Brighter days ahead

J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

Donald Trump turned a bloody trickle into a raging torrent. He dramatized his attempted assassination and claimed God’s divine intervention, while standing next to the fire jacket of the murdered chief with his name carelessly misspelled on the back. What followed was 93 minutes of abject weirdness, malevolence, inanity and incoherent bluster. The speech set records. Unsurprisingly the longest convention speech in history was also the most boring.

I tried to imagine myself as a member of Mar-a-Lago, and subjecting myself to this every night. It’s incomprehensible why so many people are enthralled to a stew of idiocies mixed together in a sinister incoherence that establishes Trump as real life’s closest proximation of what a hybrid of Mussolini and Chauncey Gardiner combined together in one of Elon Musk’s labs might be. Yet, to each their own. Incredibly, there is a line of people who want to pay the million-dollar initiation fee to hear it, as there is a convention hall full of cynics, who will endure it, and cultists who bathe in every word.

Astonishingly, CNN’s Van Jones was overcome by the contagion of the crowd. He compared the energy in Milwaukee to the DNC convention where Barack Obama accepted the nomination in front of 75,000 people in Denver speaking about possibility. I can’t speak to the energy in the stadium that night, but I remember watching Obama’s speech with John McCain. When Obama finished, McCain turned to me and said, “We might be f#@$ed.”

I replied, “Definitely.”

During the next days President Biden will bow to reality, and like George Washington before him, demonstrate the power of humility to defeat arrogance and nurture freedom. He will step aside in the campaign, and make way for the generational change that cannot be postponed. The torch will be passed and carried forward.

Donald Trump and JD Vance will be defeated 108 days from now by the American people, who will reject their extremism, corruption, fraudulence and malice.

The burden of taking the fight to MAGA fascism falls to the Democratic Party, which must get ready to get tough against a ticket that is baring its fangs like it always has.

This ad was made for the Tim Ryan campaign in 2022 against JD Vance by Suzy Shuster, one of the best ad makers I’ve ever worked with, and someone who sadly was denied the credit she deserved for some of the Lincoln Project’s most effective and devastating 2020 ads. The ad below never ran for a variety of reasons, but it should have, and a version of it must in the presidential election. Every word of the ad is true, and this is the fight at hand. The lines are clear, not blurred. The stakes are enormous. The issues are very real. The extremism is very real.

There are some important principles that Democrats must embrace during the next days. I worry that a failure to do so will lead to catastrophe in November. Here they are:

1. The United States has inaugurations not coronations. Joe Biden was vice president, not prince of Wilmington. There is no royal succession and Kamala Harris isn’t duchess of California. The convention process must be open, transparent and fair. Kamala Harris should make clear that she does not want Joe Biden’s endorsement. She must earn the nomination.

2. The convention process in which delegates choose the nominee in the case of the vacancy is a democratic process. Period. The activists and delegates of the Democratic Party have an immense responsibility and must exercise prudence, pragmatism and integrity in their choice, Whatever it may be, it will be decided by a vote and a ballot.

Vice President Harris is the clear frontrunner to be the Democratic nominee, despite carrying the burden of having been the Biden administration border czar, and a part of one of the least popular administrations in modern history that is ending on a footnote of unnecessary humiliation. There are several important questions for VP Harris to deal with immediately. Who is her team? Who will run the campaign?

Certainly it cannot be the Biden brain trust and his team of George Custers who lost honesty as an issue to Donald Trump, and architected the first implosion of a presumptive nominee’s campaign. Presidential politics is a team sport, and Kamala Harris needs a world-class and extremely aggressive team.

The list of vice presidential nominees for Kamala Harris should absolutely include Tim Ryan, whom I believe is the strongest possible candidate for the job. He would be ready on day one, and can take the fight to JD Vance. This remains a rematch election, and the Ryan component would add to the great drama. The Harris team should watch Tim Ryan perform at the 2022 Fox Town hall debate, his debate against Vance and his concession speech. Harris-Ryan would be a formidable candidate, and Tim Ryan is a perfect candidate for a race that will be decided in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. Tim is a midwest labor Democrat grounded in faith, family, country and the values that JD Vance claims in his charade.

Cheer up everyone. There are good days ahead. Donald Trump’s lucky streak is about to run out. His apogee in 2024 was the moment he walked out on the stage after being introduced by a faux tough guy who beat his wife, which marks another low for the filthy MAGA cause. It’s all downhill from here for The Don.

The good guys are going to win, so long as the political suicide prevention plan is followed. Through the storm we go. Remember, sometimes the only way out is through.

This is going to be an exciting month, and the whole world is about to see how resilient the United States and great Democratic Party are.

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