Behind the scenes as Joe Biden lost control of the Democratic Party

Choose a Girl

Another policy stumble marred what seemed to be her breakthrough moment. In a debate in June, she attacked Biden for opposing school busing in the 1970s. Making the leap from state to national politics proved daunting for her. Rivals like Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren had spent much of their adult lives steeped in policy. On the day the $1 million ad buy was supposed to begin running, Harris dropped out. By the time she quit, Harris lacked money, a message and a cohesive campaign operation — all ingredients of a successful candidacy.

• In the weeks before President Biden announced he would not be seeking reelection, some Democrats online rallied behind Vice President Kamala Harris to become the party’s new nominee.
• After meeting with Trump the morning of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday, Kennedy tried to dispel rumors on X suggesting that the pair met to discuss a unity ticket.
• Biden won in 2020 by 4.5 percentage points nationally, but he now trailed Trump by about 2 points, according to a Washington Post average of polls.

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Like all of us, the coconut tree moment exists in the context of all in which it lives and what came before it. Which is to say, it’s part of a larger set of memes surrounding Kamala Harris’ political persona. Harris has been spawning memes longer than she’s been vice president. But her laugh, her bus, her dance moves and her love of Venn diagrams have all become social media fodder. Then the 81-year-old president, traveling to campaign events to try to prove his vigor, contracted covid again.

Pornography career

Harris hadn’t mastered policy questions that dominated the Democratic debates. She had originally backed Sanders’ “Medicare for all” plan, but later released her own version that carved out a continued role for private insurers. And yesterday in Cannes, she further explored brown tones in a simple tank dress.

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A Monmouth University poll released the week after she entered the race showed her running third in a crowded Democratic field that eventually numbered more than two dozen. With 11% support, she trailed only Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, both of whom had run presidential races before. With only a few months to wage a campaign against Trump, Harris couldn’t afford to repeat the mistakes that tanked her last presidential bid. Hers would need to be a virtually error-free sprint to Election Day.

The campaign has been comforted by internal data showing that most of the people Biden has lost since the debate are unlikely to vote for Trump, suggesting they may come back. But polling matters little when your party infrastructure is not behind you. Political polling and analytics deal in probabilities, not absolutes like “No way.” They create snapshots in time, out of focus.

She would have a plethora of promising choices to balance the ticket, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, all of whom won in places where Trump performed well. From the coconut trees to the Venn diagrams, the Harris memes embrace what detractors might consider a gaffe. Trump, for instance, has dubbed Harris “laughing Kamala,” saying the laugh makes her seem “crazy.” Angela White — the infamous “Meryl Streep of porn” — almost died after filming a brutal hourlong sex scene with a well-endowed co-star. James Carville, the Bill Clinton strategist who had long called for Biden to get out, worked the phone from a cruise ship off the coast of Alaska, trying to divine what happens next and get his party to a better place.