I'm fine with Kamala Harris. I'd prefer Warren, but I think that there's a pretty strong case to be made that Harris is a politically smarter choice, and the pandemic has tipped me over into the camp of: Nothing matters besides removing Trump.
I'd be delighted by Warren but I think Whitmer is the smart pick. Gives Biden Michigan and probably a couple of other Midwest states.
I think it was LB who pointed out months ago how obnoxious it was that Biden announced that his runningmate would be a woman, rather than announcing that it would be the most qualified candidate and then selecting a woman. Since then, that detail has stuck in my craw.
I would love Warren as VP, but I don't think she's the smart choice for the campaign.
Is Duckworth officially out? I think she has a lot going for her.
I'd love Warren, too, but I also think she'd be great at Treasury.
4: That's an awful consequence, but there is a side benefit: we've, and everyone else, has been talking about women politicians a lot more than usual. It's interesting that hardly anyone thinks that Biden will renege on it.
Yeah Duckworth would be a great pick. Whitmer or Duckworth.
4: so it would have been better if he had decided privately to pick a woman and then not told the truth about it and said "I'll pick whoever I think is best, whatever their sex... oh look, the best possible candidate just happens to be female"?
4: This bothers me not at all. The objection, as I understand it, is not that Biden is considering gender as an essential factor; it's that he's saying it. So the question becomes: Is being honest politically harmful in this case?
I don't think it is. Everyone immediately became accustomed to the idea, without any argument or debate, that the nominee is going to be a woman. And so now, the conversation is not about the controversy: "Will Biden pick a woman?" Instead, we are wondering which woman.
The media never got a chance to frame the question in terms of "Was this person selected just because she's a woman?" Instead, if the media wants to address it, they have to ask: "Is there a woman qualified to be vice president?"
So substantively, Biden is correct to pick a woman, and tactically, he was correct to telegraph that part of his decision. In the moment, it was counter-intuitive to me, but on reflection and seeing how it has played out, it adds to my confidence that Biden knows what he is doing.
I do not think any VP gives you their state or region in our era. I do think nominating a black woman is somewhere between smart and necessary.
I would like the signal an Abrams choice would send, since I don't think she takes it unless she's sure there's an excellent chance that she wins and is an asset to the campaign. More and more though, I think Kamala Harris is the smart pick. She's charismatic as hell, she doesn't toss a Senate seat to the revanchists, she has a fanatic, motivated national fan base. She does have lines of attack from the left and the right, but they don't seem like they're going to achieve resonance.
Of course, we had a private plane going from South Bend to Delaware yesterday, so I'm steeling myself for the worst possible outcome.
Mayo Pete??? That would be extremely rude to count him as a woman.
Of course, we had a private plane going from South Bend to Delaware yesterday, so I'm steeling myself for the worst possible outcome.
Recently retired Notre Dame BB coach Muffet McGraw would be agreat pick. Who else could it be?
I'm on Team Kamala Is a Cop, but I like the implications for CA politics. It would be interesting to see who Newsom picks to replace her (including possibly himself). And it cockblocks Newsom's presidential run, which cracks me up. So far they've had a mutual non-aggression pact.
Man, if Harris comes and goes as senator, and Feinstein is still in there? I'm so over Feinstein.
If Warren isn't VP, I'd love to see her in charge of a powerful anti-corruption task force.
Nah if Wareen isn't VP she should be senate majority leader.
Just adding my contribution on the March to 1000
due to an unfortunate typographical error, Mark Warner has been chosen as senate majority leader.
I don't think regional considerations matter any longer for VP picks, and haven't for decades. Purely from a ready-to-be-president-immediately perspective (which matters more than usual this cycle), Susan Rice is head and shoulders above the field, for my money.
(I like Stacey Abrams, but given Biden's age, a running mate with zero federal government or executive experience strikes me as unwise.)
The presidency is effectively, what, five jobs?
1. Managing the executive branch
2. Communicating with the public
3. Negotiating with Congress
4. Managing foreign relations
5. Responding to crises
Susan Rice is clearly aces at some of these, but it's hard to argue against Elizabeth Warren as the most broadly capable.
That sounds like a lot work. No wonder Trump lets Putin do so much of it.
Fair, but almost nobody believes Warren is legitimately in the mix (71, white, GOP governor in MA).
As much as I like her, she's too old to be on a ticket with somebody else that old.
I would dearly love her to be in charge of everything, but I do not believe Warren is really in the mix.
I liked the Senate Majority Leader suggestion.
19 I'm with Josh Marshall's take on Rice, she has no experience in electoral politics and I s gonna be "Benghazi ain't going away" 24/7
I worry that Rice has just no electoral faction at all. If half the job of VP now is being the anointed front runner in the next election, unless she develops real chops quickly, she's hobbled right out of the gate.
To a executive worried about being overshadowed by a charismatic successor-in-waiting, I guess that's an asset, but it seems like it'd be a real disservice to the party.
Unless there's a new virus that kills only Republicans, Benghazi isn't going away regardless of who is running as a Democrat. If the truth mattered, things would be different.
I don't understand favoring Rice over Harris.
At the end of the day, the vetting process is going to have produced vast amounts of non-public information about each of the contenders, and we're never going to know exactly why X wasn't chosen.
Anyway, Trump is such a needy media hog, he won't let whoever the candidate is have more than half a day of media attention, although he'll retweet whatever racist shit he hears every day.
What do folk think about the idea of announcing the whole cabinet-in-waiting?
Ditto to 26. I have had the vague sense for years that Susan Rice is on that short list of people with a Hillary-like ability to make Fox viewers lose their minds. The fact that Biden has avoided this so far has been a great blessing, and I'm really dreading the announcement because it's hard to believe he'll pick someone as immune to RWNJ attacks as he himself is, and those people are so damn loud.
I am more afraid of the misogyny of the electorate than most of you. (Is "afraid" the word? Well, in lieu of a better one...) I think this is all going to get very, very ugly.
Counterpoint: the fact that everyone has written off Warren means she's the frontrunner.
I think it's going to get very ugly but I don't think there's anything Biden can do to prevent that.
Harris would be a much better pick than Rice. But Whitmer and Duckworth are both superior to Harris. Duckworth just has an incredible story and you get a woman and a POC veteran too.
I'm not saying his choice won't matter, because rallying Democrats to vote matters greatly.
No, but with all candor I think it would be less ugly if he chose a male running mate. I truly wish I believed that there were an electoral advantage to going with a female candidate, but I don't at all. Not at all. Would of course be happy to be persuaded otherwise.
I don't think there's an advantage either. I'm just thinking that whoever it is, they're going to find a picture of that person standing next to Hillary and redo 2016.
31: No! There has to be quite a lot of vetting before any cabinet appointment is announced. You don't want to devote the resources before the election. And every transition I recall at least one nominee was withdrawn because of something the vetting process missed. You don't that sort of pseudo-scandal before the election. You're also giving the other side 15 or so more oppo research targets. You can also alienate a faction of your own team with a controversial pick, even if it's excellent. Also, given the uncertainty and time delay before eventually getting the job, some people will be unwilling to be publicly announced before the election. It would be very for any sitting elected official to admit they want to leave their current job before the term ends, and completely impossible for anyone up for election this year.
39 it's also illegal to offer someone a cabinet-level job before you're elected. Which almost seems quaint given how Trump and his admin routinely give political speeches from government property and so on, but maybe it still means something?
I agree, announcing 15 people means there's a high chance one of them will be revealed to support masturbation.
I would argue that anybody who could possibly be swayed by the word Benghazi was never going to vote for Biden in the first place.
Still, I would prefer someone who has won a state-wide election.
Bret Stephens really hates Rice. So she's got that going for her.
I have zero preferences about the VP pick. Or rather, I have mild preferences but am not remotely focused on this issue. I think it would be good if he has a fighter who understands how power in politics actually works. I don't really know enough about a lot of the candidates to have a clear sense of how many of them do (Warren and Abrams definitely do).
As a woman, I wasn't thrilled that Biden pre-announced he would be choosing a woman, but I've come to see that one big advantage is that a LOT of women are having their names floated. That's just a good thing. It is good to keep drilling into the American public's minds that women are qualified, women do big things, women can get big jobs, and there are multiple eligible women for any given position that might open up.
We can't do much about the hardcore misogynists, but I wholeheartedly believe* that there is a significant fraction of the US electorate, say 12-15%, who would be fine supporting a woman VP or P but are cautious because they're worried about *other* voters. It's the same phenomenon as polling Christians about gay marriage or whatever. "I'm OK with it, but I don't think other people in my church are ready for it." And then when you poll the church it turns out that 85% of them say that.
*With no real evidence to back it up.
Most of the prominent potential VP choices are scheduled for convention speaker slots, and so is "Joe Biden's yet-to-be-announced vice presidential candidate." Does that mean that somebody's time slot is going to be rescheduled? It probably doesn't mean that someone will speak twice. Or does it mean that the VP choice is not currently listed as a speaker? If it's the latter, the VP choice is apparently Abrams.
47: what I've seen is that someone will be rescheduled (as necessary).
We're all going to be so disappointed when it turns out to be Tim Kaine again.
49 legitimately made me laugh. Thanks, apo.
Kaine was scheduled for a slot in 2016 then was moved to the VP slot so the speaker schedule doesn't mean anything.
I think it's going to be Harris. She's the most conventional choice and Biden is a very conventional guy.
1 etc speaks for me as well, although Duckworth does check the all-important "Illinois politician with strong Hawaii ties" box.
I was thinking he picked teo, but then I don't think he's old enough.
AIMHMB in 2016, my uncle went to HS with Tim Kaine, and thought he was a great guy. I don't know that he was a huge asset to the ticket, but I think he would have made a fine VP. My preference this time around is probably Abrams or Duckworth.
I remember there was some coverage of Harris being a member of AKA (the most prominent Black sorority), so I checked, and it looks like Abrams was a Delta (the second most prominent Black sorority). I think it's notable that they both attended HBCUs (Howard and Spelman, respectively).
It's all very Biden, go with the simplest popular option and don't make things complicated.
57: For years, I thought it was either "Frank O. Harris" or "Frank O'Harris".
Chosen while I was composing! Harris is going to have to figure out the criminal justice thing, but I think she can handle it.
57: All the Jerome Bettis speculation was just misdirection.
Franco's son ran for mayor of Pittsburgh as a Republican or libertarian or something.
61: I'm looking forward to the "She's too tough on crime" attacks. I also want to hear all about how Biden disagrees with her on busing.
Really not looking forward to the tsunami of "Kamala Harris is a cop" takes from the dirtbag left and their bot amplifiers.
It's not even that I entirely disagree, it's just not a useful critique at this point.
OK, now we know.
Frivolity of the moment: Kamala Harris and Mindy Kaling make dosas together.
My guess is that "Kamala Harris is a cop" is not going to be a terribly effective critique with swing voters.
I hate it but I will fall in line
65 The good news is that tsunamis of this sort are pretty narrowly located, and thus easy to avoid.
There are no swing voters.
What there are are depressible voters on the margins of the bases. The "Hillary Clinton thinks blacks are superpredators" targeted attacks really did sting, and really did depress turnout.
I don't realllly think "KH is a cop" is going to have legs, but it's going to annoy the piss out of me for a few weeks.
It's a weird complaint at that. Harris is a lawyer. Demings is a cop.
Lengthy poll of Wisconsin voters (prior to VP announcement, obvs). For those who prefer to scroll through tweets. The partisan split regarding mail voting is getting some alarmed attention: "Among those who say they will vote by mail, 81% support Biden, 14% Trump. Among those who will vote on election day, 67% support Trump, 26% Biden."
I wish there were some equivalent of poll watching for mail-in ballots.
Harris is a prosecutor. It's a very particular kind of lawyer. It definitely gives me pause, though there are other things I like about her.
I'm doing training right now for deep canvassing of PA voters. I really hope this is effective. Fingers crossed.
Now I can enjoy Newsom's imagined frustration, rather than Newsom's potential imagined frustration.
I wonder if California will get a male Senator. Honestly, I don't think the electorate is ready. I'd be happy to send Fiona Ma, to clear the way to home for Betty Yee's gubernatorial ambitions. I just love Betty Yee and I wish she'd challenge Newsom directly instead of waiting until '26.
I'm excited about the idea of Harris, but not sure what to make of the fact that her presidential campaign struggled (of course, that's true of many presidential candidates who became VP -- including Biden).
This does make me happy.
Kamala Harris's selection means that the Democratic ticket will not have someone with an Ivy League degree for the first time since 1984.
In PA, or at least in Pittsburgh, we got email confirmation that our ballot was received.
I think the campaigns do get to watch mail ballots getting tossed into the 'disqualified' box, but I could be wrong about that.
We're working to identify people who've moved since November 2018, so they can register at their new address.
Anyway, having now called people and continuing to do so, I'm going to vote by mail the first day it is possible so nobody has to call me to remind me to vote.
Every Democratic candidate struggled simply because the stakes are so pivotal and there was no perfect candidate.
I was thinking he picked teo, but then I don't think he's old enough.
I am, but just barely.
It's not the "is a cop" stuff, but the "slept her way to power" thing that's going to be infuriating.
Don't love her, but who cares. I'll just be happy to have a real election. Instead we'll probably have Trump declare victory and try to discount mail-in votes.
81: The same guy added in another tweet (not threaded with yours) "this will be the first presidential election since 1968 without a Harvard or Yale degree holder on a major party ticket."
"Political living will" made me laugh. https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2020/08/11/trump-biden-live-updates/#link-PKWDFPRXUFC2VGWX46W5KY6QMY
It's not the "is a cop" stuff, but the "slept her way to power" thing that's going to be infuriating.
I dunno, I think that's not going to have a lot of sticking power. There are plenty of folks on the left that will jump on the "is a cop" concern, but approximately zero lefties who are going to slut-shame her. And the ones who would slut-shame weren't going to vote for her anyway, IMO.
Remember 4 years ago when there were rumors of Trump liberally using the n word in Apprentice outtakes? Seems to me that the value of those tapes just went up a whole lot.
Well, the deep canvassing training is convincing me that there are a lot of middle-aged liberal women who want to CHANGE THINGS. So that's a good first step.
91: I think it's an error in a couple of different ways to worry about what the Ineffectual Left thinks or says. But of course, given the state of our media, this will be brought up by Trump and his surrogates. And when it is, it will be infuriating.
Harris didn't get a lot of traction when she ran. Duckworth would have been pretty sweet.
94: I think this understates the extent to which any of the members of the Democratic coalition can play the role of spoiler, including the ineffectual left.
Biden having essentially written the Senate's version of the 1994 crime bill and "KH is a cop" is going to present the Trump campaign with a ton of material for disingenuous micro-targeted ads. The thing we have to figure out now is how to counteract them because there will be no stopping them.
The dirtbag left on my twitter feed is not helping matters even a little bit.
I think trying to gauge the election from Twitter is not going to help.
Anyway, I called real working class people in the Mon Valley and a couple of them wanted to make sure that Biden wasn't really going to defund the popo.
Mostly they weren't home or were screening their calls.
So I happen to be well-read on her dad's work in economic theory. Her parents were divorced, and she was raised by her mom.
I read economic theory as descriptive. Bur, in addition to she being a cop we're going to here about how her dad is a "marxist". This is like Obama being a muslim and his Christian preacher being a Jeremiah. Sense is not on point.
I called about 30 people in Lancaster. Mostly they weren't home or were screening their calls. The ones I did talk to were lovely. If we pull this off in November, it's going to be old women and middle-aged women and young women and gay/alternative/hipster men that get us there.
I guess that makes you a hipster, Mobes.
WHAT have you been doing this whole time in quarantine?! No better time to acquire facial hair!
It's hot and humid and I walk every day.
Every time I've done something election-y for the past three years, it has been 85% or 90% women volunteers and maybe one or two men. (Although, if I am being fair, I've heard 'my husband is home with the kids while I canvas/phone bank/postcard' a lot, and they also serve who watch the kids at home.) At the meetings I've been to, I've seen several women who retired and since 2016, have been working 50 hour weeks, with maybe a month or two of rest right after an election. At least that I've witnessed, the work of organization has been done overwhelmingly by women and I hope there are lots of stories about how that re-built the Democrats after 2016.
Because of nuns in my past, I'm very vulnerable to being asked to help.
104: That didn't occur to me until a month ago. I look a little ridiculous, but I'm enjoying it. Also: My hair is hilariously long because I can't talk anybody in the house into cutting it.
My hair is hilariously dyed purple. It's hilarious because I didn't bother to peroxide beforehand so I look like an off-model Lois Lane.
I don't even have any dye, so I'm just going to slowly get grey.
Grey hair takes dye much better than dark hair. That's why my salt & pepper dyed the way it did.
I keep on thinking there's a Spinderella hair color joke to be made, but there never is.
105 that's no excuse Moby, I walk all the time and it's hotter and humider here and I'm on my second coronavirus facial hair experiment (now a long horseshoe mustache with a soul patch, down from a goatee and will be gone in time for my interview)
105 that's no excuse Moby, I walk all the time and it's hotter and humider here and I'm on my second coronavirus facial hair experiment (now a long horseshoe mustache with a soul patch, down from a goatee and will be gone in time for my interview)
There's no way I could live there.
Probably not as many Pokémon to catch tho I wouldn't know
So far my favorite Harris/Biden joke.
https://twitter.com/Btaylor74/status/1293298531357175809
Rep. Omar won the primary, looks like it wasn't close.
will be gone in time for my interview
Ooh, this is news to me. Good luck!
The Kamala is a cop thing cuts both ways, it will make older white voters more comfortable with a Biden/Harris ticket. I don't think this messaging is good for Trump.
And I do hope the Squad/Bernie/Warren go all out for the ticket which should lessen the impact of the dirtbag left (if they even really have any impact outside of select twitter and podcast circles).
Did someone already link to pictures coming from inside the ekranoplan?
https://www.rferl.org/a/photographer-sneaks-inside-the-legendary-soviet-ekranoplan/30777774.html
Nice! I see they've done quite a bit of work on it - the last set of photos I saw showed it being depressingly shabby.
It's kind of crazy that they snuck on board like that, when the thing is on its way to be put on permanent display.
Belated thanks to Robert for 101. That's interesting; I didn't know anything about his work.
I looked at some of Harris' father's papers, and he's much closer to being a Marxist than Obama is to being a Muslim. I mean, who cares, but he did write some pretty Marx-friendly papers.
127: Everyone knows that Marxism is a hereditary disease.
121: Among the things the Trump campaign is legitimately good at is micro targeting messages at distinct groups without regard for consistency, truth, taste, or consequences.
It's interesting to watch the NYT grapple with the concept of honest reporting. Sometimes I really think they are figuring it out. It will be interesting to see if this headline is deemed too truthful:
2020 Election Live Updates: After Harris Pick, Sexist and Racist Attacks From Trump and Fox News Hosts
I don't know about too truthful but it's definitely too clumsy. It's too long, no verb (so less readable), and unnecessarily weird word order.
I'd have gone with:
"Trump and Fox News Launch Sexist And Racist Attacks on Harris"
You don't need to mention she's been picked as VP. That's not what the story's about.
You do, on the other hand, need to say that they are attacks on Harris.
And you don't need to say "Fox News Hosts". The attacks come from Fox News anchors and employees; convention allows you to abbreviate to "Fox News", just as you can say "The Times said that" rather than having to say exactly which Times reporter did it. (It would be different if it were Fox News guests saying it.)
At least they're calling her by her surname rather than "Kamala".
Frivolous aside: having Harris in the news will constantly remind me of how I mispronounced a student's Indian first name for weeks in the intro Spanish class I taught in grad school. She never corrected me because she thought I was Hispanicizing the pronounciation for teaching purposes or something. (I apologized as much as was reasonable in the middle of a 50-minute class.) It was another three-syllable name with the stress on the first syllable, but I stressed the second... because there's some bias for doing that among U.S. English speakers, apparently?
[Brief, hypnotized pause in the morning to consider the present vs how I imagined 2020 as a second-year grad student in 2008.]
131: Sure. I can't remember if I pulled the prior headline from the front page or the linked article, but now on the front page they did exactly as you suggest:
Updates: Trump and Fox Hosts Launch Sexist and Racist Attacks on Harris
I respectfully disagree with you -- and agree with the NYT -- about "hosts." Fox News reports news as an organization, as does the New York Times. Individuals associated with those organizations express opinions. If you quote Bret Stephens or Tucker Carlson, you can't attribute their sentiments to their organizations, except to say that the organizations permitted these views to be expressed in their venues.
Ailes, as one might expect, used to take advantage of the ambiguity created by this situation. Obama officials would complain about the hideous things said by, for instance, the hosts of the Fox morning show. Ailes responded that these aren't Fox News news programs; they are entertainment programs.
Further to 9, I am just now realizing that the Biden people must have copied this strategy from the producers of the next Thor movie.
128: Everyone selected by Biden is already a Marxist, so I'm sure Harris' father didn't enter into it.
Oh so now he's a promiscuous black man, fathering all the Marxists that Biden might have selected?
Except not really a black man. Descendant of slave owners, I see from the internet. Does Kanye West have a running mate?
Wow, I was not cynical enough to see this coming: some doofus has published an article saying that Harris is not eligible for VP/P because birthright citizenship isn't a thing. (That is, her parents may not have been US citizens when she was born and therefore even though she was born in Oakland she wasn't a natural-born citizen.)
Birtherism 2.0. Talk about ugly (and legally incorrect!).
https://twitter.com/DrJohnEastman/status/1293541246489649154
Same guy wrote an article 4 years ago saying that Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen.
He cites Operation Wetback as precedential. Fuck.
He's an asshole who lost the primary race to face Harris for Attorney General.