All right.
So, of course, we have to start today with Joe Biden selecting California Democratic
Senator Kamala Harris to be his running mate.
Yesterday, later in the day, speculation sort of building.
We were supposed to hear around August 1st, August 1st, came and went.
August 8th came and went.
The convention starts in just days.
So it was time.
And we did hear that indeed, Senator Kamala Harris is going to be Joe Biden's running
mate.
This makes her the first woman of color to ever be a V.P. or presidential nominee.
Although as many of you know, I don't particularly focus on identity type stuff, but it's certainly
relevant and I'm going to talk about it more.
Obviously, this pick immediately set off a cascade of criticism from some on the left.
Then, of course, the right immediately going into all sorts of attacks on Kamala Harris,
his character and Joe Biden's character.
Donald Trump saying horrible things about her during yesterday's press briefing, which
we're going to look at, but that those those are sort of details.
Right.
The Monday morning quarterbacking and the rest of it are are not where I want to start.
Let's look at the pros and cons of Kamala Harris first then and I'm going to go directly
first to the worst of Kamala and work backwards from there.
But before I do that, there are people who are writing to me and who I'm seeing on Twitter
and other places saying this is a terrible pick, David.
This is the dude who could possibly be worse than Kamala Harris.
Any other person, or at least this person or that person would have been better.
Every one of the supposed finalists had problems.
And I think that it's important at this point not to fallacious Li imagine that anybody
who we might be able to pick out of a hat could have been better because most of those
people weren't actually being considered.
The people reasonably being considered were by Joe Biden's own selection, narrowing a
woman increasingly pointing to a woman of color, although Joe Biden never really said
that.
But you might remember when Amy Klobuchar removed her name from consideration, even
though it had already been removed due to her association in Minneapolis, related to
Derrick Schavan, the man who who killed George Floyd.
Amy Klobuchar on her way out said it should be a woman of color, etc..
So being able to say, well, what about this person who was never even really up for consideration?
That's not the way politics works.
We might like it to work that way, but it doesn't.
In terms of the people who seem to be finalists, if Biden goes with Elizabeth Warren, according
to some, that's a problem because Elizabeth Warren is not a person of color.
According to others, Elizabeth Warren would have been a problem because she's too liberal.
Others would say, well, Elizabeth Warren is a Northeasterner and that's not what Joe Biden
needs right now or whatever.
Biden pick Susan Rice.
It's pandering to Obama supporters or it's bad because Susan Rice is associated with
Benghazi and the Republicans are going to seize on that or whatever.
The point is, some group would find something supposedly terrible about any one of the people
that was being considered and the Trump campaign would find something to seize on.
No questions.
So we can't really go by that in our analysis.
Now, Kamala Harris is biggest liability, certainly is her role as attorney general of California
executing the war on drugs.
And it was a disaster.
It is the exact opposite of what the Democratic Party should be moving towards.
Republicans are going to hit her with it and they're going to hit Biden with it.
They will say we already know they will do it.
Donald Trump has done lots for black people.
He signed the first step back.
He's commuted the to the unfair drug sentences of, you know, a list of people.
And meanwhile, Biden is picking Kamala Harris.
They're going to do it.
And okay.
That'll be something that has to be dealt with.
Now on the upsides to Kamala Harris.
It depends on what's most important to you.
But there's a few angles here.
Number one, communist's, 55 years old.
She's far younger than Elizabeth Warren.
But most importantly, she's way younger than both Biden and Trump.
And certainly brings an energy and a dynamic to this race that is completely missing.
On the Republican side and quite frankly, was missing with just Joe Biden on the Democratic
side are as well.
If you believe that our leaders should be younger than what we've been seeing lately,
then this is a positive for Kamala Harris.
Number two, Harris is a senator in California.
So if Biden wins and becomes vice president, that opens Senate seat in California will
be filled by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsome until there's a special election.
Why does that matter?
If it had been Elizabeth Warren who was selected Republican governor of Massachusetts, Charlie
Baker gets to pick a replacement and he picks a Republican.
And when you're looking at a Senate in the fall where it's conceivable that Democrats
could take control and if they do, it might only be by one of the last thing you want
is to lose one of those seats because Elizabeth Warren leaves and then Charlie Baker picks
a Republican.
So I think that that's relevant.
Now, in terms of debating, Kamala Harris is going to absolutely destroy Mike Pence.
Kamala Harris, a far better debater than Elizabeth Warren for sure.
Kamala Harris will make mincemeat out of Mike Pence.
Remember this incident with William Barr?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Attorney General Barr, has the president or anyone at the White House ever asked or suggested
that you open an investigation of anyone?
I wouldn't I wouldn't say yes or no.
Could you repeat that question?
I will repeat it.
Has the president or anyone at the White House ever asked or suggested that you open an investigation
of anyone?
Yes or no?
Please, sir.
The president or anybody else.
Seems you'd remember something like that.
Be able to tell us.
Yeah.
But I'm trying to grapple with the words suggest.
I mean, there have been discussions of of matters out there that they've not asked me
to open the investigation, but perhaps they've suggested.
I don't know.
I wouldn't say suggest it.
I don't know.
And further, you don't know.
OK.
So that that's definitely a plus for Kamala Harris.
Now, let's step back for a moment.
A hearty debate about Harris versus whoever else is great.
But we should not lose sight of the reality that were at Kamala Harris, who had been president
instead of Donald Trump when we were hit with the pandemic.
This entire country would be dramatically better off today.
Kamala Harris at the top level, unlike Donald Trump, can think Kamala Harris, unlike Mike
Pence, thinks for herself rather than simply being a brown noser.
So I'm certainly not going to allow myself to be confused or to miss the forest for the
trees and forget that Kamala Harris is someone who actually knows things, who can do things,
who can function as an executive, is competent and intelligent, whereas right now it's the
blind leading the blind.
That's what we have right now in the Oval Office.
She's not as progressive as I would like.
OK.
And I know that there's debate over this.
Trump said yesterday during his press briefing that she's the most liberal senator.
And of course, now I would consider Bernie Sanders to be to.
Kamala Harris has left Elizabeth Warren to be to Kamala Harris has left.
It is true that a few years ago, Kamala was ranked, according to one ranking, as the most
left member of the Senate.
That's good.
In my mind.
But certainly today, when you look at specific positions on health care, for example.
OK.
She's not the most left, but I'm not going to lose sight of.
I'm not going to lose the forest for the trees.
Now, one other really interesting thing to think about Joe Biden choosing Kamala Harris
is sort of the antithesis of how Donald Trump operates.
And I tweeted about this yesterday, and a lot of people seem to react in positively
generally.
I would say when people come at Donald Trump, when people confront Trump, when people publicly
say things about Trump that they disagree with.
Even people in Trump's own party, Trump's reaction is to ostracize them, call them out
publicly and cut them out while assailing their character because his skin is so thin.
Joe Biden took his toughest critic from the Democratic primary and the debates.
I mean, the biggest conflict during the primary were between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
And he put her next to him on the ticket like him or not like her or not.
This alone is all the evidence.
I know.
I need to know that this is a team that I would choose over Trump Pence any day.
These are adults.
Biden has been through so much in his life.
It's a joke to think that someone is going to hurt his feelings by attacking him in a
debate.
And he picked her to be alongside him on the ticket.
On the other hand, you have Trump born with a silver spoon in his mouth, a complete narcissist.
And we've seen how that has played out with him as president.
And the answer is not very well.
Now, some of the dumbest takes so far I've seen about this selection.
One is questioning whether Kamala Harris is really black.
That's one that I'm seeing over the last 12, 16 hours on Twitter.
You know what?
Her dad is Jamaican.
And Jamaicans are not African-American.
They are, you know, Afro Caribbean or something else altogether.
Really dumb argument.
OK.
She's she's a woman of color.
And this art, she's not really African-American.
Come on, guy.
That's the argument.
Very, very dumb.
And the number two, I'm starting to see the idea that Biden didn't choose her, that the
DNC chose her or some shadow puppet masters, maybe Jewish bankers in some cases chose Kamala
Harris because she's friendly to banking.
Come on.
Okay.
That we're not that's not the direction we're going to go in here.
Policy analysis.
Yes, that that's.
We're not going to go in that direction.
Last thoughts on this for now.
The other reason that this choice is a big deal, and I'm not saying this is good, but
it's impactful, is that the selection of Kamala Harris sort of sets the Democratic Party's
course potentially for a decade or more.
Bill Share wrote about this.
And you can find his tweet about.
Linking to his article, he's Bill Share on Twitter and Bill Share pointed out.
If vice presidents choose to run for president at the end of their vice presidency, so to
speak, which could be if Biden only goes one term, that could be in four years or it could
be in eight years when V.P. is running the primary.
They essentially always win.
They almost always win, meaning that when Joe Biden picks a vice president, he is picking
someone who would have available to them.
The Democratic Party nomination in four or eight years.
Kamala Harris strikes me in particular because of her young age as someone who would be well
suited to after being vice president if she is run for president.
She is decidedly in the center left Democratic establishment.
There's no denying that we can argue about exactly where she is on the spectrum of liberal
two to centrist, but she is not part of the populist socialist ish insurgency that we
saw.
Get behind Bernie Sanders.
She's not in that wing.
So if we get four or eight years of Biden and then Kamala, if she wants the nomination,
whenever Biden steps back or or is is done, if it's eight years, she has it available.
We're talking about anywhere between, you know, eight and 16 years of this type of Democratic
Party.
A lot of people are not happy about that.
And that's something we're going to be talking about more as well.
But but this is a like it or not, this is a very consequential selection and a very
consequential election as well.
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