I wrote yesterday that the door seems to be closing on an alternative candidate to replace Biden unless Nancy worked her magic. Looks like I was wrong about the closing door. Reports today make it appear that Nancy worked her magic and Biden is seriously considering stepping out of the race. That is good news in my opinion. Don’t think we could have won with him at the head of the ticket. By the way, I don’t make much of Kamala’s approval numbers. That they are close to Biden’s is to be expected. Assuming she is the nominee — and that is most likely — and moves into the public eye, her numbers, I believe, will go up as voters get to know her and her plans for the country.

Vice President Harris isn’t Kamala Harris the presidential primary candidate of four years ago. To the contrary, four years as the Vice President representing the Biden administration in public forums has allowed her to tweak her communication skills and familiarize herself with national and global issues as well as various policy matters. No one else on the short list of presidential aspirants can make that claim nor draw from the experience to contest and upbraid Trump as much as she can. Finally, as presidential candidate Harris, she doesn’t have to defend every policy of the administration over the past four years. She can stake out her own approach to various issues.

That was an impressive speech by President Biden last night. A stark contrast to the speeches of Trump and Netanyahu delivered earlier in the day. The latter two, as you know, are dangerous demagogues who earn the title every day. Yesterday was no different. In fact, the two of them over performed, one before Congress; the other at a campaign rally.

73 year old Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders was vocally undiminished and full of lots of energy at recent Pretenders concert at Tanglewood. She’s 73. Wish I could catch her again before they head back to Europe. She’s straight out of Akron, Ohio.

What we are seeing is the evolution of a new worldview of Trump and the MAGA movement that is different in important ways from the Republican Party of old. It’s designed to create a new majority coalition that can govern and radically restructure society for the worse and over the long term.

Trump, if elected, will employ rhetoric and policies — steep tariffs on imported goods, for example — that were considered heretical in the old GOP — with the aim, among other things, of realigning the working class (or sectors of it) to MAGA’s side of the struggle. It’s no accident that Teamsters president Sean O’Brien spoke on the first day of their convention. Nor is it by chance that in his acceptance speech Trump demanded that UAW president Shawn Fain, who has had the temerity to criticize Trump, “should be fired immediately.”