Good for Biden, but I really, really hope it's not just a coronation of Kamala. I'll be an enthusiastic supporter of hers if she can actually demonstrate through some kind of process over the next few weeks that she's the best candidate, but everything I have seen up to now makes me think that isn't the case.
And I'm someone who was actually a supporter of hers during the first half of 2019 (I'm from the Bay Area, thought she had a good record as DA and Attorney General, had done reasonably well as a Senator, and I liked the fact that she was married to a Jewish guy). But in 2019, she ended up running away from her record as DA, was miserable at persuading voters to support her, and then her campaign pretty much imploded. And when she was selected to be VP in 2020 (which I was happy about), I found her somewhat off putting in both speeches and the debate.
To put it in terms that will make sense to fellow Bay Area sports fans, I'm afraid Kamala is the James Wiseman/Trey Lance of Democratic nominees: someone who has all the tools and checks all the boxes on paper but doesn't actually help you win. And while I'll be happy to be proved wrong, there needs to be some kind of process where she can prove that. My gut take is that Kamala instead of Biden doubles the Democrats chance of winning but only from under 5% to under 10%. I think someone who voters actually positively respond to could raise that to 40-60% depending on how good they turn out to be.
Although she is a sort of Black woman, Harris has proven herself, in my opinion, unfit for the job. She rose in California politics not through merit, but through connections, most notably Willie Brown, the SF mayor and politician extraordinaire. As Attorney General, she refused to prosecute either Steve Mnuchin or his WestOne Bank for bamboozling 25,000 families with subprime mortgages, throwing them out on the street. Biden settled on her as his VP pick because she had been a colleague of his son, Beau. And finally, the VP's job is mostly to wait for the President to die. So, none of them ever gets an important challenge while in office. Michelle Obama as First Lady did better than Harris. If she's elected, she'll be putty in the hands of a donor-centric Democratic establishment-- not a pretty sight.
There are a large number of others I would rather see, such as Elizabeth Warren, Katie Porter, Bernie Sanders, Stacey Abrams, Sheldon Whitehouse, or even Adam Kinzinger.
I feel freed up to get to work.
Good for Biden, but I really, really hope it's not just a coronation of Kamala. I'll be an enthusiastic supporter of hers if she can actually demonstrate through some kind of process over the next few weeks that she's the best candidate, but everything I have seen up to now makes me think that isn't the case.
And I'm someone who was actually a supporter of hers during the first half of 2019 (I'm from the Bay Area, thought she had a good record as DA and Attorney General, had done reasonably well as a Senator, and I liked the fact that she was married to a Jewish guy). But in 2019, she ended up running away from her record as DA, was miserable at persuading voters to support her, and then her campaign pretty much imploded. And when she was selected to be VP in 2020 (which I was happy about), I found her somewhat off putting in both speeches and the debate.
To put it in terms that will make sense to fellow Bay Area sports fans, I'm afraid Kamala is the James Wiseman/Trey Lance of Democratic nominees: someone who has all the tools and checks all the boxes on paper but doesn't actually help you win. And while I'll be happy to be proved wrong, there needs to be some kind of process where she can prove that. My gut take is that Kamala instead of Biden doubles the Democrats chance of winning but only from under 5% to under 10%. I think someone who voters actually positively respond to could raise that to 40-60% depending on how good they turn out to be.
Although she is a sort of Black woman, Harris has proven herself, in my opinion, unfit for the job. She rose in California politics not through merit, but through connections, most notably Willie Brown, the SF mayor and politician extraordinaire. As Attorney General, she refused to prosecute either Steve Mnuchin or his WestOne Bank for bamboozling 25,000 families with subprime mortgages, throwing them out on the street. Biden settled on her as his VP pick because she had been a colleague of his son, Beau. And finally, the VP's job is mostly to wait for the President to die. So, none of them ever gets an important challenge while in office. Michelle Obama as First Lady did better than Harris. If she's elected, she'll be putty in the hands of a donor-centric Democratic establishment-- not a pretty sight.
There are a large number of others I would rather see, such as Elizabeth Warren, Katie Porter, Bernie Sanders, Stacey Abrams, Sheldon Whitehouse, or even Adam Kinzinger.