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NOW WE KNOW THAT IT'S HARRIS/BIDEN 2020! And I think I'm going to call it that as a majority of likely voters don't think Joe will make it through a first term should he win. So what do we know about Kamala Harris other than she ran a bad primary campaign and was over rehearsed in the debates? Here's some stuff.
BEN SHAPIRO WRITES THAT HARRIS IS THE WORST POSSIBLE PICK From his article linked here:
None of these picks would be great; some would be far worse than others. But there was one pick who would prove far worse than all the others: Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif. Harris is deeply radical. She endorsed "Medicare for All" while announcing that she would move Americans away from their private health care plans; she announced in open debate that she would use executive orders to ban "assault weapons"; she said she would ban fracking; she attacked Justice Brett Kavanaugh as a purported rapist and Judge Brian Buescher for his Catholicism. Harris is unpopular with many black Americans: As a prosecutor, she was fond of pursuing heavy sentences for light charges, as well as civil asset forfeiture -- and then she bragged about smoking marijuana during her campaign. Harris has similarly alienated moderates, attacking Biden himself as a vicious racist for his unwillingness to support forced school busing in the 1970s, and suggesting that she believed Biden's sexual harassment accusers. There is a reason Harris utterly flamed out in the primaries, aside from her bizarre habit of breaking into a Joker-esque whoop when asked difficult questions.
THE NEW YORKER WRITES THE HARRIS GIVES BIDEN'S CAMPAIGN "NEW MEANING" But this article here doesn't actually articulate what that meaning is except she's black? By the way, this column is ostensibly positive but it says nothing. Read this excerpt:
Pollsters will tell you that, despite Biden’s long career in politics, his candidacy has been undefined. It lacks a clear economic message, for starters—“Build Back Better” isn’t winning any propaganda awards. At his campaign events, back when there were campaign events, his focus often wandered; at times, he sat down before the end and let a surrogate deliver the closing case for him. In contrast, Harris came through vividly in her campaign’s version of her biography: an early life adjacent to the political militancy of Oakland, with a Jamaican-American father and an Indian-American mother, both academics; participating in civil-rights marches as a child and as a young woman at Howard; law school at the University of California and an effort, as San Francisco’s District Attorney, to reform the criminal-justice system from the inside; and, finally, as a politician, the practice of eternal crusade. Other contenders in the Democratic primaries—Elizabeth Warren, Julián Castro—dove deep into policy, mastering it, but it was often hard to understand just what Harris’s plans were. She went back and forth about whether she supported Sanders’s vision of Medicare for All. She tried to argue that she had fought as California’s attorney general for ordinary citizens against predatory financial institutions, but that was Warren’s turf. Her effort to position herself as a criminal-justice reformer was undermined by the Party’s activist wing, which pointed out her consistent preference for policing and carceral solutions. In a chaotic race eventually decided by Black voters, Harris drew such little interest and money that she dropped out nearly two months before the first primary.
ROLLING STONE SAYS HARRIS IS THE RIGHT PICK TO SHORE UP THE BLACK VOTE And if Joe Biden needs to "shore up the black vote" he's in deep doo doo. This article breezily brushes aside Harris law and order past that is sure to rankle the activists in the streets right now. From this article:
Why is desire and motivation important? First, most crucially, Biden will need it to defeat his opponent. He needs it from the electorate that rescued his campaign in states like South Carolina: black Americans. Yes, it is true that the selection in and of itself cannot afford to be purely about symbolism for these voters if the Biden campaign hopes to succeed. But there is great power in affirmation, and “overdue” seems like too light a word for what black women have been owed for their loyalty to a party to which they have delivered victories, victories for officials who have produced far too few results for their communities. Harris should be the start, not the end, of their recognition as leaders within this party for which they have served as the electoral backbone.
ISSUES AND INSIGHTS SAYS HARRIS WOULD BE THE FIRST FAR LEFT PRESIDENT They even ask if you're scared yet and provide this to tell you why you should be concerned:
To win, she and Biden will have to gain a majority of independent voters, who now make up an estimated 38% of the electorate,Gallup data show. Independents are the de facto largest party in America, bigger than either the Democrats or Republicans. And they lean mostly conservative on fiscal and economic matters, but liberal on social issues.
What will likely future President Kamala Harris be selling to them?
She supports, among other things: the economy-killing Green New Deal, Medicare for All (ending private health insurance), open borders, late-term abortions (whether states want it or not), and the confiscation of private weapons (the death of the 2nd Amendment).
Even progressives have serious issues with Harris, in particular her record as attorney general in California where she incurred the ire of leftists by steadfastly opposing justice reform in the Golden State.
HERE'S AN OP-ED FROM JANUARY 2019 ABOUT HARRIS' RECORD AS A PROSECUTOR And for a party that is openly embracing anarchy in the name of protest over mistreatment at the hands of cops and the justice system, she's got a lot of 'splainin' to do. From the Op-Ed:
In 2014, she declined to take a position on Proposition 47, a ballot initiative approved by voters, that reduced certain low-level felonies to misdemeanors. She laughed that year when a reporter asked if she would support the legalization of marijuana for recreational use. Ms. Harris finally reversed course in 2018, long after public opinion had shifted on the topic.
In 2015, she opposed a bill requiring her office to investigate shootings involving officers. And she refused to support statewide standards regulating the use of body-worn cameras by police officers. For this, she incurred criticism from an array of left-leaning reformers, including Democratic state senators, the A.C.L.U. and San Francisco’s elected public defender. The activist Phelicia Jones, who had supported Ms. Harris for years, asked, “How many more people need to die before she steps in?”
RECODE SAYS HARRIS WILL HELP WIN SILICON VALLEY And more importantly, their money. Read this:
Biden’s selection of Harris— who has glad-handed with San Francisco elites for decades — as his choice for vice president is likely to usher in Silicon Valley excitement and money galore in a way that other running mates would not. For a top-of-the-ticket that has struggled until recently to excite the wealthiest and most powerful tech moguls, Harris will bring superfans from the billionaire class that will supercharge Democrats’ coffers, even though it makes Biden more dependent on these big donors.
On policy, the selection of the California senator offers some reassurance to the tech industry that has nervously watched the rise of the party’s far-left. Biden has not made tech issues a priority during the campaign, which has created uncertainty about how seriously his administration would pursue regulation or even a breakup of tech giants. With Harris — a policy pragmatist who enjoys close relationships with many leading tech executives— Biden sends another signal that his administration will not veer toward the policies pushed by those like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a vice-presidential shortlister who wants to break up Big Tech.
THIS COLUMN SAYS HARRIS IS THE MOST PRO ABORTION CANDIDATE EVER On a major ticket. She even voted against a bill that would force healthcare providers to provide care to babies who survive abortion procedures. From this column:
Now that California Sen. Kamala Harris is the Democrats’ anointed vice presidential hopeful, Biden-Harris is officially the most pro-abortion presidential ticket in American history. Harris is an extremist who supports abortion on demand through birth, paid for by taxpayers, and even infanticide.
It gets worse. As California attorney general, Harris launched a politically motivated inquisition against David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress after they released undercover videos exposing Planned Parenthood’s role in the harvest and sale of baby body parts from abortions.
Instead of investigating Planned Parenthood – which receives more than half a billion dollars a year in taxpayer funding and has spent millions to elect pro-abortion Democrats – Harris (then a candidate for U.S. Senate) met secretly with the organization to discuss the investigation. Two weeks later state agents raided Daleiden’s home.
Biden’s choice is no surprise. As with his disavowal of the Hyde Amendment, longstanding policy that has saved an estimated 2.4 million lives by preventing federal taxpayer funding of abortion, Biden’s latest move is calculated to appease the Democrats’ increasingly radical pro-abortion base – ignoring nearly 80% of Americans, according to a recent Marist poll, which shows even 44% of rank-and-file Democrats want to vote for a candidate who supports common-ground limits on abortion.
DAVID AXELROD SAYS THIS PICK POSITIONS HARRIS FOR 2024 And I agree with this wholeheartedly. Win or lose this race, this is great for Harris 2024.
By naming her, Biden likely also has set the dynamics for the 2024 election, not just the current one. The former Vice President has not said he would stand down after one term, though given the fact that he would be 81 by the next election, it is widely assumed he would not run.
This also will place Harris in not only an historic but a historically challenging position if the Biden-Harris ticket wins. She immediately would be installed as heir apparent and putative frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination four years from now.
That means she would become an immediate target for Republicans seeking to inflict political damage on the standard bearer they may face on the ballot in 2024. It also would challenge her to balance the roles of loyal and supportive vice president and candidate-in-waiting.
aAND MORE RYAN LONG He's providing a valuable service to people begging to be shamed.
That's it for the blog today as baseball ramps up at 12:30! Go Rockies!!