August 21, 2024

Wednesday, August 21, 2024. Annette’s News Roundup.

Before the Roundup moves to Day 2 of the DNC.

Woke up yesterday and watched an ad I missed, shown on the first night in the DNC.

Watch it now. 👇 You will be glad you did.

We felt the Hillary-Kamala connection on Monday night. Last night we felt the Barack-Kamala ties.

DNC 2024: Inside the Kamala Harris, Barack Obama Alliance

The Obama-Kamala Merger Long compared to each other but never close, he’s now giving her advice and she’s hiring his people.

Barack Obama listened with interest when Kamala Harris dropped by his office in Washington to make the case for her presidential candidacy and to ask for his advice. There was an endless stream of commentary comparing the two — both Black politicians with immigrant parents who reside ideologically in the party’s center. He wasn’t so sure about the parallels, but he was desperate to vanquish Donald Trump and he’d made no secret of his belief that Harris could represent the future of the Democratic Party. By the time she walked out, Obama could clearly see her political promise, but thought she needed to figure out how exactly she would appeal to the vast swaths of voters who’d never heard of her.

But that was 2019. What a difference five years makes.

Today, Obama is all in for Harris. The two have spoken multiple times in the weeks since Joe Biden decided to stand down, according to multiple Democrats briefed on the campaign and Obama’s activities this summer.

Sitting in Martha’s Vineyard, he’s fielded her calls about Biden’s decision, her campaign messaging, and her running-mate options. (Obama didn’t push for any particular candidate but emphasized to Harris the importance of finding a governing partner with whom she felt comfortable.)

Obama, these people say, is so far impressed with Harris’s blockbuster campaign start, though the always-cautious ex-president has warned political allies that her operation still has significant work to do before it can feel confident about beating Trump. To that end, Obama has been in touch with Harris’s top advisers — a growing number of whom used to work for him — as they map out her strategy for the fall, offering help and input. On Tuesday, both Barack and Michelle Obama will give Harris their most prominent boost yet during a pair of Democratic National Convention appearances in Chicago that they hope will set a unifying tone for the final weeks of the campaign.

Both Obamas have spoken to friends about their appreciation of the fact that Harris was an early supporter. But though the two pols met occasionally through the years, their respective rises were hardly tied together and their relationship has hardly always been substantial.

Harris and Obama first met two decades ago, when she was the San Francisco district attorney and he was an Illinois state senator on the rise campaigning for a Senate seat. That meeting wasn’t as memorable for Harris as when, four years later, she flew to frigid Iowa to knock on doors for Obama’s presidential campaign. The pair stayed in occasional touch once Obama became president, and he raised money for her 2010 attorney-general race — and in 2013 had to apologize for calling her “the best-looking attorney general in the country” at a San Francisco fundraiser. Still, their political trajectories never quite met: When he asked if she wanted to be considered to replace Eric Holder as attorney general in 2015, she demurred with an upcoming Senate run, and her long-term future, in mind. Obama paid little attention to Harris’s subsequent campaign, but he brought her name up multiple times when interviewers asked him who might represent Democrats’ future after Trump won in 2016.

Obama watched Harris’s Senate work closely during his self-imposed exile from daily politics; although he briefly became interested in her 2020 campaign, the common pundit comparisons between the two struck him as superficial. (Their political messages, let alone policy emphases and campaign approaches, had little in common.) Still, he counseled Biden through his running-mate selection process and supported his choice of Harris despite her poor showing in the primaries.

They spoke only sporadically once Harris became VP, even though they shared many donors and influential fans, and their political inner orbits overlapped only slightly. A few of Harris’s friends had gone to work for Obama’s campaigns and administration through the years — they shared a pollster, David Binder — but most of her allies, donors, and consultants were based in California and his were from Chicago and Washington. So many plugged-in Democrats read her decision to hire a squad of Obama allies to run a revamped Biden campaign as a statement of intent that she would hew to Obama’s political strategy more than ever before.

David Plouffe, Obama’s 2008 campaign manager who remains close to the ex-president, was the most prominent hire. (Obama encouraged him to join.) But he was not alone. Stephanie Cutter, a former deputy campaign manager and strategist, and Mitch Stewart, an organizing operative who remained close to Obama after he left office, are also new to the team, as is former communications director Jennifer Palmieri, who is helping Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff.

Other close Obama aides have risen in prominence since Harris ascended on the ticket: She has been relying on Adam Frankel, a former speechwriter, and brought Binder, the pollster, onto the campaign, too. Even before hiring her new team, Harris tapped Holder, a close Obama friend, to run the vetting process as she searched for a running mate. Obama has watched her hiring process closely, and he still speaks regularly with Jen O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chair who had previously been one of his own political advisers, and has committed to cutting more videos for Harris.

What remains to be seen is how, exactly, Obamaism itself shapes Harris’s appeal. She has already been much more active on the trail and focused on a vision for the future than Biden had been but has so far been light on a governing agenda or policy specifics. She and Obama are both treading carefully around the question of what it means to pivot aggressively to the future in her public messaging; Harris’s quick embrace of the Obamans struck some clued-in Democrats as an implicit criticism of the current president or at least his political operation.

Plouffe, for one, has not always seen eye-to-eye with top Biden advisers, and Biden has often privately blamed the ex-president’s advisers for encouraging Obama to push him out of the 2016 race. Biden remains frustrated by the way his defenestration played out, making it clear to friends that he is especially unamused about what he perceives to be Obama’s role in it — whether that was actively discussing his ouster or simply declining to defend him more. (Obama was not orchestrating the push, but he did speak with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer as pressure mounted on Biden.)

Over and over, Obama has reminded those who ask that the race is likely to be close and that Democrats cannot afford to be stuck in rounds of internal fighting, not when there are just three months until Election Day. One person who’s spoken with the former president about the election was matter-of-fact about Harris’s campaign: “In a sprint election, she’s our horse.” (New York Magazine).

Kamala Harris’s Tan Suit Surprise.

The Democratic candidate for president made an unexpected appearance on Day 1 of the party convention.

When Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, took the stage on Monday night on Day 1 of the Democratic National Convention, it was surprising for two reasons.

First, that she had popped up to speak at all, rather than simply waiting her official turn to accept her party’s official nomination on Thursday and taking her seat as the guest of honor alongside her vice-presidential pick, Gov. Tim Walz, and their families.

And second, that she had popped up to speak (albeit briefly, and in praise of President Biden) while wearing a tan suit.

A tan suit!

After all, there are few garments less likely to show up at the public performances that are the major party presidential conventions. The usual dress code is one of straightforward red, white and blue: suits and ties, dresses, skirt suits. The point is patriotism in the most obvious sense.

The last time a tan suit made political waves, it was also late August, and the person wearing it was President Barack Obama. The occasion was a news conference on Iraq and Syria, but the response from a large swath of the watching public was shock! horror! at the outfit. Peter King, the Republican congressman from New York, said he thought “the suit was a metaphor for his lack of seriousness.” Lou Dobbs of Fox called it “unpresidential.” It was such a sticky topic that jokes about the choice became part of Mr. Obama’s repertoire. They also became part of the late-night arsenal.

None of which could have escaped Ms. Harris, for whom every detail of the most important convention of her political life will have been choreographed. If she was picking up the tan suit baton and running with it, there was most likely a reason.

Not surprisingly, commentators on social media jumped on the choice — the general interpretation being that Ms. Harris was subtly poking fun at past conservative horror over the tan suit. That she was using an otherwise conservative-seeming pantsuit to quietly underscore the brat side of her character.

“The troll game is strong,” one user posted on Threads.

“I yelled and then had to explain to my kid why the tan suit was an expert level choice for her,” another wrote.

The suggestion that the suit, which came from the French label Chloé, designed by Chemena Kamali, whose gown Ms. Harris wore to the state dinner for Kenya, was a dig at her opponents may or may not be true, but it bolsters the narrative around Ms. Harris’s personality, her facility with memes and her general pop culture cred. It also serves to connect her historic candidacy — the first Black woman to become a major party nominee for president, the first woman of South Asian descent — to that of Mr. Obama, another historic figure.

And it worked as a sort of curtain-raiser and tone-setter for the convention. Ms. Harris needs to pace herself — to build to the moment of her acceptance speech — and wearing a tan suit was both a fairly innocuous opening choice and a sartorial next-stage moment; a break with the conventions of conventions. A choice that said something about a focus on individual stories, rather than group flag think.

Ms. Harris was not the only speaker on Day 1 to take a personal approach to image-making. Hillary Clinton’s cream tweed jacket and white trousers spoke directly to her own historic acceptance speech at the Democratic convention in 2016, when she wore a white pantsuit as a nod to the suffragist movement and started a movement. Jill Biden last wore her gunmetal blue sequin Ralph Lauren dress in 2022 for a White House event named in honor of her husband’s favorite line from the poet Seamus Heaney, one he has repeated multiple times throughout his presidency: “when hope and history rhyme.”

Peggy Flanagan, the lieutenant governor of Minnesota and the co-chair of the convention, who will become the first female Native American governor if Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz win the election, wore a dress and jacket by Jamie Okuma, an Indigenous designer.

And Jasmine Crockett, the representative from Texas who got into a verbal spat over appearance with Marjorie Taylor Greene during a committee meeting, showed up in an unapologetic black pantsuit piped in white, with a big brooch on the lapel.

None of the looks were standard political costumery. All of them acted as a frame and form of self-expression for people involved. The result was a little chaotic and kind of fun; a departure from the norm — and a contrast from the red, white and blue dressing that had been the standard at the Republican convention in July. As for Ms. Harris, the tan suit served one final purpose. Every time the camera panned to her sitting in her box smiling and waving at the crowd and the speakers, it triggered another frenzy of speculation about the choice. It was simply one more tool to center her in the conversation as a strategist without having to say another word. (New York Times).

Day One’s subtitle could have been Passing the Torch.

Day Two’s subtitle could have been Finishing the Paperwork on the Pour Over Night.

The line up last night was -

6 o’clock hour (all times Eastern)

Jason Carter, grandson of former President Jimmy Carter

Jack Schlossberg, the cousin of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running as an independent, and the only grandson of former President John F. Kennedy

7 o’clock hour

Stephanie Grisham, a former press secretary during the Trump administration

Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

8 p.m. hour.

A ceremonial roll call and remarks by the Minnesota and California delegations.

During the Texas roll call, which the former head of Planned Parenthood and daughter of former Texas Governor Ann Richards headed, this happened. 👇

9 o’clock hour.

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont

Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, who denounced

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico

10 o’clock hour

Angela Alsobrooks, an official in Maryland running for Senate.

Mayor John Giles of Mesa, Ariz., a Republican

Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois

Doug Emhoff, Kamala Harris’s husband

He loves his wife.

13 minutes.

Michelle Obama, former First Lady

“Something wonderfully magical is in the air.”
“Hope is making a comeback.”

21 minutes.

11 o’clock hour

Former President Barack Obama (source. New York Times).

33 minutes.

“I don’t know about you but I am fired up.”

The Vice President and her running mate were in Milwaukee last night, poking a finger in the eye of Donald Trump by holding their rally in a packed Fiserv Forum where the Republicans held their failed convention.

People at the Fiserv Forum watched the activities at United Center, and television audiences watched activities in both Wisconsin and Illinois.

And then this happened. 👇

See you tomorrow.

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