5 Comments
Jul 18Liked by James J. Heaney

The new pressure against Biden surprised me too!

I'll unfortunately be busy tomorrow morning, but I'll be eagerly archive-binging your liveblog afterwards!

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Jul 20Liked by James J. Heaney

Dratz! I had queued up these last two posts to read tonight and missed my chance to join the live stream itself! This format posted here seemed clean and easy, hopefully the “live” part of the live blog went easily enough for you as well and it can remain an option for the future.

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Yeah, I liked it! And there were even a few people actually following it, so that's already a quantum leap above my previous attempt at a liveblog!

Thanks for the encouraging comment! It's good when I'm not the only one who likes something!

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Jul 21Liked by James J. Heaney

Well, this looks different after today's news. I guess now we see why they didn't do anything yet.

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I'm still trying to figure out what was going on here. I don't think Walz/Harrison/Daughtry knew he was going to drop out, because, if the circle of trust had extended that far, everyone would have known.

Now the DNC has to live with the fact that it's invested a good amount into the "we must have a virtual roll call" narrative. If they can clear the field -- which looks probable at this point -- that won't be a problem, I guess. (I'm obviously thinking aloud as I type this, since this is my first public comment since the news.) If Harris has no competitor, they can just put together a nominating petition for Harris this week and do it openly under the rules and have a virtual roll call ballot with two options: Harris and Present. It's just like the original plan but with Biden in place of Harris.

But if they don't clear the field, if someone challenges Harris, there are going to be a lot of delegates with questions about how to get that other person on the ballot, followed by a contentious virtual roll call in the first week of August -- unless the DNC suddenly admits they were blowing smoke about the first week of August and stop pushing for the virtual roll call altogether, but that would involve walking a lot of things back. (The DNC will probably solve any problems that emerge by running roughshod over the delegates.)

It does look like Harris will quickly clear the field and take the nomination unchallenged, so they'll get away with it, and I guess maybe that's what they were already counting on back on Friday.

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