The Biden Veepstakes! [Updated: it's Harris]
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljJmrA3Nhe8]
Joe Biden @JoeBiden
'I have the great honor to announce that I’ve picked @KamalaHarris
— a fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants — as my running mate' 2:17 PM · Aug 11, 202
Just for the hella fun of it! He'd said he'd make his choice by Sunday, but: Tick-Tock, Dementia Joe!
The Miami Herald on July 31 had the Las Vegas Odds from bookie.com; here's their August 11, 2020 update: ‘Biden VP Pick Odds: Harris & Rice Top 2; Whitmer Rising Fast’
"Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who early in the process was in the top tier of contenders to be Joe Biden’s running mate only to fall to +4000 as recently as Friday, has skyrocketed back into the top three, according to betting lines posted Saturday at British bookmaker Ladbrokes.Whitmer’s sudden surge to +500 came a day after an Associated Press report that the popular Michigan governor had flown from Lansing, Michigan, to Delaware to meet with Biden. Those odds ticked back to +550 on Sunday.
California Sen. Kamala Harris remains the frontrunner to become Biden’s running mate at -110, down from -167, with Susan Rice, the former UN ambassador and national security advisor under President Barack Obama, second in the odds at +200, her all-time best. No other potential pick is close to the top three.
Harris has long been the favorite, but Rice was +2500 to be Biden’s running mate before reports emerged in June that she was one of six women seen as serious contenders. Joining Rice, Harris and Florida Rep. Val Demings on the list at that time were Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.
California Rep. Karen Bass, who catapulted into the top tier of potential choices for Biden, has plummeted even further, to +3300 on Saturday."
The odds on the rest of the possibilities, including Michelle ma Belle Obomba, are included.
Also discovered while Bingling for his choice: ‘Progressives alarmed by Rice's vast financial investments; The multimillionaire VP finalist bought into the company that owns the Keystone XL pipeline project — and many other Democratic Party villains;, politico.com, August 7, 2020
“A Rice spokeswoman would not comment on whether she still holds stock in the company that owns Keystone.
Progressive activists have started circulating dossiers among themselves that raise concerns about Rice’s holdings and foreign policy record. Left-wing Democrats — many of whom favor Rep. Karen Bass for VP — also said in interviews this week that they worried about the toll of recent critical stories examining the California congresswoman’s statements and record and complained that Rice had yet to face similar scrutiny."
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Rice had so many investments that a full analysis of her assets was only publicly released once, in 2009, by the Center for Responsive Politics. It estimated she was worth between $23.5 million and $43.5 million."
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Despite the controversy surrounding the TransCanada investment in 2012, Rice clung to the stock and listed as much as $100,000 of it in her last public financial disclosure as she exited the White House in 2017 as national security advisor. She was appointed to that post after John Kerry beat her out as secretary of state in the aftermath of her handling of the attacks on the lethal attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya."
Included is this video from Aug. 6: 'The case for Susan Rice in Biden's veepstakes'
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEiVQylwN1s]
But oh, my; Benghazi, TransCanada multi-millions, ye gods and little fishes! Don't they pale beside her friendship with genocidaire Paul Kagame?
‘A Second Wave of Genocide Looms in Congo, with Susan Rice on Point; Susan Rice has abetted the Congo genocide for much of her political career., Glen Ford, blackagenda report, Nov. 28, 2012
“Rice has fought a two-front battle to protect Washington’s murderous clients, delaying publication of a UN Group of Experts report on Washington’s clients’ depredations in Congo, and at the same time subverting efforts within the State Department to rein in Uganda and Rwanda. Last week, Rice blocked the UN Security Council from explicitly demanding that Rwanda immediately cease providing support to M23 rebels who vowed to march all the way to Kinshasa, the Congolese capital.
Susan Rice has abetted the Congo genocide for much of her political career. Appointed to President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council in 1993, at age 28, she rose to assistant secretary of state for African affairs in 1997 as Rwanda and Uganda were swarming across the eastern Congo, seizing control of mineral resources amid a sea of blood. She is known to be personally close to Rwanda’s minority Tutsi leadership, including President Paul Kagame, a ruthless soldier trained at the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and mentored by Ugandan strongman (and Reagan administration favorite) Yoweri Museveni, who is believed to have pioneered the use of child soldiers in modern African conflicts."
And: ‘How Susan Rice’s Role in the Rwandan Genocide Predicted Obamagate;
A woman who can turn her back on genocide would hardly blink at spying on Republicans’, Tue May 26, 2020
Wanna Bet? Remember: Kamala (the lotus flower) Harris raised money for him.. Of course...you can just text him...and be the first one on your block to know!
@JoeBiden 17h
It’s an important choice, and I want you to be one of the first to know who I’ve picked as my running mate – text FIRST to 30330 to get notified when I’ve made my decision.
Comments
Such as?
- Other than Sanders, there wasn't a real person that could make up for HRC's shortcomings. However, few POTUS nominees choose their main primary competitor. JFK and Reagan did but both also needed TX which is what their competitor brought to the table. That strategy requires a nominee that can bridge the personal divide with the competitor and give the illusion that they are now a team.
In a nutshell:
White voters
2008 - 74%; Obama 43% and McCain 55%
2016 - 70%; HRC 37% and Trump 57%
Age 45-64
2008 - 37%; Obama 50% and McCain 49%
2016 - 40%; HRC 44% and Trump 52%
If u mean her
"shortcomings" in the sense of lack of enthusiasm for her, several other picks could have helped that (and not her other well-known negatives). Liz Warren for progressive ideology, enthusiasm and making great economic appeal to the gettable low- and middle-income voters; Cory Booker for pizzazz and bringing more AAs to the polls in major northern cities; Julian Castro even, for ideological appeal to the Bernie wing, energy and adding to the overall turnout for HRC.
re JFK, he didn't pick LBJ. Johnson inserted himself, bullied his way onto the ticket (per Bobby's oral history which I highly recommend, and later testimony from Kennedy's secretary Evelyn Lincoln). Kennedy wanted MO Sen Stu Symington, a moderate and strong on national security issues, and had already offered him the spot, which Symington had accepted during the convention. Re strongly-Dem TX, Kennedy still didn't absolutely need that state. He did need IL.
Beyond that, this gets into alternative history land, so with Symington as his VP, Kennedy would likely have run a different race, concentrating more on CA (SoCal heavy defense industry, Symington's strong suit), which he narrowly lost to CAan Nixon. But he might even have won TX w/o Lyndon on his ticket (and LBJ's alleged popularity in his home state has been greatly overestimated in the years since), as that state as well as the others in the Deep South were all still solidly Dem at that time. See, e.g., JFK's narrow win in MO, a conservative traditionally Dem border state, even w/o Symington on the ticket.
Btw, LBJ wasn't Kennedy's "main primary opponent" -- that was Hubert Humphrey. Johnson was only the last standing official and important competitor by the time of the convention, as LBJ, having skipped the primaries and working only a backroom campaign, announced his candidacy only just before the convention began. But Kennedy would have gotten no benefit from naming another northern liberal to his ticket in Humphrey. Border stater Symington with his rep as very strong on national defense would have balanced the ticket ideologically as well as geographically (back when that mattered more), in addition to being a much better working partner in office for JFK, who probably knew enough from his time as a senator that the temperamental and highly sensitive LBJ would not be a good fit for him as VP.
There's no objective data
that your preferred 2016 VP candidates would have done more good and less harm to HRC. Warren has some of the same shortcomings as HRC. She's shrill and white men (a decisive factor in '16) dislike both of them. How much excitement did Booker create in the 2020 primary? As second AA on a Democratic ticket right after the first is inconsistent with the historical record of how a single step forward works. JFK was the first non-WASP elected President. The second one was almost fifty years later. Castro has no TV charisma.
I'm not interested in your opinions of LBJ. You loathe the man and read selectively to support your opinion.
Minimum wage (inflation adjusted to 2020)
Obama - entering and exiting: $8.76
LBJ - entering $10.28 and exiting $11.91
I gave a number of
possibles all of whom at least offered the prospect of generating greater voter enthusiasm for the ticket, though we'll never know for sure as none were selected. But you nitpick these potentials bc you can't rebut the fact that day-old oatmeal Tim Kaine was an overall negative to the ticket, for reasons I explained. It was clearly, then and in hindsight, a squandered opportunity by Hillary to enhance her chances of winning.
As for historical picks, you seem to be dwelling in some rigid historical determinism. There is nothing I've seen chiseled in stone anywhere that prohibits quickly following up with another historical pick. But this is wrong:
Who was the "second one"?
Re LBJ, clearly you don't tolerate dissenting views on your establishment-favorite hero. Recommend you expand your reading to include a few authors and insiders outside of your comfort zone.
Must go -- this is a now old thread which has gone Pg 2 status.
my.stars.
your random access memory vaults must be ginormous. do you have a photographic/holographic memory? i was taken aback when you'd mentioned mondale, even. whoooooooo?
It's not what it once was,
and that never seemed to be more than a bit better than average.
Hmm, the argument
for Harris re the EC is she would help to generate enthusiasm among black voters, who are key to winning the metro areas in those 3 key states Donald narrowly won last time.
Note that Hillary, even tho she should have showed up more in WI, MI and PA to campaign, lost those states very narrowly due in major part to a diminished minority vote in the big cities compared to turnout in 2012. And she allowed the "inevitable victor" rhetoric to go unchallenged, so the perception out there was for many who were either unenthusiastic about her or not sufficiently concerned about Trump, that they had a free hand to cast a carefree 3d party vote. The 3d party vote total in those states was significantly higher as a % of overall vote than in normal cycles and that was a huge factor in her loss in those states.
Great comment.
I'm right there with you on "paranoid." And I'll just say, kamala had best hope they don't "win."
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Oh, FFs
I can't take another 4 years of Trump, no matter who wins.
Know what you mean
Just trying to survive a few more months of the GOPandemic (or Red-Death) seems like an epic undertaking.
Harris
Our first lady President. Since Biden is winning from his basement, there's no need to replace him before the election. Will he make it to Inauguration Day? Will he resign the next day? Will he make it a week?
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
A week ...?
This is exactly what I've been thinking. I'm not convinced Biden will even remain on the ballot on election day. Yeah, I know the ballots will all be printed and all that, but I can see him standing down. If he does make it to the inauguration (a really BIG if – and I am betting otherwise right now), I believe he'll be in only long enough for the various department heads to be placed ...that, and pictures to be taken. After that, we'll see our televisions suddenly go to a Special Bulletin one evening: And Now an Emergency Message from the First Lady, Jill Biden, who will inform the nation that she has seen a serious degradation in the health of her husband and is asking for the 25th Amendment to be invoked immediately. I'd expect this within a couple of months, at best.
Of course, all this assumes that Trump loses. So far, today anyway, my money is saying he doesn't.
Biden- Harris makes me feel like I did when Richard Nixon won
So the DNC has decided to nominate a candidate for Prez who's never won a primary and a VP candidate who was polling at 2% and was washed up even before Iowa.
Oh, well, in their legal brief against the suit filed by Bernie supporters after 2016, the DNC said that it has no obligation to hold primaries -- nor to honor the voting in the primaries. They said they run the "Party" and can nominate whoever they want, no matter what their members or voters in general want.
The logic of 2016 is back with a vengeance. We don't have to offer you a real choice -- you have to vote out of fear that Trump is a wrecking ball who destroys everything in sight. We aren't obliged to nominate anyone you might actually want to vote for.
The images of Harris running around with a djembe drummer to HBCU's are probably the most painful. She doesn't appeal to Blacks under 40 who are not part of the Dem machine. In fact immediately after she was announced, even MSDNC put up a graphic showing that 32% have a favorable opinion of her, 34% a negative opinion -- and the rest either have never heard of her or don't have an opinion.
And Bernie is singing the company song.
I think they locked down AOC as a speaker before this announcement -- she might have preferred not to play this game.
The saddest part of this is that it strengthens Trump's hand -- anyone could put together a campaign video for them showing her phony moves and direct lies. But the DNC has proven consistently -- with their every move -- that they would rather elect Trump than to permit progressives to have even crumbs.
Time to move past electoral politics.
election night 1968 --
My only thought was "how will we survive Nixon for four years?" (Eight was unimaginable to a young girl.) While I still loathe Nixon, all of the subsequent winners have been no better and most have been worse.
while you may be correct
on the timing, i think she wouldn't miss it for the world! she was a campaign surrogate for bernie, and attended many rallies with him, ircc.
now she's endorsed biden: 'We must united to defeat trump'. do the math. there is no Star Power Brand larger than AOC's. films, comic books, the DSA squad on the cover of the rolling stone: a parody of EF hutton's motto: 'when AOC Tweets...people stop and listen'.
Kayfabe at it's finest.
People keep telling me what a progressive AOC is and that I'm being an unreasonable purist. But when I look at what she's actually doing, not just the words she's saying, at best she's one step forward, two steps back. I fully expect AOC will have an endorsement of Kamala similar to Bernie's before this is all over. Others may listen when AOC tweets, but sometimes I feel I'm one of the only people who realizes tweets are not actions.
Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.
it's good to hear,
amigo, but maybe she IS a 'progressive', as that term's lost all meaning for me by now, as have Left and Right. i admit i admire verisimilitude above all among the political class: including not what they virtue signal, but how they vote (with notable exceptions i votes aren't whip-countd to be close)...and who they meet with.
one bloke on twitter who lives in her district has amply demonstrated that she is not who she claims she is, and often shows tweets she'd deleted after the fact, like praising bill deBlasio for his gentrification plans. stuff like that. but he was also bugged enough that her office help was proud in saying that she's never in her office, meets with almost none of her constituents, and yet she had time to 'meet and pose for a photo' of herself and representatives of the post-evo morales Anez coup regime in bolvia...with the coup regime flag as a gift. he wrote about it Counterpunch, but they oddly deleted the photo later. Jacob Levitch.
but i'm sure her speech for the convention will be truly...awesome, brilliantly full of praise for Biden/Harris 2020, as will be her threads and makeup.
Reading your comment about how corrupt the primary was
and seeing her low poll numbers got me thinking how much the election process is nothing more than kabuki theater for the masses who still think we have fair elections. Just how proud should Harris be about being 'selected' as VP when no one really wanted you or your running mate and the only reason he won was cuz everyone beating him were forced to dropped out? If this country survives what will historians write on her historical nomination? SMDH about this.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
That’s a wrap—thanks everyone for playing! Have a safe trip home
https://www.reddit.com/r/WayOfTheBern/comments/i7zvrm/we_the_people_no_l...
And: Shaun King, standing in for all Democrat backers pulling a similar two-faced switcheroo:
This^
is a perfect example of adopting a “lesser of two evil” ethical system. Stunning.
“ …and when we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine,and understand who God is, and what our own potential is and duties are as human beings.- RFK jr. 8/26/2024
Could have been worse
Though not much worse: at least it wasn't Klobuchar (poor Mayo Pete was chromosomally disqualified). With Biden topping the ticket the extra bit of injury added by the VP pick is pretty minor.
Perhaps Biden wanted her because she brings many of the same qualifications to the slot that Biden brought to Obama: a calculating but inept presidential attempt, a Romneyesque commitment to principles, a lack of executive experience and the ability to provide a progressive smoke screen while advancing the corporatist/establishment agenda. (see also "Surprise it's Biden/Harris").
A year ago
we, or maybe it was just me, were calling Harris "Black Hillary". She got exactly nowhere in the primaries and dropped out before Iowa.
This looks to me like appeasement of the Clinton faction. It looks like installing a candidate who couldn't have been elected on her own, and who will inevitably replace Biden (only the timing is in question). It looks like a victory for neoliberalism (and, likely, neoconservatism) wrapped in identity politics. It looks like a ticket consisting of Mr. "Fundamentally Nothing Is Going To Change" and Ms. "Fundamentally Nothing Is Going To Change".
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
I don't think either
Clinton had much influence on Biden's pick. Apparently the most influential voice was from Jim Clyburn, who in a number of phone chats w/Biden was advocating hard for Kamala.
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