Home » It’s Kamala Harris for VP

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It’s Kamala Harris for VP — 139 Comments

  1. eeyore:

    Honestly, once he said it had to be a woman, I don’t think he had any other option.

  2. With her, I think Joe Biden has a very good chance. Over the past several months, many people have openly acknowledged that voting for Biden means voting for a puppet. I do not understand why you would vote for somebody to be President if you intend for him to not functionally be the President. But a lot of people started to believe this was their best possible option, depending on who the VP was. Kamala Harris is widely known and recognizable. She can also be sold as smart enough to take over as president if need be. The only issue is that many members of the far left will not see her – or Biden – as revolutionary enough. I don’t think her record will bother mainstream Democrats, or independents and moderate Republicans who hate Trump. They will certainly not reject her if it means risking a Trump victory.

  3. Biden and Harris may be a good match. Each has been vicious in Supreme Court nomination hearings.

    I don’t see how Harris will be able to avoid endorsing BLM with its attendant violence.

  4. shadow:

    But “mainstream Democrats, or independents and moderate Republicans who hate Trump” would vote for anyone rather than Trump. So the argument isn’t about Harris, it’s about anyone Biden would have nominated.

  5. Harris was the choice I was hoping he would make. Other choices would have brought baggage or less experience or heavy criticism from the right.
    Harris is not far Left like Abrams or Warren.
    Harris does not have baggage like Rice.
    Harris was a good District Attorney and in some ways runs counter to the BLM mantra of defunding the police. This will be appealing to independent voters who see the Democratic party in the Bernie / Warren / BLM lens.

    But, wow, I take issue with you saying Harris has zero charisma. First that’s hardly a criticism. Pence has zero charisma, Cheney has zero charisma. Charisma or lack thereof is never disqualifying. It’s like saying they don’t dress well.
    That said, Harris most definitely has charisma! When she went after Biden in the debates she was tough. That is charisma. It was great and probably one reason Biden chose her. She showed she could go after the front runner and not get blacklisted for it.

  6. As to the primary debates, I remember Reagan picking a running mate who called one of his main planks “voodoo economics.” Certainly JFK had no love for LBJ. You can look up and form your opinions about how well that turned out. The real question is, will the power struggle be between Harris and Jill Biden on who runs things given Joey B’s condition?

  7. This choice makes everyone happy.

    Democrats like Montage think she has Charisma! and she is a real woman who is a POC. Perfect qualifications for anything. He record as a DA was eviserate by Sen. Gabbard, a veteran, during the democrat clown car show. But since democrats hate the military – they pretend otherwise – she’s good.

    Republicans understand she slept her way to the top, or in this case, underneath position. And she is totally unqualified for any office. I can only begin to imagine all the ads with footage from other democrats – including her demented running mate – that will be shown. She’s good.

  8. Montage:

    Unsurprising commentary, coming from you.

    As far as charisma goes, though, VPs don’t need it if the presidential nominee has it. Trump, for example, is either hated or liked very much. There’s almost no in-between. He didn’t need a charismatic VP, because he was the one with the charisma. Pence lacks it totally, but no matter.

    However, Biden has been neither high nor low on charisma, but rather medium, despite his supposed affability. That’s one of the many reasons he has never gone anywhere in his previous presidential runs. Obama chose him because he was supposed to have foreign policy experience that Obama lacked and he was “likable enough,” but Joe didn’t need to have a ton of charisma because Obama had plenty of it to spare.

    Here’s what I wrote about Harris almost exactly a year ago:

    Have you ever noticed how voters can forgive a candidate almost anything if they like that person? One of Hillary’s big problems, for example—one Obama correctly sensed in the 2008 race, when she was his main rival—is that she’s “unlikable.”

    So is Kamala Harris, IMHO.

    Likability isn’t what I tend to look for in candidates, although it’s a plus because any president is someone we’re going to hear a lot and see a lot for quite a few years, and it helps if we like that person. And of course different people have different criteria for who’s “likable.” For example, I never really felt Obama’s likability; for me his policies got in the way. But I could see that he had a kind of smooth, polished charm that would appeal to a lot of people.

    I don’t know what it is about Harris—I’d describe it as a certain harsh quality—but she just isn’t especially likable. A lot of things about a candidate can be changed, but not that.

    This is still true. However, as I wrote in a comment above, those who will vote for Biden because they hate Trump will not care about Harris’ lack of likability or charisma. They hate Trump enough to vote for a cognitively-challenged mediocrity with a history of corruption such as Biden, and a sort-of-nasty black/Indian woman such as Harris. Doesn’t matter.

  9. Didn’t her Jamaican father’s family own slaves? Didn’t she put a lot of blacks in jail for drug crimes? Didn’t she sleep her way into power? I think we should get out the cans of red spray paint.

  10. I’m genuinely surprised at this, though maybe that says more about me than about political realities. I think it will benefit Trump, because Harris is a pretty awful person, politically speaking, and I don’t think she’ll appeal to swing voters.

    I don’t think it got much attention, but I certainly was spooked by something she said back in the primaries: that “homophobia” is a national security issue. Considering that “homophobia” is applied to anyone who isn’t on board with the totality of the gay agenda, that means that, for instance, a person who believes that marriage is intrinsically a male-female bond is a danger to national security. An enemy of the state, if you will.

    Is that a winning position? Well, I suppose it doesn’t have to be, as it will be buried if it seems to be a problem.

  11. It will be interesting to see if Harris can control her innate nastiness long enough to fool the electorate.

    I don’t suppose Trump will dare point out that she got her start in politics in the bed of a powerful California operator.; who happened to be married to someone else. That would be nasty.

    Only people who are completely incoherent expect Biden to function for a full term; and frankly, I don’t see how people who would not elect Hillary would choose Harris. I know that Trump hatred has intensified in some quarters, but, I question whether it has spread. I should think that there are quite a few people who are saying, “he is a much better President than I ever imagined he would be”.

    I also hope that Harris will have a difficult time with Pence’s calm and and gentlemanly demeanor. If she is true to form, she could come off as mean spirited. If she is inhibited, I don’t know how effective she will be. The bottom line is that she hasn’t been tested overly much to get where she is. Willie Brown was able to escort her up the political escalator in California; but won’t be much help outside. Willie who? At this point, being a former Mayor of San Francisco probably does not enhance a resume in wide swaths of the electorate. In fact, I should think that any association with California would be a negative to many.

  12. Whew, that’s a relief. I was worried it would be Michelle Obama, which would galvanize the base and create a huge amount of enthusiasm for Obama 3.0 among the Democrats. They’d likely win. Horizontal Harris is going to be a non-factor in a short while and other than Montage, will probably excite no one.

  13. I just got off the phone with a liberal who quizzed me on my predicted pick (I am in the closet to her) and I said Harris, while my friend said Susan Rice.

    I was happy to be proven right, but I saw it as pretty much a toss-up between Harris and Rice and I’m not sure why Rice lost the toss. One can say Rice has baggage, but so does Harris in terms of her previous tough-on-crime stances and being unlikable.

    Maybe that’s less baggage than Rice’s Benghazi media appearances, though it doesn’t seem Democrats see that as a problem. Perhaps they believe Trump can make more mileage off it.

    Then I try to filter things through “What Would Obama Want?” and I’m not sure. It does seem clear the sun has set on the Clinton machine.

    Interestingly, Willie Brown recommended Harris turn down the Veep position because Veeps rarely get a second act as POTUS. However, that seems an unusual miscue on Brown’s part because it ignores the likelihood Biden won’t finish his term.

    Or maybe Brown was deflecting attention from that likelihood…. Brown is clever enough to do it. Don’t throw Kamala into the briar patch!
    _________________________________________________

    Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
    Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel

    –Dusty Springfield, “Windmills of your Mind”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGOnUMh8HhQ

  14. “Biden certainly has enough senatorial experience to take up any slack.”

    Yes. Jim Eastland and Herm Talmadge always take his calls.

  15. I don’t think Kamala Harris has any chance of becoming Pres. if Biden wins. The “deep state” and Dr. Jill haven’t been working this hard just to hand Kamala the keys to the country. Susan Rice wasn’t chosen because she has her own power base in DC and would start working to push Joe out of office as soon as she was nominated. No, Kamala will never have access to the President, probably will be sent on a series of world tours to “fix” all of Trumps foreign policy errors. She’ll be the eyes and ears of the Pres. but never the brains.

  16. At least the hidden hands who run the Biden Campaign (Biden sure as hell does not) had the good sense to pick another non-native mystery meat POC Person along the lines of Obama. Isn’t that interesting though? It’s almost as if the Democratic political establishment knows well that American Blacks just aren’t up to the job and realize that their own less committed voters know it well too.

    Can only think of one in living memory who might have been (Condoleeza Rice) — and was obvious that she had brittle personality issues despite being highly intelligent and driven. Frankly just a bit too driven for anyone with a wise head to countenance. Anyway you don’t hand the Red Button to childless women. Bad, bad idea. Regardless, no way other American Blacks would vote for one of their own from so far out on the Right Tail of the IQ/achievement distributions that she might as well be from Alpha Centauri. But they seem to give a pass if the negritude infusion has travelled over a body of water to get to the US and will vote for it en bloc.

    Truly the proper study of Man is Man. Too bad much of it is forbidden.

  17. Neo: Never mind the people who will vote for Biden because he isnt Trump, how is this choice likely to look to people on the fence? Would the sway people one way or the other, or would it make any difference at all?

  18. I don’t think Kamala Harris has any chance of becoming Pres. if Biden wins. The “deep state” and Dr. Jill haven’t been working this hard just to hand Kamala the keys to the country.

    Eva Marie: But if Biden gets stuck babbling on national television about “The way of future… The way of future…,” as Leonard diCaprio did while portraying Howard Hughes, or Biden has a serious stroke, what then?

    Does Dr. Jill play POTUS as Woodrow Wilson’s wife did after WW’s incapacitation? Would that work in the 21st C?

    IMO much of the delay on the Veep choice has been gaming out what happens if, or more likely when, Biden breaks down as POTUS.

  19. Zaphod:

    Harris comes across as at least as driven as Rice – both Rices, Condi and Susan. And Harris is also childless, for what that’s worth. She does have two now-grown stepchildren, though, and married about 6 years ago when she was in her late 40s. Her husband is apparently Jewish – not sure whether that will matter to anyone or not.

  20. Harris has been coached up to avoid her most irritating habits, and she has had plastic surgery. Will this improve her likeability? Also, what are the odds that Biden makes it to election day before bowing out? Might Harris be the actual nominee rather than the nudge-nudge-wink-wink vice-presidential nominee?

    If Trump wins, hundreds of billions of dollars of corruption and self-dealing are in jeopardy. I don’t think we’ve seen the ugliest and lowest in our politics yet, which is frightening since we’ve already seen an attempted coup d’etat, the press going full Pravda, Red Guards rehearsing cancel culture (and cancelling culture), and deliberate efforts to increase deaths and despair during covid.

    The optimist in me says a majority of people will be repulsed by nihilism enough to vote for Trump. The pessimist in me says party like it’s 399.

  21. Harry:

    I don’t think it will make any difference. The only person who might have made a difference was Michelle Obama, and she didn’t want it (IMHO).

    I think anyone on the fence will make up his/her mind based on late-breaking news and/or mostly that person’s opinion of Trump, not of who’s running against him.

  22. All my FB Dem friends are practically orgasmic over Harris as VP. They now think this is the real winning ticket. When I, not subtlety suggested that she would be the actual president if elected, that was a feature not a bug for them. Funny how she did so poorly in the primaries, but now she’s wonderful!!

  23. Whew, that’s a relief. I was worried it would be Michelle Obama, which would galvanize the base and create a huge amount of enthusiasm for Obama 3.0 among the Democrats. They’d likely win.

    Paul in Boston: I’m more doubtful a Biden/Michelle ticket would win, but it would be more worrisome.

    That the Obamas decided against it is IMO strongly suggestive the Obamas don’t believe a Biden ticket can win, with or without Michelle.
    ________________________________

    I can’t live
    With or without you

    –U2, “With or Without You”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujNeHIo7oTE

  24. I will bet that none of the veep candidates spoke directly to Joe, had a one on one conversation. I will also bet that all the veep candidates were promised cushy jobs in the administration if they weren’t picked for VP, since none of them are blabbing about the process. If Joe has a serious stroke, no one will know.

  25. Thanks for your reply Neo.
    For me Harris is a horrible choice, but there really isnt any choice that would have been good even if he hadnt purposely limited himself for intersectional reasons, but I think you’re right and we’re now back to hoping Trump limits the amount of damage he does to himself between now and the election. Here I was hoping we were handed an edge.

  26. She checks all the right intersectional boxes and, given her prosecutorial background, Democrats can maintain the fiction (however thin it may be) that she’s a “moderate”. She’s also unlikely to say or do anything embarrassing. No charisma? No problem! Democrats aren’t even trying to win the charisma fight…where Trump is very hard to match.

    My Facebook feed is littered with fawning echoes from all of my lefty friends (which are most of them). She appeals to a certain key Democrat demographic (which most of my FB match): well educated professionals (attorneys, teachers, nurses, social workers in particular), disproportionately female, disproportionately white… passionately liberal but not naturally inclined towards to hard left….but eager to demonstrate their “wokeness”. In other words…the kind of people most likely to read (and love) “White Fragility”.

    Granted, Harris’s background as a prosecutor might alienate certain elements of the hard left, but they are nearly impossible to corral in general.

  27. Then there is the theory the Obamas never saw 2020 as an opportune moment for Michelle to mix it up.

    That the real plan was for Michelle to run in 2024 after Trump had exited stage right.

  28. That the Obamas decided against it is IMO strongly suggestive the Obamas don’t believe a Biden ticket can win, with or without Michelle.

    Nope. Strongly suggestive of something she hasn’t hidden: she doesn’t want the job. In fact, she’s not been career-oriented at all, it’s just that she wanted a higher and steadier income than his cobbled-together employments would provide and people were unaccountably willing to pay her handsome salaries for pushing paper. She’s interested in decorative arts, not in public policy. He’s interested in golf and college basketball (but also in getting spiteful jabs at various antagonists).

  29. That the real plan was for Michelle to run in 2024 after Trump had exited stage right.

    You people just don’t give up on this meme. Looking forward to your take on the ‘real plan’ when 2024 rolls around (presuming much of the country isn’t in ruins by then).

  30. but there really isnt any choice that would have been good even if he hadnt purposely limited himself for intersectional reasons,

    The obvious choice was Lisa Jackson. Either she didn’t want the job or the political hacks around Sundown Joe value only hack skills.

  31. Art Deco: Nope back atcha.

    We’ve been through this before. I still see MO as a leftist and therefore capable of rising to the occasion even against her druthers, if the deal looks sure enough and on her terms.

    Geez. Most commenters here go on and on about how diabolical leftists are, but somehow MO is incapable making any personal sacrifice for the cause.

    I stand by what I said:

    That the Obamas decided against [MO as Veep] is IMO strongly suggestive the Obamas don’t believe a Biden ticket can win, with or without Michelle.

  32. Neo, Harris’s husband’s ethnic background doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. I knew he’s “white,” didn’t know he’s Jewish. All Wikipedia says about him is that he’s an entertainment lawyer.

  33. BTW, Eeyore wins this thread.

    Correction: It’s a draw between Eeyore and GvdL.

    I can’t figure out which is more nasty despite being a connoisseur of nastiness. Please no more, good people. My Cup Runneth Over.

  34. physicsguy on August 11, 2020 at 7:30 pm said:
    All my FB Dem friends are practically orgasmic over ****** as VP. They now think this is the real winning ticket. When I, not subtlety suggested that she would be the actual president if elected, that was a feature not a bug for them. Funny how she did so poorly in the primaries, but now she’s wonderful!!

    I replaced the name “Harris” with ****** because I bet that your FB Dem friends would have been equally orgasmic regardless of who Biden’s team picked as Biden’s running mate.

  35. You people just don’t give up on this meme.

    Art Deco: Could be because it’s a decent argument, even if it falls outside your dogmatic opinions. You don’t make arguments; you make pronouncements.

    I’ve never seen you give up a thing in any discussion here.

  36. Can only think of one in living memory who might have been (Condoleeza Rice)

    You need to do some actual thinking. Colin Powell, Herman Cain, Andrew Brimmer, Richard Parsons, John Johnson, William Coleman, and Anthony Williams come to mind.

    and was obvious that she had brittle personality issues

    Thanks for the issue of your imagination. Always an education.

  37. Zaphod, I don’t think the urban POC are in fact voting in great numbers for the Demons. I think lots of them don’t bother to vote at all. This is part of the problem the Demons have with their base. A lot of dysfunctional people. Same with illegals, they aren’t reliable voters. Thus the push for all mail voting so their betters can vote for them. Part of the reason for keeping US person status off the census is because it puts upper limits on the phony baloney vote (the other reason was to hide how many foreigners are here).

    Montage, the Demons want to get rid of the Electoral College and change the Senate to guarantee their permanent control. Do you agree with these. That is on top of open borders, socialized medicine, selective enforcement of the law and a hundred other horribles. Are these the things you are for? Why?

  38. Could be because it’s a decent argument,

    Your argument, if that’s what it can be called, hinges on two things: (1) not paying attention to what this woman has done with her time her whole adult life and (2) not paying attention to anything she says.

  39. Regardless, no way other American Blacks would vote for one of their own from so far out on the Right Tail of the IQ/achievement distributions that she might as well be from Alpha Centauri.

    People voted for Richard Nixon (IQ 143).

  40. Kate:

    Show me a person surnamed Harris or Miller (for example) and mention that he/she happens to be an Entertainment Lawyer and I will wager fair odds that such a person is unlikely to have arrived on the Mayflower clutching Tyndale’s NT in 8vo.

    Also you may not care about ethnic background, but if you’ve been looking out the window of late you may have noticed that Ethnic Background Cares about You (and your family).

    It’s time to start paying attention to everyone all of the time.

    Yes that sucks. No, it does not make a person ‘Anti-Semitic’. There are Jews on both sides of this ideological and likely soon to be kinetic battle. But stereotypes do exist, and patterns of voting behaviour and candidate finance (to give two examples) do exist.

    It’s not a crime to notice.

    It *is* a stupidity to clutch pearls and bleat ‘not who we are’ in times like this.

  41. @Art Deco:

    Nixon was White.

    Blacks will not vote for a smart black from their own neighbourhood. Uncle Tom. Too much of an assault upon their own Egos to admit that others from same place could succeed and they could not. Foreign extraction Blacks give them an excuse to excuse themselves.

    A bit like how Jewish success in Israel drives Arabs insane with rage by holding up a mirror to Arab incompetence.

  42. I think it will benefit Trump, because Harris is a pretty awful person, politically speaking, and I don’t think she’ll appeal to swing voters.

    More likely of import this year than any other year. Per Wm. Schneider, a satisfactory VP pick will generally net you 2% of the vote in the candidate’s home state. This year, who knows?

  43. @avi:

    She is black enough for the role she is to play. That is all that matters to her and her handlers.

    Some people bring knives to a a gun fight. You just brought facts to a rhetorical battle. This isn’t an Oxford Union Debate. Elections in Current Year are ritualized (for now) warfare.

  44. The human story, in myth and in history, includes a huge theme of people giving up their personal lives for the greater good. We see that again and again from the boys who stormed Normandy to Jesus at Gethsemane.

    I’m not fond of Michelle Obama, but she too is a human being and, I say, capable of giving up her comfortable life to do something bigger.

    Doesn’t anyone remember her near-fanatical campaign speeches for Obama, how “Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual — uninvolved, uninformed”?

    Or how about MO’s commencement address to all college graduates just a few months ago:
    ________________________________________

    We won’t solve anything if we we’re only willing to do what’s easiest. We’ve got to make hard choices and sacrifices in our own lives.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/07/michelle-obama-graduates-dont-ever-ever-let-anyone-tell-you-that-youre-too-angry/
    ________________________________________

    Who can say absolutely that Michelle Obama is incapable of walking that talk?

    I don’t believe anyone can say that, not even Art Deco. I didn’t argue that an MO ticket was likely but I still say it was possible.

    Furthermore, 2020 has been such a weird year — the twists and turns are not over — MO may still play a part.

  45. Not clutching my pearls, Zaphod. His name is Douglas Emhoff. Just being an entertainment attorney in California is enough to tell me he’s a leftist. Plus, marrying Kamala Harris.

  46. @Chases Eagles:

    Every percentage point counts. I agree that it’s hard to get the Black Vote out.

    All other things being equal, more will come out on the day for a darker skin than a paler skin… with some caveats I’ve mentioned above about Uncle Toms.

    (Only some pathologically altruistic white people don’t vote their skins. Everyone else sure as hell does.)

    Given that this year will likely be more than usual amount of mail-in vote fraud favoring Democrats, being able to claim that Blacks voted big time for the VP candidate helps with the plausible deniability angle too.

    One thing I’ve just thought of. Perhaps they had to pick a Black Female Political Hack who slept her way up the greasy pole simply because if they hadn’t, they would have been under immense pressure to select someone/thing even weirder and nastier.

    The one good thing can be said about Harris is that she heads off all the stranger Intersectional Candidate Weirdness at the pass — at least for now. Now I don’t think that’s a good thing. I’d prefer Democrats pick someone even less electable. But you can kind of see it from their perspective.

  47. Blacks will not vote for a smart black from their own neighbourhood.

    David Dinkins has degrees in mathematics and law, earned at a time when you got no mulligans Anthony Williams is larded with Ivy League degrees and (unlike Barack Obama, real accomplishments). The current Mayor of Chicago worked in BigLaw; her problem is not derived from a deficit of intelligence, but from bad priors and a deficit of scruples.

  48. Zaphod:
    Blacks will not vote for a smart black from their own neighbourhood. Uncle Tom. Too much of an assault upon their own Egos to admit that others from same place could succeed and they could not. Foreign extraction Blacks give them an excuse to excuse themselves.

    IIRC, Blacks voted overwhelmingly for a smart black living on the South Side of Chicago who was the son of a Kenyan.

  49. Art Deco on August 11, 2020 at 8:13 pm said:
    “I think it will benefit Trump, because Harris is a pretty awful person, politically speaking, and I don’t think she’ll appeal to swing voters.”
    More likely of import this year than any other year. Per Wm. Schneider, a satisfactory VP pick will generally net you 2% of the vote in the candidate’s home state. This year, who knows?

    Even if it the net this year were 20%, that does nothing for Biden because, as neo pointed out, Harris’ home state is blue blue California.

  50. That said, Harris most definitely has charisma!

    Max Weber coined the term ‘charisma’ to refer to rare inspirational ability – a la Buddha or Christ.

    Whatever they’re paying you, it’s too much.

  51. Also you may not care about ethnic background, but if you’ve been looking out the window of late you may have noticed that Ethnic Background Cares about You (and your family).

    I can recall two occasions when anyone professed to care about the spouse of the VP candidate. One was John Zaccaro and the other was Marilyn Quayle. In the former case it was his business interests people cared about. In her case, it was her residence (and her sister’s) in a corner of the evangelical intelligentsia (and the people who made an issue of it were gliberals and leftoids who want unsuborned evangelicals driven out of public life).

  52. The question I have is will Black Men vote for a Black (well she is not Black Black) Woman? No doubt the “suburban white women” will vote for her.

  53. I love the choice of Harris. A harridan who will cost the Dems many black male votes. They don’t like Biden on his own with his many faux pas “you ain’t black” moments, and she earned their hatred when she was AG in CA.

    She was a dud in the primaries, largely because blacks don’t like her. Hopefully she loses her senate seat through this and goes into oblivion like other vp’s on losing tickets.

    I’m a happy a Trump camper over this choice.

  54. “Didn’t she put a lot of blacks in jail for drug crimes?”

    “Kamala has locked up the Black vote in California.”
    Literally.

  55. @Montage:

    Harris most definitely has charisma! When she went after Biden in the debates she was tough. That is charisma. It was great and probably one reason Biden chose her. She showed she could go after the front runner and not get blacklisted for it.

    Good lord. Not get blacklisted? I understand that you’re not talking about her being blacklisted by our rabidly partisan MSM, but Harris is anathema to the far-left base of the Democratic Party. As for charisma, one need only revisit her shrewish performances at any number of Senate hearings. The woman comes across as extremely abrasive, and that streak of hers will be on full display once the pressure is on. I can’t wait for her debate against Mike Pence (assuming that both Biden and Harris don’t preemptively excuse themselves from debating anyone at all).

  56. I have a question. If Joe Biden becomes President, who will be making the decisions and choices?

    It’s meant as a serious question. There’s little doubt that Trump is the decider in the present WH, and that most of his initiatives are at his direction; and Obama had his own initiatives on certain things, like health care. And he certainly wasn’t bashful about criticizing things he knew little about. But: With Biden, who will be deciding things? The Cabinet? The Chief of Staff? Jill? How will this be practically accomplished?

    One problem for Kamala is that she will be hide-bound by her position. She will never have any authority for policy or decision-making that is recognized above the circle of advisors around Joe. She will always be in the waiting room, the VP.

  57. Might be too long for a Trump campaign ad. Tulsi dropped the hammer on her in the first debate about the locking up low-level weed eaters. I was shocked that things would get that heavy within a party.

  58. Neo
    It’s your opinion that she is not charismatic. This is driven in part by your disliking her politics. You would not care about charisma when it comes to Republicans who you agreed with. So I expect smears. What I didn’t expect was one line in your response calling her a “sort-of-nasty black/Indian woman.” I’ve been reading your blog for a while and did not expect that from you. You are usually pretty good at not criticizing people because of their racial ethnic background tied in with a stereotype. Women take a greater amount of criticism for being assertive. The Left hated Sarah Palin beyond what was reasonable. I expect the Right to hate Kamala just as much. I hope your criticism will be based on policy not how you view her personally.

    Also, I did a Google search and the word charismatic and Kamala Harris came up quite a bit. Even among those who criticize her.
    Jeffrey Gundlach, the investor who predicted Trump’s win in 2016, said “[Harris] is a little too charismatic…”

    And speaking of cognitively challenged did you see Trump said that the 1918 flu ended World War II? Honest mistake or…?

    MollyG
    Ah she’s ‘shrewish’ too! Keep going. Women with strong opinions are ‘shrewish’. Yikes.

  59. If Biden wins who will be making the decisions? On a smaller scale – who was making the decisions on the Mueller team? It was a a group of grifters with an ideological bent that shoveled as much money as they could into their own pockets (paying tribute to the Democratic Party at the same time.) When did we find out that Mueller had cognitive issues? When the grifters had had their fill and in front of the whole world wanted everyone to know that none of any decisions could be traced back to them. Maybe that was the model for the Biden Presidency.

  60. “I don’t think Kamala Harris has any chance of becoming Pres. if Biden wins”

    I think that’s incorrect. She would almost certainly ascend to the Presidency.
    It’s likely she would be a figurehead, which is perhaps what you meant.

  61. Biden seems to be physically strong. His bike ride the other day impressed me. Reagan died 10 years after his diagnosis (at 93) and he was much older than Biden when he was diagnosed. Biden has a long life ahead of him. Kamala will be so close and yet so far away.

  62. SLOW JOE and the CAMEL TOE !

    Who will be a no name cabinet member always present? Valerie Jarrett?

  63. @Montage:

    Nice try at a straw man argument. I was referring to her demonstrably nasty demeanor, not to her opinions, be they “strong” or whatever else they may be. But thanks for playing.

  64. Montage has his thong in a twist. “Kamala is charismatic, stomps feet, for emphasis.” And defending all women for a bonus, bad, bad, Neo! He is so disappointed in you. LOL how droll for a troll.

    Don’t let the door hit you in the but.

  65. I’m comfortable with Harris as Biden’s VP for all of the reasons listed above. Her record, past positions and statements and familial history are ripe for derision.

    Rasmussen’s latest poll has black approval of Trump @ 36%. Non-whites @ 51%… that’s game over for the dems. Add in conservative non-participation in polling…

    I continue to think that the Dems are not seriously considering winning the Presidency. It’s the Senate upon which they are focused. Holding on to the House and gaining the Senate would effectively turn Trump’s second term into a lame duck presidency. Trump would only be able to get Robert’s type judges appointed and his executive orders will be easily rescinded by the next Democrat president.

  66. Of all the POC candidates Biden could have picked to be president, I’m most hopeful that under President Harris, when the Democrats start to cull the ranks of the country of all opposition, the fact that I have been a registered as a Democrat and that they (presumably) will know that I voted for her through my confiscated mail-in ballot, that I can maintain my job and keep my assets as a loyal servant of the party. Under some of the other possibilities, including Michelle Obama, I don’t think “but I voted for you” would have been enough of an excuse to save me from losing everything I’ve worked for by means of “obligatory reparations”.

  67. Neo, I hope you will have a reply to Montage’s insinuation of racism and hypocrisy on your part. (Montage is apparently capable of reading your mind.) Then again, maybe you will choose to let Montage’s egregious insult speak for itself.

  68. In the event of a Biden election (facilitated by the most massive Dem vote fraud ever), I think Biden will resign or be deemed non compos within 3 months, Kamala stepping into the breach. Pelosi will stay as Speaker, leaving the VP slot open.
    Kamala is an unprincipled vicious bitch. There is nothing “moderate” or humane about her. She is a POC Nazi. And she will put people into ovens. With relish.

    It’s what happens when a country becomes majority female, when the shallow suburban femmes become a critical election factor. The choice was always going to be female and melanin. Things will get worse as a result. We gotta stop “systemic racism” because “white supremacy”. White Dems unite on that.

    Shotgun shells and rifle ammo are in very short supply where I live.

  69. Montage:

    Really, you need to up your game.

    I couldn’t stand Obama after just a few months of watching him during the 2008 primaries, but as I said many times, I could recognize that for many many people, he had charisma. A lot of it. I just wasn’t one of those people. To me, he was a hard, cold, manipulative phony.

    That said, I’m not incredibly fond of Trump’s style and never was. Never was a fan prior to his running for president and wasn’t a fan during the campaign – at all. I recognized, though, that he was the sort of person you either loved or hated. For many people, he’s got tons of charisma, and for others he’s practically diabolical. For me, neither, although I like most of the things (not all; most) he’s done as president, and I think he has a good sense of humor.

    There are plenty of people with whom I disagree but whom I recognize have charm. Bill Clinton is (or certainly was) one – I voted for him but never liked him, but I recognized that many people found him very charismatic. His wife, not charismatic.

    Personally, I only ever found two American politicians charismatic: JFK (I was a youngster) and Paul Tsongas. Now, Tsongas was not everyone’s cup of tea, but I just plain liked him. Otherwise, Churchill (whom I remember when I was very young) was fabulous, as far as I was concerned. So for me, personally, charismatic politicians were and are few and far between.

    However, I noticed early on that Kamala Harris is especially off-putting. She has – as I already noted – a harsh and nasty quality. It rather surprised me, actually, that she has been as successful as she has. I find her to be one of the least likable politicians around. It has zero to do with her race – about which I could not care less.

    However, I pointed out that many people “hate Trump enough to vote for a cognitively-challenged mediocrity with a history of corruption such as Biden, and a sort-of-nasty black/Indian woman such as Harris” because that is exactly what she is, and without the “black/Indian” part – in other words, without being what is currently referred to as a “person of color” or in her case a “woman of color” – she would not have been nominated and they would not be considering voting for her.

    If you think her race isn’t a big part of why she was nominated – if you think she had the exact same credentials and was white, she still would have been Biden’s pick – then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. I am merely stating facts as far as her race goes. Personally, whether I vote for her or don’t vote for her has nothing to do with her race, and what’s more you know it.

  70. Neo

    Here’s my view. Many here are fans of Candace Owens. She’s outspoken, smart and very opinionated. If someone criticized her by saying she was ‘nasty’ that would be fine. But if someone wanted to cut deeper and embrace a stereotype they would say she was a ‘nasty, black woman’. Do you see the difference? I would also find it objectionable to call someone a ‘nasty Jewish woman’. Nasty will do.

    You bring up a good point that race is part of why Harris was chosen. So, yes, it is inbounds to mention race. But I’m not so sure it is when it’s mixed with a criticism of her personality. Granted, I’m sure the Left would say she is a ‘smart black woman’. But that’s not a whole lot better since it undercuts black women In general.

    We can agree to disagree about Harris being charismatic or not. And we can agree to disagree on this. But IMHO the criticism I am noting is not substantive. Let’s talk about Harris’ record or lack thereof. And if race comes into it then I would say let’s criticize the Democratic or Republican party for using it. But not the individual politicians. Thanks.

  71. Montage:

    As I said, you need to up your game. Stop pretending you don’t understand what I said. I am talking about people’s voting habits, not my own. I am not criticizing Harris’ record or lack thereof, although that would be easy to do. I am talking about why other people are willing to vote for her. They hate Trump, which is the first and foremost reason, and that is why they are willing to vote for the cognitively-challenged old man Biden, and the nasty woman who happens to be something they like, a person of color.

    I don’t vote for people based on either their likability or their race, but other people most definitely do, and I am willing to acknowledge and describe that phenomenon. Harris’ race and gender are her main pluses for a lot of people. For me, they are meaningless in terms of my voting preferences.

  72. Montage, nobody cares about her skin color. She is evil. Baby part trafficking is evil.

  73. Neo,
    You’re correct. I have been misreading your view here. I see the context now. The bee in my bonnet took over my comprehension. I shouldn’t keep two computer screens open at once… Sorry for any implied criticism on race. Thanks.

  74. If you have friends and family who are still on the fence, this is important.
    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1292804013344337921.html

    Look at Chicago and understand this is every city, every town, under Democrat rule. If you’re a working middle-class American, you’re fighting for your life in the 2020 election, and voting Democrat is suicide. Abolish the Police is the only issue and they’re on the wrong side.

    Don’t let Joe Biden’s handlers convince you he’s some kind of “moderate” who just wants “reforms.” The Democrat Party is 100% run by extremists now. They are VERY insistent that when they say Abolish the Police, they mean exactly that.
    The core ideology of the radicalized Democrat party requires dissolving the rule of law. This is baked into everything they say, every policy they push. They think impartially enforced law is racist, sexist, transphobic, etc. “Justice” is the antonym of “law” to them.

    That’s why Dems shriek like banshees against the presumption of innocence, a core concept in the traditional American understanding of law and justice. Their ideology is all about presumed GUILT. Every policy is based on politicized notions of identity and grievance.

    Everything from Democrat speech codes to economic policy is based on variables of grievance and entitlement, not absolute principles that apply equally to everyone. What you’re allowed to say and do, what you’re allowed to own, depends on your class, race, and politics.

    This radicalized concept of law as a political instrument is cooked into every single policy on the Left. Some people just have more “rights” than others. No rights are inalienable. Everything, right down to the words you’re permitted to use, is calculated based on your identity.

    These riot-prone blue cities are just the most vulgar example of what will happen everywhere in America if Democrats take power. It’s ALREADY happening everywhere because they have so much power over media, and especially over education.

    Once you throw out the rule of law, the presumption of innocence, and inalienable rights, you’re lucky if the worst thing that happens is local officials deciding your family and property don’t deserve police protection from looters, or the privilege of defending yourself.

    That’s the key word right there: PRIVILEGE. The Left’s obsession with that word is very illuminating. They think everything is a “privilege,” nothing is an inalienable right. Privileges can be revoked. The term conveys a sense of unfairness that needs redressing.

    Understand that the radicalized Democrat Party thinks even the basic duties of government, like protecting lives and property rights, are actually “privileges.” They hate police because they see them as racist mall cops enforcing the unfair privileges of the middle class.

    The Democrats are hell-bent on taking those “privileges” away: your money, property, liberty, and security. You’re not even allowed to refuse to participate in their ideological crusades. They loathe middle class “privilege,” which they rhetorically disguise as “white privilege.”

    If you want to keep a shred of the traditional, REAL American ideals of equality, opportunity, security, and lawfulness, vote against Democrats in November like your life depended on it. They will sacrifice every shred of law on their altar of “justice” unless you stop them. /end

  75. For people who think that Joe Biden will resign – look at Ruth Bader Ginsberg or John McCain. Both of them had/have extremely ambitious staff members who derived/derive their own power from their positions. It will not be any different with Team Biden. They will destroy this country before they give up power. That anyone believes this fantasy that after all the work, the promises that have been made, the sacrifices of time, the deals that they are contemplating . . . That after commandeering Air Force One, taking over the Oval Office – Team Biden will step down and say, “ok that was fun – your turn Kamala now. We will voluntarily slip back into being powerless nonentities now.” You folks are dreaming. You thought the coup against Trump tore this country apart? It will look like child’s play if Biden ever gets to the point that his mental condition can’t be overlooked. Team Biden will not give up. Kamala Harris is not charismatic. No one really likes her. That’s why Team Biden picked her. That was her biggest selling point.

  76. Good points here about the hidden wheels within the wheels.
    https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/08/11/joe-biden-selects-kamala-harris-as-his-running-mate/

    It seems doubtful that Harris herself will make much of a difference as a vote-getter in that regard: a year ago, almost to the day, polls had her down to pulling only 1% of the black vote.

    But a group of (left-wing) black leaders urged Biden on Monday to be sure to pick a black female, and he seems to have taken that mandate to heart.

    I say “he,” but it’s evident to clear-eyed observers at this point that Joe Biden is a Trojan horse. He’s just the shell a hidden army of far-left radicals is using to insert its force-recon commandos into the White House. We have a pretty good idea which other high-profile names have a common policy agenda with that army, but to say those names — Sanders, AOC, the others in the Squad — is not to name the actual soldiers and unit commanders in it. Those nameless persons, like Antifa, play a Bolshevik-style role in which they remain in the shadows for the time being. They won’t be anxious to reveal who they are until a President Biden has consolidated their power for them.

    It won’t be possible to stop the mainstream media from fatuously discussing Biden-Harris as if it’s a ticket with intrinsic political portent; i.e., as if we should study Biden and Harris to divine what a President Biden would do in office. But we voters need not constrain ourselves to take that blinkered view.

    Barring one of 2020’s hallmark interruptions from the cosmos’s bag of tricks, the Biden-Harris ticket will open the divide further between what high-information Americans know is reality, and what the mainstream media proclaim it to be. We can look forward to three months of filtering out fictional-narrative nonsense from the media about what it means that Biden and Harris are running, and may get elected.

  77. Another thing is she is anti-American, un-American and not really American. She, like Nikki Healy, shares none of our heritage. Our history is not her history. Our national agonies and ecstasies are not hers. They shaped who we are but not her. It makes it awful easy for their type to discard our past because it is not theirs.

  78. It’s her cross-over appeal they wanted.
    https://babylonbee.com/news/party-of-the-poor-and-oppressed-nominates-old-rich-white-man-and-cop

    At publishing time, the DNC was airing ads in flyover country about how the cop they’ve nominated once called herself the “top cop” of California, threatened to arrest parents of truant students, and tried to keep prisoners in jail as long as possible in order to use them for cheap labor, while simultaneously airing ads on the coasts and big cities featuring clips from her interview in which she bragged about how much pot she smoked because she is part Jamaican.”

    Or .. maybe not.

    https://babylonbee.com/news/reading-from-his-teleprompter-biden-accidentally-says-im-pleased-to-announced-my-vp-pick-is-insert-woman-of-color-here

    https://babylonbee.com/news/reading-from-his-teleprompter-biden-accidentally-says-im-pleased-to-announced-my-vp-pick-is-insert-woman-of-color-here

  79. Don’t lose sight of the other reasons that DNC picking Biden may have been a bad call (in hindsight, they should have just let Harris win the primary!)
    https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/new-memos-disclose-relentless-pressure-hunter-biden

    he Ukrainian natural gas firm that appointed Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter to a lucrative board seat relentlessly pressured the State Department throughout the 2016 election in an effort to get corruption allegations against it dropped and its badly damaged reputation rehabilitated, newly released government memos show.

    “They keep trying through every channel they can,” a State Department official lamented in summer 2016, describing a nonstop lobbying campaign by Burisma Holdings and its American representatives.

    The memos, released to Just the News under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit assisted by the Southeastern Foundation, add new significance to a long-running Senate investigation into the Bidens’ activities and perceived conflicts of interest in Ukraine.

    For instance, they show far more contact between Burisma and the U.S. embassy in Kiev than was acknowledged by witnesses during President Trump’s impeachment proceedings earlier this year. One issue in that trial was the more than $3 million Hunter Biden’s firm collected from Burisma while his father supervised Ukraine policy for President Obama.

    The memos obtained by Just the News also were withheld from Senate investigators, who learned of their existence from the FOIA lawsuit.

    “We have been so frustrated in our attempt to get the documentation that we need before we can sit down and interview people, and as I understand it, the documents you just obtained in your FOIA request we haven’t received unbelievably,” Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson said in an interview with the John Solomon Reports podcast.

  80. “But, wow, I take issue with you saying Harris has zero charisma.”

    That must be why after being so widely heralded she couldn’t even make it to the first primary. You are such a propagandizing tool montage and are too stupid to realize how obvious it is.

  81. It’s interesting to consider the different predictions of what would happen if Biden/Harris were to win. Some say Biden would be set aside almost immediately, others say he would retain power (or at least his office) for the full term. I’m in between these two points myself.

    Is it possible that Biden’s team merely assessed Harris as being the best choice because they view her as the most able, of those available for selection, to govern at the top level? Has anybody from team Biden said anything as yet about the justifications for the choice? It may be much too early for them to spill the beans about this. I mean beyond the standard boilerplate about Harris being “the most qualified,” etc. I find it kind of tiring trying to puzzle out all of the subtleties. Maybe I should go back to playing Solitaire.

  82. I’m pretty much down the line with Neo on Harris.

    Veep only matters if the candidate can deliver a new voter demographic. She doesn’t. 7% popularity for Prez in Cali doesn’t move needles, either

    Clearly, her past record in politics will be spun and counter spun. Wait n see.

    The issue of hidden Trump support gets a genuine work out over at The New American, from polls to inferred voting to Dark Support. Don Surber thinks Trump could win 37 states, the height of optimism methinks.

    The piece gains cred by taking seriously media meddling and the Dem clear advantage with mail vote manipulation. This part scares the Hell outta me! https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/36689-silenced-majority-vs-the-silencers-will-hidden-voters-give-trump-37-states

  83. Quite a thread. I agree with Geoffrey Britain’s analysis of what certainly looks like a lot of support for Trump among minorities, plus conservative non-participation in polling. That fits my my sense of the state of play re Trump. I would add that my reaction to the Dems picking Harris is that it demonstrates that they still don’t see how much of what they do drives voters away. They still seem remarkably unaware of how much they are undermining themselves. As Talleyrand said of the Bourbons “They have forgotten nothing and they have learned nothing.” So given we have no idea what will happen between now and election day, Harris’s nomination is the first time I felt that Trump would probably win. But also as Geoffrey Britain points out if the Dems regain the senate and hold the house, then Trump is pretty effectively nullified. Given the propensity of electorates to hamstring governments they don’t feel comfortable with I would say that kind of intentional gridlock might turn out to be the bigger issue when the dust has settled. I’m hoping that the US electorate will do what the UK electorate did – emphatically confirm the change of direction they both voted for in 2016. I read somewhere that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed and find myself wondering that if this notion might actually turn out to be true.

  84. Two things;

    1) I wonder if she will ever be called to account for the blatantly false discussion scenario she posited in her questioning of Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings. The scenario was damning. Kavanaugh said he had no idea what she was talking about. And the subject never came up again. Obviously it never happened, Are we to now approve of such behavior in a serious matter such as that? Taking such a tack tells you a lot about this person;
    2) She has proven time and again to be flip – whether she is trying to project an image of coolness or be funny or hip I do not know. But I do know she will cause a major controversy at some point (or points) during the campaign that will seriously damage the Biden election effort. Mark my words on that one.

  85. I still think Biden and Harris are going to have a very hard time with the riots and the BLM ideology. A perfectly respectable attempt at police procedural reforms was offered in the Senate by Sen. Tim Scott. Harris, along with all other Democrats, voted to filibuster, and nothing whatever has been done.

    As to resignations: Ginsburg’s body is fragile but her mind is still sharp. No question of cognitive decline. McCain hung on, in my opinion, so he could lie in state in the Capitol as a serving Senator. Biden’s bike ride didn’t convince me of anything. Often the body hangs on when the mind has slipped into darkness.

  86. She, like Nikki Healy, shares none of our heritage. Our history is not her history. Our national agonies and ecstasies are not hers. They shaped who we are but not her.

    Haley spent all of her first 44 years on this Earth in South Carolina, receiving all of her education there and enmeshing her self in the work of local philanthropies. You need to get a grip.

  87. Reagan died 10 years after his diagnosis (at 93) and he was much older than Biden when he was diagnosed.

    Older, not much older. Maureen Reagan later said she didn’t notice anything untoward until the middle of 1993, at which time he was 82. Edmund Morris said that Reagan stopped recognizing him in August of 1994 and that six months later Reagan was so impaired he was himself unrecognizable. Some people with Alzheimer’s just crater.

    The thing about Alzheimer’s (unlike vascular dementia) is that it is only weakly associated with diminished life expectancy. People diagnosed with vascular dementia usually die within a few years. People diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at a given age have a life expectancy maybe 5-10% shorter than normal people at that age. A man Biden’s age generally has a life expectancy of just north of nine years. (His father lived to be 86 and his mother 97).

  88. A perfectly respectable attempt at police procedural reforms was offered in the Senate by Sen. Tim Scott.

    Federal legislation in such matters is seldom reasonable. It certainly isn’t in response to a non-problem. The Republicans have been perfectly deer-in-the-headlights the last several months.

  89. Reasonable in political terms. Policing should be a local and state issue, I agree. But how is a Democrat, who believes in federal solutions for every issue, going to handle declining to do anything?

  90. “I still think Biden and Harris are going to have a very hard time with the riots and the BLM ideology.”

    That’s an interesting thought now with the looting in Chicago, and last night the Portland rioters moved into residential neighborhoods. Do they continue to support BLM as the Tesla buying elites and moderates in middle class areas (look up Kenton Portland on google maps, street view is interesting) are getting attacked??

  91. Goodness. The AP is up with a gushing tribute to Harris’s religious plurality. She attended a “Black Baptist” church and a Hindu temple as a child, and then married a Jewish attorney, it says. That wedding ceremony was Jewish, complete with smashed glass. It seems that belief in any of these is optional.

  92. Reasonable in political terms.

    No, not reasonable. It takes as a given the lies of the times.

  93. With all due respect, how do we know that RBG’s mind is sharp? Because the people surrounding her say it is? And what does sharp mean? That she can spend 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week analyzing legal arguments? Or that she still recognizes people and can carry on a conversation about what she had for breakfast?
    We are already being prepared for the fight ahead by lefties. We are being told in no uncertain terms that a vote for Biden is not a vote for an individual but for a group of activists. So what does the state of Joe’s mind or body matter as long as the activists we voted for are in charge. It would be subverting the will of the electorate to ask Joe to step down as long as the activists surrounding him are still in charge.

  94. “But how is a Democrat, who believes in federal solutions for every issue, going to handle declining to do anything?”

    1. Deny there is even a problem (IOW deploy the “myth” gambit and/or have the MSCM ignore the problem).
    2. Blame Trump for it (AKA the “one-stop solution” to EVERY problem—even if the problem “doesn’t exist”).
    3. (Or switch #1 and #2).
    4. Optional: Righteously declaim that under a Democratic administration none of these problems would even occur…

    (Pretty clever, these Democrats!)

  95. “…gushing…”

    Wow! A new Camelot is imminent!! (Kamalat??)

    (…And none too soon after the too-too-long, Dark and Deplorable “Trumpencian” Age….)

    You can practically smell the excitement—wafting amidst the tear gas and acrid, burning cities…

    (Is the MSCM ever wrong?)

  96. Art Deco, Re: Nikki Haley,
    So what. If Nikki Haley was born in Japan and lived there for 44 years she still wouldn’t be Japanese. Nikki Haley had NO Confederate heritage so it was mighty easy for her to ditch the Confederate iconography. In fact my dead NY relatives who died fighting the Confederacy have more Confederate heritage than she does.

  97. “I don’t think it got much attention, but I certainly was spooked by something she said back in the primaries: that “homophobia” is a national security issue. Considering that “homophobia” is applied to anyone who isn’t on board with the totality of the gay agenda, that means that, for instance, a person who believes that marriage is intrinsically a male-female bond is a danger to national security. An enemy of the state, if you will.”

    Wait a minute. That’s hilarious. She must want very, very few immigrants and refugees if homophobia is a national security issue! Much of the world is still homophobic!

  98. If Nikki Haley was born in Japan and lived there for 44 years she still wouldn’t be Japanese.

    The self-understanding of Americans does not include the notion that you have to be consanguinous to belong. If that bothers you, tough.

  99. I’m not convinced that Harris does much of anything for the Democratic ticket. I’ve been watching the #ADOS tag on Twitter. (American Descendants of Slavery) and they aren’t happy about Harris. I tend to agree with them, yes, Harris is a person of color, but she definitely does not come from the American legacy of slavery and I think that is a big deal. Until we get a president or vice president who comes from that history, I think they have a valid concern. We pat ourselves on the back about having elected a black man president and now a black woman is the VP pick, but neither of them have really lived the black American experience in the same way that ADOS have.

  100. The “Top Cop in California” line is a sick joke. Wait until her record as DA and AG gets vetted. She was slapped down repeatedly for over charging and prosecutorial misconduct. Never mind that she was never actually a cop in the sense that she faced criminals who were not already in chains.

    As I said, the charming Ms Harris was escorted up the political escalator in California by uberpowerbroker Willie Brown. She repaid the support with services rendered, or as he euphemistically puts it, “they dated”. His wife of the time might characterize it differently. The closest thing she has experienced to a legitimate campaign was the Democrat primary. That really went well.

  101. Melissa:

    Valid concern about the ancestry of a BIPOC and the whether that person is certifiably aggrieved enough? It is never enough, race hustlers gotta hustle, it’s what they do. I’m not concerned about their concerns. So sad that you claim to be..

    Was Carmen Best diverse enough for the BLM fascists in Seattle? Nope.

  102. Art, I am telling you the facts jack.

    The term ‘fact’ does not mean what you fancy it means.

  103. “I still think Biden and Harris are going to have a very hard time with the riots and the BLM ideology.”

    The irony is that is probably why Harris was finally chosen, because of her background as a DA. The riots have forced the Dems to make a nod to “law and order”.

    But that is the same mistake made by those who thought Harris would be a formidable candidate. On paper, she looked ideal for the Democrats. Identity boxes up the wazoo, progressive cred but could fake to the center because she was a DA. But it turned out the candidate with everything was the candidate with nothing. Not black enough for blacks, not progressive enough for progressives and not tough enough for people who actually want some law and order. I don’t even think her personality had that much to do with her failure because none of the Dem candidates were that appealing. And what has changed since she bellyflopped in the primaries? Nothing I can see that makes her any more appealing now.

    I try to take to heart Instapundit’s “don’t get cocky kid” but as someone who wants Trump to win I’m not exactly quaking in my boots over the choice of Harris.

    PS – lots of scroll-bys in the comments!

  104. Kate, 8:51am: “The AP is up with a gushing tribute to Harris’s religious plurality…. It seems that belief in any of these is optional.”

    Indeed it is. This is the Multicultural Festival model of religion, in which one goes around the various booths sampling the colorful apparel and interesting cuisines of the exhibits in the great hall of secular liberal monoculture. You are not supposed to take any definite belief into the outside world. You can sort of get away with it as long as you make clear that it’s just a personal preference, not a description of reality.

  105. Biden/Harris is the perfect Marxist ticket. Both will follow orders and do & say what they are told. If elected, Biden will drop out when told to. The country will not survive these two.

  106. This is the Multicultural Festival model of religion,

    You may recall Democratic Party press agents in the magazine press writing of Michael and Kitty Dukakis that “they raised their children in both traditions”. The media weren’t so thoroughly suborned back then, so you could find a reference here or there (in a letter to the editor) that the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese considered the Governor to be excommunicate and his marriage invalid.

    At the same time, The New Republic (among others) was running hit pieces about Marilyn Quayle and her sister Nancy Northcott being subscribers to the lecture tape series of a theologian named Robert Thieme.

  107. Grampy: I agree.
    Tyranny looms.
    Black and female are valid criteria in a democratic republic?
    A demented old man is a valid candidate for POTUS?

    The Bolsheviks that are the Democratic Party may triumph?
    Gramsci wins, if so.

  108. Art, Nikki not only didn’t defend her state flag, she sneered at those that did. “Actions have consequences” remember?

  109. Folks will vote either for Trump or not; it really make no difference at all who BiteMe picked (unless he chose a former Grand Klaxon of the KKK, in which case some black voters – perennial demokrat voters – would just stay home and not vote for Trump).

    Non black dems would probably still vote for BiteMe because for them Hitler and Trump are one and the same, so best vote for the lesser of two evils – the former KKK poo-bah and BiteMe.
    As for placating the left-er wing of the leftist demokrat party, it’s meaningless. Really, they will vote for anybody not Trump.

    One would be hard pressed to find a greater difference in political ideology betwixt Trump and the senile BiteMe.

    If he wins, BiteMe will be president in name only; he is senile and will do whatever his staff tell him to do. His staff will be mostly Obama former staffers.

    If he is found to be “incapacitated” the dems will hide this fact as long as possible and continue operating as if all is well (think Woodrow Wilson’s wife) until they are forced to concede BiteMe’s brain has way too many amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles., at which point Camilla , oops, Kamala Harris becomes president.

    The ENTIRE world will be laughing at this and Putin and China will be holding huge celebrations. They will simply not believe their luck.

    Japan, S.Korea and other Asian nations will re-double their military spending.
    Iran can look forward to receiving a few more billion $$$ and Israel’s PM can look forward to visiting the White House via the back door / trash disposal corridors .

    Camilla – oops, Kamala’s – only qualification is her gender and skin color. She is just what the USA needs; another individual who never in her entire adult life had a job outside of government (i.e., never held a REAL job in her entire adult life – just like the senile BiteMe and the reknown former president Barry HUSSEIN Obama).

    If Camilla, oops, Kamala wins the presidency, may God have mercy on the USA.

  110. ” … how do we know that RBG’s mind is sharp?”

    A good question. I’ve heard that her clerks are running the show. Maybe she does a lot, maybe not. I don’t think the evidence is clear either way.

  111. “Nikki was tested and she failed.”

    I agree with this part. She is, at bottom, part of the elite and not a Deplorable.
    I would not vote for her.

  112. She is, at bottom, part of the elite and not a Deplorable.
    I would not vote for her.

    No clue what you’re referring to.

  113. JimNorCal,

    I vote for the Republican nearly 100% of the time. Even when I disagree with many of their positions.

    The last exception I made was to vote FOR Sen. Duckworth even though I disagree with most of her positions.

    Why? Because former Sen. Mark Kirk flat-out LIED about a citation his unit was awarded during the Gulf War. He said it was awarded to him PERSONALLY. I couldn’t vote for that lying SOB.

    Especially since Sen. Duckworth is an honest-to-God war hero. She left a good portion of her lower body on the battlefield while honorably serving our country.

    So I could easily vote for Gov Haley.

  114. Art, Nikki not only didn’t defend her state flag, she sneered at those that did. “Actions have consequences” remember?

    South Carolina’s had the same state flag for about 160 years.

    She has been buttonholed in re controversies about the Stars and Bars.

    https://time.com/5745880/nikki-haley-confederate-flag/

    Here she is trying to split the difference, something I do not much care for, but politicians are like that.

    I can think of a menu of possible critiques of Donald Trump, Paul Tsongas, Michael Dukakis, Edward Kennedy, Henry Jackson, and Edmund Muskie. A deficit of Civil War veterans among their ancestors isn’t one I’d pursue.

  115. Tuvea, I have no problem with other folks’ voting choices.

    I only wanted to highlight that I consider Gov Haley more aligned with the GOPe than with, say, the Tea Party or other more populist pro-traditional-America groups.

    Back in the day, I voted for W, McCain and Mitt. If the anti-Trump wing of the Repub Party re-establishes control, I intend to show them the same level of support that’s been shown to our current President: little and grudgingly.
    I would vote for none of those three today.

  116. Especially since Sen. Duckworth is an honest-to-God war hero.

    See Robt. Dole on this point: “I wasn’t a hero, just a guy who got shot”.

  117. Nikki Haley, former Gov of SC and former US Amb to the UN

    Except for her stint in New York, she’s lived in South Carolina her whole life. Her husband is one of the odd minority of National Guardsmen who is enrolled f/t. Her education begins and ends with a business degree from a state school.

    NB, she exposed after the fact Rex Tillerson’s efforts to sabotage the President.

  118. Re: Ginsburg’s brain. I have seen some interviews, fairly recent, in which she’s still there mentally. I don’t agree with her, but she’s as much there as she ever was. Whether she will survive this latest round of cancer/chemo is another question.

  119. Back in the day, I voted for W, McCain and Mitt. If the anti-Trump wing of the Repub Party re-establishes control, I intend to show them the same level of support that’s been shown to our current President: little and grudgingly.

    About 70% of the primary and caucus ballots in 2016 were cast for Trump, Cruz, or a menu of also rans with their own bones to pick with the Capitol Hill nexus. The best performer among the establishmentarians was John Katsh!t, who will be addressing the Democratic convention this year. The people actually harassing Trump have been Mitt Romney (a centimillionaire on a weird, spiteful lark), John McCain (terminally ill, also took a gratuitous swipe at his 2008 running mate), Bob Corker (retiring), and a string of characters from the permanent government. And, in a minor way, the Bushes. All of the harassers bar Romney have this in common: they weren’t planning to run for office in the future.

  120. Local TV newscaster just breathlessly announced that Harris is first “African-American woman” to be nominated. I guess it doesn’t matter to these ignoramuses that her father was Jamaican and her mother Indian. And that’s just one immediate example of the ignorant crapola we’ll have to put up with until this election is over.

  121. Senator Ducksoup of Ill-annoy? Yes she has proved to be a real keeper in recent senate hearings, right up there with Senator Amazing Her Oh No. But she knew how to fly a chopper in war at one time, so lifetime pass. Buyers remorse anyone?

  122. “She must want very, very few immigrants and refugees if homophobia is a national security issue!” shadow

    You must not have gotten the memo; homophobia is only a concern with White ‘homophobes’. When has the left criticized liberal black homophobes?

  123. If the dems somehow finagle Biden into the Presidency, I agree that neither he nor Harris will initially be running things. However, I’m very doubtful that Biden’s continuing decline will be able to be concealed for long and Harris will inevitably become the President.

    Based upon the evidence of her ‘career’, Ambition with a capital A is her primary characteristic and if so, IMO once she attains the Presidency, she’ll resist being ordered around by the dem’s Star Chamber. Since she’s at the least a “Fellow Traveler” her POV will be mostly in alignment with the Marxist radicals but once at the top of the power pyramid, rather than submit to others controlling them, those whose lust is ambition… ‘must’ dominate.

    She’s already on record as easily dismissing Constitutional ‘restrictions’. Given her past animosity to the 1st and 2nd amendment and in order to fully advance the left’s agenda… the necessity to disarm the public is unavoidable. So it’s entirely possible that she’ll trip the 2nd’s trigger wire and precipitate Civil War II.

  124. Check out the vast crowd! What do you think? Maybe … 40?

    https://tinyurl.com/y5xd8kjf
    Christopher Cadelago
    @ccadelago
    Cheering crowd forming outside to see Biden-Harris arrival. Exceedingly rare in this Covid campaign, where previous Biden events here haven’t drawn many onlookers
    Posted by: BetaCuck4Life at August 12, 2020 04:40 PM

  125. Geoff, I don’t think Harris has the depth to impose her own agenda if she becomes President, not that it would be that different anyway. It just will be substituting one puppet for another. Actually if Biden is elected he may last longer than people think. As long as they can pretend he is alive he is quite useful as an empty front man.

  126. Two articles, one pro-Trump and one pro-Trump, sort of.
    Both via Power Line.

    https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-case-for-trump/
    by Michael Anton
    “As the saying goes, the only way out is through….Whenever I’m asked—mostly by leftist concern trolls who want to write “Former Trump Official Bashes President”—if I have any criticisms of President Trump, my answer is always the same: there’s little wrong with President Trump that more Trump couldn’t solve. ”

    https://bernardgoldberg.com/why-i-want-biden-to-lose-more-than-i-want-trump-to-win/#comment-5026631207

    I linked the comment because it effectively answers (as do a few others) Goldberg’s virtue-signaling in wanting Biden to lose but refusing to vote for Trump.

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