Vice President Kamala Harris, taking freedom back

As far back as 2013, we stressed the importance of Democrats framing their arguments in terms of promoting “freedom.” Specifically, we wanted to take that term back from the Republicans, because freedom is a deeply held American value, and we know that Democrats, not Republicans, are the ones who truly believe in it. The great news is that, in recent years, leading Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have been promoting the idea of “freedom.” While this trend might not have been too noticeable other than to folks who were specifically looking at Democratic messaging, Vice President and presumptive 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has amped up the “freedom” theme to the point where it is now on the radar of many voters and journalists. We couldn’t be more pleased with these developments.

Just in the past week, since Harris began her 2024 presidential campaign after being endorsed by President Biden, her first speech in Wisconsin strongly laid out the “freedom” theme. Initially, Harris stated that “we believe in a future … where every worker has the freedom to join a union.” Harris went on:

Ours is a fight for the future. And it is a fight for freedom. Generations of Americans before us led the fight for freedom. And now, Wisconsin, the baton is in our hands. We who believe in the sacred freedom to vote will make sure every American has the ability to cast their ballot and have it counted. We who believe that every person in our nation should have the freedom to live safe from the terror of gun violence will finally pass red flag laws, universal background checks and an Assault Weapons Ban. And we who believe in reproductive freedom will stop Donald Trump‘s extreme abortion bans because we trust women to make decisions about their own bodies, and not have their government tell them what to do. And when Congress passes a law to restore reproductive freedoms, as President of the United States, I will sign it into law. So Wisconsin, ultimately in this election, we each face a question: what kind of country do we want to live in? Do we want to live in a country of freedom, compassion and rule of law, or a country of chaos, fear and hate? …. Do we believe in freedom? …. And are we ready to fight for it?

Donald Trump, convicted of 34 felonies

The mainstream “news” media threw themselves a big party over the last two weeks. Ever since President Joe Biden, with a cold, a lifelong stuttering problem, and after crisscrossing the western hemisphere from Normandy to Los Angeles, had a bad performance at the presidential debate on June 27 (arguably only for the first 20 minutes), the “news” outlets have run stories about him nearly 24/7. The coverage has been relentless and unfair, for example, focusing on the few people in Congress who say Biden should withdraw from the election (or who are wishy-washy), rather than the overwhelming majority who support him to beat Donald Trump. While President Biden just gave a forceful speech at the NATO Summit, the coverage instead focuses on “Biden’s Fitness Under a Microscope.”

What do these media outlets want? One answer is: eyeballs and money. The Guardian revealed their media business plan with this headline yesterday: “‘Blitz primary’: the scenario that could turn replacing Biden into a ‘riveting spectacle.'” The other thing many such outlets want is to defeat President Biden and the Democratic Party. These big media corporations increasingly skew Republican. For example, David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery (which owns CNN) just tried to play coy about not favoring one presidential candidate over the other. However, he gave away the game by saying that:

We just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to be even better.

Of course, Zaslav and everyone else knows that such talk of “deregulation” is the classic language of the Republican Party.

What these media outlets are not talking much about during their anti-Biden celebration is Donald Trump. Trump has reportedly been mostly in hiding since the debate, recognizing that the media are doing a better job of bashing Biden than he, Trump, could ever do. When Trump does emerge briefly from the golf course, it’s to tell lies and spout bizarre “false grievances” such as “we don’t eat bacon anymore.”