Longtime Dem consultant Doug Sosnik, who before July 21st was not sugarcoating President Joe Biden’s prospects, tells Politico Playbook that now he sees Vice President Kamala Harris on the cusp of transcending merely campaigning to leading a movement on the scale of Reagan in 1980, Obama in 2008, and Trump in 2016: “In my political lifetime, there have been three political movements in presidential politics. And to be clear, a movement in politics is way bigger than a campaign.”

“Harris is not the leader of a movement now. She’s still the leader of a campaign. But she has been making strides and she could – by the end of the month, particularly if the convention goes well in Chicago – she could be at a point where she’s a head of a movement which is bigger than a candidate, and that’s pretty much unstoppable. She’s not that far from being there. And I think it’s a combination of her circumstances, but also, probably more importantly, how she’s handled herself as a candidate so far,” said Sosnik, who we’ll have to look to for a review after the DNC next week.

#KamalaHarrisForward I believe VP Kamala Harris and her VP pick Tim Walz are our best chance to move forward. They are our best chance to push back on encroaching fascism and threats to democracy, and our best chance for creating the world we all desire and deserve. Politics is… pic.twitter.com/8tTuLfIbEw

— Shepard Fairey (@OBEYGIANT) August 15, 2024

This new art from Shepard Fairey, the creator of the iconic “Hope” poster of Barack Obama, is great… Except for the way the lips are colored since it makes the Veep look like a freaking vampire or bloodthirsty cannibal. Like we get the color needs to be integrated somewhere but this is off-putting at best, a flaw that will be weaponized by MAGA propaganda at worst – and likeliest.

“Two years ago, I signed the Inflation Reduction Act—the largest climate investment in history that is lowering energy costs and creating good-paying union jobs, while taking on Big Pharma to lower prescription drug costs—with Vice President Harris casting the tie-breaking vote. Already, this law is lowering health care costs for millions of families, strengthening energy security, and creating more than 330,000 clean energy jobs according to outside groups. It has also unleashed $265 billion in clean energy and manufacturing investments from the private sector in the last two years—part of the nearly $900 billion invested in America since we took office.”

“This historic legislation is fiscally responsible. It lowers the deficit over the long run by cutting wasteful spending on special interests and making big corporations and the wealthy pay more of their fair share. And just yesterday, my Administration announced lower prescription drug prices for the first ten drugs that have been negotiated by Medicare, which will cut the prices of drugs used to treat blood clots, heart disease, cancer, and more by nearly 40 percent to 80 percent, and save taxpayers $6 billion in the first year alone,” says President Biden in a statement.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign this week began buying up ad spots running during the day time of Fox News, when the audience is thought to be more ideologically diverse than the fans of the propagandists in the evening and primetime programming, the campaign tells Axios.

Most of the ads are pro-Harris and biographical, focusing on her middle class upbringing and introducing herself to voters, rather than negatively trashing disgraced former President Trump.

This is what being in a cult looks like:  South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace cannot be brought to say adjudicated rapist and GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump said something wrong when he questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’s race.  For more than one minute, Mace inartfully dodges saying, “What Trump said was wrong!”  Instead, she claims to have not seen the now-famous statement.

Federal investigators are reportedly investigating the sale of a parcel of land previously owned by the city of Vineland, New Jersey that was flipped within months to a Michigan company for seven times the original selling price by companies partially owned by two Republican state senators, Politico reports.

State Sen. Michael Testa, who happens to be the Cumberland Co. GOP chair, and state Sen. Doug Steinhardt, the head of Warren Co.’s Republican Party, are members in two of the four partnerships that bought a parcel of land for $1.15 million in October 2022.

About a year later, after only getting two easements for the property at a cost of one dollar each, the partnerships flipped the property for $8.4 million to an out-of-state property development group that is building a cold storage unit on the site.

Talking about awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the wife of now-dead GOP financier Sheldon Adelson when he occupied the Oval Office, convicted felon and Republican standard-bearer Donald Trump compared the civilian award handed out by the President to the Medal of Honor, the military award recognizing heroism and acts of valor in battle.

“That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian,” the traitorous tangerine drones.  “It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version.  It’s actually much better because, everyone who gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, that’s soldiers.  They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.  She gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman.  It’s great.”

Ukraine’s incursion into Russian territory continues to make gains, with Kyiv announcing its troops have taken Sudzha, a Russian town of around 5,500 people six miles inside the border, the Associated Press reports.  Ukraine isn’t planning on leaving anytime soon either:  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zylenskyy announced the army would set up a regional command center in the town.

Ukraine’s attack in the Kursk region reportedly came as a surprise to the Kremlin and forced the evacuation of more than 100,000 civilians from the area.  It also prompted Aleksandr Lukashenko, the President of Russia-aligned Belarus, to plead for Russia and Ukraine to start peace negotiations.  Lukashenko repeatedly implored Kyiv to remain peaceful towards Belarus, which moved thousands of troops to its border with Ukraine in case Kyiv opts to expand operations.

House GOP campaign chief Richard Hudson on Thursday convened members for an all-hands virtual meeting to tell them he’s seen a significant shift towards the Dems in polling as they unite around Vice President Kamala Harris, who is “peaking really at the right time,” and their fundraising numbers are off the charts, which fucking sucks for the GOP, Politico’s Olivia Beavers reports. One member described Hudson’s spiel as “sounding the alarm,” and another said there’s a lot of still work to be done to “define” Harris (lol) as a San Francisco liberal and the border czar and blah blah blah.

Jesus Dork House Speaker Mike Johnson admitted that the “numbers are ominous” but they’ve got great candidates and so on and so forth. What’s funny to remember is this: They left town for the rest of the summer three weeks ago, on day four of Harris’s campaign launch, back when they could very plausibly still say “Well alright, she raised a ton of money and is getting a lot of media attention but whatever. All those contributions were being held back because Biden and of course Dems are excited they got rid of the vegetable. She’s still the failed border czar, a DEI hire, a loser Marxist. We got this,” and now it’s like “OH MY GOD THE FUCKING MEDIA IS FUCKING US AGAIN! WHY HASN’T SHE BEEN DEFINED YET? DEFINE NOW! TRUMP NEEDS TO GET ON POLICY MESSAGE!”

And there’s still 25 days to go before they can get back in front of cameras consistently on Capitol Hill so they can try to do the work Trump won’t. Then again it’s easier on them that they don’t have to answer for every deranged thing the fat bastard posts on Truth Social every day.

The US Secret Service will surround the podium with bulletproof glass as one of the additional protective measures should adjudicated rapist Donald Trump, the Republicans’ choice to lead their ticket, opt to have outdoor rallies in the future, the Washington Post reports.

At the advice of the agency, Trump stopped holding outdoor rallies after he was winged by a bullet fired by an apparently depressed Republican loner who had access to an assault rifle.  Bulletproof glass is provided and installed by the Pentagon when the President or Vice President speaks outdoors, but candidates normally don’t get such measures.  The agency noted other, non-specified measure would also be taken, likely including the use of drones to scout the area in real-time.

Vice President Kamala Harris is making a massive increase of the housing supply a central part of her economic pitch to voters fucked over by costs and is set to propose an initiative to build 3 million new housing units by 2029 in a speech in North Carolina on Friday, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Not so fresh off NABJ, Florida, and Twitter glitches, Donald Trump intends to deliver another self-obsessed rant full of his own personal grievances to distract from his toxic Project 2025 agenda, unpopular running mate, and increasing detachment from the reality of the voters who will decide this election. These remarks will not be artificial intelligence, but they certainly will lack intelligence.”

“Banning abortion, raising costs on families, confusing basic facts, cutting Social Security and Medicare, blocking border security, and being publicly unstable, unfit, and unwell will not help his struggling campaign for president,” said the Harris campaign ahead of this shitshow.

Mike Pence replacement JD Vance on Thursday told reporters on the campaign plane – not sure if it’s still Jeffrey Epstein’s old jet – that brainwormed candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr should drop out of the race and endorse convicted felon former President Trump due to similar views on “medical freedom” and “not starting stupid wars,” the Washington Post’s Meyrl Kornfeld reports, adding that Jaydee said Bobby’s “much closer on the issues to President Trump than he is to Kamala Harris.”

“Shortly after Vice President Kamala Harris handed over the podium to President Biden on Thursday, dozens of attendees at a joint event simply stood up and left rather than listen to the retiring commander-in-chief. The rude demonstration was a stark demonstration of the enthusiasm gap among Democrats revved up by Harris’ sudden elevation as the party’s presidential nominee – after Biden regularly suffered low rally attendance replete with heckling,” the New York Post reports in the lede to their BREAKING news story titled “Crowd leaves joint Biden-Harris event early after VP hands off lectern to lame-duck prez,” flashed on a yellow banner atop all pages on their site.

If the takeaway from the story is supposed to be something besides “Cry more libs! Biden’s popularity is taking a BIG HIT going into the fall campaign season! The footage of this event doesn’t lie! No way he’s getting a second term now when his own voters are walking on him!” then we’d love to hear it. Like everything they write is in this instance is true and sure, it’s embarrassing to Biden.

We guess. But… You know… We don’t need to explain what the issue is here so much as raise the question of what the actual fuck drove this editorial decision. Is this like complicated grief or something playing out in real time for the Post’s readership? Why would a partisan media outlet want to do this to themselves and their audience? You can’t call it a “coping method” because it isn’t coping. It’s an act of spiritual and psychological self-harm also being abusively inflicted on readers.

Former NASCAR driver Kurt Busch doesn’t still have the skill and focus necessary it takes to win behind the wheel. If he did, he wouldn’t have been caught by cops in North Carolina driving 20 miles over the speed limit with a 0.17 BAC, as People Magazine reports. Whatever dreams of a comeback he may have still had are over with if he can’t have a few beers and get away with drunk driving.

Not only did convicted felon former President Trump disclaim any knowledge of what is reality and what’s generated by AI and contradict his insistence on one day only of voting when he showed up Wednesday to cast a ballot in Florida’s primary election, he did it illegally, Florida Bulldog reports.

“There’s absolutely nothing in the Constitution or in state law that would enable him to vote. He’s a convicted felon and the Constitution says in plain English that unless you’ve completed your sentence, you’re not entitled to vote,” said lawyer and former Florida appeals judge Phil Padovano.

Governor Ron DeSantis had in June promised to move to restore Trump’s right to vote immediately and then did not do it immediately. Thus no clemency has been granted and Trump violated the law prohibiting felons who have not completed their sentences and restitution from voting.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign on Thursday moved to shut down convicted felon former President Trump and eyeliner-wearing Mike Pence replacement JD Vance’s attempts to set the terms of engagement between the two tickets, with Harris comms director Mike Tyler writing “The debate about debates is over. Trump’s campaign accepted our proposal for three debates – two presidential and a vice presidential debate. Assuming Donald Trump actually shows up on September 10 to debate Vice President Harris, then Governor Walz will see JD Vance on October 1 and the American people will have another opportunity to see the vice president and Donald Trump on the debate stage in October. Voters deserve to see the candidates for the highest office in the land share their competing visions for our future. The more they play games, the more insecure and unserious Trump and Vance reveal themselves to the American people. Those games end now.”

Shorter version: “See those polling numbers? We’re in charge now, motherfuckers. Deal with it.”

Former Trump White House OMB Chief Russell Vought, one of the chief architects of the Project 2025 plot to destroy American democracy and a guy who the fat fuck claims not to know, got duped into speaking on hidden camera, for two hours, last month to a pair of British journalists who had claimed they were relatives of a wealthy potential backer for the Fourth Reich, CNN reports.

On tape, Vought told the two undercovers from the Centre for Climate Reporting that his Orange Allah had “blessed” his organization and is “very supportive of what we do,” to the surprise of no one with a functioning brain, and that Trump’s attempts to disown it were “graduate-level politics.”

That this Vought guy thinks you need a masters in political science to fucking come up with simply lying about a serious electoral liability says a lot about him and his level of basic competence, that Project 2025 in fruition is probably going to look more like Idi Amin’s regime than Adolf Hitler’s.

In related news, Jaydee on Thursday confirmed he’ll face Minnesota Gov Tim Walz at the October 1st CBS debate but also challenged Walz to a second face-off on CNN September 18th.