It's her...I think...I hope...It better be!

Adapted from the Twitter feed, June 15 and June 17, 2020. Written up July 15. Revised and posted Tuesday morning, August 4.

The ticket I’m rooting to see: Joe Biden with Kamala Harris on the campaign trail pre-lockdown. Uncredited and undated photo via Harris’ post in Medium announcing her endorsement of Joe for the Democratic nomination for President, March 8, 2020.

A joint note from the Departments of In Search of Lost Time and Like I Would Know…

I want to get this in for bragging purposes before Biden announces his choice for VP, just in case. Harris has been my favorite since she dropped out of the presidential race in December, for a number of reasons, the main one being I like how fierce she can be. But back then, when I had long since already concluded, reluctantly, that Joe would be the nominee, I thought Harris could provide the fire he lacked on the campaign trail. She could be Joe’s Teddy Roosevelt to his McKinley. Biden could campaign from his figurative front porch while she barnstorms around the country making fiery speeches and rallying crowds of the faithful. It also seemed he liked her and I expected he’d choose someone he was most comfortable with who could do the most for him attracting the voters he needed to win. That wasn’t Warren. Isn’t Warren. The pandemic has upended everything, of course, and I’m not sure how Harris’ strengths on the stump will carry over onto virtuality. But there’s also this: She’s what Joe isn’t. Someone Trump and the GOP can demonize in their voters’ eyes. Everybody likes Joe. That’s his main strength. But, wow, are they going to hate on her. They already do, even if they don’t know it’s her they hate specifically. She represents everything they fear and loathe. This makes her a problematic choice. Having her on the ticket might scare off potential Republican and Republican-leaning Independents in a way Biden himself doesn’t. And, then, there’s developing conventional wisdom that Biden might want a VP who won’t overshadow him, even inadvertently, by pursuing presidential ambitions of her own while she’s supposed to be giving her all to helping enact his Presidential plans and policies. One of Joe’s weaknesses throughout his career has been his susceptibility to conventional wisdom.

At any rate, I’m still rooting for her. But, as always, like I would know.

The post below is adapted from a Twitter thread I posted back in June in response to that letter. You might remember it. Nope. Not that one, the one that appeared in Harper’s. The one before that one. The open letter to Biden from the self-styled liberal Democrats favoring Warren for the VP. The one putting forth arguments against Harris that were, ironically, sexist and implicitly racist in the way unreflectively morally and politically self-approving white liberals can be...

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It’s her.

I think.

I hope…

So this open letter to Joe making the case for Elizabeth Warren and against Harris really broils my brisket.

And Lawrence Tribe’s defense of the letter infuriates me even more.

Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, where Warren once taught, said that there would be some “symbolic ways in which some people would be disappointed” if Biden does not choose an African American woman, and that disappointment should count. But Warren’s record, he said, makes her the strongest choice.

“I think African Americans above all would be the first to say they are more interested in results than cosmetics,” said Tribe, who signed the letter.

Tribe should know better.

CNN political commentator and Democratic consultant Karen Finney said it succinctly in this tweet:

No ⁦@tribelaw, Black people are NOT “cosmetics” and it’ll be more than “symbolic” disappointment. Your comments are a prime example of the ways that white liberals are just as bad about telling Black people to just wait our turn. Shame on you.

The other top named signers are not representative of the Democratic left. They are charter members of the Democratic elite, just slightly more liberal than their fellow members.

In fact, that they would presume to speak for POC, tell them what's best for them and essentially tell them "wait your turn...again" disqualifies them from speaking for the liberal rank and file.

Harris was my first choice for the nomination. She’s my first choice for VP. It's not a symbolic choice for this old white guy either.

I not rooting for her because I want to see the first black woman as Vice-President. I want her to be the first black woman VP. Same as I didn't want Hillary Clinton in 2016 because I wanted to see the first woman President; I wanted HRC to be the first woman president. I think Harris will be good at the job and, if it should come to it, if President Biden decides not to run again or can’t, I think she'll be the best candidate for the 2024 Presidential nomination.

I see Warren as the symbolic/cosmetic choice. She'd add nothing special to the ticket except as a consolation prize to "progressive" voters who think Biden owes them for beating their preferred candidates.

The letter portrays Warren (D-Mass.) as the best prepared prospect to serve as president and one uniquely capable of helping Biden politically in the November election. It asserts that he is “already strong” among nonwhite voters but could use help winning over disaffected voters who backed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the primary — even as some of them have soured on Warren.

I’ll say Biden’s already strong among non-white voters. Particularly black voters. That’s how he won the nomination. But that doesn’t mean he can take them for granted. Rewarding and rallying the voters who got you here and showing you value them is far more an imperative than chasing after a petulant remnant who won’t appreciate your efforts to court them anyway and respond with the sought-after enthusiasm.

As for "qualified", I think Harris is the more qualified. She has more executive experience, she has more experience as a politician answering to a community, and she's even more involved in the current moment.

Then there's the bit about how Warren would make a fool of Pence in their debate. So what? First off, that's easy. Second off, nobody will care. The only reason for making that a qualification is intellectual snobbery and vanity. We'd all like to see Pence get his comeuppance

But it won't come in the form of liberal elitists smugly talking/tweeting/zooming about it the next day with other self-satisfied liberal elitists

What's more, Harris is a good debater and interrogator herself. That’s how she grabbed my attention. I jumped on her bandwagon before there was a bandwagon to jump on, in March of 2017, when she went after Neil Gorsuch at his Supreme Court confirmation hearing. At one of the early debates last year, she got in trouble for being "too hard" on Biden. Warren would run intellectual circles around Pence. Harris would eat him alive.

And let me get this straight: A major concern about Biden is his age. His birthday’s November 20. That’ll make him seventy-eight come January 2021. We're worried his health and his stamina won't hold up over the next four years. So the answer to this is for him to pick as his VP a punk kid of...seventy-one?

Warren looks to be in great shape for a person her age. But people in their 70s are still old and they tend to develop all sorts of serious health issues seemingly overnight.

For the record, she's still only 70 until next week. Her birthday is June 22.

She has the energy and spirit that suggests she'll live to be a hundred. But it's not improbable that Joe will outlast her.

This is my most petty objection to the letter. But that its signers, while making the case that Joe’s age means that his Vice-President will have to be ready to take over at any moment, are pushing the notion that a fellow septuagenarian is the best qualified to step in if necessity demands is indicative.

It's incredible that at this moment the signers would dare tell black Americans to "wait their turn" and that an elderly white woman who floundered in the primaries in good part due to her failure to develop the necessary level of good will among them is their best hope.

What it comes down to is the signers pushing one of their own for the job and signalling quite plainly that they do not regard Harris or any of the other women of color said to be on Biden’s list as belonging to the club.

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To read the whole story about the letter, follow the link to "Warren allies send letter urging Biden to pick her as running mate" at the Washington Post. For Harris' post endorsing Biden jump here.

Filed under The Presidential Horserace 2020.

Comments

[Bill Wolfe]

My wife and I have been dissecting this question endlessly for the past week or two. We'd decided that we liked Karen Bass because she seemed to be the only one who could solve the fundamental riddle faced by the Democratic nominee: how to appease the Bernie leftists while not frightening the guys who voted twice for Obama and then for Trump? Then it came to light this week that Bass had spent time in Cuba in the early 1970s and that, unfortunately would become the sole focus of the campaign if she were chosen. So Harris would seem the most qualified remaining African American woman. Except what you wrote is absolutely true. Unfair, but true.

"She’s what Joe isn’t. Someone Trump and the GOP can demonize in their voters’ eyes. Everybody likes Joe. That’s his main strength. But, wow, are they going to hate on her. They already do, even if they don’t know it’s her they hate specifically. She represents everything they fear and loathe. This makes her a problematic choice. Having her on the ticket might scare off potential Republican and Republican-leaning Independents in a way Biden himself doesn’t."

Honestly, if Biden hadn't promised to choose a woman, and if his political debt to African Americans didn't very nearly require him to choose an African American, part of me thinks someone as bland as Tim Kane might be the ideal choice. But he did, and it does, so it has to be Harris, Val Demmings, or Susan Rice. Rice would make the election all about Benghazi. Harris would have the effect you described. So that leaves Demmings. Who I don't really know very well and who may well have some skeletons in her closet from her years as a law enforcement official, although I've liked her the few times I've seen her on TV. So I'm afraid Biden is not going to be able to find his Biden.

[BroD]

Plus, she’s uniquely positioned to play a constructive role as the nation grapples with reforming our law enforcement infrastructure.