USA election update 10: The Vice-Presidential debate

This is #transitzone USA Election Update 10, recorded on Wednesday 2 October 2024.

Just 35 days to go to the 2024 voting day on November the 5th.

Margo Kingston and Peter Clarke watched the vice presidential debate between The Democrats, Governor Tim Walz, running mate to Kamala Harris, and the GOP’s, Senator JD Vance, Donald Trump’s VP pick. The debate was hosted by CBS News in their New York studios.

Neither Peter nor Margo scanned nor consulted other media takes or analyses. including from social media, before recording. What you’ll hear are their uninfluenced comments.

The larger “real world” context was stark. The still unfolding loss of life and widespread destructions from Hurricane Helene. And the threatening regional Middle East war with Israel and Iran, now facing off again after Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and ostensibly Hezbollah.

The contrast between the style and “mood” of this event and the Donald Trump, Kamala Harris debate was striking. This was almost an “old school” encounter with both Vance and Walz choosing, strategically and tactically, at least the veneer of a kind of comity and reasonableness, even fleeting moments of agreement, as opposed to the unrelenting Trump style of bitter, curmudgeonly denunciations and declarations of impending American dystopia.

THE 2024 VICE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE REPLAY:

USA election update 9: Economic policies

This is #transitzone USA Election Update 9, recorded on Saturday 27th of September, 2024.

This last week of the election campaign has seen Donald Trump become even more overheated in his rhetoric. His fixation on whether Kamala Harris had a summer job working for McDonalds about 40 years ago, as she claims, has become a recurring feature of his rally rants. He has not relented an iota on the Springfield, Haitian attacks or his 2020, “rigged” election Big Lie, even as the voting machine company, Smartmatic, settles at the last minute a defamation case with far-right outlet NEWSMAXFox News is next in that litigation queue

But gradually, economic policies are coming into focus with Trump emphasising his across the board tariffs policy and 15% corporate tax offer to encourage manufacturing in the USA plus a grab bag of other throw it against the wall policy promises.

Kamala Harris delivered a major speech followed by a solo cable TV interview around HER economic policies. And yes, “opportunity economy” and ‘middle class” were repeated themes from her as you’d expect. There was some detail.

Peter Clarke, Margo Kingston with their guest, Nicholas Gruen, discuss the “competing” economic policies of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump (such as they are), with under 4o days to go to the USA election voting day on 5 November.

USA election update 8: dogs, cats and geese

This is #transitzone USA Election Update 8, recorded on Wednesday, 18 September.

It is a week since the Kamala Harris, Donald Trump nationally televised debate, which most saw beforehand as a pivotal media event. It was certainly a revealing one. The #USA media journalism sector has been awash with post debate analyses and opining ever since.

When Trump dropped his meme quality, “they’re eating the dogs”, during the debate, it was perceived primarily as part of his unravelling under the repeated needling from Harris. But it’s clearer now that the Springfield Ohio, “they’re eating the pets” lie is central to the Trump, GOP, cult campaign, propaganda operation. GOP VP nominee, JD Vance, in a testy interview with Dana Bash on CNN, admitted that he, “creates these stories” for effect. There has been no credible evidence for the claims.

Springfield has been deeply affected by bomb and other threats against Haitians and lockdowns.

And this week, an armed lurker in the bushes on the perimeter of a Trump golf course was flushed out by the Secret Service shooting in his direction and later arrested, charged with firearm offences. He apparently fired no shots and Trump, who was playing golf there at the time, was unharmed. But the incident has been described almost universally as an “attempted assassination”.

Of course, Trump and the GOP cult campaign have exploited it to the full, again blaming the “inflammatory rhetoric”, criticising Trump, from the Democratic Party, for inducing the violence. Trump’s career long, personal hallmark has been vitriolic, inflammatory rhetoric and “insult politics”.

Margo Kingston and Peter Clarke look back on another febrile week in the USA 2024 election campaign as the Springfield, Ohio situation worsens and GOP propaganda becomes even more bizarre and deceptive.

FORTY SIX DAYS TO GO TO VOTING DAY.

USA 2024 election update 5: The Democrats National Convention

This is the fifth of the #transitzone, USA 2024, presidential election campaign updates, recorded Saturday 24 August.

It has been 34 days since Joe Biden withdrew from the race. A truly extraordinary month in USA political history.

The Democratic Party held its national nominating convention in Chicago for four days this week. But there were only the most minor echoes of the turmoil and police brutality of their roiling 1968 convention, held there in the midst of the Vietnam War and in the aftermath of the withdrawal of Lyndon Baines Johnson from the presidential contest and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F Kennedy.

The expected Pro Palestine protests were muted and overall, non disruptive.

This convention was a smooth, slick, crafted affair with highly co-ordinated rhetoric emphasising the Kamala Harris, Tim Walz themes of freedom, moving forward, renewing democracy and relentlessly describing, attacking, ridiculing their Republican opponent, Donald Trump.

“Fraudster, Philanderer, Felon” was one piece of alliteration a Democratic speaker used. But there was much, much more, including even a suggestive hand action from, of all people, the ever serious Barack Obama about size: crowd size that is.

At the end of the week, the so-called scion of the Kennedy dynasty, Robert F Kennedy Jr, suspended his presidential campaign, as an independent, to endorse Trump.

In his typically fickle way, Trump, who had earlier blasted Kennedy as a “dangerous radical”, now heaps praise upon him.

Margo Kingston and Peter Clarke, who followed the Democratic Convention closely, listened to the speeches, observed that very American, often cheesy, saccharine sentimentality, hoopla and razzle dazzle, discuss this pivotal week in the upturned 2024 presidential campaign.

RESOURCES

Margo Kingston, in her commentary, drew upon a range of USA podcasts and other sources. She’s including this selection for your information and reference.

“Kamala Harris Wants to Win”. The Ezra Klein Show

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/kamala-harris-wants-to-win/id1548604447?i=1000666403310

“A.B. Stoddard: Only in America”. The Bulwark Podcast

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/a-b-stoddard-only-in-america/id1447684472?i=1000666394258

“Kamala Harris is not going back to the failed politics of 2016”. Nate Silver – “Silver Bullet” Blog

https://www.natesilver.net/p/kamala-harris-is-not-going-back-to

USA 2024 election update 4: “Stop Whining!”

This is the fourth of the #transitzone USA 2024 presidential election campaign updates recorded on Saturday 17 August.

It has been 28 days since Joe Biden withdrew from the race.

Next Tuesday, 20 August, Australian time, the Democrats head to Chicago for their national convention to formally nominate Kamala Harris as their presidential nominee.

Then, we think, a national televised debate between the two contenders, hosted by ABC, on the 10th of September.

Trump is scheduled to be sentenced for criminal fraud, in New York, on the 18th of September, although he and his legal team have been submitting a constant stream of filings to the court, seeking to avoid that ultimate conclusion to his criminal trial and guilty verdict by that jury.

Margo Kingston and Peter Clarke look back over another extraordinary week of two sharply contrasting election campaigns, marked, on the Republican side, by increasingly unhinged and incoherent (not to mention politically reckless) rhetoric from their (“Let Trump Be Trump”) candidate, Donald Trump.

USA 2024 election update 3: Meet Tim Walz

This is the third of the #transitzone USA 2024 presidential election campaign updates, recorded Friday 9 August. It has been 18 days since Joe Biden withdrew from the race. 25 days since the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania.

Margo Kingston and Peter Clarke have been tracking some of the key events and developments in this extraordinary fast forward campaign.

The Republican candidate, former president, Donald Trump, has just held a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort. Disciplined, focussed, rational, it was not. It was the typical Trump ranty mix of lies, self-infatuated claims and vitriolic invective. He is still fixated on his rally crowd sizes even claiming his January 6 2021 Washington, Ellipsis address was bigger than that for Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington in 1963.

Meanwhile, Kamala Harris and her VP running mate pick, Minnesota Governor, Tim Walz, are on a multi swing state rally blitz attaining a huge amount of “earned media” coverage from the networks, cable news outfits and online entities.

Trump’s VP pick, JD Vance is shadowing them city by city.

The Democrats’ national convention starts in Chicago on 19th of August.

And THE NEWS is apparently Trump and Harris have come to some kind of agreement to meet for a nationally televised debate hosted, as was originally planned with Joe Biden, by the ABC network on 10th of September.

Margo and Peter discuss Kamala Harris’s VP pick, the latest unhinged speech from Trump, his apparent self-sabotaging in the state of Georgia by attacking its popular Republican governor, Brian Kemp and the looming national televised debates.

RESOURCES

First combined Kamala Harris – Tim Walz rally in Philadelphia:

Trump press conference, 8 August, Mar-a-Lago:

USA 2024 election update 2

Margo Kingston and Peter Clarke take stock of the unfolding USA presidential election at the end of the second week of the Kamala Harris presumptive candidacy for the Democratic Party.

Donald Trump appeared for a tense and heated interview with three Black women journalists at the annual convention of the National Black Journalists’ Association. It did not go well. The former president questioned whether Kamal Harris was, “Indian or Black”: a self-evident false binary. His campaign is going all out to define his opponent as “fake”. Meanwhile, Harris addressed a wildly enthusiastic 10,000 strong rally in Atlanta, Georgia, delivering her evolving stump speech with “Freedom” as its rhetorical leitmotif. She also fired back at her GOP opponent’s racist attack.

With Harris’s choice of VP running mate looming, Peter and Margo try to predict that choice.


“We’re not going back!” Kamala Harris takes on Donald Trump

Ultimately, it happened at lightning speed. After weeks of apparent digging in, USA president, Joe Biden, finally bowed to the inevitable and withdrew his candidacy from the presidential election contest, endorsing his Vice President, Kamala Harris, as he did so.

She, within 24 hours, had secured sufficient Democrats’ delegates to the upcoming national nomination convention to instantly become the putative nominee.

Harris immediately started campaigning with feisty, speeches, taking on her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, frontally and laying out her policy themes under her slogan “We’re Not Going Back!” to counter Trump’s, “Make America Great Again”, making the intensely fractious, febrile contest ostensibly about the past versus the future.

Peter Clarke and Margo Kingston take stock of the first days of this utterly transformed and crucial US presidential election contest.