True, it’s not like there are a lot of examples of MORE progressive DAs people can point to…
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And as everyone knows, anti-black bigotry is based entirely on who a person’s ancestors were rather than what a person looks like. That’s why cops always run a person’s license plate through ancestry.com before pulling them over for no reason.
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Again, the “left” is not the problem here. Harris, Biden, they are politicians, not gods beyond reproach. If they can’t stand a little scrutiny into their record of public service and answer to it when called out on it and promise to do better, then we really do not have any sort of meaningful democracy at this point. Criticism is precisely HOW we get politicians to evolve and do better. They will not do it on their own, no matter what side of the aisle they sit on.
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Oh, it is the right word. After all the ramrod is the only safe way of introducing a projectile into a muzzle-loading firearm or cannon. It’s literally a specialised tool for doing this one job. Ramroding something, then, should mean doing things by the rules and safely…
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To clarify: I don’t rule out that Biden genuinely likes her policies and her as a person for his running mate successor. I just question the pick of a candidate whose politics look bad for those on the left of him and whose race and gender knock voters off from the other from a campaign whose rallying cry is “electability over everything” If someone has a problem voting for Kamala because she’s black, a woman, or both they’re in the wrong and that’s their problem.
I guess at I can at least take it as an improvement over “I’m going to gloat in an interview about how much outright white supremacists liked working with me” Joe from last year.
ETA: It’s their problem as in we can’t exactly fix racism and misogyny within the next 2 months or so, not to imply that these aren’t systemic and pervasive issues in our culture.
I saw a theory that picking Harris was intentionally inviting attacks from the leftists so that they could play this to the center-right undecideds as “see, the leftists are saying we are not leftist! You can feel safe voting for us.” Not sure if this is a viable strategy, but it does make a sort of sense, I guess. Harris’ voting record int he senate is far more liberal than her reputation would suggest, and Biden tacking left has been pretty well documented. As I have said, I have persistently optimistic that this could at least be a step toward the kind of liberal democracy most of us would like to see. At the very least, it is a step away from a fascist dictatorship we certainly d not want to see.
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The Democrats have been proposing a slightly bigger tent as of late (to moderate, TBF), but the more people on the left put pressure, the more they will be pressured to move further. In their efforts to do that, they have actually listened to Sanders and added at least some of his proposals in part of whole. Is it enough for me? No, but it’s better than nothing right now. It’s a spring board to some wider systemic changes, IF we on the left are willing to put the work in and push for it. Or we can stomp off and be pissed that we didn’t get all we wanted and hand the election over the Trump. True democratic practices isn’t just at the ballot box, it’s an active, ongoing process.
And the left is no monolith, either, we should remember. It is in fact probably more politically lively and diverse than the right, which tends toward deferring to authority.
Again. They can get fucked. If someone won’t vote for someone due to their race or gender, then they are not at all interested in real democracy in America. They want to go back to where the rest of us shut up when a white man was talking (often under threat of violence).
We’re agreed. Why pander to them?
We can’t fix it in two months, primarily because there is a non-insignificant contingent on the left who very much wish to shut down any discussion on race and gender, because they see it as “not real” and the only real struggle to be the class struggle… ignoring the fact that class is itself an identity.
Ugh. I hate that.
That seems to be the case. I think most focus on her record as a DA and AG as being problematic. If she moves away from that, it can only be a good thing.
This.
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I hate this so much and I can’t even be sure that this isn’t the strategy.
Agreed
also agreed. That’s why we’re having this conversation 
I’m with you. I wasn’t saying that the Biden campaign should pander to them, but I was rather questioning why they were doing (in my view) weird half-pandering by explicitly picking someone whose politics they agree with (or can be spun to agree with, esp. during her DA days,) but their bigotry does not.
As someone who used to be in that set: fuck them. I’m not sure the contingent is large enough to have a notable effect on the national level compared to your standard “I’m race blind” garbage but it oughtn’t have a place in leftist circles in the first place.
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People are not going to vote elsewhere because she’s the vice president.
She’s black, that’s a big thing.
If people are really picky, then they aren’t voting for Biden. And the really radical are as always, a small portion of the population.
It shouldn’t be, but if the choice is Biden or Trump, one dwarfs the other, no matter what might be wrong with Biden.
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They do that? No worries nder every time I’ve been stopped whioe walking, they demand ID. I always figured they were looking for previous records to pursue their suspicion that I must be a criminal.
One time when walking to the US, the guy at the border did ask me if I was native (the only time someone asked, though now I’m wondering if others wondered), but some of us were Mohawk, who were processed differently. I never understood why, I was just waved through.
Republicans—who love to complain any time someone else mentions race in any context whatsoever—are really tearing themselves up over the question of whether to attack Harris for not being a “real” Black person or to attack her for being (checks notes) an “Aunt Jemima.”
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There’s flawed, there’s problematic, and there’s unacceptable. Biden and Harris are problematic. I’m not happy about it, but I will absolutely vote for them as the lesser evil.
Thing is, every Bernie-or-Bust person I know feels the same. I know that it’s really popular to paint us all as petulant children who were just mad out favorite didn’t win, rather than admitting that you made a shitty choice in candidates- but there is pretty much nobody out there who hates Biden so much they won’t back him versus Trump. It was just Clinton who could inspire that.
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It’s definitely not all…but there’s a small-but-vocal Brocialist cadre that has the same watch-the-world-burn instinct as the worst of the MAGAts.
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I’m so fucking exhausted with Brocialists bending over backwards to to be unimpressed by this.
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Hard to be impressed with a spineless opportunist cop.
Joining the administration of a President that one debated major policy differences with doesn’t make someone a “spineless opportunist.”
I’d feel much better about an administration comprised of adults who can work productively together despite their differences than an administration comprised of a big fat blowhard who can’t stand the presence of anyone who was willing to publicly criticize him.
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For many a moon I had intended to write in Barack Obama. It was quite literally only 24 hours beforehand that I talked myself out of that and decided to vote for her instead.
Again, she’s problematic. Her history as a prosecutor is extremely problematic. Problematic does not mean “dealbreaker”.
People change, and political positions, alignments, and associations especially change. If it turned out that, for example, she were to double down on some of those past positions, and take large campaign contributions from the private prison lobby, then that would cross that line; being the difference between “what she’s done”, and “what she’s likely to do”.
Now, I’m happy to talk about big money and why I don’t trust her to help things, but I’m reasonably sure she’s not going to make things worse.
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Yeah, I’m real excited for Harris and Biden to work productively together on fucking the rest of us over despite their differences. Because at the end of the day, despite their differences, they’re more similar to each other than they are to us.
I’m real fuckin’ excited for people to [cheer] as Harris and the rest of the administration, post-pandemic, spends untold billions on bailing out the megacorps that don’t deserve it and then gives regular people the choice between prosecuting Trump or getting Universal Healthcare passed, or more likely wag their fingers and say “Now’s not the time for that.” when people ask them for it, while they dump more cash into the military-industrial complex and deporting immigrants.
