What a day.
I had just finished reading about Joe Biden’s lingering resentments about having been edged aside to make way for Hillary Clinton in 2016[1] and figured this was the icing on the cake, that there was no way he would step aside, when word came down that Joe Biden was, after all the drama, indeed stepping aside.[2] Soon after, and again affirming what many had been expecting, he endorsed Kamala Harris.[3]
I’m still digesting all this. I think Harris has a chance where Biden had absolutely none following his disastrous debate performance and his campaign’s astonishingly bad damage control. That isn’t saying much and, really, it shouldn’t. I don’t know.
One thing I am feeling is a sense of relief. Expecting a 1984-style landslide victory for Donald Trump, I was fearing the worst. And yet, because Biden has been supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza, I could not vote for him. The choice, for me, was between a war criminal and a fascist—I can vote for neither.
But I don’t know what Harris’ position on the genocide will be. She, of course, is toeing the Biden administration line because she still works for the man, which means we are unlikely to find out until after the election, and quite possibly, after inauguration day. Until I know otherwise, I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
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I’m gradually figuring out how to work with Substack. I think I’ll use notes as a stand-in for the old Irregular Bullshit. If you’re interested in my hot takes, keep a browser tab open to the notes here.
One of the big problems with Substack is that it does not properly support footnotes. They can be done, but they have to be done through the hypertext markup language (HTML), which is, to put it mildly, crude, and lacks automatic numbering. (One oddity: It appears I can copy and paste footnoted text from a Microsoft Word document into a regular post, but not into notes.)
All I can say for now is I’m working on it.
One thing that very badly needs to happen is more subscribers. If you like what you see here, please do recommend Not Housebroken to folks you think may be interested. Thanks for reading!
[1] Ryan Lizza, Eugene Daniels, and Rachael Bade, “Inside the Biden Bunker,” Politico, July 21, 2024, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2024/07/21/inside-the-biden-bunker-00169976
[2] Joey Garrison and Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, “Joe Biden drops out of 2024 race, exit comes amid growing pressure from top Dems,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 21, 2024, https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/07/21/joe-biden-drops-out/74255359007/
[3] Richard Luscombe, “Biden endorses Kamala Harris for president after dropping out of race,” Guardian, July 21, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/21/biden-kamala-harris