Last week, my colleague Peter Savodnik spoke to John Fetterman. The senator from Pennsylvania told Peter he is not going to the Democratic National Convention, which begins today in Chicago, and he insisted it has nothing to do with the fact his pro-Israel stance is at odds with his party’s increasingly empowered left wing.
But it’s hard to imagine Fetterman being welcome in Chicago—where more than 100,000 anti-Israel protesters are expected to show up, threatening a reprise of 1968.
In the months following October 7, Fetterman has become the bête noire of progressive activists who have booed him outside the Capitol; descended on his home in Braddock, Pennsylvania; and who have demonstrated outside his Philadelphia office every Friday for months chanting, “Let Gaza live,” and “Cease-fire now.” Online they call him “Genocide John.”
In his conversation with Peter, Fetterman insisted none of this bothered him. But apparently they bother a member of his staff.
After his interview with the senator, Peter’s phone rang. It was Fetterman’s communications director, Carrie Adams, who wanted to make clear that she doesn’t agree with her boss on Israel and Gaza.
“I have a sense that his international views are a lot less nuanced than my generation, because when he was growing up, it was might makes right, and for my generation and younger who, of course, are the ones protesting this, they have a much more nuanced view of the region,” said the 30-something Adams of the 55-year-old senator.
It was an astonishing moment. As Peter writes, “I’ve been a reporter since the summer of 1998, when I covered Bill Clinton’s trip to Martha’s Vineyard for the Vineyard Gazette. This was the first time I’d ever encountered anyone—on Capitol Hill or anywhere else, on the record, off the record, on background, whatever—criticizing ‘the principal.’ ”
Read Peter’s full, extraordinary interview with the senator here: “John Fetterman Has No Regrets.”
How will these anti-Israel delegates shape the convention that begins today in Chicago? Eli Lake inquires.
A handful of delegates is threatening to pierce the Democratic Party’s kumbaya for Kamala as its national convention kicks off in Chicago on Monday.
These potential spoilers are known as the Uncommitted Movement, representing voters who deliberately declined to back Joe Biden when he was seeking a second term in the primaries. The movement has drawn delegates from three states—Michigan, Minnesota, and Hawaii—where they voted “uncommitted” in their state primaries this spring. The Uncommitteds argued that voters should use their leverage to change Biden’s policy of supporting Israel’s war in Gaza, and at the DNC this week, they say they are planning to agitate for a “ceasefire, anti-war, pro-peace narrative.”
Kamala Harris secured her place atop the Democratic ticket on August 6, when she was certified by 4,567 delegates out of 4,695 over Zoom. The Uncommitteds comprise just 30 of those remaining 98 delegates. So while they pose no threat to Harris’s nomination, they are a noisy minority who can help galvanize the anti-Israel protesters set to disrupt the DNC this week and force Harris to face a problem she has not yet experienced since Biden dropped out of the race: a bad news cycle.
The Uncommitteds on the inside of the convention are distinct from the radicals who intend to crash it. Some of the groups planning street theater and protests have pledged to make the convention “great like ’68,” a reference to the historical DNC that led to televised riots and clashes between police and demonstrators in Chicago that year. By contrast, the Uncommitteds have sought policy concessions from the Democrats, such as prime time speaking slots and anti-Israel language in the party’s platform. That said, both the outsiders and insiders are pressing for the same goal: ending American support for the world’s only Jewish state.
The Uncommitted Movement was first founded in February as “Listen to Michigan”—named after the state with the largest Arab American population in the country. Layla Elabed, the sister of Michigan Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, is campaign manager for the national movement.
Though Biden won more than 618,000 votes in the Michigan primary on February 27 and earned 115 pledged delegates, just over 100,000 people voted “uncommitted”—enough to deny him two delegates at the DNC.
That got the attention of the White House.
In the run-up to the Michigan primary, Biden sent a delegation of senior officials to Dearborn to listen to complaints from local leaders over his policy on the Gaza war. Soon after, Biden’s rhetorical tone on the conflict shifted. He began to criticize Israeli air strikes as “over the top,” and announced sanctions against a handful of Israeli settlers on the West Bank.
Elabed (Tlaib’s sister) took notice of that move. “Despite the naysayers in the establishment,” she said on March 3, “the Biden administration is moving because of the pressure from uncommitted Democrats.”
After the Michigan primaries, Elabed and Abbas Alawieh, a former chief of staff for Democratic Rep. Cori Bush, created a super PAC called Listen to Us (now called the Uncommitted Movement) to challenge Biden in other states. According to OpenSecrets, the organization spent $375,925 against Biden this year during the primaries. The campaign failed to make a dent in Biden’s primary campaign.
But now that Harris is running for the presidency, the movement is pushing her to pledge fealty to their cause. Earlier this month, before a rally in Detroit, she and her running mate, Tim Walz, had met with leaders of the Uncommitted Movement. At that meeting, they discussed a possible arms embargo on Israel, and the vice president’s national security adviser, Philip Gordon, posted on X that she opposes it. But Harris herself made no commitments. And that’s the point.
Read Eli’s piece (and listen to his podcast) on “Kamala Harris and the Election of Laughter and Forgetting.”
The last four weeks since Joe Biden announced he would not be running for reelection couldn’t have gone better for Kamala Harris. Harris has secured all of Biden’s delegates and is now coasting all the way to the Democratic National Convention powered by vague feelings of hopey-changey freshness and good vibes. She has offered no interviews to the media. Zero. And the media—rather than complaining about that fact—has helped reinvent her as a stateswoman “matched to the moment.”
And it’s worked. Kamala has closed the gap with Trump, with all of the major polling averages showing her ahead of the ex-president both nationally and in the major battleground states.
In other words, Kamala Harris is winning.
Or is she?
The polls remain very tight. A new candidate was always going to get the honeymoon bounce. And if the best Harris can manage in this period of intense cheerleading ahead of the DNC is a narrow lead in the polls, things might not look so rosy come Election Day.
So, we’ve been asking ourselves in the newsroom: who is really winning? Trump or Harris?
In today’s fight club, Free Press contributing editor Abigail Shrier and senior editor Peter Savodnik square off in the ring. Abigail argues the Kamala-mentum is real, while Peter says “not so fast.”
Read Abigail and Peter’s arguments, and tell us what you think in the comments.
The daily themes for the programming at the DNC will be “for the people,” “a bold vision for America’s future,” “a fight for our freedoms,” and “for our future.” It is a sign of a different emphasis from Harris than Biden, who had been presenting the election as an existential fight for American democracy. (NBC)
Tonight Joe Biden has the awkward task of addressing the DNC where he hoped he’d be receiving his party’s nomination for president. Instead he must sing the praises of his VP—someone who is trying to distance herself from him ahead of the election. Paul Glastris, who helped write Bill Clinton’s 2000 convention speech for his VP Al Gore, has some advice. (Washington Monthly)
House Democrats have been advised by congressional security officials not to book hotel rooms under their own names at the DNC this week, amid fears of anti-Israel protests that could rock Chicago outside the convention hall. Businesses have boarded up their shop fronts in anticipation of the disorder. (Axios)
“We have a consistently pro-Western view that the West has a superior way of living and organizing itself, especially if we live up to our aspirations,” Palantir CEO Alex Karp tells Maureen Dowd. “It’s interesting how radical that is, considering it’s not, in my view, that radical.” Her piece about the daydreaming, tai chi-ing, cross-country skiing defense tech leader is a profile in moral clarity. (New York Times)
Are we living in a time of unparalleled wealth inequality? No, says economist Daniel Waldenström, who argues the orthodoxy on the subject is all wrong. Wealth has become more equally distributed over time, he argues, and the driving force for the masses has been “political and institutional change that enabled citizens to become educated, better paid, and to amass wealth through housing and pension savings.” (Aeon)
A study finds that legalized sports betting is leading to more bankruptcies and lower credit scores. I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling on the apps isn’t having an entirely positive effect. (The American Saga)
The Washington Post’s editorial board calls Kamala Harris’s economic proposals, including a federal ban on “price gouging,” “populist gimmicks.” And the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says these gimmicks will increase deficits by $1.7 trillion over a decade. (Washington Post)
How about some policies that will actually lower costs? Economist John Cochrane has some ideas. (The Grumpy Economist)
Britain is going to war against its keyboard warriors. Ed West looks at the Brits being sentenced to jail for the posts about the recent anti-immigrant riots. You don’t need to be a free speech purist to agree that “many of these punishments are cruel, excessive and embarrassing to our reputation.” (The Wrong Side of History)
Is color blindness possible? Coleman Hughes discusses his hope for a color-blind America with Glenn Loury and John McWhorter. (Glenn Loury)
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