I think it’s great that he has made his choice. No matter whom he picked, people were going to find fault. I don’t envy her the next three months (or any others, actually). I wish them both success.

I think she’s smart and savvy and knows how Congress works. She wouldn’t have been my first choice, but I think she’s a good choice.

Kamala Harris was my first choice for President, so I think she is a great pick.

@canidmajor, who was your first pick? I thought it was a great list and a tough choice.

I was kind of rooting for Tammy Duckworth. But everybody who isn’t a Trump or a quasi-Trump looks good to me.

I was going to vote for Joe no matter who his VP pick was.

Kamala was my first choice for President, but as her campaign failed to catch fire, she said some goofy shit. For example: she said convicted drug dealers should get to be first in line for licences to open cannabis shops.

@Jeruba: I think the problem with Duckworth would have been the Trumpers would never cease to harp on the fact that she was born in Thailand. I know and you know it would have been legit but it would be an issue because they would make it an issue.

I am glad.

@filmfann This is a diversion but that’s not a goofy idea. African-Americans are serving jail terms for dealing marijuana and then it becomes legal and big corporations make all the money? Legalizing marijuana in NJ was partially voted down because of the unfairness of that.

I’m pretty excited about her. She was not my first choice for Pres – and I’m interested to see that for the two Californians she was – but I think she’ll bring a lot of needed sizzle to the campaign. Can you imagine her debating Pence?

@Jeruba, I really liked Stacey Abrams.

@Jca2 Is that prounounced thigh-land?~

It’ll be interesting, I guess. She’s more “law and order” than progressives want (and wasn’t she accusing Biden of being racist during the primary debates?); her campaign fizzled out because she never had a clear message. We’ll see if she can help Biden formulate one that’s more than “not Trump”. But then again, that may enough for them to win.

@chyna Apparently, the Jewish Museum has made t-shirts that say “Yo Semite” and they are selling like hot cakes.

@janbb: Love it! I’d put a comma. “Yo, Semite!” Hilarious!

Helps Biden. It’s a good ticket.

Stacey Abrams, nice local lady, just doesn’t have the national stature -name – reputation – that Harris does. And her role as Attorney General makes her a serious player.

Look both the left and the right are going to whine, but Harris is a good solid choice.

So is anyone thinking what I’m thinking?

Joe Biden doesn’t appear in the best health…...
Possibly first Female President…..lol.

@janbb Whoever is allowed to sell cannabis products has to have a respect and obligation to the law. Someone who has been busted for drug dealing has neither.

She brings a much needed infusion of Young to the partnership.

@filmfann “Whoever is allowed to sell cannabis products has to have a respect and obligation to the law.”

Because big corporations always respect the law and show an obligation to it? Bullshit.

“Someone who has been busted for drug dealing has neither.”

As opposed to all the people who weren’t busted and are now free to open these shops? See, that’s where your argument falls down: who gets busted and who doesn’t isn’t an indicator of who respects the law and who doesn’t. It just gives you an idea of which neighborhoods cops like to visit.

Not thrilled. I will still crawl through glass to vote for Biden because.. Trump. But I’m not buying a t-shirt with her name on it.

This was pretty much the worst choice.

My avatar is a call to ALL semites! ;-)

She was my first choice.

@jca2 What? she was born in Oakland Ca

@Blackberry: A young, African-American, woman president.

@YARNLADY @jca2 was talking about Duckworth when she made that comment.

@jca2, oh, I didn’t realize that. Of course whoever is selected as a VP candidate has to be qualified for the presidency, including meeting the constitutional criteria. That should always go without saying, and I think it’s been very much a factor in this race from the get-go.

The chances of Democrat victory would be greater if Harris was President with Biden VP.

@gondwanalon Maybe in your next life.

What do I think? I want Kamala and Biden to drive trump voters as crazy and as miserable as trump did to Hillary voters. And for 8 looooooooooooong years!

Well Biden just pissed in the face of Progressives. If they don’t show up in November, he only has himself to blame. It also goes to show that he’d rather lose to Trump than win with a Progressive VP/United Left.

They didn’t learn anything in 2016…

@cookieman “A young, African-American, woman president.”

If someone’s asking you to eat half of a bowl of shit, do you really care what color the wrapping paper it came in is?

@cookieman She’s actually African-South Asian (mother born in India), if you have to put a racial label on it.

Honestly, I don’t see it as a winning combination, as @gorillapaws mentioned. But it depends on the “Anyone But Trump” campaign’s success and how effective the last four years of that has been on the American psyche.

America: “cops are dogshit”

DNC: “let’s add a cop to our ticket!”

I think this quote from David Sedaris says it best:

“I look at these people and can’t quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention? To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it? To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.”

Seems like some would prefer 4 more years of shit with glass.

@janbb It is a very effective technique by hard-right supporters, to present the chicken as the shit-with-glass.

@janbb Where’s the fucking chicken? You have two shit platters with red and blue wrapping paper on them. And you guys seem to be REALLY FUCKING HAPPY about the color of the paper. Obama/Biden + Neoliberalism got us the nightmare that is Trump. A failed Biden/Harris recovery during a total economic meltdown could easily lead to something much worse than Trump, something that would have you BEGGING to eat shit with glass.

“Seems like some would prefer 4 more years of shit with glass.”

We’re going to be eating shit with glass no matter who wins in November. I’m just so sick of having the menu rigged for me every 4 fucking years that I’m ordering from a Green menu. I probably won’t get my meal, but maybe in 4 years there will be a viable alternative.

David Sedaris’ silly quote corrected:

“Can I interest you in the chicken with glass or the chicken with glass?”

Seems like some would prefer 4 more years of shit with glass.

“But wait – one of the chicken-with-glass has slightly less glass! You’d be a fool not to choose that one.”

“But why is there glass in the chicken at all? Couldn’t you have left the glass out of one of the chickens? Wouldn’t that have appealed to the passengers who dislike glass in their chicken?”

“Look at your privilege! Go ahead and play purity politics and starve!”

The reason why we currently have a President who can’t pronounce the name of a major park and doesn’t know when WW2 was is that everyone bitched about Hillary, endlessly. She’s cold, she’s a bitch, but what about her emails? What about the FBI? Now look. So let’s do it again 4 years later and see where that gets us.

@jca2 “The reason why we currently have [Trump] is that everyone bitched about Hillary, endlessly.”

WRONG. We have Trump because Democrats have long abandoned the working class. Obama/Biden gave us the Republican Healthcare plan. They bailed out the banks. They allowed mergers to go through, further consolidating corporate power. They turned their back on unions. They deported 2.5 undocumented workers—more than any other President before them. Yeah those cages on the border that everyone is so outraged about?—Obama/Biden built them. They broke their promise to end the wars and close Guantanamo. They bombed the shit out of the Middle East with drones. They were complicit in Israel’s war crimes. They were basically neoliberal Republicans with Democrat hats on.

That failure of Obama/Biden and the DNC to fight for the working class lead to Trump. The working class in America is collapsing. It’s not Russia, it’s not Jill Stein, it’s not Susan Serandon, or voters who thought Clinton was “cold.” You have desperate people who are struggling to get by and nothing but vapid platitudes and insufficient half-measures from the Democratic leaders. Who gives a fuck what sex organ is between the legs of the Vice President when their job was shipped overseas and they’re being evicted during a pandemic?

The job of the DNC is to act as a firewall against a progressive backlash as they march further and further to the Right. That’s the job they’re being paid millions of dollars to do.

@jca2 Biden thinks he’s running for Senate, so….

https://youtu.be/WqS4m-8B4IQ

@gorillapaws , What Trump did is far worse than anything Obama did. Also, the progressive movement in the Democratic Party has been growing. There were two progressive candidates, Warren and Sanders in the primary. I believe that if Biden is elected, he will move at least a little to the left. At the very least, you should vote for Biden as the much lesser of two evils.

@gorillapaws: I have no idea what you’re on about.

@KNOWITALL: I so don’t care what her race is, I was just expanding on the post above me, which you have now expanded further.

@LostInParadise “At the very least, you should vote for Biden as the much lesser of two evils.”

Is he? It’s arguable that Biden’s Crime Bill is third only to slavery and Jim Crow in terms of policy that hurt the Black community in this country’s history. His support of NAFTA (and other offshoring bills) has lead to the erosion of the middle class. Beating the war drum to help push the Democrats to support Bush in the War in Iraq has resulted in millions of deaths and basically brought economic ruin to the country by bloating the defense budget. His long-standing support for Banks and predatory lenders have left the middle class with fewer opportunities, more debt and less wealth than the generations before them.

I hate Trump. He’s killing tens of thousands of Americans with his mishandling of COVID-19 and lining up the dominoes for a total economic collapse as the bottom falls out from this thing. But remember that something like ~45k Americans die every year from lack of health insurance. Obama and Biden were in a position to guarantee universal care, and instead we’ve got the 45k deaths per year plan that’s killed probably around half-a-million Americans so far (but lead to some pretty sweet Pharma donations to the Biden campaign). So Biden is still WAY ahead of Trump in terms of American deaths resulting from the policies they supported (though Trump seems to be trying hard to catch him at this rate).

Either way, it’s not at all clear to me that Biden is “much lesser” of two evils. They’re BOTH evil.

Really. Fucking. Evil.

“There were two progressive candidates, Warren and Sanders in the primary.”

Warren proved pretty conclusively that she’s not actually a progressive.

Politicians don’t serve chicken. They make and then try to fulfill promises about how they’ll manage and regulate the processes by which people can obtain chicken.

With Biden, you can at least have a coherent public discussion about why the glass is in the chicken, how to get the glass out of the chicken, to what extent the chicken distributors are influencing the politicians, etc. With Trump, we will continue to argue in circles about whether the glass is even there, with Trump’s antics at the center of attention. (What glass? He doesn’t see any glass. And if there is any glass, and he’s not saying there is, then [whoever Trump’s picked as enemy of the week] put it there, and Trump is doing better than anyone at getting rid of the glass, believe him. But what glass?)

With Biden, you also at least have someone making the motions of giving progressives more of a seat at the table, and of giving progressive issues more consideration. Regardless of how genuine or substantive you feel the effort is, it at least moves the Overton window in the direction of progress on social and economic issues, and away from the growing authoritarian tendencies of the Trump-Republican administration.

Take, for example, the unity task force that Biden and his team put together shortly after gaining the nomination. Sanders: ”‘Though the end result is not what I or my supporters would have written alone, the task forces have created a good policy blueprint that will move this country in a much-needed progressive direction and substantially improve the lives of working families throughout our country,’ [Sanders] said in a statement, emphasizing that Democrats’ left and centrist wings need to come together in order to defeat Trump.”

Picking a VP specifically based on race & gender, doesn’t seem very progressive.

Those are external traits. He, and Obama, say she is more than capable of doing the job.

And all those white men weren’t? their race and gender were just coincidental?

How many candidates throughout history have publicly announced their intention to only pick white males as their VP?

How many of them needed to announce what was taken for granted?

I think for Joe it’s a mixed bag. He and Harris went after each other pretty good during the debates. So how well will they work together? Unknown. Another potential rubbing point would be how well she will follow orders when he is declared incompetent and she is bumped up to POTUS. Joe’s handlers aren’t willing to give up their power that easily. But all this is predicated on the idea that they will win the election. That is far from a foregone conclusion.

@gorillapaws I didn’t know any of that about Biden. I knew we were screwed either way. Now I don’t feel good about any of this lol. (Please let me die quickly and painlessly)

Anything is better than trump.

Here’s one last quote from Ava Duvernay, noted African-American filmmaker:

“There is no debate anymore. There’s no room for it in my book. We either make this happen. Or literally, more of us perish. People are dying. Someone I love died. This virus is real. If it hasn’t visited your doorstep, it will. Oh but, Kamala did this or she didn’t do that. I hear you. I know. And I don’t care. Because what she DIDN’T DO is abandon citizens in a pandemic, rip babies from their mother’s arms at the border, send federal troops to terrorize protestors, manufacture new ways to suppress Black and Brown votes, actively disrespect Indigenous people and land, traffic in white supremacist rhetoric in an effort to stir racist violence at every turn, attempt to dismantle most American democratic systems of checks and balance, degrade women all day everyday, infect the Supreme Court with another misogynist hack, demolish America’s standing on climate, actively cultivate and further white supremacist structures and systems across all aspects of American daily life. I mean, that’s what she DIDN’T do. So I don’t wanna hear anything bad about her. It doesn’t matter to me. Vote them in and then let’s hold them accountable. Anything other than that is insanity. It’s ego. It’s against our own interests. It’s selfish. It’s disrespectful to our elders. It’s nonsense. It’s talking to hear yourself talk. This is a matter of life or death. We need all our energy focused. This is a fight for more than can be expressed here. There is no debate anymore. Not for me anyway.”

Excellent Pengy.

How will Biden and Harris work together? Well, one thing we know is that she’s not a rubber stamp. Another is that Joe wasn’t afraid to name someone who challenges him—someone who’s not essentially a Mini-Me, such as the sycophants who populate the present administration. This gives me confidence. I would worry if they were too much the same, not if they’re too different.

Also it’s pretty certain that nobody is going to pop up with a “me too” accusation against her. That’s a plus in itself.

I almost feel good about this race now, and that’s something I haven’t been able to say for nearly four years.

I’m hopeful too.

Amazingly, Trump suggests Harris may not be eligible for the Vice Presidency, even though she was born in this country, because her parents were immigrants:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/us/politics/trump-kamala-harris.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

^Because he is a bitter old man that can’t handle anyone else getting attention.

Quote: “I heard it today that she doesn’t meet the requirements…I have no idea if that’s right. I would have assumed the Democrats would have checked that out.”

Listen Ted Cruz (Canada) and John McCain (Panama Canal, US zone) went through a similar situation, too, it’s not just Kamala or Democrats.

And another “Whataboutist” heard from.