Kamala Harris … cool, I guess.
I still don’t think it makes much of a difference, though I must be honest: I’m truly thrilled it was not Susan Rice.
Your thoughts?
UPDATE: Hey, Joe Biden did something!
The most important choice in the history of picking things is ...
I left my initial thought in the open thread, which is that I look forward to seeing her dogwalk Mike Pence in the VP debate. Evil Race Bannon is WAY out of his league.
Pence just felt someone walk over his grave.
Yeah, there’s almost no way she Tim Kaines that debate.
It’s the right pick because it’s the safest pick. I mean there’s going to be a lot of dogwhistled racism and sexism from the Republicans and the media, but that was inevitable whoever Joe selected.
I look forward to Trump coming up with the first, most racist and/or hypocritical thing he can say about her.
Oh, I fully expect him to drop the n-word.
She’s half Asian Indian — he can find some opportunities for slurs there too.
I think the mixed race background is going to really freak out the race purist fanatics in his base.
…feels like he maybe could have done better in so far as some of the criticisms of her habits as a prosecutor overlap some of the reasons people hold the crime bill stuff against him
…but I guess the other ladies had better things to do…or couldn’t come to mutually acceptable terms
…despite her beating him over the head with the busing thing in that debate I think they’ve been on pretty decent terms for a while…she worked with his son for a fair bit, didn’t she?
…I dunno…doesn’t feel surprising…but I guess we take a deep breath & wait for the mudslinging to begin?
I mean…weirdly enough, part of the problem was that he boxed himself in with the “needing to pick a woman of color” stuff. But even assuming men and women were both up for this thing, I’d still reckon Kamala would’ve been the pick. And possibly because she bodied him in that first debate. Biden has just enough self-awareness (barely) to want a VP who will support him while also calling him out on his bullshit. I think, anyway.
Kamala Harris isn’t the pick we want, but she’s the pick we need. It boxes Trump into a corner. And oddly enough, Harris’ history as an AG and on criminal justice issues kinda puts a dent in Trump’s already dubious claims that electing a 70+ year old white man is somehow going to bring about The End of Suburbia As We Know It.
“And oddly enough, Harris’ history as an AG and on criminal justice issues kinda puts a dent in Trump’s already dubious claims that electing a 70+ year old white man is somehow going to bring about The End of Suburbia As We Know It.”
YEP!!!
This was exactly why I’ve been wanting Harris (or Duckworth), she takes ALL the wind out of the *R-side Takling Points* on crime (Duckworth would’ve been an asset on the “Dems HAAAAAAATE the Military!!!” front).
There WILL be plenty of grumbling on the Left, because that’s what we DO (and trying to capitalize on that grumbling, on the Right, so they can say, “SEE, THEY HAAAAAATE THEIR OWN CANDIDATES, VOTE FOR OURS!!!!”🙄🙄🙄).
But Harris is SMART, she’s extremely politically savvy, she’s accomplished, and the skeletons have already been exposed, so as you’ve said so well(😉💖), SHE’S SAFE.
And YES, too!
To the fact that Joe’s gonna love the camaraderie aspect–He and Barack sparred in ’08 on the trail, but AS WE’VE SEEN, Joe is very much an old-school “we may differ politically, but we can still be friends, because we can *also* see each other as people” sort of legislator.
Kamala has been a Senator in the “My Political Enemies are no longer even HUMANS!!!” era… so she *gets* what they’re gonna be facing, in their opposition.
Not to mention, her position on Judiciary–so she KNOWS what’s been going on re the courts up & down the federal bench.
She’s safe, but she’s also the absolute right choice for this exact moment!!😉
And–not gonna lie–i’m honestly ALSO looking forward to all the folks who are gonna be showing their WHOLE asses, in the coming months😈, and seeing so many white-guy heads simply *imploding* out of a combination of sheer rage, misogyny, & racism!😈😂🤣🤣🤣
Because, Harris is EVERY bit as qualified as any other Veep candidate in recent history–and MUCH more qualified than MOST of the recent R-side ones!
If she was a white dude, with her qualifications & background, those same asshats would hail her as the Second Coming, ffs.
I’ve been known to be vocal about the crime bill and Kamala’s record after it passed, but one thing this pick does is take a lot away from Trump’s “LAW & ORDER!” message/tweets.
In fairness, it doesn’t really matter because they’ll just make shit up.
Trump’s base’s top 2 talking points are that Biden is racist and Biden has dementia and, uh, hate on Uncle Joe all you’d like but I’m pretty sure Trump surpasses him by a country mile on both counts.
Big red flag — Trump (and Ivanka) donated to her campaign twice.
I am sure he will be regretting that a lot more than Harris. I don’t think this will be an issue for her at all.
Pretty much what everyone expected. Once again, the left wing gets to take a back seat.
Leaving aside Warren, was there another leftish candidate you would have preferred?
…not sure if preferred is the term I’d use…but I’d have been interested in what it might have meant if he’d gone with Abrams given what she’s tried to do about voting-related stuff
…I don’t think it’s at all a bad thing to have a prosecutor in hand if they want to spend the next four years whipping trump & as much of the GOP as they can up & down the courts but an AG that isn’t Bill Barr could cover a good deal of that…so in terms of hypotheticals I’d give that one some consideration…but I wouldn’t say I have a problem with the pick or a hard time seeing how it went the way it did?
Nope. Warren was my pick for Prez and my pick for VP. If literally any other of Joe’s potential picks had Warren’s stance on economic issues, then I would have supported them.
Let’s be real: The Republicans will still call Joe and Kamala the two biggest socialists since Lenin. They will scream and holler about how these two will incite lawlessness and other coded racial bullshit. The reason why Warren should have been the pick is because the Republicans are going to say that shit anyway, so we might as well have someone on board who can actually give us a shot at some real changes, especially if Joe steps aside in 2024 at 82 fucking years old. But the Democrats are bound and determined to continue courting conservative voters, no matter what. Let’s not kid ourselves into imagining that a Biden/Harris admin will generate anything remotely resembling systemic change of any kind at any level. Wall Street will continue to get theirs, and the poor will continue to get screwed. Police reform will only take place in isolated local patches here and there. Healthcare? Please. The best we can hope for now is to slow our inevitable decline. If nothing changes, then nothing changes.
As I was also in Warren’s camp, she was my favorite too – but the senate math never favored her and I certainly wouldn’t want to leave that possibility in Charlie Baker’s hands. (Plus if she could gain any extra power in a senate majority that’s probably better than VP tbh)
…plenty seems to have changed these last few years…& I could stand to see less of that kind of change…but I guess I know what you mean
…maybe it’ll be worse than I imagine but for now at least I’d like to think that picking a prosecutor for a VP might at least be indicative of not dropping all legal avenues of recourse against the incumbent come the new year…in the interests of bilateral political goodwill or whatever horseshit euphemism for a lack of consequences they might decide to go with
The political bar in America has been set so low that I’m just happy Biden kept his promise to select a woman as his running mate.
This, too!
(And right now, I’m off on my way to try to do *my* part to keep The Squad together, and cast my vote for Ilhan!😉😁)
People who have been saying “it doesn’t really matter who Biden picks” have a point but it does matter because Biden doesn’t intend to run as incumbent in 2024 (if he finishes his first term which he kind of hinted toward once as “for whatever reason” he might have to step aside).
yep!
Not to mention, the VERY LEGIT issue of Age, in a Pandemic.
We brush off the Veep pick, societally, as “The Spare”… but as Veeps since *at LEAST* Mondale have shown, and ESPECIALLY in the sith-lord era of Darth Cheney, the Veep you chose can work for *a LOT* of good, or…
you know…
The Halliburtonization, grifting, and raiding of all federal coffers, with Jack SHIT for competence & cohesion, when it all hits the fan, and *someone* needs to “be in charge” of something… i dunno… like, perhaps a *Pandemic Response Team*?🤔🤨🧐
I know this might not be a popular opinion around here – but I’m excited about Kamala Harris – yes, she’s not as liberal as I am – but Elizabeth Warren(as much as I love her) would have made the ticket too white. I like Stacey Abrams a lot – but I wish she had run for one of the Ga senate seats – I think she would’ve won easily.
I’m energized and I’m all in.
Biden/Harris2020 – Fuck All Republicans
Harris is smart, strong, and politically savvy. She’s onboard with police reform. I think I could get excited about her.
I’m more interested in the knock-on effect it has on the Congressional races down-ticket. If one or (hopefully) all GOP senators, specifically Murkowski, Collins, Turtle, and Graham lose their seats and more left-leaning Dems waltz into the house of representatives, I’m interested to see the way Biden/Kamala cater to the centrists who voted those senators out while appealing to the push from the left side of the party. It might be a shit-show, but it’d be a shit-show I am 100% for considering the past four years. Or even 8 years.
Some around here might not be excited about Kamala and a small part of me is still on the fence, but Warren, in my opinion, wasn’t the best choice (whether I’d rather see her as POTUS is a different conversation) because it would have, in dumb people’s minds, fallen into that ridiculous “Joe has gone radical leftist because he can’t stand up to his own party” narrative from Trump. A Warren pick would have also brought the “Pocahontas” crap back to the front stage. Most importantly, I think a Warren pick for VP would have hindered the congressional Dems on the down ballot.
One thing about Kamala is that she adapts to the climate. I doubt that if she was a DA or even AG today she’d be putting POC in prison for dime-bags the way she was way back when. She speaks out against it now. We got 8 years of “reach across the aisle” from Biden as VP which sucked at the time but might work to his advantage today because Trump can’t trash him. Just last week, Trump dissed Bernie Sanders in an attempt to trash Biden.
I would have preferred Abrams, but it’s pretty easy to get excited about Kamala. She is going to completely obliterate Pence…and I can’t wait!
A huge problem Trump is having is that Joe is so inoffensively a Centrist that his “JOE BIDEN IS A TOOL OF THE RADICAL LEFT!!!” jabs carry no weight. Kamala similarly is center-left enough that the only thing anyone GOP operatives can come up with is “they’re puppet candidates for AOC and Bernie Sanders!”.
And I always wonder how the whole “tools of the radical-left” thing plays with anyone besides GOPers and libertarians. Given how mainstream Bernie made such horrible left-wing ideas like “maybe less people should die from not having healthcare” and “having assloads of debt to your name while entering a shaky job market is probably bad”, what does “radical left” even mean anymore?
Harris has been getting a lot of negative press for being a former DA, but she did some good work as a DA – that’s when I first became aware of her.
She established a program to help keep non-violent first-time offenders out of prison, and worked to reduce crime, instead of just fluffing her conviction record.
This is worth at least a skim-read:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2020/08/10/kamala-harris-progressive-pioneer-san-francisco-da-column/3334668001/
That is worth a full read. Quite a bit of stuff I was unaware of.
Thanks
Case in point; watch as Trump sputters for two whole minutes trying to come up with anything negative on Kamala Harris that isn’t a clearly written talking point on the notes he’s looking at.
He even calls her his “number one draft pick” before talking about her doing poorly in the primaries and how she’s a bad pick.
Politics is chess, not checkers. This is a man who can not land clean shots on the Democratic ticket, and he knows it.
Almost 90% of the precincts have reported so far, and if she can stay on track, it looks like she’s got it!😁😃🤗🤗🤗🤗
Fingers crossed!🤞🤞🤞
Ooooh, they updated!! 92+%!!!
https://www.kstp.com/article/13318/
YES!
More good news,from my state tonight!
https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/5-native-legislative-candidates-advance-in-minnesota-qC77O-4E-ku-MP0opaEcgw