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FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2m ago
The problem is, that is a double-edged sword: give the masses the chance to see President Kamala (as she takes over from Biden and finishes out his term) and maybe we all see how badly she does when given power. See Ford versus Carter for how being the VP who took over as President wasn't any advantage.
The difference with Ford is that Ford succeeded (as Speaker of the House, not VP) from a disgraced Nixon admin. Kamala, succeeding a dead Biden, would not have been concerned with those disgraces. Witness St. Charles of Kirk; we still avoid speaking ill of the dead. Still moreso a dead president, still more a dead president who was mediocre but ultimately started no wars and kept unemployment under 4.5% for effectively his entire term. She would have basked in the twin glows of succeeding a martyred president, and being the first woman in the white house.
Or maybe there is enough of a run-in to let them have an open primary and choose a different candidate.
The dems could never choose a different candidate after they picked Kamala for VP. They picked Kamala to be a BLACK WOMAN, and they couldn't be seen to skip over a BLACK WOMAN.
aldomilyar
4m ago
Malaysia has Mahathir Mohammed who turned 100 this year, did 2 years as a caretaker PM due to massive corruption in 2018-2020 and is still pretty spry and vocal considering his advanced age even if he's currently weathering corruption charges and being controversial.
Ioper
4m ago
Perhaps kind is too strong a word but unlike Hillary she didn't seem actively malevolent, which is within striking distance of as good as you're going to get with a politician.
What bold policy slogan could she have used?
In this alternate universe she would have some kind of sincere belief to advocate for. Obama clearly believes in socialized medicine or he wouldn't have fought for Obamacare. Trump clearly believes in barriers that separate the nation from the outside world or he wouldn't be so consistently interested in walls and tariffs. Kamala Harris doesn't seem to actually believe in anything, and that's the problem.
I think it's a lot harder to be a charismatic leader if you don't actually believe in anything.
That being said: Just pick one! Pick a direction and start directing people! She was running for President, people must have been beating down her door to give her policy proposals. She was VP for four years! Did she not have a single idea in four years?
She can't escape the questions of "Why haven't you done this already?"
To be honest, I don't think that would stick to a VP who was trying to spread their wings and fly in a new direction. The answer to that question is obviously "Because I was the Vice President, not the President." Everyone watching that soundbite would know that's what the answer is. This isn't an obscure point of political minutia, everyone knows the VP isn't allowed to go behind the President's back like that. It's an empty gotcha and I doubt it would resonate.
If- and this is the sticking point- if she actually stood for something, if Harris had hit the floor day 1 advocating for Medicare for All in a clear departure from Biden's policies, I think people would respect her for that. The problem is that she actually doesn't have any policy differences from Biden. My read on Kamala Harris is that she wanted to be President because she likes to be the top banana, not because there's something in particular she wants to do with the most powerful office in the world.
HMK2
8m ago
In Northern VA, most of the masked people I see are Asian. I understand that going out in public masked has been very common in East Asia since the SARS epidemic more than twenty years ago.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
8m ago
Thing is, we've been trying the experiment of suppressing "IQ Realism", pretending all groups are the same, and rejiggering things so it's not as obvious they aren't. It has led us to some nasty bits of the Culture War, resentment among whites discriminated against, doctors who couldn't pass the MCAT if they were white, possibly the Jackson water crises, etc. Chirugh's maxim applies: "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?"
The lighter version -- "IQ Realism" is suppressed and the disparate outcomes allowed to exist but waved away for various other reasons -- worked better in some senses, but it was not stable. Perhaps it could be re-established somehow, but I suspect the conspiracy required would be too difficult to maintain.
For Jews, I suspect there's less of a problem. Outbreeding among the Ashkenazi is reducing their IQ advantage, and this is probably good (overall, not for IQ specifically) for the hybrid generations as well, as the Ashkenazi show a number of genetic diseases resulting from a small inbred population.
aldomilyar
11m ago
Has Trump ever done anything particularly homophobic? Like the quote above says that 'Donald Trump knows no floor' as if he was going to particularly go after her for being a Black Woman and Buttgieg for being gay when I'd argue he hasn't really done either. He makes fun of opponents but it's more the 'Crooked Hilary' kinda vibe than explicit Idpol attacks. I'm sure he's supported policies which make life harder for queer individuals (and I'd expect he were more Transphobic than anything but really the whole Trans association with the remainder of the Alphabet union is loose and silly at the best of times) but I can't really think of anything outright homophobic rhetorically.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
14m ago
he answer was "she was scared he was too ambitious".
Also too competent. Also too Jewish.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
15m ago
The last 7 days are more important than everything else put together.
Eh? Do American voters really have no attention span, they forget about inflation that happened a couple years ago?
Biden and Kamala should've just done proper economic management and they could easily win. Don't talk about building/repairing infrastructure, build it or at least seem to be building it. Lower the price of energy and make people feel richer. Make them be richer.
Don't let in millions of people through the Southern Border either.
But they couldn't do that because the structure of US governance means the govt struggles to do anything correctly, plus the nature of Democratic policy and staffers means they can't focus on easy wins or implement them if it means compromising on climate, DEI, mass immigration and so on... DEI is how Kamala got into power at all.
Tanista
15m ago
It also just doesn't work for the Veep to be the driving personality.
It's one thing if she was some grey eminence but she had a mediocre time as Senator, an awful time as a campaigner in 2020 and her record as a prosecutor was of dubious value. What does she bring then to balance the impression that her Veep should be President instead?
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
17m ago
He's a self-admitted mediocre prose artist,
Ironically, I believe this was actually one of the things his editor reined him in on. Something like "You can't write easily digestible prose most of the time and then turn into Hemingway for three paragraphs."
HereAndGone
17m ago
if she were half-way competent she should have taken control of the Biden White House.
Well, according to the book excerpts, the Biden staffers and administration and Bidens were determined not to let her do anything like that, so they deliberately kept her overshadowed and in the background, or handed her thankless tasks. Plus, the VP is supposed to stand by and just be ceremonial/decorative, not try to muscle in on the presidential turf.
The sniping between her and some ex-Biden staffers is entertaining, but to be fair, no VP really gets a chance to take over unless the President is pretty much incapable, and in Biden's case there was a combination of "we have to cover this up so as not to give Trump and the Republicans any advantage" and Jill etc. were keeping the reins firmly in their own grip, with no intention whatsoever of handing over power to Kamala at all.
Tanista
18m ago
She basically hid from the public and she had no iconic or easy-to-understand policy goals.
All of these things were baked in by that point. Kamala had no policy because as VP she couldn't walk away from Biden, especially taking his people and endorsement. She had no policy because she ran away from the only thing she could have been said to be successful at (being a prosecutor) due to George Floyd and she couldn't flip flop again. She couldn't escape the things she did in that time like the quote that gave us the they/them ad.
She was simply an awful candidate, notwithstanding her (justified imo) insecurity and incompetence in the social realm.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
18m ago
First of all, 107 days is plenty of time for an election
I never blame it on the timeline. Rather the major problem is that she can't have
iconic or easy-to-understand policy goals. Compare some policy ideas from better politicians, like Build the Wall and Medicare for All. Iconic, bold, and yet emblematic of what the politician stands for. Inseparable from the personality of the originator. Give me a policy goal that fits in 3 words and you've got a shot at winning.
Because she was VP for four years and didn't try to do anything. She can't have policy goals separate from the Biden administration's policies. It just doesn't make any sense. She can't escape the questions of "Why haven't you done this already?" She's on the horns of the dilemma, she can be gored by "So you were powerless to advocate for your positions for four years?" on the left and "So you're saying Joe Biden was a bad president?" I don't see how you make any bold policy proclamations as Kamala Harris circa July of last year that don't fall victim to one of those two criticisms.
She could claim none of the Biden administrations' accomplishments, such as they were. She couldn't claim to be a steady hand, who had kept the country safe and the economy humming. She also couldn't claim to be a voice for change. Where did that leave her messaging-wise? What bold policy slogan could she have used?
HereAndGone
20m ago
Yeah, but as time goes on, the likelihood of it becoming true increases. I don't think he's at the point of cognitive decline just yet, but I think you are right about physical lack of energy and maybe he's starting to slow down mentally as well. He's 79 now, when he hits his 80s I would definitely expect a gradual diminishment.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
21m ago
But there's no such culture of individual defiance. If a Polish cop honks at a dres walking down the middle of the street and yells "move your ass, fuckface", the dude won't attack him to defend his honor if he's sober.
There must be, though, a LOT of cases where the dude isn't sober.
FarmReadyElephants
23m ago
I only know Harris from recent years, but she doesn’t seem super ambitious and I wouldn’t be surprised if she rode off into the sunset. She’s happy to play the role of the party’s anointed, but she’s not going to Bernie Sanders her way against the Democratic Party
HereAndGone
24m ago
The thing is, so far as I can see, nobody was asking "Gee, why didn't Kamala pick Pete?" The question was "why didn't she pick Shapiro over Walz?" and the answer was "she was scared he was too ambitious".
So this is coming out of nowhere (unless anyone has any information to the contrary) and the only thing it's doing is stirring up controversy. Why is she doing this now? is the interesting question.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
24m ago
Not for long, anyway. Either they're pedestrians in very short order, or they no longer leave their replacement bike unlocked.
FarmReadyElephants
24m ago
He can speak though. And that was sorely needed. I think that would have outweighed whatever downsides he brought to the ticket
HereAndGone
26m ago
I mean, she's entirely happy to blame racism and sexism for why she didn't win, so as you say having a gay VP would be yet another ready-made excuse ("it's not because we ran a shoddy campaign, it's because the voters are racist sexist homophobes!")
Genuinely, the only sense I can make of what she's saying now (apart from 'gosh, ease off on the day drinking, girl') is that she wants to sabotage Buttigieg and as many others in the Democratic party as she can in revenge for what she sees as their betrayal.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
26m ago
doesn't follow lawful orders
Yeah, lawful orders. Tell me, what does it mean to you when a man puts his hand on his club and orders you to turn around?
oats_son
28m ago
I know it isn't, but I have to be honest, I was raised in that kind of faith environment for 15 years. If a church shifts their stance on things because they feel they had to, that's going to feel like a softening to make way for what we've learned about the world in the 2000 years since the New Testament rather than the Divine Word being something for everyone eternally. In short, I am just as confused spiritually as I am sexually. I guess I really do have to make a Wellness Wednesday post, because I bet most therapists wouldn't even understand the question.
HereAndGone
29m ago
she needed a charismatic speaker to shore up her weakness of being an uncharismatic machine politician
But the problem with that would be that her running mate would then overshadow her, and that was her exact problem with Shapiro, which is why she picked Walz instead.
Kamala is a little insecure, or rather she seems to find it hard to make decisions quickly and second-guesses herself and (allegedly) doesn't take advice well, but then blames staff around her when things go wrong. So picking someone who would be the Bill Clinton or Obama charisma-wise of the campaign, thus relegating her to second place, would be exactly the thing she would never do.
Nah, but trans IS bundled into LGBTQ, so if Trump is running with 'She's with them, I'm with you', it'd hit extra hard with Buttigieg as VP.
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