There were hip gyrations from the stage. The playlist included “Girls in the Hood,” “Mamushi,” “Savage,” and “Body.” The candidate quoted Quavo.
Washington
Harris events: Not your father’s campaign rallies (or Biden’s)
In Atlanta, the baton was fully passed to Kamala Harris. This was now her party. Her campaign. Her playlist.
In fact, Joe Biden never came up.
From the music to the outfits — and, most tellingly, the crowd size — it was clearer than ever that the shift to a new Democratic generation was complete.
By and large, it is the same campaign aides who were putting on Biden events that are now in charge of Harris ones. But the types of crowds interested in attending Harris events — and the musicians willing to perform at them — are very different. The new playlist, even if controlled by the same staffers who curated Biden’s soundtrack (a mix including Whitney Houston’s “Higher Love,” Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down,” and Elton John’s “Philadelphia Freedom”), has a certain Harris flair, and is put together based on her personal input.
Campaign aides say they are still thinking about how Harris events will be different, and they are determined to not only do large-scale rallies but want to put her in smaller settings as well. The coming days will provide more of a test case as Harris picks a running mate and launches a seven-state tour that will probably include a range of venues.
Harris is attempting to harness the surge in organic enthusiasm to display a show of force around her campaign launch. Aides want to do so in ways that are not only helpful to the vice president’s case but also work to get under Trump’s skin (The Trump campaign has scheduled a rally on Saturday in the same Atlanta arena that Harris filled on Tuesday).
The crowds to date in the Harris for president campaign are simply more energized. They’re bigger and louder. And it is a different tapestry than the Democratic Party has presented to a general electorate since at least 2016.
Biden is the candidate who works rope lines and owns small rooms, but has never been known as the one who can fill large arenas. Filling a middle school gymnasium, as he did last month, was reason for boasting, and success for him is the amount of time he spends on a rope line after the event rather than the number of total supporters who attend it. And four years ago, during the height of a global pandemic, the closest the president came to having large rallies was events where cars gathered, at a social distance, and honked their horns.
Harris, at least in the opening weeks of her candidacy, is drawing the kind of energy and excitement that Barack Obama drew in 2008 or that Donald Trump brought in 2016.
While Democrats have long had strong ties to the entertainment industry — attracting actors as donors and musicians as opening acts — the octogenarian who spent half a century as a politician and rarely dips into pop culture was not a source for inspiration. Biden’s prized possession is a car built in 1967 (a Corvette Stingray) and his favorite movie was made in 1981 (“Chariots of Fire”)
Biden often quotes Abraham Lincoln or Irish poets in his speeches. On Tuesday night, Harris was quoting hip-hop artists in hers.
“Trump … Does not walk the walk,” she said. “Or as my friend Quavo would say: He does not walk it like he talks it.”
Biden often says the Black community was among those that “brung me to the dance.” But he most definitely did not have the playlist, or energy — or the dance — that came from Atlanta.
The rally marked a debut of sorts for Megan on C-SPAN, which streamed the event live. She took the stage amid flashing strobe lights, and was dressed in a blue pantsuit, a white shirt with exposed midriff, and a blue tie. She riffed on one of Harris’s strongest campaign planks: abortion rights.
“Our future president — let’s get this done, Atlanta,” she told the cheering crowd. “We’re about to make history with the first female president. The first Black female president. Let’s get this done, honey.”
As she sang her song “Body” she told the crowd: “Now, I know my ladies in the crowd love their bodies — and if you want to keep loving your body, you know who to vote for.”
Harris’s remarks were stylistically different from Biden’s, with her own cadence and without verbal digressions and the storytelling that Biden often relishes. But at the core, many of her policy aims did not significantly diverge from the ones that Biden promotes.
“Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency,” she said. “When our middle class is strong, America is strong.”
She talked about the need to tame inflation, and she spoke in sharp tones about immigration.
“He tanked — tanked — the bipartisan deal because he thought it would help him win an election,” Harris said. “Which goes to show, Donald Trump does not care about border security. He only cares about himself. I will bring back the border security bill, and I will sign it into law and show Donald Trump what real leadership looks like.”
She mocked Trump’s policy positions — called some of the things from him and his running mate “just plain weird” — and poked fun at her GOP rival for not fully committing to a debate. While Biden also often mentions Trump, she seemed to take more glee in poking at her new rival.
“Donald, I do hope you’ll reconsider, to meet me on the debate stage,” she said, looking into the cameras. “Because as the saying goes, ‘If you got something to say, say it to my face.’”
Harris also echoed what has been a signature line in her brief time as a candidate, as she recalled her time as a prosecutor taking on “predators who abused women; fraudsters who ripped off consumers; cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain.”
“So hear me when I say,” she added, pausing for effect. “I know Donald Trump’s type.”
In Atlanta and elsewhere, there are calls-and-response. There is a rollicking feeling that often doesn’t exist amid polite applause at Biden’s events. When Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) on Tuesday night chided Trump for being “too scared to debate Vice President Harris,” the crowd began chanting, “Too scared! Too scared!”
When Harris referenced Trump’s legal problems and guilty verdicts, the crowd yelled, “Lock him up! Lock him up!”
Biden has acknowledged his milquetoast taste.
“Isn’t it really dull when you have a president known for two things: Ray-Ban sunglasses and chocolate chip ice cream?” he said last month during a gathering in Harrisburg, Pa., as he sought to inject life into his reelection campaign.
Two weeks later, he was out of the race. And now he’s hoping to propel to victory a president known for things far less dull.
Washington
Stars defeat Capitals to end losing streak at 6 | NHL.com
Hintz scored into an empty net at 19:41 for the 4-1 final.
“Everybody played hard, did the right things, got pucks in deep, especially in the third period when we’re trying to close out a lead,” DeSmith said. “So, I thought top to bottom, first, second and third, we were really good.”
NOTES: The Stars swept the two-game season series (including a 1-0 win Oct. 28 in Dallas) and are 8-1-0 in their past nine games against the Capitals. … Duchene had the secondary assist on Steel’s goal, giving him 900 points (374 goals, 526 assists) in 1,157 NHL games. … Hintz has 11 points (seven goals, four assists) in an eight-game point streak against Washington. He had a game-high 12 shots on goal. … Thompson has lost six of his past seven starts (1-5-1).
Washington
Bridge collapse on Washington Avenue leaves emergency crews racing to rescue victims
WHEELING, W.Va. — Emergency crews are responding to a major incident at the Washington Avenue Bridge, which has collapsed into Wheeling Creek.
Multiple police and firefighter units are on the scene, working swiftly to rescue those injured in the collapse.
Three injured workers have been taken to the hospital. Officials say one is a serious injury and two are non-life threatening.
Access to the area has been closed to facilitate rescue operations.
The bridge was closed in early December for a replacement that was expected to take nearly a year.
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Washington
Dynamite, Floods and Feuds: Washington’s forgotten river wars
A look back at Washington’s historic flooding
It’s been a few weeks since the historic flooding hit the streets of western Washington, and if you scroll through social media, the shock still seems fresh. While some insist it was a once-in-a-generation disaster, state history tells a different story.
TUKWILA, Wash. – After floodwaters inundated western Washington in December, social media is still filled with disbelief, with many people saying they had never seen flooding like it before.
But local history shows the region has experienced catastrophic flooding, just not within most people’s lifetimes.
A valley under water
What may look like submerged farmland in Skagit or Snohomish counties is actually an aerial view of Tukwila from more than a century ago. Before Boeing, business parks and suburban development, the Kent Valley was a wide floodplain.
In November 1906, much of the valley was underwater, according to city records. In some places, floodwaters reached up to 10 feet, inundating homesteads and entire communities.
“Roads were destroyed, river paths were readjusted,” said Chris Staudinger of Pretty Gritty Tours. “So much of what had been built in these areas got washed away.”
Staudinger has been sharing historical images and records online, drawing comparisons between the December flooding and events from the late 1800s and early 1900s.
“It reminded me so much of what’s happening right now,” he said, adding that the loss then, as now, was largely a loss of property and control rather than life.
When farmers used dynamite
Records show flooding was not the only force reshaping the region’s rivers. In the late 1800s, farmers repeatedly used dynamite in attempts to redirect waterways.
“The White River in particular has always been contentious,” explained Staudinger. “For farmers in that area, multiple different times starting in the 1890s, groups of farmers would get together and blow-up parts of the river to divert its course either up to King County or down to Pierce County.”
Staudinger says at times they used too much dynamite and accidentally sent logs lobbing through the air like missiles.
In one instance, King County farmers destroyed a bluff, permanently diverting the White River into Pierce County. The river no longer flowed toward Elliott Bay, instead emptying into Commencement Bay.
Outraged by this, Pierce County farmers took their grievances to the Washington State Supreme Court. The court ruled the change could not be undone.
When flooding returned, state officials intervened to stop further explosions.
“To prevent anyone from going out and blowing up the naturally occurred log jam, the armed guards were dispatched by the state guard,” said Staudinger. “Everything was already underwater.”
Rivers reengineered — and erased
Over the next century, rivers across the region were dredged, dammed and diverted. Entire waterways changed or disappeared.
“So right where the Renton Airport is now used to be this raging waterway called the Black River,” explained Staudinger. “Connected into the Duwamish. It was a major salmon run. It was a navigable waterway.”
Today, that river has been reduced to what Staudinger described as “the little dry trickle.”
Between 1906 and 1916, the most dramatic changes occurred that played a role in its shrinking. When the Ballard Locks were completed, Lake Washington dropped by nine feet, permanently cutting off its southern flow.
A lesson from December
Despite modern levees and flood-control engineering, December’s storms showed how vulnerable the region remains.
“For me, that’s the takeaway,” remarked Staudinger. “You could do all of this to try and remain in control, but the river’s going to do whatever it wants.”
He warned that history suggests the risk is ongoing.
“You’re always one big storm from it rediscovering its old path,” said Staudinger.
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The Source: Information in this story came from the Tukwila Historical Society, MOHAI, Pretty Gritty Tours, and FOX 13 Seattle reporting and interviews.
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