Politics

There are 150 posts filed in Politics (this is page 2 of 15).

Completion of the Kamala Campaign Timeline project

With Election Day in the US come and gone, I have completed updates to the Kamala Campaign Timeline website. This site covered the day-by day events of the Harris-Walz campaign from Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race through Election Day. Each daily entry contains a link to the CNN daily blog for that day, links to other press coverage of the campaign, and links to videos of campaign events.

Having covered topical events before (see my Portland Protest News site), I was familiar with tracking down stories and links. The CNN daily blog was very helpful as a starting point for finding other coverage. During the development of the site, CNN began to restrict the number of page views to their site, and to reserve content for subscribers. Whenever this happened, I looked for other coverage.

As with the Portland Protest News site, I found it difficult to make time everyday for site updates. Since I was using a static site generator, I was able to catch up and still keep the consecutive date timeline. I have seen some recent comments about creating news streams. I have created a few streams myself, but aggregating feeds still depends on someone creating those feeds. Kamala Campaign Timeline was such a site (although the template did not support generation of a RSS feed – darn!). To me, the best site of this kind is Political Wire. However, it takes time to sift through the news, pick out the stories of note, and post cogent summaries/quotes, and to do it day in and day out. The DailyKos site is probably the best known Democratic/Progressive news site, and they have a staff supporting their efforts. Similarly, keeping the @kamalahq Threads account going took some effort, and someone, somewhere was paying for that. So, my opinion is that it is a tough job for a single person to carry that kind of load, but maybe there is someone out there who can handle it, or organize it (like Election Law Blog has a set of guest editors).

Anyway, I enjoyed having another shot at creating a daily news site, and hope that this serves as a historical record of a unique campaign. I’m just sorry that Harris and Walz didn’t win.

Why I am sticking with Joe Biden

Yes, I watched the CNN debate on Thursday with Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Yes, I  thought Joe Biden’s “performance” at the debate was poor, compared to the confidence of Trump’s presentation. However, Biden answered the questions set by the moderators and generally answered those questions truthfully, while Trump repeatedly refused to answer the questions in the debate, even after being pressed several times for some of those questions. Trump told so many lies that it took CNN’s Daniel Dale several minutes just to list all the lies that Trump spewed out over the course of the debate (also see text of fact checking). As Joe Biden mentioned afterwards, “It’s hard to debate a liar.”.

Several other perspectives:

Mary Trump (Trump’s niece) on Substack:

While Biden’s performance is rightly being criticized, it was the debate moderators who allowed Donald to steamroll the truth with an incessant stream of increasingly bizarre and dangerous lies — that he, not President Biden instituted a cap on insulin, that blue states allow women and their doctors to commit infanticide, and that Nancy Pelosi  was somehow responsible for January 6th — while refusing to answer the questions asked of him. Why Jake Tapper and Dana Bash chose to abdicate their journalistic responsibility in service to a man who is an enemy of American democracy and a free press only they know, but that abdication should be a much bigger story, I know who Joe Biden really is. And I know who my uncle really is.  And I’ll take the decent guy with the sore throat who believes in democracy over the rapist insurrectionist monster every single time.

https://marytrump.substack.com/p/why-im-still-with-president-biden

Seth Abraham on Substack:

Biden will not step away from the 2024 election cycle because it would hand the presidency, beyond any doubt, to a confirmed rapist, serial sexual assailant, active insurrectionist, convicted felon, pathological liar, malignant narcissistic sociopath, gleeful adulterer, career criminal, unrepentant con man, traitorous would-be U.S. dictator, misogynist, antisemite, racist, homophobe, transphobe, Islamophobe, and budding war criminal.

https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/the-extremely-simple-reason-maga

Heather Cox Richardson on Substack:

Tonight was the first debate between President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and by far the most striking thing about the debate was the overwhelming focus among pundits immediately afterward about Biden’s appearance and soft, hoarse voice as he rattled off statistics and events. Virtually unmentioned was the fact that Trump lied and rambled incoherently, ignored questions to say whatever he wanted; refused to acknowledge the events of January 6, 2021; and refused to commit to accepting the result of the 2024 presidential election, finally saying he would accept it only if it met his standards for fairness. 

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-27-2024

The American people have a choice between a convicted felon and liar, and a man who has fought to preserve democracy and improve our way of life. I am going with the second one. 

What If Trump Wins? An interactive web site

Via an email newsletter from Eileen Flanagan, I found out about an interactive web site/story called “What If Trump Wins?”. The site presents the reader with an initial choice – does Trump or Biden win the 2024 US presidential election? Based on what result the reader selects, a set of other choices is presented along with a narrative to fit the initial choice. From the main site page, there are 25 different ways that the story ends. The site was created by the advocacy group Choose Democracy, which conducted trainings back in the 2020 election to prepare for a coup or possible electoral mischief. I “played” the story both ways (first selecting Trump and following the suggested actions, then selecting Biden and following different actions). I thought it was an excellent “thought exercise” which provided insight in how a Trump presidency might unfold. Check it out – it might make you want to get involved in the election!