If the presidential election were to be decided by endorsements, Kamala Harris would win in a landslide. It seems like not a day goes by without yet another person or group endorsing the Harris-Walz ticket. Some of these are from political people like Republicans Liz Cheney, her father Dick Cheney, and Alberto Gonzalez (the attorney general during the Bush-Cheney administration). More than 100 former Republican administration people have also signed a joint letter endorsing. her.
More than 100 Republican former national security and foreign policy officials on Wednesday endorsed Kamala Harris for president in a joint letter, calling Donald Trump “unfit to serve” another term in the White House.
Former officials from the presidential administrations of Republicans Ronald Reagan, George H W Bush, George W Bush and Donald Trump, as well as Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama voiced their support for Harris, the Democratic nominee for president in this November’s election. They were joined by some former GOP members of Congress.
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Among the signees were former defense secretaries William Cohen and Chuck Hagel, who served in the Clinton and Obama administrations, respectively. Others include William Webster, a former CIA and FBI director under the Reagan and first Bush administrations, as well as Michael Hayden, a former CIA and NSA director under the younger Bush and the Obama administrations.
“We firmly oppose the election of Donald Trump. As president, he promoted daily chaos in government, praised our enemies and undermined our allies, politicized the military and disparaged our veterans, prioritized his personal interest above American interests, and betrayed our values, democracy, and this country’s founding document,” the letter added.
…Several former Trump officials who signed the letter include Mark Harvey, a former special assistant to the president, and Elizabeth Neumann, a former assistant secretary of Homeland Security … as well as Trump’s former press secretary Stephanie Grisham and communications director Anthony Scaramucci.
Almost all the major trade unions have also endorsed the Harris-Walz ticket. These include the United Auto Workers, the AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, and the United Steelworkers
The one major exception is the Teamsters where its leader Sean O’Brien has said that they will not endorse anyone. O’Brien seems to like creepy Donald Trump (he spoke at the Republican National Convention and praised him), Immediately after his statement about no endorsement though, regional branches of the union rushed to announce their support of Harris-Walz and vowed to volunteer to do grassroots work. This happened very quickly.
Indeed, within 24 hours of the union proclaiming its neutrality, regions and locals representing more than 500,000 of the Teamsters’ 1.3 million members (of whom a little more than 100,000 are in Canada) announced that they were backing Harris.
Harris has completely dominated when it comes to celebrity endorsements. The most high profile was Taylor Swift right at the end of the Democratic convention which caused creepy Trump to react in typical childish fashion by tweeting “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT”.
Then last week Billie Eilish also endorsed Harris.
It’s National Voter Registration Day. We are voting for Harris-Walz. The choice is clear. Check your voting status here: https://t.co/ZPKcYDR7aF pic.twitter.com/PiFfQpkARW
— billie eilish (@billieeilish) September 17, 2024
Then Oprah Winfrey added to her earlier endorsement by hosting an event with Harris where a number of well-known Hollywood personalities endorsed her.
Hollywood celebrities like Meryl Streep, Bryan Cranston, Julia Roberts, Chris Rock and Jennifer Lopez, lent their casual, zooming-from-my-kitchen appeal and provided a cozy setting for Harris to take questions designed to allow her to emphasize her core campaign messages on the economy, immigration, abortion and gun control.
Others who joined in included Tracee Ellis Ross, Julia Roberts, and Ben Stiller. George Clooney is already on record as supporting the Democratic ticket.
Deadline is keeping a running tally of celebrities who have endorsed creepy Trump, which includes Kanye West, Kid Rock, Hulk Hogan, Elon Musk, Dennis Quaid, Russell Brand, 50 Cent, Lil Wayne, Rob Schneider, Roseanne Barr, Jon Voight, and James Woods.
Compared to the many A-listers among the Harris endorsers, the creepy Trump list consists mostly of C- or D-listers.
I expect more endorsements to come in for Harris on a steady basis. I am pretty sure that the Harris-Walz campaign is in touch with many of the people who they think will endorse the ticket and are working with them on the timing. The idea seems to be not to have all of them bunched together but release them regularly so that they dominate the news. In fact, I would not be at all surprised if the timing of the Swift endorsement at the very end of the Democratic convention debate was planned in advance so as to end it with a bang.
Do these endorsements matter? The union endorsements do because they constitute a large number of people who live and work everywhere and, most importantly, are willing to do the hard work of canvassing door-to-door and getting out the vote.
As to celebrity endorsements, I have no idea. But the fact that the parties court them suggest that they think they help in terms of influencing voters.
None of the list of Trump endorsers was particularly surprising, they’re all pretty well-known arseholes going way back, years before Trump was ever a candidate. The one name on the list that was an eyebrow-raiser for a different reason was Russel Brand.
I’m a little amazed that Brand even qualifies as D-list. To UK eyes he’s a mid-range standup comic who got lucky, was in a couple of not-terrible films, then went down an alt-right rabbit-hole when his work here dried up after Sachsgate (the incident in which he and another presenter made a “comedy” phone call to the then 78 year old actor Andrew Sachs (who played Manuel in Fawlty Towers), in which Brand crowed about the fact he’d had sex with Sachs’s granddaughter).
The fact anyone in the US would give a monkey’s about what he thought (or would even have been able to recognise his name) is baffling to me.
Swift’s endorsement was just after the debate, some time after the end of the convention.
[You are correct. I have corrected it. Thanks! Mano]
It’s nice that all these republican-types are endorsing Harris, and I’m sure that she’s glad to have the high-profile political republican figures do so.
But, I’d feel little icky about having to accept the endorsement of war criminal and mass murderer Dick Cheney.
I know that she has to accept it, so would I in her place, but it’s just rather yucky. Like being endorsed by Kissinger.
The endorsements matter if they translate into an increase in voter registration and turnout among the younger demographics. Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Billie Eilish have millions of fans in the 18-35 range which doesn’t vote as consistently as older voters.
I haven’t checked recently, but there were over half a million new voters registered within 24 hours via the link on Taylor Swift’s endorsement.
I have no idea why a British edge-lord like Brand is included in the endorsements, but that entire list of D-listers are rather hateful.
The endorsements matter if they translate into an increase in voter registration and turnout among the younger demographics. Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Billie Eilish have millions of fans in the 18-35 range which doesn’t vote as consistently as older voters.
I haven’t checked recently, but there were over half a million new voters registered within 24 hours via the link on Taylor Swift’s endorsement.
I have no idea why a British edge-lord like Brand is included in the endorsements, but that entire list of D-listers are rather hateful.