I would have hoped that people would learn from 2016 that we can’t afford to fire at each other while sitting in a circle. Nobody believed that Donald Trump could win. There were many reasons for it, but one of them was certainly the lack of unity and support for the ticket. We can’t afford to allow Donald Trump to win re-election. We are seeing rising fascism and increasing lawlessness from Donald Trump and his enablers. Our democratic norms are being shattered. The Attorney General of the United States is acting like Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. We have racial unrest due to police killings of African Americans. We have already lost over 165,000 Americans due to Trump’s mismanagement of the novel coronavirus pandemic. More than forty two million Americans have filed unemployment claims and we have double digit unemployment. We are in grave danger of seeing this country be fundamentally changed and I don’t know that America can survive four more years of Trump.
We have a democracy. The voters in our Democratic Primary for President chose Joe Biden. He won the most votes and a majority of the pledged delegates. He is going to be our nominee. When voters chose Joe Biden, they entrusted him with the right and power to choose his running mate. He has done that. We have our ticket now. The ticket is complete. There won’t be a do over or a change from it. We are less than ninety days from November 3. Our national convention is about to start.
Many of us felt that Senator Harris was the best choice. While this is subjective, we believe this for several reasons. First, she uniquely of the people under consideration had both what we see as high level executive experience in government as the Attorney General of the state of California and experience as a legislator in the US Congress as a United States Senator from California. Nobody else under consideration had both high level executive experience in government and legislative experience as a United States Senator. Senator Warren comes the closest and deserves much praise for creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau out of nothing, but she was not approved to head the agency by the republican controlled US Senate. Some people under consideration had high level executive experience in government, but they lacked experience as a legislator in the US Congress. Others had experience as a legislator in the US Congress, but were only US Representatives or lacked high level executive experience in government. She alone had both.
We also feel that this moment called for a diverse ticket. Senator Harris is a black woman and an Asian American woman. Police killings of black Americans continue. Many of us watched in horror as George Floyd was murdered by white cops. He was one of many. Black women are the base of the party, yet a black woman has never been on the ticket of either major party. The country is becoming increasingly diverse as is the Democratic Party. We also know that Donald Trump will be running a law and order campaign. As a black woman who served as a district attorney and as Attorney General, she has that perfect mix to counter his attacks.
California is the most populous state in the Union. It is extremely diverse, a majority minority state and it has the sixth largest economy in the world. Senator Harris won three straight statewide elections in a state with no shortage of progressive, talented and ambitious politicians. This shows her political talent. There were twenty serious candidates with strong backgrounds in the presidential primary this time around which made it very difficult for any candidate to attract a huge following. Senator Bernie Sanders has many strong supporters who supported him in 2016 and they were committed to him in 2020. Many people love Senator Warren and wanted her to run in 2016 and they were delighted she ran in 2020 and were committed to her. They dominated the progressive lane with their pre existing committed supporters. Biden and Buttigieg commanded the moderate lane. There were so many candidates and only so many voters. So, it was very splintered. Because of the large amount of qualified, serious candidates, the past primary is not the best one to judge anybody’s political talent.
Senator Bernie Sanders is doing an awesome job supporting the Biden / Harris ticket and I am grateful to him. He performed second best in terms of results. Yet, they made key mistakes. We have a proportional allocation of delegates in our primary and that means that their attempt to win the primary with only 35% support was doomed to fail from the start. Pete Buttigieg has a strong background as a military officer who served in Counter Terrorism in Afghanistan and as a Rhodes Scholar. However, he doesn’t yet have a great deal of legislative experience . He performed well, yet we might have expected Senator Sanders to do better in Iowa than Mayor Pete. I won’t comment on other aspects of his campaign.
Senator Warren was my second choice after Senator Harris. Yet as much as I love her, she had her failings as well. She became engulfed in a Native American controversy which she worsened with a DNA test. Then, she had multiple roll outs of her Medicare for All plan. She didn’t win any states and came in third in her own state. It is not easy for me to see how that can be considered successful.
Even Biden himself had struggles until South Carolina. He came in fourth place and fifth place in the early elections in the primary. He had problems raising funds and had a limited number of offices in many states. Representative Jim Clyburn’s endorsement was considered very important by a majority of black voters in South Carolina. Yet, along with the endorsement, Mr. Clyburn also encouraged Joe to improve his campaign.
Bottom line, none of the candidates ran a great or even very good campaign and there were simply too many very qualified and talented candidates for us to judge any of them on the basis of that one campaign. Consider how many ways that the vote could be split among them all and it should be obvious that this one primary was different than others and should not be used as the one and only criteria to determine how talented a politician is. That is true for all of the candidates including Senator Harris.
Progressive Punch rates her as the most progressive woman in the senate and with a more progressive score lifetime than Senator Sanders. Consider the struggle and fight for racial justice for African Americans. What would be considered progressive by black Americans in terms of racial justice is often not even thought of by white liberals. The term “Progressive” will have different meanings to different people. And many of us aren’t going to allow one faction of white liberals to own that term and minimize the concerns and cause for racial justice. It is progressive to put a black, Asian American woman on the ticket. Senator Harris will be the first black woman and the first Asian American woman on the ticket of either major party. Putting her on the ticket is a progressive Act. People who have lived the life know the discrimination that others of similar ethnicity experience. It is important for our government to look like the people it purports to represent.
Evaluations of what is considered necessary for an Attorney General to do will vary, but none here have occupied the office. Moreover, evaluations are subjective: what criteria will one choose and how will one weight the different criteria. These are subjective choices. Determinations of what is a progressive act by an attorney general are subjective.
One person in a diary announced the choice and wrote that in their opinion Senator Harris is progressive. Another person published a comment in that diary which stated that this was like a person “pissing on them and telling them it’s raining “ . A proposition is a statement that has a truth value of either true or false. It is objective. It is not subjective. Urinating on a person is a physical act that is either occurring or not occurring. It is either true or false that one person is urinating on another person. However, some people writing that they (subjectively) find the choice progressive when another person does not find her progressive is not a physical and objectively true act. It is one person subjectively disagreeing with another person. So, the simile fails because one one is a proposition, a statement that a has a truth value of either true or false, and the other involves opinions that are subjective. Multiple people in that diary were attacking Senator Harris and a not insignificant number of others recommended these posts. If it had been one person and nobody recommended the numerous posts attacking Senator Harris, then I would not have bothered. However, there were multiple people writing such posts and others were recommending them.
As I wrote above, Joe Biden was chosen by the voters to be the nominee. As such, he has the right and power to pick whom he wants as his running mate. He has made that choice. He has chosen Senator Kamala (said Comma — la ) Harris . Donald Trump is an existential threat to our country, its norms and values, the rule of law, and to the lives of many people. Attacking the running mate won’t change Joe Biden’s mind. The only thing that attacking the running mate, attacking by the way the very first black woman and Asian American woman to ever be on the ticket of either major party, does is help Donald Trump in several ways including dividing Democrats.
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We need to all be all in and totally committed to supporting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in their work to defeat Donald Trump and Mike Pence ! Go Biden / Harris !!
Wednesday, Aug 12, 2020 · 1:56:51 PM +00:00 · Dem
One poll is just one poll. An average of the polls is certainly a snapshot of how the electorate feels at that point in time; it’s not a prediction at all. However, we can safely say that when one candidate has a lead in the polls of over seven points for more than two straight, continuous months in the AVERAGE of polls that this is simply how the electorate feels this way. We are now approaching the middle of August. No incumbent at this point in time who has been losing by more than seven points for over two straight months in the AVERAGE of polls has ever come back to win. It has not happened. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen, but it does indicate that if we all do everything we can to help our ticket win, we have a really good chance at winning. This is truly a life and death election because of Trump’s mismanagement of the pandemic. In addition to deaths, his mismanagement of the pandemic has deeply hurt people, especially people of color, economically. Trump is displaying strongly fascist tendencies as well as violating our norms. He has committed a number of crimes as well (bank fraud, tax fraud, FEC violations, Obstruction of Justice). He is a profound and existential threat to America as we have known it. We must win ! There is too much riding on this election for us to be able to afford to attack our ticket or either of the people on it. The ticket isn’t going to be changed. Attacking either of them now only helps Trump. We should know by now that we can’t do that.
Wednesday, Aug 12, 2020 · 2:30:04 PM +00:00
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Dem
It’s more than understandable to have an opinion. However, we are less than 90 days from November 3rd, election day. If we were still in the primary and it were unclear who would win or if the general election were over, then few people here would have a problem with criticism of our Democratic elected officials within reason. Nevertheless, now we are in the general election phase of this election. The primary is over and the running mate has been chosen. So, now it is our party vs theirs, our candidates vs theirs. We can’t afford to have people within our party or on our side of the aisle attacking our own candidates at this point in time.
I understand that some people might not find her progressive. Others of us do. And different people will use different criteria to arrive at that assessment. However, right now is not the time to attack her on this website which exists to help Democrats get elected and since the primary is over, we all need to support our ticket. Joe Biden was not my first choice. He was my tenth choice, but I got on board immediately before Super Tuesday. I understand that he was going to be the nominee because it became obvious due to the coalescing around him that I saw. Most of us did the same. So, we all had to accept that, not criticize him, and get on board. And we did ! We all have to do this at this time and we need to do it together !