The summer of political whiplash in the US was one we will never forget. In the last week of June I was guest curator of the Aspen Ideas Festival. The defining vignette was the jolly debate-night watch we planned, which, from the first ashen glimpse of Joe Biden at the mic speaking in a Mr Creakle whisper, turned into a Democratic wake punctuated by the occasional broken sob in the audience.
Ten weeks later, the whole world has changed as Dems hum joyously along to Kamalot. Kamala Harris’s inspired vice-presidential pick, cosy Middle American dad Tim Walz of Minnesota, “looks like home”, as the still-intuitive Bill Clinton told his friend Paul Begala.
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