From “Trump seems to forget it’s not 2016 anymore. And he’s frustrated” by E. J. Dionne, Jr. at The Washington Post: “Enter Harris, 59, who instantly flipped the age issue against Trump. His often-disjointed screeds suddenly felt like the ravings of a grumpy old man, not entertaining breaks from politician-speak. Trump had always fed on the energy of his crowds. “Low energy” is a favorite Trump epithet against his foes. Now Harris has the energy, and her audiences seem positively rapturous….Harris was not afraid to put aside a decorousness that came naturally to Biden, first elected to the Senate in 1972. She has gone after Trump hard, thrilling her crowds even more. “I know Donald Trump’s type”became a T-shirt-worthy battle cry for Democrats weary of feeling like punching bags. Worst of all, from Trump’s point of view, Harris shoved him out of the lead spot in the campaign news. She was new, and her identity as a biracial woman excited many constituencies, especially younger voters who had been checking out of politics before her arrival….But here is why 2024 may be Trump’s undoing: We have been here for nine long years. When Trump went after Hillary Clinton in 2016, the media didn’t know what to do with him, and Democrats did not know how to respond. Journalists debated for years over whether Trump’s lies should, in fact, be called lies. (Pretty much all outlets finally decided a lie is a lie.) In 2016, Democrats underestimated Trump right to the end. There’s none of that now….Trump’s act has grown tired and often boring, as his Republican convention speech showed….Trump and the media will make a big mistake by fighting and covering the last war.”

Some nuggets from “Kamala Harris must lean in: The left doesn’t have to pick between woke and working class” by Michele Lamont at Salon: “Conservatives have already begun attacking Vice President Kamala Harris as an unqualified “DEI hire,” language that evokes the broader right-wing narrative that the left has become too “woke” and no longer represents the average American. With Harris’ ascension to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, many political commentators have expressed fear that voters may buy into the idea that liberals have, indeed, become too woke to connect with voters in the swing states needed to secure an Electoral College victory. But this election doesn’t have to be a clash of the “woke” versus the working class, and liberals don’t have to sacrifice one to win over the other….Americans without a college degree have steadily moved to the right in recent decades, resulting in a diploma divide where political views are largely split along educational lines. In 2021, progressive groups surveyed working-class voters in five swing states and concluded that “‘woke,’ activist-inspired rhetoric is a liability” to winning them over – a perspective echoed by other recent analyses….Our media praises entrepreneurs for disrupting the status quo and CEOs for creating jobs. For a fleeting moment during the Covid-19 pandemic, essential workers were celebrated, but that quickly faded. Working-class people were back to feeling invisible and undervalued….Unions have traditionally been the biggest source of working-class dignity. They’ve also been a reliable supply of left-leaning voters. With unions on the decline for decades in the U.S. (the rate of union membership among workers is half what it was in the 1980s), it is high time for the left to forcefully refocus on shared dignity as an electoral strategy….Liberals should use their movement-building magic – and the Gen Z passion for social justice – to build a movement that prioritizes the humanity of all people, including the working class.” Lamont goes on to discuss “four strategies hey can take from past successes,” and you can read about them right here. Lamont concludes, “Progressives know how to stand up for the dignity and respect of different groups and create a big tent where everyone feels valued. It’s time to do that for the working class.”

Wondering about the future of health care under the different presidential candidates? Then read “Obamacare is stronger than ever. Trump and Vance vow to kill it” by Joan McCarter at Daily Kos. As McCarter writes, “Republicans will never stop trying to destroy the legacy of our first Black president. Despite a decade of failure in repealing the Affordable Care Act, and the fact that the law is stronger than ever, gutting it still looms large in their aspirations. And this week, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, is banging the repeal-and-replace drum….“Well, I think we’re definitely gonna have to fix the health care problem in this country,” Vance told the news outlet NOTUS this week. “The problem with Obamacare is that for a lot of people, it just doesn’t provide high-quality health care, right? So you have a lot of people paying out the ass, paying very high prices for health care that isn’t high quality.”….As a matter of fact, premium costs for people with subsidized ACA plans have decreased 44%, or $705 per year, according to a recent analysis by KFF, a nonpartisan organization focused on health policy. That’s 21.4 million people with Obamacare plans who have enjoyed those lower costs thanks to President Joe Biden and the Democratic Congress that increased those subsidies….While Trump kept up the fiction that he was working on a plan to replace the ACA, that plan never materialized. On top of that, his Department of Justice was arguing before the Supreme Court, trying to get them to overturn the law—and yes, that included ripping coverage away from people with preexisting conditions….In this election cycle, Trump has regularly talked about getting rid of Obamacare, even though Republican lawmakers want him to stop talking about it. (Again, the law is popular.) While he might not find much congressional support to repeal the law, that doesn’t mean the ACA would be safe in Trump’s hands if he wins this November….When he couldn’t repeal it during his administration, he did everything he could to sabotage it through executive actions. Biden had to undo that damage, and it worked—there are more people enrolled in its plans than ever before. But that doesn’t mean it’s safe.” McCarter concludes, “There are still necessary improvements to the ACA, and to the health care system in general, but who would you trust to oversee that?”

By now, no one should be too surprised by the information contained in the headline “Half of Trump’s former Cabinet secretaries haven’t backed his 2024 bid: During Donald Trump’s term, 42 people served in his Cabinet. Nearly half of them haven’t endorsed his 2024 candidacy. There’s no precedent for this” by Steve Benen at MaddowBlog. As Benen explains, “Imagine you were an employer looking to hire someone for your workplace team. You’ve collected some résumé, but to help make a decision, you decide it’s best to check with applicants’ references. After all, to get a sense of how someone would perform on the job, it makes sense to ask those who’ve worked with him/her in the recent past….Then imagine you reach out to an applicant’s former colleagues, and when you ask whether they’d extend their support, nearly half of them hesitate. In fact, some are quite explicit in warning you not to hire the applicant….Would you hire the person anyway?” Probably not, is my guess. Benen adds, “By the Post’s count, 42 people, at some point between January 2017 and January 2021, served in Trump’s Cabinet. Based on the latest tally, 24 of them — roughly 57% — are publicly supporting their former boss’s ongoing candidacy.”….The rest either won’t take a position or have declared publicly that they won’t support the Republican Party’s 2024 nominee….this is an exceedingly tough dynamic for Republicans to defend. Indeed, one of the reasons I’ve been preoccupied with this angle for quite a while is because it simply has never happened before: Presidents have been known to clash from time to time with individual members of their administrations, but Trump is unique in facing so much opposition from his own team.”….As ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos recently summarized during an appearance on MSNBC, “His secretary of state called him a ‘moron.’ [Former Defense Secretary James] Mattis says he doesn’t even respect the Constitution. John Kelly says he’s the worst person he ever met. Think about that applying to any other president of the United States at any other time….“Their chief of staff, their defense secretary, their secretary of state, their national security adviser are the ones who had the most damning judgments of his competence and character. That is chilling.” Thoughtful swing voters, moderates and Independents ought to give this reality due consideration. This election is not only about defending democracy; it is also about avoiding global catastrophe.