Category: politics

Tonight’s debate and what Tom Friedman thinks Harris must do to win

September 10, 2024 • 12:45 pm

As you know, there’s a Big Debate tonight between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. It’ll be broadcast on television on ABC, a non-cable channel. ABC says this: (note that times are Eastern times):

The ABC News debate, moderated by David Muir and Linsey Davis, will take place on Tuesday, Sept. 10 at 9 p.m ET. A prime-time pre-debate special will air at 8 p.m. ET. It will air on ABC and stream on ABC News Live, Disney+ and Hulu. Viewers can also stream the debate on the ABC app on a smartphone or tablet, on ABC.com and connected devices.

The debate will last an hour and a half. I may do a live post with readers reacting in real time, but I will refrain from giving any of my own take until the next day.

If you’re a PBS fan, there’s a bunch of broadcasting on PBS starting at 6 pm EDT with the PBS News Hour, and continuing through the debate (with, undoubtedly, some post-debate analysis).

A few comments and some related articles.

Although Harris has been notably silent about specific policy issues until now, and has sat for only one (softball interview), I now see that there’s a menu of policy positions on her website, which you can see here. You’d better believe that the Trump campaign will be scanning them for what they see as weak spots.  There are, of course, a gazillion ways Trump himselfcan be attacked, though, like Harris, he seems to have moderated some of his more extreme stands (e.g., on abortion) in a pragmatic bid for victory.

I’m not convinced that either candidate will tell the truth about what they really plan to do, as both now seem to be acting pragmatically: they both want to win, and both will say what they think will get them elected. Such is politics: you can’t govern unless you win.  That said, I think Harris is absolutely serious in wanting to pass a law that reinstates the provisions of Roe v Wade nationwide, and I support her on that. But unless both houses of Congress turn Democratic, she stands no chance. As for Trump, I have no idea what he’s absolutely serious about, which scares me.

But I don’t think that Trump will have the self-control that will gain him a victory in the debate. Still, a victory in the debate may not, unlike the fatal Trump/Biden debate, have much to do with how people vote come November.

What will happen tonight?  All I can predict with confidence is that it’s going to get nasty despite both candidates having moderated their tone and made noises about sticking to the issues. I don’t think Trump can control himself, and to the extent that Harris keeps her cool, she’ll come off looking better. But I hasten to add that Trump has always seemed impervious to how he “comes off,” and the support he’s enjoyed despite all the civil and criminal trials in his future support his statement that “”I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?. . . . It’s, like, incredible.”

As Tom Friedman notes in the NYT op-ed below (click headline to read, or find the article archived here). Harris has taken some positions in the past that could come back to haunt her should Trump bring them up in the debate. These include immigration and Title IX issues. As the Free Press reports in its daily news summary.

Even as Harris gets a little more specific in 2024, the promises she made in 2019 remain a headache. The latest unwelcome reminder of the progressive positions she took in the Democratic primary five years ago come courtesy of CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski, who reports that during that race Harris told the ACLU she supports cutting ICE’s funding and providing gender transition surgery to detained migrants.

Further, she’s susceptible to her statement that her values haven’t changed but some of her positions have (e.g., fracking).  If I were a moderator, I’d ask her to explain that. She’s also not good when thinking on her feet, and, with the pressure of a deranged opponent coming down on her, she has to try hard to keep her cool.

I am not a fan of Friedman so much, but I think he’s pretty much correct in his article below:

An excerpt:

“Joe and I got a lot of things right, but we got some things wrong, too — and here is what I have learned.”

For my money, uttering those 23 words, or something like them, is the key for Kamala Harris to win Tuesday’s debate against Donald Trump — and the election.

Utter them, and she will hugely improve her chances to win more of the undecided voters in this tight race. Fail to utter them or continue to disguise her policy shifts with the incoherent statement she used in the CNN interview — that while her positions might have changed on fracking and immigration, “my values have not changed” — and she will struggle.

Madam V.P., if you say your positions have changed but your values haven’t, what does that even mean? And what should we expect from your presidency — your values or your actions? Our latest poll shows too many voters still don’t know.

It’s OK to say: “I learned a lot as vice president. I’m proud of our record of putting America on a sustainable path to a clean energy future. It will make us more secure and more prosperous. But I also see that we can’t get there overnight. For reasons of both economic security and national security, we need an all-of-the-above energy strategy right now. So you can trust that in a Harris presidency, America will continue to lead the world in exploiting our oil and gas advantages but we will do it in the cleanest way possible while making the transition as fast as possible.”

I’m not so sure that admitting she was wrong will “hugely improve her chances” to win over undecided voters, but if she doesn’t she’ll be in a tight place.

Will admitting she was wrong hurt her? Not to me, but perhaps to the American public, which may interpret it as a weak candidate flip-flopping on the issues.  Here’s one of the issues—from CNN—that she might want to back off on, especially given the fact that illegal immigration is now an important issue to many Americans (as is, to a lesser extent, “affirmative care”).

Click to read Kaczynski’s article mentioned above:

An excerpt from CNN:

As Kamala Harris pivots to the political center in her campaign for president, a 2019 questionnaire from a leading civil rights organization spotlights her past support for left-wing causes such as taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for detained immigrants and federal prisoners.

In an American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire then-Sen. Harris filled out as a candidate for president in 2020, she also expressed support for decriminalizing federal drug possession for personal use, and for sweeping reductions to Immigration and Custom Enforcement operations, including drastic cuts in ICE funding and an open-ended pledge to “end” immigration detention.

The questionnaire has received scant media attention and a spokesperson for the ACLU claimed it had remained live from 2019.

But the ACLU’s website upload and page source indicate the questionnaire was reposted last month after Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee. CNN was unable to find questionnaires filled out by other candidates from the 2020 campaign that the ACLU had reposted.

Harris has acknowledged that some of her stances have evolved over time but that she holds core beliefs that remain unshakable: “My values have not changed,” she said in an interview with CNN last month.

The ACLU questionnaire, which was sent  to all Democratic and Republican candidates during the 2020 presidential campaign, provides a clear record of Harris’ progressive stances. Some candidates did not respond to the questionnaire, including Joe Biden.  The ACLU later ran radio ads attacking Biden for not answering.

The ACLU also had volunteers question candidates at public town halls and later posted videos on their website of their responses.

During one town hall event in New Hampshire in April 2019, Harris was asked by a voter if she supports adding a “third gender” to federal identification cards.

“Sure,” Harris answered to a round of applause from the crowd. “I have my entire life and career been an ally and I see the issue of LGBTQ rights as a fundamental civil rights and human rights issue, period,” Harris said.

Here’s a graphic of that, again from CNN:

I have to say that her stand on this: giving federal funding for gender surgery for immigrants who entered the country illegally, is absurd.  And slashing ICE funding is not something most Americans want.  She’d better be ready to disavow these positions, because if Team Trump has any smarts, they’ll bring them up.

Perhaps most Americans will be watching the debate as a form of entertainment rather than a way to figure out how to vote. It’s not at all clear that there will be more debates, though, so this may be the only chance to see the candidates go mano a mano. All we know is the country is poised to go down two very divergent paths, and I find debate about that to be more anxiety-inducing than entertaining.

Anyway, these are just random thoughts, but I invite your random thoughts or predictions about the debate.  I’m sure people will have more to say tomorrow.

Meanwhile at the Democratic National Convention. . .

August 22, 2024 • 9:00 am

I’m off to the Blyde River Canyon today and most of tomorrow, so posts will be nonexistent or thin for a few days—save for Matthew’s postings of the Hili Dialogues.  I’ve largely avoided reading the news, as I find it depressing and not conducive to a relaxing vacation, but two readers sent me stuff about the Democratic National Convention that is taking place in Chicago.  I’m glad I’m not there.

Here’s one item that epitomizes the wokeness I fear is metastasizing in the body of the Democratic Party: a land acknowledgement to open the convention. I was sent a link to the video below, which YouTube describes as follows:

Two citizens of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation — Zach Pahmahmie, tribal council vice chair and Lorrie Melchior, tribal council secretary — gave the land acknowledgement Monday at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where Kamala Harris will step into the spotlight not as a running mate but at the top of the ticket.

And the video:

My response to these things is always the same: they are performative gestures signaling the virtue of the organization, but accomplish nothing. If the Democratic Party really does acknowledge that the lands on which the convention is taking place was stolen from Native Americans, why don’t they try to compensate the Potawatomi Nation for the theft? (Land in Chicago is expensive!)

Granted the speaker notes that the Interior Department placed some of their tribal lands into a trust, making the Potawatomie “the only federally recognized tribal nation in Illinois in 175 years.” But did any individual get land or cash?

And there are the expected pro-Palestinian protests. Here’s one where an American flag gets burned (legal speech), but a guy who tries to put it out gets jumped on and pushed away.

This shows the divisiveness that plagues America, and that I fear will appear again on campus this fall.

I can’t find an article someone sent me relating that the Convention has given pro-Palestinian protestors far more space than pro-Israeli demonstrators, who have apparently been pushed far away from the site, but I do remember reading that somewhere. In the meantime, the Washington Post reports this:

. . . pro-Palestinian activists have won small but notable concessions at the Democratic National Convention that, three days into the event, have largely headed off any major eruptions of anger or division. Organizers have provided space for a panel to discuss Israeli-Palestinian conflict and for a vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza [was there a vigil for the dead Israelis, including now six more hostages?], and several high-profile speakers have demanded an end to the war from the stage.

Those concessions have helped defuse the issue, but most critical has been the emergence of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. Harris, in her public comments, has emphasized Palestinian suffering notably more than President Joe Biden has and held Israel more directly responsible for the high civilian death toll and the slow pace of humanitarian aid. In addition, her campaign has ramped up its efforts to engage with those calling for a change in U.S. policy.

This wokeness and anti-Israeli sentiment does of course worry me about Harris and the election, to the point where I’ve been contemplating not voting for President at all (there’s no question of me voting for Trump, who I think is unstable and dangerous). But make no mistake about it: if Harris wins, Israel is in for a hard time, with some Israelis even regarding Harris as an existential threat to their country. I’m hoping that they’re unjustly worried.

And I’m hoping the centrist Democrats will push back on the party’s new cooling toward Israel.  Above all, Democrats have to realize that a permanent cease-fire now is a victory for Hamas, and that the IDF has been more careful than any army in history in trying to reduce civilian casualities. Blame the deaths of Palestinian civilians not on Israel, as have Harris and Biden, but on Hamas, which actually wants the deaths of its own civilians as part of its strategy to win the world’s favor. And Hamas seems to be succeeding, even among Democrats.]

Finally, I wish that Harris would have some interviews or press conferences before the election; it’s surprising to me that’s she’s had exactly none. We all know why that is, of course, but Democrats resolved to support her will find some reasons why no such events are required.

If Democrats share “the contagious power of hope,” as Michelle Obama said in her speech, then my hope is that the Democratic party stops its movement towards its “progressive” wing.

Anyway, these are some early-morning thoughts before I take off to see the wonders of nature. Please discuss them but, as always, be civil to your fellow commenters and to your host. Debate is fine; insults are not.

Discussion thread: politics or other matters

August 19, 2024 • 11:15 am

I’ve generally been avoiding the American news, but I know readers are following it, especially since the Democratic National Convention, whose conclusion is foregone, has started in Chicago. (I’m glad I’m not home, as there will be tons of protests and disruption. I had enough of that in 1968.)

So here’s a discussion thread about politics, or anything else you want to get off your chest. I’ll start it off with a headline from today’s NYT. I dare not even mention my own views any more, as I’ll be given a hiding for saying that I don’t want to vote for either Presidential candidate, and be told off for thereby helping Trump (a misguided view for sure).

Click on the link below to read, or find the article archived here. I’ll give an excerpt. Talk about the election, politics, or anything you want.

An excerpt:

When Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016, she had more than 200 distinct policy proposals. Four years ago, Joseph R. Biden Jr. had a task force write a 110-page policy document for his White House bid.

Now, Vice President Kamala Harris does not have a policy page on her campaign website.

A last-minute campaign born of Mr. Biden’s depreciated political standing has so far been running mainly on Democratic good feelings and warmth toward Ms. Harris, drafting off legislation and proposed policies from the man she is hoping to succeed.

Democrats’ problem for most of this year appeared to be Mr. Biden himself, rather than his policies. For more than a year, as his poll numbers sank, his aides and loyalists insisted that his legislative record and priorities were viewed favorably by Americans and would ultimately carry him to another term.

Ms. Harris is now testing that original theory — but with a younger, more spirited messenger.

On policy, she has essentially cherry-picked the parts of the Biden agenda that voters like most while discarding elements like his “Bidenomics” branding on the economy. She has emphasized what allies call the “care economy”: child care, health care and drug prices, which directly affect voters’ lives.

The link to the whole article is above.  Didn’t Harris propose some kind of ban on high grocery prices?

As I said, you can talk about anything here, not just politics, but do not diss other commenters or your host, and BE CIVIL. (If you’re a newbie, I recommend reading the posting rules.

Have fun! I’m off to see the animals.

The nooz

August 16, 2024 • 11:30 am

Although I’m staying away from most of the news, i do follow the election news, and am aware of how Harris has befuddled Trump as Democrats, enthusiastic for a candidate who’s mediocre at best, have taken Harris above the Orange Man in the polls.

As always, I emphasize that I’m a never-Trumper, but I’m probably a not-Harriser, either, as I may vote for a third candidate, or not vote at all, since my state will go Democratic anyway. I also note that Harris is completely avoiding press conferences and interviews, since she’s not at all good on thinking on her feet or speaking intelligibly on the issues. I am baffled for the tremendous Democratic enthusiasm for Harris, but I guess I can understand it as it gives us a way to avoid Trump, who looked as if he was going to win.

But I argue that Harris, despite her promise, did not earn the nomination but simply inherited it, and I’m sad that the person likely to be chosen leader of our country is someone without the smarts and savvy of someone like Gretchen Whitmer, my previous favorite. (n.b. please do not tell me that I MUST vote as doing so won’t help the Democrats, and I will look askance at claims that Kamala Harris is the greatest thing since sliced bread.)

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, here are three items I’ve stolen from Nellie Bowles’s weekly news summary at The Free Press, called this week “TGIF: the RayGun goes off.”

→ Kamala is up big: Another week in which Kamala Harris does some high-energy rallies. . . and not much else. The Democratic nominee has so far given no interviews, no press conferences, and is just generally keeping it light on details like, say, how she plans to run the country. And it’s working. The voters are warming to Kamala—or at least the loosely reality-based version of Kamala Harris being put forward by a pliant press. According to The Cook Political Report, Harris now leads or ties Trump in all but one of the seven battleground states. The latest national Emerson poll puts Harris four points ahead on 50 percent to Trump’s 46 percent. Nate Silver’s magic election machine also has Harris ahead, as do the betting markets. Remember how a few months ago every expert and political insider insisted that an obviously over-the-hill Joe Biden was a better candidate than Harris? Or that Biden alone could beat Trump? Me neither.

I am but a passenger in the vibes election. And I am dangerously close to putting in a bet on Kamala.

I’d bet on her winning, at least at this stage of the election. But et’s wait until the candidates debate each other and give interviews and press conferences.

→ Oi, mate, be nice or else! I have some British colleagues and they’re all really nice. Polite, considerate, good manners, hard workers, never cry in public, only slightly concerning drinking habits. Anyway recent headlines out of Blighty have me wondering: Is that just because it’s actually illegal to be a dick over there? After some ugly anti-immigrant riots in the UK, in which real-life people tried to do real-life harm to other real-life people, the big takeaway from the powers that be is that people who are mean on the internet should be put in jail. “Think before you post,” warned prosecutors. Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson told Brits: “You may be committing a crime if you repost, repeat or amplify a message which is false, threatening, or stirs up racial / religious hatred.” And one of Britain’s police chiefs even threatened to extradite U.S. citizens who break Britain’s censorship laws—to which the only reasonable response is a big, fat, American middle finger. I can think of no more just war than refighting the American War of Independence, only this time over busybody speech codes and our right to say crazy shit online rather than a tax on tea. Hand me my musket, and fire up Facebook. We’re taking no prisoners.

→ Goodbye, weird kid sports: The Algerian boxer Imane Khelif’s gold medal win highlighted how the IOC is rather squirrely about how they separate the sexes in sports. Is it by what’s listed on your passport? Your testosterone level? What’s coded into your DNA? Whether or not you’re good at math? Who knows! But let’s get real: The Olympics have been playing fast and loose with their standards for quite a while. Skateboarding, speed climbing, BMX racing, and—the newest, dumbest addition—breakdancing all featured as Olympic sports in Paris. I’m not saying these activities don’t require athletic prowess; I’m just saying if the uniform is cargo pants and a sideways hat then maybe it should be part of a different competition than the one Simone Biles participates in. This year, the Australian breakdancer Rachael Gunn, a.k.a. RayGun, participated in the competition, earning herself exactly zero points for her wild display on the break floor. She has a PhD in cultural studies and her thesis was on “Deterritorializing gender in Sydney’s breakdancing scene: A B-girl’s experience of B-boying,” and oh, it showed. After being roundly ridiculed online for her performance Gunn shared the quote, “Don’t be afraid to be different, go out there and represent yourself, you never know where that’s gonna take you.” But sometimes you know exactly where you’re going, like if you sign up for the Olympics as a breakdancer. I commend Raygun for participating and answering the question we all ask ourselves when we watch the Olympics, which is, “I wonder how I would stack up.” Now we know. Breakdancing, and the modern pentathlon that apparently involved laser pistols, will mercifully not be a part of L.A.’s 2028 program.

Okay, one more from Nellie (see also this link from reader Ginger K.):

→ I love my quaint hometown: A referendum in Pittsburgh that would cut all ties with Israel is moving through the legislative process. If it makes it to the ballot, voters will get to choose whether the city charter will be amended to bar “investment or allocation of public funds, including tax exemptions, to entities that conduct business operations with or in the state of Israel.” This is like BDS on crack. If it were to pass, the lights in the city would go out (since we couldn’t do business with Duquesne Light because they do business with Israel) and there would be no more Narcan, a drug manufactured by an Israeli company. Also: There would be no fuel for the city vehicles like patrol cars, nor any vehicles at all, since oil and gas companies and car companies do business with the Jewish state. This sounds like a really promising initiative that will make life in Pittsburgh—a key stakeholder in the war in Gaza—better for all. Also, shout-out to the brave highway blockers in L.A.! If they adopted the Pittsburgh measure, though, they could just take the ambulances away instead of blocking them.

.  .  . and that’s the way it is.

NYT goes all out for Harris—except for Pamela Paul

August 8, 2024 • 11:00 am

Below are screenshots of are all the articles I found on this morning’s New York Times site  It’s clear that the paper has unapologetically gone all out for Kamala Harris (what do you expect?), but has done so in both the news and the op-eds. There is only one dissenter: the ever-heterodox and thoughtful Pamela Paul (see below). The paper is also making a virtue of necessity in heaping encomiums on Tim Walz, an okay VP candidate but not as good, in my view, as Shapiro.

Like Paul in the article below, I’m tired of people urging others to vote for Kamala Harris because she’d be the first black/Asian/woman President. In fact, my favorite candidate was a woman—Gretchen Whitmer—but that was because of merit, not gender or ethnicity. As for Harris, if I do vote for President it would be for her (my vote doesn’t matter in Democratic Illinois), but I have to say—and you already know this—that I’m not a big fan of Harris. I don’t think Paul is, either, at least in the article below (click to read, or find it archived here):

Some excerpts:

But I don’t particularly care that the Democratic candidate is a woman. I care about having the best, most electable Democratic candidate possible, and I suspect many Americans, male and female, feel the same. As my colleague Jeremy Peters reported last week, voters are looking for electability, not representation. “In interviews, Harris supporters of all races said they were concerned that if she talked more directly about her race, she risked feeding the backlash that has been building over diversity,” he wrote.

The year 2020, in other words, is as over as 2016.

If President Biden had pulled out of the race months ago, other candidates, male and female, could have made a case for their qualifications and electability and maybe had a better shot at the presidency. As groovy as the vibe feels right now, all the memes and Zooms in the world can’t cover for Harris’s weaknesses or less than overwhelming vice-presidential record. Nor will promoting her as possibly the first woman president do anything substantive to help her win.

The last paragraph expresses my view, and I’m sure that if Biden had pulled out, say, six months ago, and if there had been an open Democratic forum and a series of debates, Harris wouldn’t be the candidate—except for her inheriting Biden’s campaign funds. But I’d rather have a candidate run on merit than on funds, sex, or ethnicity.

. . . Donald Trump may be the latest in a long line of male presidential candidates, but I don’t oppose him because he’s a man; I oppose him because he is a terrible candidate, a catastrophic leader and a terrible human being, one who treats women (and men) horribly.

Similarly, women didn’t necessarily vote for Hillary Clinton because of her sex. And despite efforts to make gender central to her campaign, women didn’t turn out for her in the same force as pollsters predicted. “I’m Not With Her: Why Women Are Wary of Hillary Clinton” ran a headline in The Guardian months ahead of the election.

. . . I hope Harris is elected and succeeds mightily not as an emblem or a representative and not based on essentialist or identitarian terms but simply on the merits — and that’s on her to prove. Whether she wins or loses, fails or excels, she should be judged based on what she does, not on which box she checks.

So please, stop all the talk of breaking barriers and glass ceilings, of which group is somehow categorically represented by a single human being and which isn’t and instead talk about the candidates’ qualities. A good president represents all Americans, regardless of his or her own identity.

To those who insist on focusing on sex this election, home in instead on Trump’s contempt for members of the opposite sex. That alone — leaving aside his atrocious record and stance on nearly every policy issue — should be reason for his defeat.

It looks to me that Paul wants Harris elected simply because she’s not as insane as Trump, but note that Paul says nothing about Harris’s own merits. What did Harris mean when she said she wanted to earn the nomination rather than inherit it? How has she earned it? By turning down Shapiro, for one thing, because, as a Jew, he wouldn’t appeal to progressives?

Here from the Times of Israel are some of Harris’s antics as she campaigns in Michigan, a state not exactly favorable to Israel:

Democratic US presidential candidate President Kamala Harris told a group chanting about the “genocide” in Gaza at her election rally in Michigan Wednesday to quiet down unless they “want Donald Trump to win.”

Before the Detroit rally, she met briefly with the founders of the Uncommitted National Movement, which led a mass vote protesting US President Joe Biden’s support for the war in Gaza during the swing state’s February primary.

. . . Ahead of the Detroit rally on Tuesday, Harris met with Abbas Alawieh and Layla Elabed, the Uncommitted National Movement’s co-founders. According to The New York Times, Harris indicated she was willing to meet with the two over their demand for an arms embargo on Israel, and introduced them to her staff.

. . .In a subsequent statement, her campaign gave no indication of this, however. “Since October 7, the vice president has prioritized engaging with Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian community members and others regarding the war in Gaza,” the statement said. “In this brief engagement, she reaffirmed that her campaign will continue to engage with those communities. The vice president has been clear: she will always work to ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups. The Vice President is focused on securing the ceasefire and hostage deal currently on the table.”

According to the Times, Alawieh and Elabed had been invited to stand in a photo line welcoming Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Alawieh was quoted in the report as saying he “felt an openness from [Vice President] Harris, as well as a listening ear from Governor Walz.”

“I appreciate her leadership, and I know the uncommitted voters want to support her, uncommitted delegates want to support her,” Alawieh said, “but our voters need to see her turn a new page on Gaza policy.”

Oh, she will, she will, though not perhaps before she’s elected. But her calls for a cease fire are equivalent to calls for a Hamas victory.

And from Batya Ungar-Sargon at the Free Press, in an article called, “America is ready for a Jewish Veep. The Democrats aren’t.”

On Monday night, Vice President Kamala Harris had narrowed her search for a running mate to two men: Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro and Minnesota governor Tim Walz. Each had pros and cons.

In Walz’s favor, he had the distinction of applying the term weird to J.D. Vance, a word that the entirety of his party’s elites then picked up and ran with. Against Walz was the fact that Minnesota is not a swing state and Walz himself is a progressive, like Harris, making it unclear what he would add to the ticket.

In Shapiro’s favor was a 61 percent approval rating in a must-win state for Harris and a history of working across the political divide and choosing moderate, popular positions on everything from school choice to Covid-19 restrictions to degree requirements to corporate taxes. But working against him turned out to be something insurmountable: Josh Shapiro is a proud Jew.

Almost as soon as Harris began her search for a running mate in earnest, a campaign from the progressive left made it clear that the anti-Israel wing of the party would not vote for Shapiro. Though his support of Israel is identical to that of every other contender, though he hates Benjamin Netanyahu a lot, though his view on college campus protesters (he called it “absolutely unacceptable” that “universities can’t guarantee the safety and security of their students”) is the most common, most popular view, none of this was a match for his last name, the fact that he is an observant, kosher-keeping proud Jew, and that, like the vast majority of Jews, he supports the state of Israel.

. . . There can be no doubt about it: there was only one reason to reject Shapiro, and it was that the Democrats would rather cater to their antisemitic base and lose the election than embrace the vast non-antisemitic American middle and win. “You also have antisemitism that has gotten marbled into this party,” Van Jones said on CNN Tuesday. “You can be for the Palestinians without being an anti-Jewish bigot, but there are some anti-Jewish bigots out there.”

There’s an argument to be made—and Free Press reporter Peter Savodnik has made it smartly—that the goal in picking a vice president should be to do no harm. And, like it or not, in the current version of the Democratic Party, Shapiro harms the ticket. But consider what this means: the most qualified person to help a major party nominee win the presidency was passed over because he’s a proud Jew with a strong connection to his heritage.

And a satirical article from the Babylon Bee that still rings true (click to read):

An excerpt, somewhat but not completely satirical:

After hearing Josh Shapiro might be Kamala Harris’s pick for Vice President, Democrats worry his name on the ticket might cost them the all-important “Death To America” vote.

“I think Josh is very qualified to be Harris’s VP pick,” Chuck Schumer told the press over the weekend. “I do worry he might discourage those wishing to obliterate the U.S. and wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. We really need those votes.”

The Harris team announced it is nearing a decision on who will join the current Vice President on the national ticket. Governor of Pennsylvania Josh Shapiro is rumored to be at the top of the list, but some worry his Jewish heritage and past as an IDF soldier might cost the dems votes from those wishing to make the streets run red with the blood of Jews if it’s the last thing they ever do.

“We really need those 15,000 votes from Dearborn, Michigan who want America to be eternally consumed by the fires of holy jihad,” Schumer said. “We’d hate to lose out on their support just because we have a guy on the ticket who probably thinks Jews should exist. It’s a real conundrum.”

I’m not a one-issue voter, but I do care whether Harris supports Israel or not. If she calls for a ceasefire, cuts off or severely reduces aid to Israel, or bawls for a two-state solution, she wants Hamas to win so that she can win. But this surely bears on her moral compass, and if it points to Hamas, it’s 180º off.

Further, I’m not keen on her views on gender or Titles VI and IX, nor on her abysmal failure to do anything about the border. She alienates a huge proportion of people who have worked for her, and that doesn’t bode well, either.  In my view, she has earned the nomination in only one way, by inheriting Biden’s war chest.  And, as with Pamela Paul, I don’t think anybody should be ruled out as President because of their sex or ethnicity. But neither is that a reason to vote for them.

A note about politics

August 3, 2024 • 12:00 pm

Here’s what I won’t miss about politics:

Trump and now Vance are repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot by making stupid statements.  Any idiot would know that saying that Kamala Harris turned black from Asian would not please most voters, including Republicans. I’m not sure whether Harris once emphasized her Asian ancestry and then her black ancestry at a later time, but even calling attention to that is invidious.  Like many voters, including black ones, I do not want this election to be about race; I want it to be about issues.

Vance, who was chosen for his hardscrabble background designed to appeal to middle America, has proved to be somewhat of a drag on the ticket. His comment on childless cat ladies was just as bad as Trump’s gaffe, and he topped that by criticizing Simone Biles for pulling out of the last Olympics because of mental health issues. That’s just churlish. None of these statements have anything to do with issues; they are ad hominems.

Harris, on the other hand, accepted her coronation with glee, and I’m appalled that people with much better cred, including Obama and Pelosi, jumped aboard the Harris juggernaut so quickly. I am not enthused about her stand on Israel, on her wokeness (she’s increasingly “progressive”, and will do damage to Titles VI and IX) and her weakness on the border, though she’s keeping a low profile right now.  What irks me the most is her claim that she wasn’t going to simply inherit the Democratic nomination, but EARN it. Well, she’s done absolutely nothing to earn it except serve up a few more word salads (I swear, she is incapable of thinking on her feet, and becomes acceptable only when reading from a teleprompter).

This is one election when I’m not enthused about either candidate. I remain a Democrat and a huge critic of Trump, whom I consider mentally ill, but I can’t say that I wouldn’t be holding my nose when voting for Harris. I am appalled at what’s happened to the Democratic Party. Yes, they are dancing with glee around a mediocre candidate, for they want to win, but what happened to the search for quality?  Perhaps it was too late to have debates or resolve this in the Democratic Convention, for it’s already been solved. Still . . . .

But the laws of physics have already determined who will win the Presidency, so I suppose I should just relax and let the molecules work it all out.

What questions would you ask the candidates?

July 31, 2024 • 10:00 am

A hypothetical question: You are one of the moderators of the next Presidential debate. (We’re not sure if there will be one, though there surely must.)  What question(s) would you most like to ask both candidates together, as well as either one separately. Since Harris hasn’t yet chosen a running mate, we’ll leave out VP questions, though if you want to say what you’d ask Vance, fire away.  Be hard on them!

But here’s one question I’d ask both candidates. A version of this was asked in 2007 among the Republican Presidential candidates, with three out of the ten candidates said they didn’t “believe in evolution.” Here’s the video of that:

So here’s what I’d ask both Trump and Harris:

Do you accept that evolution is true? Why or why not?

That’s a touchstone about whether they’d accept established scientific “truth.” If you don’t buy that, then you’re oblivious to evidence. I’m sure Harris would say “yes”, but don’t know what Trump would say.  But I’d also like to know if they know the evidence.

Here’s what I’d ask Trump (two questions):

You still maintain that the last Presidential election was rigged, with illegal votes counted in a way that made you lose.  If you lost this time, would you still say the same thing?

(This is to determine whether he’d still foment insurrection if he lost.)

As lagniappe, I’d ask him this:

You recently said this: 

“You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.” 

And you’re sticking by that statement. Could you explain exactly what you meant by it? 

And here are two questions I’d ask Harris:

What do you think you accomplished on your own as Vice-President, as opposed to simply assenting to what Biden accomplished? I am referring to what you actually did to make America progress, as opposed to what you were supposed to do). 

I thought of one more:

You are hoping that you will win the Presidency by reinstalling Roe v. Wade as the law of the land. How, exactly, would you accomplish this if at least one house of Congress was majority Republican?

Both of those questions for Harris are designed to make her think on her feet as opposed to her custom of simply repeating a question as if it were an answer.

Put your questions below. Remember, you aren’t supposed to show partisan bias here, but to draw out the candidates, for that’s what debate moderators are supposed to do.