discourse readers made plans and executed them in 2022, and we can do it again! We’ll share information and tools for voters to register, staying registered, vote, and make sure their votes count. Sometimes, these issues can be surprisingly difficult for people to navigate, but as someone who has worked both inside and outside of government on elections and voting rights issues, I’m here to lend my expertise, and I know all of you will have good ideas! Thank you for supporting Civil Discourse so we can get to work.

Democracy only dies if we let it. Let’s not do that.

We’re in this together,

Joyce