This is the sixth #transitzone USA election update.

It was recorded on Friday 30 August. (Please see news update below.)

Vice President Kamala Harris, since emerging as the presumed then formally nominated Democratic presidential candidate, has been under considerable pressure to do some formal media interviews and full cry media conferences.

Some of her "critics" have suggested Harris is OK on the teleprompter doing rally speeches but less accomplished and confidently communicative when she is extemporising under journalistic questioning.

Another more substantive aspect of doing more interviews was to “explain” shifts in her policy positions including around, for example, fracking and how to deal with the border.

Historically, candidates from both parties have shifted their overall policy profile once they face a general election after the primaries are done with.

Harris, and her VP pick, Governor Tim Walz, have been touring the crucial swing state of Georgia in their emblazoned campaign bus. They chose veteran journalist, Dana Bash, from CNN, for their first sit down interview.

Bash pre-recorded the interview in a plain unadorned room with that bus visible parked outside the glass doors before the two candidates headed to a rally in Savanah Georgia.

Peter Clarke and Margo Kingston appraised Harris's first formal journalistic interview and the current state of the competing campaigns.

NEWS UPDATE

Former President Donald J. Trump said on Friday that he would vote against a ballot measure in Florida that would expand abortion access in the state, clarifying his stance after having suggested a day earlier that he might support the measure.

“I’ll be voting no,” Mr. Trump told Fox News, even as he said he disagreed with his home state’s current ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/30/us/politics/trump-florida-abortion-measure.html

RESOURCES

GEORGE LAKOFF

Peter and Margo referred to the linguist, activist, George Lakoff.

https://x.com/georgelakoff/status/1829010468327080438?s=61&t=LsaW4g5LZrmuvsdTgt2l2w

LAKOFF WEBSITE: https://george-lakoff.com

KAMALA HARRIS INTERVIEWED BY DANA BASH AT CNN

PART 1 https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/30/politics/video/kamala-harris-tim-walz-full-interview-part-1-digvid

PART 2 https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/30/politics/video/kamala-harris-tim-walz-full-interview-part-2-digvid

PART 3 https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/30/politics/video/kamala-harris-tim-walz-full-interview-part-3-digvid

This is the fifth of the #transitzone, USA 2024, presidential election campaign updates, recorded Saturday 24 August.

It has been 34 days since Joe Biden withdrew from the race. A truly extraordinary month in USA political history.

The Democratic Party held its national nominating convention in Chicago for four days this week. But there were only the most minor echoes of the turmoil and police brutality of their roiling 1968 convention, held there in the midst of the Vietnam War and in the aftermath of the withdrawal of Lyndon Baines Johnson from the presidential contest and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F Kennedy.

The expected Pro Palestine protests were muted and overall, non disruptive.

This convention was a smooth, slick, crafted affair with highly co-ordinated rhetoric emphasising the Kamala Harris, Tim Walz themes of freedom, moving forward, renewing democracy and relentlessly describing, attacking, ridiculing their Republican opponent, Donald Trump.

"Fraudster, Philanderer, Felon" was one piece of alliteration a Democratic speaker used. But there was much, much more, including even a suggestive hand action from, of all people, the ever serious Barack Obama about size: crowd size that is.

At the end of the week, the so-called scion of the Kennedy dynasty, Robert F Kennedy Jr, suspended his presidential campaign, as an independent, to endorse Trump.

In his typically fickle way, Trump, who had earlier blasted Kennedy as a “dangerous radical”, now heaps praise upon him.

Margo Kingston and Peter Clarke, who followed the Democratic Convention closely, listened to the speeches, observed that very American, often cheesy, saccharine sentimentality, hoopla and razzle dazzle, discuss this pivotal week in the upturned 2024 presidential campaign.

RESOURCES

Margo Kingston, in her commentary, drew upon a range of USA podcasts and other sources. She's including this selection for your information and reference.

"Kamala Harris Wants to Win". The Ezra Klein Show

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/kamala-harris-wants-to-win/id1548604447?i=1000666403310

"A.B. Stoddard: Only in America". The Bulwark Podcast

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/a-b-stoddard-only-in-america/id1447684472?i=1000666394258

"Kamala Harris is not going back to the failed politics of 2016". Nate Silver - "Silver Bullet" Blog

https://www.natesilver.net/p/kamala-harris-is-not-going-back-to

This is the fourth of the #transitzone USA 2024 presidential election campaign updates recorded on Saturday 17 August.

It has been 28 days since Joe Biden withdrew from the race.

Next Tuesday, 20 August, Australian time, the Democrats head to Chicago for their national convention to formally nominate Kamala Harris as their presidential nominee.

Then, we think, a national televised debate between the two contenders, hosted by ABC, on the 10th of September.

Trump is scheduled to be sentenced for criminal fraud, in New York, on the 18th of September, although he and his legal team have been submitting a constant stream of filings to the court, seeking to avoid that ultimate conclusion to his criminal trial and guilty verdict by that jury.

Margo Kingston and Peter Clarke look back over another extraordinary week of two sharply contrasting election campaigns, marked, on the Republican side, by increasingly unhinged and incoherent (not to mention politically reckless) rhetoric from their ("Let Trump Be Trump") candidate, Donald Trump.

This is the third of the #transitzone USA 2024 presidential election campaign updates, recorded Friday 9 August. It has been 18 days since Joe Biden withdrew from the race. 25 days since the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania.

Margo Kingston and Peter Clarke have been tracking some of the key events and developments in this extraordinary fast forward campaign.

The Republican candidate, former president, Donald Trump, has just held a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort. Disciplined, focussed, rational, it was not. It was the typical Trump ranty mix of lies, self-infatuated claims and vitriolic invective. He is still fixated on his rally crowd sizes even claiming his January 6 2021 Washington, Ellipsis address was bigger than that for Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington in 1963.

Meanwhile, Kamala Harris and her VP running mate pick, Minnesota Governor, Tim Walz, are on a multi swing state rally blitz attaining a huge amount of “earned media” coverage from the networks, cable news outfits and online entities.

Trump’s VP pick, JD Vance is shadowing them city by city.

The Democrats’ national convention starts in Chicago on 19 th of August.

And THE NEWS is apparently Trump and Harris have come to some kind of agreement to meet for a nationally televised debate hosted, as was originally planned with Joe Biden, by the ABC network on 10th of September.

Margo and Peter discuss Kamala Harris's VP pick, the latest unhinged speech from Trump, his apparent self-sobataging in the state of Georgia by attacking its popular Republican governor, Brian Kemp and the looming national televised debates.

RESOURCES

First combined Kamala Harris - Tim Walz rally in Philadelphia:

https://youtu.be/eBRFGMw38zI?si=VGLfgB1zoBXwYVVn

Trump press conference, 8 August, Mar-a-Lago:

https://www.youtube.com/live/McXjpQFFN90?si=1Z8szclourbZwCu2

Margo Kingston and Peter Clarke take stock of the unfolding USA presidential election at the end of the second week of the Kamala Harris presumptive candidacy for the Democratic Party.

Donald Trump appeared for a tense and heated interview with three Black women journalists at the annual convention of the National Black Journalists' Association. It did not go well. The former president questioned whether Kamal Harris was, "Indian or Black": a self-evident false binary. His campaign is going all out to define his opponent as "fake". Meanwhile, Harris addressed a wildly enthusiastic 10,000 strong rally in Atlanta, Georgia, delivering her evolving stump speech with "Freedom" as its rhetorical leitmotif. She also fired back at her GOP opponent's racist attack.

With Harris's choice of VP running mate looming, Peter and Margo try to predict that choice.

This year marks a significant anniversary in Australian political history. But few Australian citizens will be celebrating it mainly because they simply don’t know what it is. In 1924, as Australia entered its third decade of federation, our federal parliament passed legislation mandating compulsory voting. 100 years later, that innovation has been meshed into our political lives and democracy as utterly normal. The “democracy sausage” effect. Our turn out for elections is persistently high, unlike most other democracies we might compare ourselves with.

How has compulsory voting shaped our democracy over the last century? What are the positives and negatives? What might we lose if we abolished it as has been tried relatively recently in Australia by the Liberal Party under John Howard.

Emeritus Professor of Politics at Monash University, Paul Strangio, co-edited the 2021 book Compulsory Voting in Australia : Genesis, Impact and Future. He speaks with Peter Clarke about the history, current status and potential future of compulsory voting in Australia.

RESOURCES

Compulsory voting in Australia is 100 years old. We should celebrate how special it makes our democracy by Paul Strangio

https://theconversation.com/compulsory-voting-in-australia-is-100-years-old-we-should-celebrate-how-special-it-makes-our-democracy-234801

Compulsory Voting in Australia : Genesis, Impact and Future

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-33-4025-1

From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia Got Compulsory Voting by Judith Brett

https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/from-secret-ballot-to-democracy-sausage-how-australia-got-compulsory-voting

Ultimately, it happened at lightning speed. After weeks of apparent digging in, USA president, Joe Biden, finally bowed to the inevitable and withdrew his candidacy from the presidential election contest, endorsing his Vice President, Kamala Harris, as he did so. She, within 24 hours, had secured sufficient Democrats' delegates to the upcoming national nomination convention to instantly become the putative nominee. Harris immediately started campaigning with feisty, speeches, taking on her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, frontally and laying out her policy themes under her slogan "We're Not Going Back!" to counter Trump's, "Make America Great Again", making the intensely fractious, febrile contest ostensibly about the past versus the future. Peter Clarke and Margo Kingston take stock of the first days of this utterly transformed and crucial US presidential election contest.

Denise Shrivell is an Australian democracy activist, media critic and analyst. Her background is in advertising and public communications. More recently, Denise has worked on political campaigns including as an advisor to "community independent", Kylea Tink, now the independent federal MP for North Sydney. She produces and presents a weekly, "live" podcast titled, Spinproof, and curates a daily newsletter, TrueNorth, which aggregates Denise's selections of quality, independent, Australian journalism.

She is in conversation with #transitzone anchor, Peter Clarke.

DENISE SHRIVELL TWITTER: @DeniseShrivell

https://linktr.ee/deniseshrivell

TrueNorth: https://linktr.ee/truenorthnews

@TrueNorthNewsAU

SpinProof Podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/spinproof--4577848