Portside

The Hill (Lauren Sforza)

Congressional Black Caucus backs Harris as Biden replacement

The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) is backing Vice President Harris as President Biden’s replacement after the president announced his decision to withdraw from the race on Sunday.

The CBC political action committee (CBCPAC) released a statement Sunday on behalf of caucus Chair Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) and CBCPAC Chair Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.).

“The Congressional Black Caucus PAC joins President Biden in fully supporting Kamala Harris as our party’s nominee. She has been instrumental in delivering the accomplishments of the last 3.5 years and has led on lowering maternal mortality rates, protecting reproductive freedoms, and ensuring economic opportunities for all,” the statement read.

“She will do an excellent job as President of the United States.”

The statement also praised Biden.

“President Joe Biden is the ultimate stateman. He’s dedicated his entire career, amid great personal sacrifice, in service to the values of democracy; civility, freedom and opportunity. He is undoubtedly one of the most accomplished presidents in American history, a trailblazer on the issue of gun safety, a staunch advocate for civil rights, and a bipartisan lawmaker who has created millions of jobs across the country,” the statement read.

“Americans and democracy loving people around the world owe Joe Biden a great deal of gratitude,” the statement continued.

Numerous Democrats have already followed Biden’s lead to unite behind Harris after the president announced Sunday afternoon that he would be stepping aside from the race and endorsed Harris as his replacement.

The CBC statement comes just weeks after Horsford reaffirmed his support for Biden as many Democrats called on the president to withdraw from the race.

Former President Trump’s campaign and his allies, meanwhile, have already unloaded on the vice president, with the campaign saying she will be “even worse” than Biden.

Jacobin (Ben Burgis)

Joe Biden’s Replacement Must Embrace Economic Populism

Joe Biden is out of the race and a second Trump term would be a nightmare. To avoid it, Democrats need more than a candidate who can complete sentences. That candidate must put pro-worker policies at the heart of their campaign.

Just over three weeks ago, Joe Biden and Donald Trump met for a debate. The most devastating moment was when Biden said, “I’m going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the…the…the…total initiative relative to what we can do with more Border Patrol and more asylum officers.” Trump responded, “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence, and I don’t think he knows either.” The general impression even by many erstwhile Biden loyalists was that if this man were a private citizen, his children would be having a difficult conversation about moving him to an assisted living facility.

But you don’t have to give Joe Biden praise that he absolutely does not deserve to recognize that it’s good that he dropped out of the 2024 race. A Trump victory would be a disaster. At the debate on June 27, Trump outflanked Biden from the right on Palestine, bizarrely saying that Biden had become a Palestinian — “a bad Palestinian.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is rooting for a Trump victory, knowing that the former president would give Israel an enthusiastic green light for far worse slaughter than we’ve seen in the past ten months. And all indications suggest Trump’s return to the White House would unleash a wave of domestic cruelty.

At the very least, we can expect Trump do what he did last time. He cut taxes for rich people, he shredded workplace safety regulations, and he filled the National Labor Relations Board with strike-breakers. And the worst could get much worse.

At the Republican National Convention (RNC), delegates were given signs to wave demanding “Mass Deportations Now.” Speaker after speaker falsely blamed undocumented immigrants for fentanyl entering the country and thus for the epidemic of Americans dying of fentanyl overdoses.

There are, at a conservative estimate, 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. As Radley Balko points out, if Trump actually follows through on “Mass Deportations Now,” making a serious attempt to round up and deport  all 11 million, there’s no possible scenario that doesn’t look like an authoritarian nightmare. In fact, it’s plausible that Trump would put Stephen Miller — the only senior staffer who isn’t a Trump relative who made it through all four years of his first term — in charge of the operation. And Miller has spelled out exactly what he wants to do in interviews.

As Balko writes:

Miller plans to bring in the National Guard, state and local police, other federal police agencies like the DEA and ATF, and if necessary, the military. Miller’s deportation force would then infiltrate cities and neighborhoods, going door to door and business to business in search of undocumented immigrants. He plans to house the millions of immigrants he wants to expel in tent camps along the border, then use military planes to transport them back to their countries of origin.

Put that together with Trump’s constant fear mongering about immigrants allegedly being sent straight from prisons and insane asylums to the US border, and how some of them are “not people,” and this could be a nightmare.

Even before the extent of Biden’s cognitive difficulties became apparent, he may have torched his re-election prospects by backing Netanyahu’s grotesque assault on the population of Gaza. No matter how he’d performed on the debate stage, it would have been very hard to imagine, for example, Biden winning my home state of Michigan — which is both a crucial swing state and a home to the largest concentration of Arab-American voters in the country. A different nominee not being as associated with that horror might make a difference, especially if they made a clear break from Biden’s policy, although it’s also possible that at this point the damage is done.

On the domestic front, Biden was desperate enough to start making some tentative steps in a positive direction in the final weeks of his candidacy. He talked about ending medical debt, for example, and finally moving toward desperately needed reforms to the Supreme Court — an issue that had been raised by the “Squad” of left-wing members of Congress. He unveiled a plan to effectively cap rent increases at 5 percent, making major landlords’ tax breaks contingent on their adhering to this limit — although in a telling moment he fumbled the delivery of this announcement, telling the NAACP Convention that he was going to limit rent increases to fifty-five dollars.

These moves were not only the right thing to do in themselves, but evidence that some Democratic Party power brokers correctly understand that a constituency that desperately wants reforms like these could be crucial to winning the election. A candidate less likely than Biden to say “$55” when they mean “5 percent” might be able to blunt the appeal of Trump and Vance’s cynical reactionary populism.

Trump and Vance are leaning hard into populist rhetoric this year. Vance’s Republican National Convention speech covered the pain of communities devastated by deindustrialization, the housing crisis, the opioid crisis, and more. Lines like “jobs were sent overseas and our children were sent to war” hit home. When it comes to supporting policies that would do anything about these problems, it’s all hot air. Trump was a ferociously anti-labor president, and Vance’s legislative scorecard from the AFL-CIO sits at 0 percent.

But the fake populism taps into very real pain, and that appeal can’t be countered by insisting that everything is basically fine and all we need are competent liberal technocrats to sensibly steer the ship of state.

Even if Harris or some other nominee did embrace a substantively populist policy agenda, they might well go down to defeat. Too many voters might dismiss it as empty election-season rhetoric. Harris in particular might not be a believable messenger. And with barely over a hundred days until the election, there might just not be enough time to effectively reframe the election.

But fake populism being countered with policies that would actually help ordinary workers could give America, and the world, a chance to avoid whatever’s lurking on the other side of a Trump victory this November.

Forbes (Allison Beck)

Every Major Democrat Endorsing Kamala Harris For President (Full List)

KEY FACTS

Several Democrats who were widely seen as potential Biden replacements endorsed Harris on Sunday, significantly easing her path to the party’s nomination: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Harris also picked up endorsements from Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, whose names have been floated as possible Harris running mate picks.

Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., a key Biden ally who helped shore up his 2020 campaign and former member of the House Democratic leadership, endorsed Harris on Sunday evening.

Politico reports a large group of current and former Democratic National Convention delegates have signed a letter endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris, who they favor for her experience as a prosecutor, as well as her “resolve and fortitude in the face of racist and sexist attacks by MAGA Republicans.”

Key Democratic donor and tech investor Reid Hoffman (worth an estimated $2.5 billion) threw his support behind Harris, calling her “the right person at the right time” in a tweet.

Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton published a joint statement to X endorsing Harris, saying the two “are honored to join the President in endorsing Vice President Harris and will do whatever we can to support her.”

A handful of key congressional Democratic groups threw their weight behind Harris, including the Congressional Black Caucus’ political action committee, and the chairs of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (Rep. Nanette Barragán, D-Calif.), the Progressive Caucus (Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.) and the moderate New Democrat Coalition (Rep. Annie Kuster, D-N.H.).

Harris picked up endorsements from Sen. Tim Kaine, Va., who was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2016, along with Sens. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.

The vice president also gained the support of a litany of House Democrats, including Reps. Maxwell Alejandro Frost, Fla., Jerry Nadler, N.Y., Mark Pocan, Wisc., Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, N.Y., Ilhan Omar, Minn., Andy Kim, N.J., Ted Lieu, Calif., and Abigail Spanberger, Va.

KEY BACKGROUND

Biden announced Sunday afternoon he would not seek reelection in November after weeks of pressure from more than 30 elected Democrats for the 81-year-old to drop out of the race . Their calls followed his poor debate performance against former President Donald Trump last month and numerous speaking gaffes, including once calling Harris “Vice President Trump.” Soon after he released his first statement, Biden released a second endorsing Harris, who is seeing mixed results in polls against Trump, though she currently polls better than lesser-known Democrats to take Biden’s place.

CONTRA

Former President Barack Obama did not endorse Harris or any other candidate on Sunday, instead advocating for an open nominating process at the Democratic National Convention. He did not mention the current vice president in his statement, instead writing that he has, “extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges.”

WHAT TO WATCH FOR

Democrats have a few weeks before they officially choose a presidential nominee. The party’s 4,700 delegates will make their choice during a roll call vote between Aug. 1 and Aug. 7, including the 4,000 delegates who were previously slated to vote for Biden. The Democratic National Convention runs from Aug. 19 until Aug. 22.

WHAT WE DON’T KNOW

Who Harris will pick as her running mate. Kelly, a Navy veteran and former astronaut, was the first rumored candidate so far to endorse Harris, followed by Shapiro and Buttigieg. Other possible Democrats who could run alongside her include Newsom, Cooper, Klobuchar, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga.

TANGENT

The American Federation of Teachers, United Farm Workers and Service Employees International Union endorsed Harris Sunday evening. They appear to be the first major unions to endorse her as a presidential candidate.

MSNBC Rachel Maddow