It's Kamala Harris for Biden's prosecution of case against Trump

'Strong woman' with gloves off

As he introduced his running mate Kamala Harris on Wednesday in their first live appearance as a ticket, Joe Biden chuckled over how President Donald Trump called the California senator "nasty" for her tough grilling of his nominees. “Is anyone surprised Donald Trump has a problem with a strong woman or strong women across the board?” Biden said.

Harris promised to be trouble for Trump. "Let me tell you, as somebody who has presented my fair share of arguments in court, the case against Donald Trump and Mike Pence is open and shut," she said in her first speech as the Democrats' presumptive vice-presidential nominee.

“This is a moment of real consequence for America. Everything we care about — our economy, our health, our children, the kind of country we live in — it’s all on the line,” Harris said. "America is crying out for leadership, yet we have a president who cares more about himself than the people who elected him," she said.

Biden's pick of Harris paid off quickly in one respect. During a virtual fundraiser Wednesday night, Biden announced their campaign had raised $26 million in the previous 24 hours.

Reflecting the pandemic-altered political year, both candidates arrived onstage wearing masks in a Wilmington, Delaware, high school gym with few attendees, rather than a hall filled with cheering supporters as would normally be the case. The pair removed the masks while each spoke and blamed Trump for the depth of the coronavirus crisis. “It’s because of Trump’s failure to take it seriously from the start," Harris said.

Biden took note of the historic significance of Harris' place on the national ticket as a biracial daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India. “This morning, all across the nation, little girls woke up, especially little Black and brown girls, who so often feel overlooked and undervalued in their communities,” Biden said. “But today just maybe, they’re seeing themselves for the first time in a new way: as the stuff of president and vice presidents.” He said Harris' background is "America's story."

Biden recalled that Wednesday was the third anniversary of the death of a woman from white nationalist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, after which Trump at the time said there had been "very fine people on both sides" of protests over a Confederate statue. "Who are we as a nation?" Biden said onstage. "What do we stand for? And most importantly, what do we want to be?" Said Harris: “We need more than a victory on Nov. 3.” She continued, “We need a mandate that proves that the past few years do not represent who we are or who we aspire to be.” Click here for video of the Biden and Harris remarks.

Helping Biden close the deal?

Biden's choice of Harris will shore up support among key voting blocs that are critical to ensuring a victory in the fall, political scientists and campaign strategists told Newsday's Laura Figueroa Hernandez and Yancey Roy. 

Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist, said the selection shows Biden has “accepted the fact he’s the front-runner” for the general election, and “when you’re the front-runner, you do not make a risky decision.”

Harris was the likely choice all along because she’s a tested political pro — unlike some of the other contenders — and she excites part of the Democratic voter base, Sabato said.

“Joe Biden is never going to be exciting. So there has to be something on the ticket that gets people out to vote, other than their hatred of Donald Trump,” Sabato said. “In Harris, he has it. With Kamala Harris on the ticket, he looks contemporary.”

Harris’ nomination is “almost a sign of respect to the Black community, and Black women in particular who have just been the staunchest and most consistent supporters of the Democratic Party,” said Amanda Clayton, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University who focuses on the intersection of gender and politics.

She's no easy target

Trump has his work cut out for him if he's going to try to convince voters that Biden has added a wild-eyed radical to the ticket.

Trump has focused recent appeals on trying to win back suburban women — "suburban housewives," he calls them — but Republican pollster Sarah Longwell told Reuters. "There’s no evidence yet that they do dislike or distrust" Harris. “In fact, my guess is that she’ll play pretty well with suburban women,” Longwell said.

Harris is more liked by Republicans than is Biden, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted earlier this week, just before she was announced as Biden’s pick. It found 21% of Republican voters had a favorable impression of her; 13% felt that way about Biden.

Trump opened a new line of attack on Harris during his coronavirus briefing and news conference on Wednesday. "She's very bad on facts," he said.

The president also brought in the name of another Black senator, Cory Booker of New Jersey, in a tweet contending "the 'suburban housewife' will be voting for me because Biden and Booker want 'low income housing' to 'invade their neighborhood.’ ” Tweeted Booker at Trump: "Your racism is showing."

Janison: What's wrong with this picture?

On July 28, Trump crowed that his administration reached "a historic" and "groundbreaking" deal to provide a $765 million loan for Kodak in Rochester, New York, to expand its pharmaceutical chemicals line. He even thanked Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo for supporting it.

But the plan isn't developing as promised, writes Newsday's Dan Janison. At the outset, some Wall Street analysts wondered why officials turned to Kodak, a 20th century industrial giant in long decline since digital photography destroyed its film-based business. The company has no presence in the pharma trade. But its stock value quickly tripled.

Now the deal seems to be in a great deal of trouble. Five days after the announcement, Trump responded to reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission and other agencies were probing possible improprieties. "If there is any problem, we’ll let you know about it very quickly,” Trump said, before adding: “I wasn’t involved in it." The stock price has plunged.

A dramatically high volume of trading just a day before the public announcement marks one of what appear to be several irregular features of the deal. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) asked the SEC to investigate any connection between the granting of the loan and several trades and executive purchases of Eastman Kodak stock. 

No check for the mail

Democrats in Congress have called for more funding for the Postal Service as part of the stalled coronavirus relief package, and members of both parties have complained that cost-cutting by the Trump-allied postmaster general has caused serious delivery delays for such vital packages as mail-order prescription drugs.

But Trump on Wednesday said no, and he wasn't hiding his motives — to discourage the use of mail-in voting.

“They don’t have the money to do the universal mail-in voting. So therefore, they can’t do it, I guess,” Trump said. “Are they going to do it even if they don’t have the money?”

Deliveries from online shopping during the pandemic had already stretched the Postal Service to its limits. 

Coronavirus risks? Atlas shrugs

Trump has brought aboard a new coronavirus adviser — a frequent Fox News guest whose views are closer to the president's than, say, Dr. Anthony Fauci or Dr. Deborah Birx.

Dr. Scott Atlas, a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, decries the idea that schools cannot reopen fully this fall as "hysteria" and pushing for the resumption of college sports. “Young people that age, without a co-morbidity, have virtually a zero risk from this," Atlas said earlier this week. 

According to CNN, Atlas also has asserted it doesn't matter "how many cases" there are in the U.S., wrongly claimed those under 18 years old have "essentially no risk of dying," implied teachers who are at high risk for contracting COVID-19 should "know how to protect themselves," baselessly claimed "children almost never transmit the disease" and without evidence blamed a rise in cases in Southern states on protests and border crossings.

Trump introduced Atlas at his coronavirus briefing Monday as someone "who will be working with us on the coronavirus." The president added, "And he has many great ideas."

More coronavirus news

See a roundup of the latest pandemic developments from Long Island and beyond by Newsday staff, written by Lisa L. Colangelo and Bart Jones. For a full list of Newsday's coronavirus stories, click here.

What else is happening:

• Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons, favorited a later-deleted tweet that referred to Harris as a "whorendous pick," The New York Times reported. (Here's a screenshot.)
• Trump's attack on Harris as "nasty" puts her in well-known company. Trump has used the word to describe Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Meghan Markle, Chris Wallace and (before his 2016 election) Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Mitt Romney and Ted Cruz.
• The Trump administration wants to change the definition of a showerhead to let more water flow, addressing a pet peeve of the president, who complains he isn’t getting wet enough to tend to his hair, The Associated Press reports.
• Trump tweeted congratulations to Marjorie Taylor Greene, a QAnon conspiracy cultist who won a GOP House primary runoff in Georgia, and called her "a future Republican star." Previously, House GOP leaders disavowed her for "appalling" and "disgusting" videos with racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic comments. In a victory speech, she referred to Pelosi with a b-word slur.
• Intel outside: Trump’s interest in taking intelligence briefings has been declining steadily since his first months in office and has dropped to near zero in recent weeks, according to a review of his daily schedules by HuffPost.
• Trump has privately said that he intends to replace Defense Secretary Mark Esper after the November election, Bloomberg News reports. Trump has been frustrated that Esper hasn’t done more to publicly defend him during controversies, including U.S. intel reports that Russia paid bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
• The State Department's Office of Inspector General called for further investigation of staff complaints that the U.S. ambassador in London — New York Jets owner Woody Johnson — made "insensitive" and "inappropriate" remarks regarding "religion, sex or color." Agency officials rejected the recommendation and closed the case.
• Trump on Tuesday expanded his exceptions to his unfounded claim that mail-in voting is rife with fraud, encouraging North Carolina supporters in a phone rally to vote absentee. He also has blessed mail voting in Arizona and Florida. There's been a sharp shift toward Democrats in absentee ballot requests in North Carolina, compared with 2016.