Now the Democratic candidate for Vice President of the United States, a historic pick, no matter what one thinks of her, and I know quite a few people on the left and Dems more generally who are not fans of hers, although many observers think she may be the strongest VP candidate for Biden to beat Trump and Pence, and I am looking forward to her tearing current VP Pence to shreds in their debate.
Anyway, as I have noted a few times before here, I have come to realize how old I am because I know the parents of people running for president, and one of those happens to be the father of the now-selected Dem VP nominee, Kamala Harris, who was running for prez before she strategically pulled out early back in January, now an obviously smart move (and I do think she is plenty smart, whatever else one thinks of her). I have never met her, but I know her dad, Don Harris quite well, although I have not seen him for some time now.
I first met Don in 1968 when he arrived at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where I was in my senior year as an undergrad. I took Development Economics from him, and he had a serious influence on my thinking. He was the first faculty member I had encountered who took Marx seriously. Like his friend Joan Robinson, he is not a Marxist, seeing too many problems with Marxian theory. But he took Marx seriously and had us read people who had Marxist perspectives on colonialism and imperialism and how these issues affected poorer less developed nations.
Later as a grad student there I would take Advanced Macroeconomic Theory from him, and he was even on my committee briefly before he left for Stanford in 1972, where he was on the faculty until retiring in 1998. He is still alive, and I think 82 years old, or so. He did a lot of advising for the UN as well as the government of his home nation, Jamaica.
Barkley,
If Kamala and her dad mend their fences then maybe you will end up with a hook in the new administration. Good luck.
Depending upon how one draws the lines (Anarcho-syndicalism is disconnected from all but the darkest magic markers) then I am probably far to the left of Don, which means I do not now nor do I ever expect to have a competitive dog in any US political race. This gives me the detachment to view Biden/Harris as a yuge improvement over the current administration despite being well short of political sliced bread. Given the political crap that US citizens have survived since FDR, then it is safe to say that Biden/Harris will be just fine. Whatever works to retire Donnie.
Trump searches for a line of attack as Biden and Harris hammer his handling of the virus
NY Times – August 13
President Trump and his allies have spent the months since Joseph R. Biden Jr. emerged as the presumptive Democratic nominee cycling through a variety of messages in hopes of denting the reputation of the former vice president.
They have called him soft on China and questioned his mental agility. They have tried to cast him as too tough on crime (at least in appeals to Black voters) and at the same time as anti-police. More recently, the Trump campaign has framed Mr. Biden, who ran throughout the Democratic primary as a moderate, as a captive of the “radical left.”
And on Thursday morning, the president, who twice mispronounced the word “fatality” during an appearance on Wednesday, questioned his opponent’s mental acuity.
“Joe doesn’t even know he is alive,” Mr. Trump said during a high-volume one-on-one with Maria Bartiromo of the Fox Business Network, a sympathetic interview that ended with each praising the other.
None of these slights have particularly stuck as Mr. Biden has maintained a steady lead in the polls.
The early stages of trying to define Kamala Harris, Mr. Biden’s vice-presidential pick, have been similarly scattered, while simultaneously infused with charged language specific to her role as the first woman of color to be part of a major party’s presidential ticket.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump continued to ridicule Ms. Harris, trying out another one of his derogatory nicknames on the California senator — a practice that some Republican officials worry will backfire among suburban women who will see such an attack as sexist.
“Now you have sort of a mad woman, I call her, because she was so angry and such hatred with Justice Kavanaugh,” he told Ms. Bartiromo. “I mean, I’ve never seen anything like it. She was the angriest of the group and they were all angry. They’re all radical left angry people.”
The Biden campaign, for its part, has focused on Mr. Trump’s handling of the simultaneous crises that have erupted in 2020: the coronavirus pandemic, the resulting economic downturn and the national protests after the killing of George Floyd in police custody.
On Wednesday, Ms. Harris simply stepped in as a new messenger. “There’s a reason it has hit America worse than any other advanced nation,” she said of the pandemic. “It’s because of Trump’s failure to take it seriously from the start.” …
The Democratic contenders pledge a path forward out of crises
WILMINGTON, Del. — Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Kamala Harris made their debut as running mates in a high school gymnasium on Wednesday, pledging to lead the country out of the coronavirus crisis.
The first full day for the newly announced Democratic presidential ticket offered a glimpse of how two once-bitter rivals from opposite coasts and different generations will try to unite Americans around their candidacies. Projecting warmth toward each other, they sketched out a vision of recovery from the public health and economic catastrophes the nation is confronting — crises that, they argued, Mr. Trump has made worse at every turn with an extraordinarily divisive presidency.
Ms. Harris, a Californian who once served as attorney general of the state, made clear that part of her campaign role would be demonstrating her skills as a prosecutor to build a case against Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, methodically detailing what she cast as their failures in combating the coronavirus, reopening the economy and creating conditions under which schools could reopen safely this fall.
“Let me tell you, as somebody who has presented my fair share of arguments in court, the case against Donald Trump and Mike Pence is open and shut,” Ms. Harris said.
“This virus has impacted almost every country, but there’s a reason it has hit America worse than any other advanced nation,” she said. “It’s because of Trump’s failure to take it seriously from the start. His refusal to get testing up and running. His flip-flopping on social distancing and wearing masks. His delusional belief that he knows better than the experts. All of that is reason, and the reason, that an American dies of Covid-19 every 80 seconds.”
Progressives didn’t want Harris on the ticket. But they’re supporting her anyway
Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s choice of Kamala Harris as his running mate affirmed what many progressives had feared: that any potential Biden administration would govern the same way the former vice president had spent most of his career — firmly rooted in Democratic establishment politics.
But rather than revolt, many progressive activists and elected officials stifled their criticisms and proclaimed their support, reiterating that removing Mr. Trump from office was their priority. Even those prone to denouncing Mr. Biden and other moderates largely tried to make peace.
Larry Cohen, the chairman of the Bernie Sanders-aligned group Our Revolution, described Ms. Harris as “extremely competent.”
The declarations of enthusiasm underscore how delicately progressives are approaching this moment, as they try to balance demands for change with the understanding that Democrats across the spectrum must unite behind Mr. Biden to defeat Mr. Trump. They are also negotiating another political reality: that Ms. Harris could be the party’s face of the future, and that crossing her now will have political consequences that did not exist at the week’s outset.
Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants union and a Sanders ally, said she was focusing on how Ms. Harris, as California attorney general, had helped secure a nationwide settlement with big banks.
“When I think about this moment that we’re in, and I think about the fact that she was one of the A.G.s to take on the banks during the financial crisis and to stand up for working people — I’m hanging on to that right now,” she said. “I can get excited about that.”
The Democratic contenders pledge a path forward out of crises