Democrats ditch disarray
For months, Democrats expected their national convention in Chicago to be a nightmarish rerun of 1968. Everything seemed to be trending toward disaster. The electorate wasn’t excited about President Joe Biden. Angry anti-war constituents promised to disrupt proceedings, with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson not giving the party strong signs he was going to try to rein them in.
The 1968 contest was an electoral disaster. Richard Nixon romped to a 301-191 Electoral College win over incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey, with the help of independent George Wallace eating into the possible vote share and winning Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia.
Some of the disaster elements are still in play, with Vice President Kamala Harris playing Humphrey and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. not quite ready to throw in the towel on a campaign that has been spiraling, but overall, Democrats are feeling much better about their chances with Harris as the new face of the party.
Delegates en route to the Democratic National Convention that starts in Chicago this evening told Senate Reporter Samantha-Jo Roth that the party has undergone a mood change. With new, or younger, blood whipping voters into Obamalike frenzies, the vibes have shifted from desultory to delighted.
“Everyone’s looking forward to this event, which, a month ago, looked like it might be a funeral and now is looking like it’s going to be a big party and celebration as we go forward to elect the first woman president,” Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz, a New York delegate, told Samantha-Jo.
In reality, the conventions have devolved into less of a significant event than they used to be. Harris has already sewn up the nomination, having secured enough delegates during a virtual roll call earlier this month.
“I am honored to be the presumptive Democratic nominee for president of the United States,” Harris said on the call announcing her nomination. “We will gather in Chicago united as one party, where we’re going to have an opportunity to celebrate this historic moment together.”
The unified Democrats still face splinters of opposition, though the role they are set to play looks to be diminished from when Biden was staring down a series of defeats in swing states — including in Michigan, at least in part because of a dissatisfied “uncommitted” faction of Muslim American voters who were angry with the administration’s support for Israel during its war with Hamas.
That problem hasn’t completely gone away, Samantha-Jo noted. However, with good feelings buoying Harris and her supporters, the fraction of delegates who want to punish Biden has been sidelined.
“There are about 30 uncommitted delegates to the convention of about 4,600, injecting some uncertainty into the proceedings,” Samantha-Jo wrote. “Harris now must face new obstacles in continuing her campaign’s early momentum and appeal to a divided party while also courting enough independent voters to prevail over former President Donald Trump and his MAGA base.”
Harris has already begun to soften the “uncommitted delegation’s opposition to her by signaling her willingness to meet with them to discuss their concerns. She also tapped Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) to be her running mate, acknowledging that outside of Michigan, rebels in Minnesota were agitating to be heard.
Biden is set to speak on Monday night, essentially capping his career in politics and stepping out of the limelight, handing the keys of the party to Harris and letting the rest of the week be dominated by his vice president and her entourage.
All the 1968 elements are still swirling. Harris has agreed to a debate with Trump, but she’s still untested in an adverse environment, having not sat down for any interviews since taking the mantle from Biden. Her vice president nominee is under incredible scrutiny, and the war in Gaza doesn’t appear to be approaching a close.
A lot can still go wrong for Harris and the Democrats. Until then, though, the crowds crashing into Chicago are on cloud nine.
“Everybody is very excited,” Sandra Lowe, a California delegate who is the former mayor of Sonoma, told Samantha-Jo. “A lot of people who didn’t try to become a delegate are disappointed now because they would have loved to have been there — a little FOMO going on there.”
Click here to read more about the good feelings coming out of Chicago.
Anti-Israel reckoning
The right to protest is protected in the U.S. — even sacred by some standards. When supporting those protests comes at the behest of a foreign country or power, there’s a problem.
Investigative Reporter Gabe Kaminsky scooped a legal push to force several backers of anti-Israel protests to register as foreign agents for their support of Hamas following the terrorist attack on Oct. 7 that sparked the conflict Israel is engaged with in Gaza.
“America First Legal, a group led by former Trump administration officials, sent a petition on Friday to the DOJ’s national security division requesting that it enforce the Foreign Agents and Registration Act on pro-Palestinian groups and their leaders,” Gabe wrote this morning. “Those groups include Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation, also known as American Muslims in Palestine, and its director, Osama Abuirshaid.”
American Muslims in Palestine, which is based in Virginia, has been under state investigation since last year. Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said his office “has reason to believe” the group has been raising funds illegally and was supporting terrorism abroad.
The group is one of roughly 100 anti-Israel organizations planning to protest outside the DNC in Chicago this week and is tied to a violent protest in Washington, D.C., last month that featured a burning of an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and red spray-painting intimidating messages outside Union Station, Gabe wrote.
The group has denied it has any links to terrorism.
A wave of anti-Israel protests threw college campuses into chaos in the spring, as several violent protests disrupted finals, and more than one university leader wound up stepping down from their post for reasons related to how they handled the protests.
Without an end to the conflict on the horizon, how the U.S. handles anti-Israel protests at home remains a live problem — not least because of the threat they pose to the presidential election in November.
Besides the questions of how support for Israel could split voters in November, how the Department of Justice approaches handling anti-Israel protesters accused of breaking the law, including whether organizers should be registered as foreign agents, will feed into concerns about the “weaponization” of governmental organizations.
“On Friday, America First Legal also renewed a demand for the DOJ’s inspector general office to investigate whether the DOJ’s lack of prosecution of pro-Hamas groups is due to bias,” Gabe wrote. “In January, the conservative group said it obtained nonpublic information suggesting the DOJ ‘issued an effective stand-down order to U.S. Attorneys and to federal law enforcement concerning Hamas’s network of U.S.-based supporters’ and front groups backing terrorism.”
Click here to read more about the legal challenge for anti-Israel protesters.
Overripe impeachment report
Three House committees finished and published their impeachment report for Biden, alleging the president acted corruptly and committed impeachable acts, but they stopped short of recommending a vote on trying to remove him from office.
The meat of the report, Justice Reporter Ashley Oliver wrote, is focused on Hunter Biden’s actions as an employee of Ukrainian energy company Burisma while his father was vice president. Representatives from the House Oversight, Ways and Means, and Judiciary committees “said that after more than two dozen interviews, six hearings, and a review of millions of pages of documents, they found that the Biden family participated in a ‘global influence peddling racket’ with Biden’s ‘full knowledge and cooperation.’”
Republicans had Biden in their sights since Day One, though this report landed with a thud on Monday morning, almost exactly one month after the president announced he wasn’t running for reelection and as Democrats were celebrating the fêting of Harris at the DNC in Chicago.
Most of the committees’ report focused on the actions of members of Joe Biden’s family rather than anything he did while he was in office. And most of the acts described were related to his time in the Obama administration.
While the bulk of accusations were levied against Hunter Biden, the committees did point to Joe Biden’s interactions with Ukrainian officials and his insistence they fire a prosecutor who was looking into Burisma.
“They alleged that Joe Biden leveraged a $1 million loan from the United States to Ukraine to force prosecutor Viktor Shokin’s firing because, according to the committees, Shokin was investigating Burisma for corruption,” Ashley wrote. “His firing would directly benefit Hunter Biden, the committees said.”
Republicans also pointed to dinners and meetings Joe Biden attended with his son’s business partners, effectively raising the reputation of Hunter Biden and entrenching him as a valuable employee for the company despite his lack of experience or expertise in the sector.
The committee chairmen said that although they weren’t recommending a vote to impeach the president, they would keep the inquiry open.
Click here to read more about the 18-month effort to impeach the president.
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For your radar
The DNC starts in earnest this evening, with protests set to begin at roughly noon Eastern time. We will have full coverage of everything you could want to know about what’s happening in Chicago, so stay tuned.
Biden will give the keynote address at the DNC at 10:50 p.m. Eastern before leaving for California, where he and first lady Jill Biden will stay for the week.
Harris doesn’t have any appearances scheduled. She will be at the convention for Biden’s speech.
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) will speak about the economy in Philadelphia at 1 p.m.
Trump will speak about the economy in York, Pennsylvania, at 3 p.m.
