‘I See You, and I Am With You.’ Texas Women Needed That Harris Rally. by Olivia Messer and Leslie Rangel

Olivia Messer and Leslie Rangel report on Vice President Kamala Harris’s recently rally in Houston, which was mainly covered by the starstruck political press as the event where Beyoncé endorsed the Democratic candidate for the U.S. presidency from the stage. (More of those journalists should have noted that Beyoncé’s Destiny’s Child bandmate Kelly Rowland established herself as a political orator of consummate skill.) As usual, the content of Harris’s speech — and really the focus of the entire rally — wasn’t mentioned enough. The event was all about reproductive rights, a message that must have had greater resonance in a U.S. state with such hateful, draconian laws against the medical procedure of abortion that there are multiple documented cases of women dying as a direct result of those laws. This piece powerfully captures the feel of the event and what’s truly at stake in the election. The article is published by The Barbed Wire.

The Cult of Trump and The Death of Decency by John Pavlovitz

Writing for his own Substack, The Beautiful Mess, John Pavlovitz plainly expresses how mind-boggling it is that the Republican candidate for the presidency is even still in the race at all. Even setting aside the corruption and ineptitude of the person’s initial, unearned term in the highest office in the land, his sheer number of infractions against the most basic norms of public behavior should be disqualifying. Candidates from prior years whose campaigns were derailed by their silly yelling or some other minor faux pas must be flabbergasted as they watch the continued political survival of a convicted felon and court-proven rapist who’s on record as professing admiration for Hitler. Just last night, he simulated fellatio on a microphone during a rally, precisely the sort of crass behavior that his right-wing adherents usually meet with alarmed indignation. That around half the country is still going to vote for this amoral maniac is an indictment of our whole damned system.

It has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to endorse Harris for president by Alexandra Petri

Billionaire cowards at Washington Post, L.A. Times show what life under a dictator is really like by Will Bunch

The scuttling of presidential endorsements by the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have rightly stirred up a tornado of outrage. No matter what implausible justifications are bandied about, it’s clear that the decisions were driven by the dictates of the publication’s craven billionaire owners in a pathetic attempt to curry favor with the vindictive moron at the top of the GOP ticket. Alexandra Petri, the aces humorist who writes for the Post, responded with her own endorsement, expertly laced with venom. Will Bunch, writing for The Philadelphia Inquirer, is more brutal, correctly calling the choice cowardly and further naming it as preemptive capitulation to tyranny, just what the wannabe tyrants are counting on.