Politics
Vice President Kamala Harris, in her toughest hour, is keeping a tighter circle
Vice President Kamala Harris was marinating in a contemporary stew of commentary about her public polling that confirmed her residence state approval numbers had been nearly as dismal as her nationwide ones. Russia had simply invaded Ukraine, forcing the vice chairman to speed up her on-the-job coaching because the administration confronted a defining international coverage disaster.
It was the form of week that has grow to be routine for Harris, replete with stress and scrutiny. However for about an hour on Feb. 28, a cool and cloudy Monday, it felt just like the outdated instances, as she hosted 11 shut associates and supporters in her ceremonial workplace in a constructing subsequent to the White Home. They checked out a brand new bust of Thurgood Marshall within the nook, shared photos and hugs, and informed her to remain robust.
“After all, we addressed her as Madam Vice President, however she was Kamala to us,” mentioned Amelia Ashley-Ward, a Harris good friend who can also be the writer of the Solar-Reporter, the Bay Space Black newspaper that gave a greenhorn California politician considered one of her first massive political endorsements. “I assured her that I nonetheless had her again.”
Harris doesn’t have many moments like that anymore. Since taking workplace, the roster of confidants she depends on for recommendation and help has contracted and tilted away from her long-time residence base of California. The narrowing of her interior circle displays each the calls for of the vice presidency, which go away little time for social calls, and her personal tendency to be selective in whom she seeks counsel, in accordance with interviews with longtime associates, advisors and present and former staffers.
The change has left shut associates saying they’re glad and pleasantly shocked by her efforts to remain in contact, even when the calls are understandably much less frequent. But a few of her earliest backers warn that her outreach has been inadequate to keep up a loyal base of help and will hamper her means to make one other run on the presidency. In addition they fear that Harris, in contrast to President Biden, lacks a full steady of trusted and examined allies to information her by way of a vice presidency that has proved to be as daunting as it’s historic.
“She is form of the antithesis of how Jerry Brown was, anyone with a rolodex of fifty,000 individuals who would name Sam Nunn sooner or later and Bono the following,” mentioned Brian Brokaw, a former advisor to Harris, referring to the previous Georgia senator and the lead singer for U2.
“She’s somebody who retains a really, very tight circle,” he added. “She is aware of and counts as associates loads of influential individuals in all walks of life. She is just not one to do common check-ins. That’s not her fashion. She is usually reluctant to verify in with individuals except she’s absolutely briefed on what points that particular person would possibly care about.”
Her most frequent contacts at the moment are with a small group of Washington fingers, in addition to her husband, Doug Emhoff, and sister, Maya Harris. Her household has grow to be not only a private outlet however a conduit to associates and allies exterior the bubble of the vice presidency.
She has saved up a few of her longtime social rituals — specifically, birthday calls to childhood associates, former workers and political allies. However different communications have developed, given the safety, time and political calls for positioned on a vice chairman and the affect of COVID-19 restrictions on her means to carry gatherings.
Harris final 12 months bought her residence within the Bay Space, the place she grew up and spent most of her political profession. She and Emhoff now rely Brentwood as their residence when she is just not at her official residence in Washington’s Naval Observatory, a fortified compound that she enters and exits in a prolonged motorcade.
“If you’re president or vice chairman, your life is scripted,” mentioned Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore’s 2000 presidential marketing campaign. “There’s that small window the place you continue to wish to know what else is occurring on this planet.”
Brazile is amongst a gaggle of Washington veterans from whom Harris generally seeks steerage. She has additionally spoken with Hillary Clinton, the primary lady to win a serious celebration nomination for president, and Madeleine Albright, the primary feminine secretary of State, who died Wednesday.
Minyon Moore, who served as political director to Invoice Clinton, has emerged as an particularly shut advisor. Moore was lately chosen by the White Home to assist choose and information Supreme Court docket nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson by way of the affirmation course of.
Harris has identified Moore for greater than a dozen years, checking in together with her nearly each time she visited Washington when she served as San Francisco’s district legal professional and California legal professional normal, in accordance with a former advisor. They bonded, partially, over the shared expertise of ceaselessly being the one Black lady in a room of energy brokers.
Although Harris’ associates say she faces challenges tied to the workplace and her expertise as a politician, additionally they take it as a on condition that the vice chairman is handled extra harshly due to her race and gender. Harris is attuned to the perceived double normal, and generally grumbles privately about it. To this point, the vice chairman has avoided airing her frustrations.
“No person has to remind her she is the primary lady of coloration vice chairman,” mentioned Holly Mitchell, a Los Angeles County supervisor and former chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus. “She wakes up with that actuality and goes to mattress with that actuality on daily basis.”
In a September birthday name, Mitchell requested Harris how she was doing.
“It’s so much,” Harris replied in a sing-song quip that to Mitchell summarized the stress.
As it’s with many politicians, the difficult dynamics of family and friends may be tough for Harris. Her shut relationship together with her sister, Maya, is well-known. However it turned a tinderbox throughout her failed run for the Democratic presidential nomination, when Maya Harris was seen as a part of an influence battle over the route of the marketing campaign.
Although her sister has remained largely underneath the radar since Harris turned vice chairman, present and previous advisors say the previous stays an vital sounding board and channel to the skin world. One particular person with intimate information of Harris’ workplace mentioned the vice chairman’s sister generally speaks together with her workers; a White Home official mentioned she solely passes on messages and doesn’t suggest whose calls needs to be returned. Maya Harris didn’t return a message looking for remark.
One other issue that supporters say has hindered Harris is that her operation has markedly few longtime aides. Allies say Biden administration officers insisted she jettison aides who labored on her presidential major marketing campaign, which was marked by workers infighting and a pointy assault on Biden’s document on desegregation that left some unhealthy blood along with his interior circle.
The result’s a workers that has turned over and isn’t steeped in her political historical past or deeply acquainted with Harris’ strengths and weaknesses as a politician.
“She does want somebody that she will shut the door and say, ‘That is tousled’ or ‘That is laborious,’” mentioned one former longtime advisor. “And whenever you’re with brand-new individuals,” it’s more durable.
Harris has maintained ties with Rep. Barbara Lee, an Oakland Democrat, and Sen. Alex Padilla, the Democrat who changed her within the Senate, however has few different robust relationships on Capitol Hill. A number of Democrats within the California congressional delegation, for instance, mentioned they‘ve had little contact together with her since she took workplace. Although she shares San Francisco roots and a spot in historical past alongside Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi, they aren’t particularly shut.
“Most of their conversations are operational, about one thing that’s occurring,” mentioned Drew Hamill, Pelosi’s deputy chief of workers. “There’s not lots of time for reflection on this enterprise as a result of there’s a lot incoming.”
The drift away from California might hamper Harris’ prospects of operating for president — given the state’s preeminence in Democratic fundraising and activism.
“Kamala’s grow to be vice chairman. She’s in Washington and everybody else is out right here,” mentioned Mark Buell, a Democratic donor who led fundraising for Harris’ first election as San Francisco district legal professional and in addition served as a prime cash particular person in her statewide elections. “Except Kamala has another political concepts and desires to domesticate a base, it looks like she’s fairly pleased simply being vice chairman.”
Others say Harris is correctly avoiding any look of tending to a political operation that’s distinct from Biden’s.
Figuring out the individuals most ceaselessly contacted by Harris is hard. These she calls and meets are discreet, to allow them to preserve their entry. Former contacts who lose contact may be cagey, lest individuals assume they’re not gamers.
“Anyone who publicly brags about how a lot they speak to anyone is both embellishing or not a confidant,” mentioned one former advisor who, like many others, requested anonymity to talk candidly about Harris and to keep away from sounding like a hypocrite.
Harris’ workplace made clear in an announcement that she doesn’t like her associates or acquaintances speaking out of faculty.
“The Vice President often engages together with her California colleagues, family and friends throughout the nation. These conversations are vital to the vice chairman as is their confidentiality,” spokeswoman Sabrina Singh mentioned in an announcement. (Singh, who has labored for Harris because the 2020 marketing campaign, is departing for an additional job within the administration.)
A kind of who has saved in contact is Derreck Johnson, an Oakland restaurateur who has been shut with the Harris sisters since he was 16. He has spoken by telephone with Harris, he says, 5 instances because the inauguration. Although he didn’t disclose particulars of the conversations, Johnson mentioned he worries about Harris and believed that the pressures of the job had been weighing on his longtime good friend.
“Anybody who is continually criticized whenever you’re attempting to do the appropriate factor — that’ll have an effect on anybody. It’s human nature,” he mentioned.
Johnson mentioned that he believes that when doubt creeps in, Harris turns to the boldness she gained from her late mom, Shyamala, a single father or mother who raised her whereas working as a most cancers researcher.
“You already know you’re doing this for the appropriate causes and also you rise above that,” Johnson mentioned.
However Harris hasn’t spent a lot time venting to him concerning the scrutiny she faces, which Johnson mentioned she considers to be a part of the job. Relatively, he mentioned, their calls have targeted extra on how Johnson is doing — together with his personal campaigns for native workplace in Oakland — in an effort to remain linked to a good friend and her hometown.
Politics
Soros DAs suffer 12 big defeats, billionaire's agenda faces uncertain future
Americans are turning the page on the woke left’s approach to crime, if this week’s district attorney elections are anything to go by.
A majority of the 25 George Soros-linked district attorneys on the ballot this week were defeated, signaling a backlash against progressive policies that critics say are to blame for a surge in crime across the country in recent years.
Many of the losing Soros candidates were running for office in deep blue jurisdictions and suffered heavy losses despite Vice President Harris clocking up comfortable majorities in those same areas – indicating that a large portion of Democrats are also done with the progressive Left’s soft on crime experiment, according to the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, a pro-police non-profit that tracked the 25 races.
Politics
A comic, Trump and Alpha Male walk into an election
Alpha Male has won.
What happens now?
Comedian Brent Terhune has for years satirized the angry, working-class white man who rails against libtards and expresses unyielding devotion to Donald Trump. His monologues resound with right-wing rants and epitomize toxic masculinity in a character he calls Alpha Male. But the aggrieved American man now rides on a sense of vindication in celebrating Trump’s return to the White House. And Terhune wonders what that means for his character and the nation.
“I think he’ll go from being a sore loser to a sore winner,” said Terhune, who lives outside Indianapolis in a blue-collar neighborhood. “Alpha Male will always exist. He was there before Trump. He doesn’t go away. He’s your dad, your cousin. We all feel misunderstood and betrayed at times. But he’s got to find a way to justify everything Trump and MAGA do. It’s a weird hurdle, and a way for me to get out my frustrations.”
Terhune — a former Boy Scout and a Catholic-school-raised liberal — abhors Trump and is nothing like his alter ego. Alpha Male, who wears a russet beard, wraparound sunglasses and a backward ball cap, is enamored with the likes of Tucker Carlson and has no tolerance for gender studies, critical race theory or what he sees as the liberal radicalization of a country that has succumbed to snowflakes and bibliophiles.
The character is at once emblematic and a caricature of the Joe Rogan demographic, bros and aging bros, mostly white but with a growing number of Latinos, who revere Elon Musk and march to Trump’s crass, weaving rhetoric.
“His people will be encouraged,” Terhune said of the president-elect, suggesting that the most extreme of Trump’s followers will become more of a threat to democracy, civil rights and gender equality than during his first term.
“He’s an embodiment of who they are,” he said. “They believe he hates the same things they do. They’re willing to excuse anything and everything for their guy. There’ll be no repercussions.”
Trump and his allies ran a high-testosterone, anti-immigrant, protect-the-economy campaign that appealed to ranchers, mechanics, pastors, billionaires, college students and the radical Proud Boys. Musk — who has 204 million followers on X — urged men to turn out and vote, posting a militant reference on the day of the election: “The cavalry has arrived. Men are voting in record numbers. They now realize everything is at stake.”
Musk reposted an artist’s depiction in which he, muscle-bound and stripped to the waist, resembles the Hulk carrying an American flag. Rogan sits atop Musk’s shoulders lifting Trump toward the sky in a trinity that evokes both a savior complex and hyper-masculinity.
Such imagery suits Alpha Male. Terhune’s character does not apologize. He does not equivocate. He represents, said Terhune, who was profiled in The Times last year, men who feel empowered by Trump’s showman brashness and the belief that he shares their rage and bewilderment at a left-wing, woke society that conspires to leave them behind.
Alpha Male was born out of what Terhune saw as the hypocrisy of conservatives who espouse American ideals, such as freedom of speech and religion, but attack anyone opposed their prescribed views. The character’s first appearance came when Terhune posted “Redneck Burns Nikes” in reaction to then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick taking a knee in 2016 during the national anthem to protest racism. That was followed by Alpha Male diatribes on book banning, the Black “Little Mermaid,” Trump’s mug shot, ruminations on Hunter Biden’s laptop and swipes at President Biden, whom he calls “Papa Long Hugs.”
Alpha Male, whose videos have had millions of views on social media, has become a way for Terhune to understand and navigate the nation’s divisions. The character is a funny, if unsettling, mirror who at times — like Archie Bunker before him — earns a degree of empathy. Terhune’s irony and satire can be so sly that some people don’t get the joke, thinking that Alpha Male is not an act but the comic’s true self.
“Is this satire or is this guy really as deranged as he sounds?” one man posted on Facebook.
Like many liberals, Terhune, who spoke by phone from his home on the day after the election, was finding it difficult to reconcile the many ruptures and recriminations that have jolted the country since Trump’s first campaign eight years ago.
Trump’s recent victory is “a shocking but not so shocking revelation of where we are as a country,” said Terhune, the son of a lunch lady and a father who trucked fuel to construction sites. “A lot of people were fed up with the last four years, but this says that people don’t think past themselves. It is their need to put party over country for perceived patriotism. I’m a straight white guy. I’ll probably be fine. But what about people who aren’t straight and white?”
Through it all, though, the focus of Terhune’s Alpha Male bits will stay on Trump and what he has shaped. In a recent video about Trump working at McDonald’s, Alpha Male says, “Mr. Trump doesn’t need to work there. He was just sticking it to lying Kamala Harris. … There’s no proof she even worked there. Hell, are we even sure she was the attorney general of Commie-fornia? No. Are we even sure she was vice president? No. Nobody knows. There’s no proof.”
In another skit, Alpha Male is the driver in the garbage truck Trump rode in after Biden’s verbal gaffe suggesting that Trump’s supporters were garbage: “You done pissed me off, Joe, and if being a patriot is what they’re calling garbage these days, then, yeah, I am garbage cause I’m going to show up to the polls wearing a garbage bag to show you what us white trash can do.”
Alpha Male, sometimes tearing up when he recounts his many grievances, mythologizes Trump, a leader who survived an assassin’s bullet, an army of prosecutors, 34 felony counts and endless scandal.
After what authorities said would have been a second assassination attempt against Trump at his golf course in Florida, Terhune reimagines the incident in a video in which Trump grabs a golf club to deflect bullets: “The first one he sent flying went back to the shooter, knocked his Bud Light clean out of his hand and he took off scared. And he was running away and there was an envelope of cash that fell out of his pocket. You could see on it, it said, ‘Pay off from the Dumb-ocrats.’ It was then that the Secret Service finally got off their lazy asses and did something.”
That is the kind of fervor — James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” played at the Republican National Convention in July — that has surrounded Trump since he swaggered onto the nation’s political stage.
“He can do no wrong,” said Terhune, mimicking his alter ego. “If you don’t like it, deal with it.”
For Tehrune, the only way to deal with it is to keep channeling Alpha Male’s deep well of suspicion and anger.
Politics
More than half of Harris voters want to relocate following Trump win: survey
More than 50% of voters for Vice President Kamala Harris say they want to move following Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, according to a survey commissioned by StorageUnits.com.
Storage Units surveyed 1,837 Harris voters on Nov. 6 to determine how many would like to relocate – and who actually plans to – and the top concerns of those who voted against Trump.
Of those surveyed, 44% would like to move, but probably won’t, while 5% said they will definitely move and another 5% said they probably will. Those who would like to move, but probably won’t, cited personal finances, family and community ties as reasons they will stay in place.
Of the 10% planning to move or seriously considering it, 90% are looking into moving to another country, with the top choices being Canada, the United Kingdom and Mexico. California, New York and Colorado were the top three choices for those considering moving to another state.
5 MISTAKES THAT DOOMED KAMALA HARRIS’ CAMPAIGN AGAINST TRUMP
According to the survey, the top three reasons Harris voters want to relocate are concerns that a federal abortion ban will be enacted, an increase in racial inequality and progressive rights will be overturned.
Abortion access at the federal level, which was one of the Democrats’ top campaign issues, has been an area of concern for many Dem voters despite Trump stating he would not enact a federal abortion ban and reiterating that he agrees with the decision being left in the states’ hands after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court on June 24, 2022.
Other top areas of concern include: reduction in healthcare access, increased social inequality, lack of gun regulation and the weakening of public education.
“Some Harris voters who are experiencing fear, anxiety, and concern following the election results may elect to shift from a red to a blue state with friendlier LGBTQ+ and/or less restrictive abortion laws. However, there are a number of factors influencing any potential moves, such as cost of living, job availability, and housing prices,” Realtor Jo Ann Bauer told Storage Units.
FOX NEWS VOTER ANALYSIS: IS THIS A CHANGE ELECTION? TOP ISSUES AND MOOD OF THE NATION AS VOTERS WEIGH IN
Of all the generations surveyed, Gen Z had the highest number of Harris voters saying they will definitely or probably move (nearly 20%) when compared to Millennials, Gen Xers and Boomers.
Gen Z also had the least number of participants say they have “no interest in moving” at about 30%.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
Trump won the 2024 election decisively, garnering at least 301 electoral votes over Harris’ 226 and beating Harris by more than 5 million in the popular vote.
-
Business1 week ago
Carol Lombardini, studio negotiator during Hollywood strikes, to step down
-
Health1 week ago
Just Walking Can Help You Lose Weight: Try These Simple Fat-Burning Tips!
-
Business1 week ago
Hall of Fame won't get Freddie Freeman's grand slam ball, but Dodgers donate World Series memorabilia
-
Culture7 days ago
Yankees’ Gerrit Cole opts out of contract, per source: How New York could prevent him from testing free agency
-
Culture5 days ago
Try This Quiz on Books That Were Made Into Great Space Movies
-
Business1 week ago
Apple is trying to sell loyal iPhone users on AI tools. Here's what Apple Intelligence can do
-
Technology1 week ago
An Okta login bug bypassed checking passwords on some long usernames
-
Health2 days ago
Lose Weight Without the Gym? Try These Easy Lifestyle Hacks