The last several weeks have been witness to a series of stunning and consequential political events. The attempted assassination of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was followed by the GOP convention where Trump announced his vice-presidential running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance. Just three days later, President Joe Biden announced his decision to drop his re-election bid, endorsing his Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic party nominee.
After Biden’s disastrous June 27 debate with Donald Trump, a group calling itself Pass the Torch formed to pressure the president to step aside and make way for a stronger candidate to take on Trump and his threat to democracy. The group recruited volunteers to make tens of thousands of phone calls to elected officials and organized protests across the country and at the White House.
After Biden announced his departure from the campaign, the group praised the president for listening to voters and encouraged the Democratic party to unite around Harris as their nominee. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Aaron Regunberg, a member of the Pass the Torch steering committee, who served two terms in Rhode Island’s General Assembly. Here he talks about the rise of Kamala Harris as the Democratic party’s de facto candidate, and the changed dynamics of the campaign to defeat Donald Trump and the Republican party’s extremist agenda.
AARON REGUNBERG: It was certainly been a pretty crazy moment in American politics. And Pass the Torch has been a group of grassroots Democratic voters, organizers, activists, a few current and former electeds that came together just in the days after that debate with the desire to try to do something about it. You know, our sense was, “be really important that the voices of regular Democratic voters be heard in this process.”
And so we wanted to, again — just a bunch of volunteers coming together — wanted to do what we could to help regular people be heard. So we put together a call tool and an email tool. We helped over 10,000 phone calls to Democratic reps and senators, other almost 20,000 online actions. We worked with volunteers on the ground in swing states to have some actions in Ohio and Michigan.
We worked to support, Democratic leaders that were coming out, had the courage to speak out on this. So we wanted to make sure they had they had backup. We had a rally at the White House this weekend doing all sorts of things. But again, the point was just most Democrats in this moment agreed and felt strongly that it was time for President Biden to pass the torch.
And we felt it was important that those folks have some sort of group that’s working to represent them and give them ways to make their voices heard.
Most Democrats have cared about this so deeply because we understand that this election is existential in nature, right? Our party has been saying that for for years. But it’s not just a talking point. It’s a reality, right? We’re dealing with a movement that hasn’t just dabbled in violent authoritarianism. Violent authoritarianism is the core of its identity right? It’s not just rhetoric to say democracy is on the ballot and abortion access is on the ballot, and a livable future is on the ballot. It really it really, It really is.
And when the stakes are that high, we need to we need to have, a ticket that is in its best possible position to win.
SCOTT HARRIS: Aaron, given the strength of Kamala Harris to become the Democratic party nominee, what, in your view, are her strengths and weaknesses? And, of course, people remember the trauma of believing that Hillary Clinton would be the first woman elected president in 2016. She wasn’t. There’s concern that racism and misogyny could play a huge role in determining who wins the election in November.
A lot of fear out there of those prejudices, which certainly exist. Again, what’s your assessment of Kamala Harris’ strengths and weaknesses here?
AARON REGUNBERG: Well, I think the biggest strength of any is that she is a strong communicator who can actually get out there and campaign vigorously every day. And do the 10 interviews today that we need and deliver our message. I mean, I think it’s been very clear for a while that we don’t have a Democratic problem in this election. Right?
Democrats have been doing fine. Right? Democrats are winning special elections, our swing state senators are up in the polls. Right? Double digits above where Biden has been. Americans don’t like Donald Trump and they don’t like his horrifying Project 2025 agenda. And I think they’re ready to get behind a strong Democratic message.
Yes, there’s there’s a lot of racism. There’s a lot of misogyny in the United States. You’d have to be blind to argue otherwise. Having said that, I mean, Barack Obama won two times with over 50 percent of the vote, right? I don’t actually think that the biggest problems with Hillary Clinton’s campaign came from the fact that she was a woman, but there were other things going on as well.
And as a group, which, again just a bunch of volunteers that came together in the last few weeks, I think we’re figuring out what we want to do. And I think right now the focus is just overwhelmingly on supporting the new Democratic ticket to defeat fascism in November. That, I think has to be all of our priority right now.
On Nov. 6, I think there is a really important conversation we need to have as a party, because we were literally almost drawn over a cliff in the last couple weeks. Millions of Americans were feeling fear.
And as a party, I think it would be healthy for us to have a real conversation about how did we get here? What allowed this to happen and what can we do to clear out that rot and make sure that we’re never in a position where we are heading full speed off a cliff again?
But that’s a conversation for Nov. 6, because right now we’re up against fascism and we can win this race. We’re now in a position where we’ve got a strong fighting chance and we’re coming together, and we’re going to do everything we can to make sure that our democracy and our freedoms and our rights are there and safe on Nov. 6.
For more information on Pass the Torch, visit Pass The Torch website at
www.passthetorchbiden.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Aaron Regunberg (18:44) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page.
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