Kamala wraps up her coronation

Chicago

Pour one out for the Beyhive. For the bulk of the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the topic of conversation was: who is the mystery guest? The speculation ran rampant but was mostly focused on the myth of the goddess — Beyoncé herself was going to descend from the sky to affirm the ascendance of Kamala Harris. And then it turned out that the bright shiny mystery box contained… nothing at all. Too bad, so sad. But this itself seems in keeping with the 2024 cycle, where all promises decay into a great big pile of fail.

For the delegates and consultants, this was a perfectly fine convention, logistical failures aside — a daily hammering of the impending evil and danger of a second Donald Trump term. But for those outside of Chicago, the absence of all the things that could boost Democrats in 2024 — a big celebrity glow up, a powerful pair of speeches from Harris and Tim Walz, a coherent narrative on the economy or immigration — could limit the appeal of this convention and the polling boost the party expected to gain. There is a very real possibility that every boost Democrats could’ve expected to receive has already been given to them, and that the battleground polling stays essentially unchanged. This would be bad for the narrative of Democratic momentum, and embolden the Trump-Vance team headed into September’s upcoming debates.

The problem for Democrats is fear. They are deeply afraid of putting Kamala Harris or Tim Walz out there in unscripted and open communication environments with the American media. They’re worried about Kamala because she sounds stupid. They’re worried about Tim because he seems like a pathological liar. Every interaction is a moment of risk. For a campaign that doesn’t care about this — like Trump’s — the risk doesn’t matter. But for a campaign that views itself as carefully scripted, constructed and built in intentional ways designed for TikTok and Instagram clips, even the small stumbles are maximized. If people believed Kamala and Walz were authentic, this wouldn’t be an issue — but they don’t, and nothing in Chicago changed that.

The problem for Republicans is the lack of focus. Infuriated by the fact that the traditional media has not held her to account, Trump is slowly re-emerging from his more restrained schedule post-assassination attempt. The bulletproof glass box creates an appearance of an old man locked in a cage, which he has to break out of in order to have the kind of campaign effort that makes him thrive on the trail. No one wants to see Trump in a fishbowl, they want the great white shark to hunt at sea. So perhaps the key here is for the Florida camp to take a line from the great Chicago entertainment property of the moment (shout out Mr. Beef): “Let it rip.”

-Ben Domenech

On our radar

TESTING, TESTING President Joe Biden will restart a federal program that provided Americans with free at-home Covid-19 tests. Households will be able to order three to four tests in late September. 

A GOLF APART Florida governor Ron DeSantis announced plans to build golf courses, hotels and pickleball courts on some state park land. Some Republicans balked at the idea, which was proposed by the Department of Environmental Protection. 

‘WE’RE IN DANGER HERE’ A man who made threats to assassinate former president Donald Trump was arrested in Arizona on Friday after a manhunt. Trump abruptly ended an interview with NewsNation after the reporter asked him about the incident, warning, “We’re in danger here.” 

RFK joins forces with Trump 

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who switched from Democrat to Independent last October, has now switched to Republican — kinda — as the Kennedy campaign made a court filing earlier today to request that RFK be removed from the Pennsylvania ballot “as a result of today’s endorsement of Donald Trump.” 

RFK gave a speech in Arizona on Friday in which he ripped the Democrats for their undemocratic elevation of Kamala Harris to the top of the ticket and described their convention as “smoke and mirrors and balloons in a highly produced Chicago circus.” He said that his decision to endorse Trump was a “spiritual” one based on their shared desire to end chronic disease in the United States and get “giant for-profit corporations” out of government agencies. 

“If President Trump is elected and honors his word, the vast burden of chronic disease that now demoralizes and bankrupts the country will disappear,” he said. “President Trump has told he wants this to be his legacy. I’m choosing to believe that this time he will follow through. His son, his biggest donors and his closest friends all support this objective.” 

He admitted that backing Trump will “a difficult sacrifice for my wife and children but worthwhile if there‘s even a small chance of saving these kids.”

RFK’s wife, Curb Your Enthusiasm star Cheryl Hines, is reportedly not pleased about her husband’s endorsement.

But as to whether Kennedy’s imminent dropout will help or hurt Harris or Trump more is hard to say; the Kennedy campaign, which commanded 10 percent of the presidential vote at one point, made no secret of having courted both parties. RFK’s running mate Nicole Shanahan said this week, “There’s two options that we’re looking at. One is staying in, forming that new party, but we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and [Tim] Walz presidency, because we draw votes from Trump. Or we walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump. We walk away from that and we explain to our base why we’re making this decision.”

The Spectator’s Ben Domenech posits “regardless if [RFK] decides to throw his support behind Donald Trump, it will serve as a politically meaningful boost to the Republican campaign in multiple battleground states where Kennedy has gained ballot access in the past few months.”

–Teresa Mull

Inside ‘Hotties for Harris’ 

Chicago

The social highlight of the DNC was Tuesday night’s “Hotties for Harris” party at the Moonlight Studios, which was apparently thrown together at ten days’ notice at a cost of over $200,000. Like much of the convention, the event was targeted at Gen Z “creators” and influencers — and was orchestrated by Democratic strategist Liz Plank, a thirty-seven-year-old Canadian. “Hotties for Harris, let’s go!” the DJ cried, again and again and again.

The level of attention to detail at the soirée was remarkable. “TRUMP-VANCE SEX ENDS NOV 5th” announced a mock sale sign. “EVERYTHING MUST GO!!! CHOICE ENDING SOON.” The bar served “Madam President’s Spicy ’Rita” and “A Walz on the Beach.”

In the games room attendees could play a feminist mini golf course, or “whac-a-weird policy,” or “abortion access skeeball.”

There was a sex supermarket with free plan B, UTI tests and “f*ck Project 2025” condoms. The bathrooms were split into “male” and “female” — outmodishly — but there were tampons and pregnancy tests in the men’s room.

There was a sex supermarket with free plan B, UTI tests and “f*ck Project 2025” condoms. The bathrooms were split into “male” and “female” — outmodishly — but there were tampons and pregnancy tests in the men’s room.

A “wall of weirdos” displayed images of Trump, his sons, Amy Coney Barrett and several others. The oddest inclusion was perhaps Spectator sweetheart Dr. Sebastian Gorka — hardly one of the leading lights of the American right. Cockburn asked a host about his inclusion. “I’m twenty,” she said, “I was thirteen when Trump was elected. I don’t really know who most of those people are.”

Cockburn watched as Michael Tracey and his intern — covering the convention as “creators”’for Glenn Greenwald’s Rumble channel — received a sex tarot card reading, where each card featured a sex position. She received the “wheelbarrow.” “What’s the most Republican card you have in there?” he asked. “I actually keep a special card for people like you,” the reader said, reaching into her back pocket to show him one that read “JUSTICE” and depicted a man on all fours preparing to be pegged by his female partner.

Taylor Lorenz — the Washington Post tech columnist over whom the sword of Damocles presently dangles due to her sharing a meme on her “Close Friends” Instagram Story — has a longstanding theory that journalists are ultimately “influencers,” in how they leverage their brands through media appearances to draw more attention to their content. The Hotties for Harris” party offered a helpful way to delineate between a journalist and an influencer: influencers are excruciatingly well-dressed compared to hacks, who look like dug-up corpses in crumpled suits because they are over the age of twenty-five. Lorenz was spotted at the party sipping on one of the coconuts they were distributing, as was the New York Times’s Ken Bensinger, New York magazine’s Ben Jacobs, the Independent’s Andrew Feinberg and Claudia Conway and her brunette girlfriend. Parkland teen David Hogg, after cutting shapes on the dancefloor, told Lorenz it was the best party he’d ever been to — plausibly, given that he went to Harvard.

–Cockburn