Great Call, Joe

Nikki Haley said in February that "the first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to win this election" - a prediction she may come to regret.

Well, every once in a while an old dog can learn new tricks. The Democratic Party managed to get its shit together at the eleventh hour and convince Biden to set his ego aside and bow out of the race, giving us a chance test to test out Nikki Haley’s own prophecy from earlier this year. The last paragraph here:

Kamala Harris is the most likely nominee at this point, though some on the left are calling for an open convention to let a bunch of candidates battle it out, and Dem-turned-Independent Senator Joe Manchin is reportedly considering re-registering as a Democrat in order to throw his oil-stained hat in the ring. (Go straight to hell, sir.)

Trump is, of course, crapping his pants at the prospect of having to debate someone younger than him who can string a coherent sentence together—especially a career prosecutor, considering that he’s a convicted felon whose been found civilly liable for rape. His statement today:

Honestly, I have never been a huge Kamala fan myself, considering her criminal justice record and her complicity in funding the genocide in Gaza. That said, I think one of the main reasons she polled at a dismal 3% in the 2020 primary—behind Biden, Buttigieg, Warren, and even Mike Bloomberg—is that Democratic voters were choosing who to nominate then based on perceived electability, and she is a Black woman in a country that has never elected a woman at all. Biden appeared to be the safest choice, even though he was quite old and had been vocally anti-abortion earlier in his career.

We’re in a general election now, and faced with a choice between Trump and Harris as the threat of Project 2025 looms, I think Harris actually stands a chance with the right running mate. Sen. Mark Kelly (Ariz.) and Gov. Josh Shapiro (Pa.) are both broadly popular Democrats in swing states, so they appear to be the frontrunners at this point.

If you need a little more convincing to get aboard the coconut train, despite whatever reservations you may have or have had about Harris, I recommend reading this thoughtful conversation between Rebecca Traister and Brittney Cooper. I, too, wish the Democrats could nominate someone who’s opposed the genocide. (She’s expected take a “tougher tone” on Israel than Biden has, but I am not sure exactly what that means.) Still, a Trump presidency would certainly not be any better for Gazans than a Harris presidency, and the former would be considerably worse for the planet and most people on it. And there’s zero chance of the Democrats nominating someone like Bernie or Rashida Tlaib.

So Kamala is looking like our best option at this point. And if this is how the glass ceiling is broken after two centuries of American presidents—especially considering that Trump got Roe v. Wade overturned, sexually assaults people, just walked onto the RNC stage to a rendition of “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World,” and called Haiti and African nations “shithole countries”—I will at least rejoice in the poetic justice of him being taken down by a Black woman.