"Please Stop And Let Me Finish, Sir" by Nancy Ohanian

Republicans are desperate to make the election about something other than Trump. In a Trump referendum, they lose-- top to bottom. And now it looks like someone has finally persuaded Trump to do the unthinkable, help make the election not-about-him. Appealing to his innate racism and misogyny, Trump is preparing to try to make the election about Kamala Harris.

Reporting for the Associated Press yesterday, Kathleen Ronayne wrote that "Grasping for a comeback, President Donald Trump and his Republican allies are intensifying their focus not on Democratic nominee Joe Biden, but on his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris-- arguing without evidence that it’s Harris, the first Black woman on a major party ticket, who would really be in charge if Democrats win the White House. The effort is laced with sexist and racist undertones, and one that is aimed at winning back Republicans and independents who are comfortable with Biden’s more moderate record, but may associate Harris with Democrats’ left flank, despite her own more centrist positions on some major issues."

I filled out my ballot yesterday. My record is unbroken-- another pass on Kamala Harris. I looked at her every time she's run for office and didn't vote for her. The funny thing about this time, though, is that if it were Harris vs Trump, I probably would have voted for her. But as much as I understand the consequences of another Trump term, I just couldn't vote for Biden, safe in the knowledge that the size of the anti-Trump landslide in California doesn't need my vote. During Biden's many decades in the Senate, he always had one of the worst, most GOP-like voting records-- always an "F" and always among the 2 or 3 Democrats eager to vote against progressive priorities. Kamala, like most politicians, may not believe in anything beyond her own career trajectory, but her voting record is actually excellent. ProgressivePunch rates her a solid "A" and her record is not just in the top 10, the not always relective-of-reality algorithm employed by ProgressivePunch shows her "more progressive" than Bernie. (She's got a 95.47% lifetime crucial vote score; his is 94.55%.) On the other hand; he's an actual progressive; she's... a savvy California politician from the liberal wing of the establishment.

Trump, of course, isn't going to attack Kamala because she isn't a true progressive. Ronayne wrote that "During the past week, Trump told Sean Hannity of Fox News that Harris would assume the presidency within 'three months' of Biden’s inauguration. During a conversation with Rush Limbaugh, he warned that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would 'replace' Biden with Harris. And the president called her a 'monster' during an interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business." If Trump thinks this is going to help him with suburban women, it may be in for a rude awakening next month.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally, is pushing the president to make Harris a campaign centerpiece.

“If voters understand the totality of her radicalism, they would conclude that she would be a very high-risk person to put in the White House,” Gingrich said.

He went on to call Biden “docile” and Harris “aggressive.”

The sexism and racism associated with such language, including Trump’s reference to Harris as a “monster,” are aimed at Trump’s most loyal supporters.

“It is really an effort to say to their base, ‘Look, we don’t want a Black woman to be president,’” said Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH), a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. ”‘We don’t want this Black person to take over in case something happens to Joe Biden.’”

Fudge said efforts to brand Harris as radical don’t align with her record, particularly on law enforcement. Harris and Fudge are both former prosecutors.

Republicans “consistently talk about law and order to the only person in this race that has a law-and-order background,” Fudge said.

Still, there are some signs that Trump’s message is resonating with his base.

“I’m scared that if Harris gets in, it will be a Harris administration ’cause old Joe’s got some issues,” said Bob Stanley, a retired orthopedic physician assistant who lives in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and said he will be voting again for Trump.

Unless Biden dies, ole Bob Stanley needn't worry about Harris running the country any more than any other vice president ever has, including the current master-manipulator. Chances are, if Biden is a puppet for anyone, it will be Obama. Ronayne added that "Joshua Dyck, an associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, said the focus on Harris is a sign that Trump’s attacks on Biden aren’t working. 'This is a desire not to run against Joe Biden, to run against anybody but Joe Biden,' he said."

There’s little evidence that Trump’s strategy will change minds. While vice presidential picks generate buzz, they rarely sway voters, said Dyck, who also runs the UMass-Lowell’s Center for Public Opinion.

One exception may be 2008, when Republican John McCain chose little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. McCain was 72. A New York Times/CBS News poll taken just before the election found 59% of voters said Palin was not prepared to be president.

...Biden and Harris can best respond to the attacks by focusing on their agenda and policies, said Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee of California. Other allies can denounce Trump’s comments, as the women of the Congressional Black Caucus recently did.

“There are those in the country who need to raise their voices and say this is un-American,” Lee said. “We cannot tolerate this in a multiracial country.”

OK, here's one voter who didn't vote for Kamala and who agrees completely with Barbara Lee-- Trump, as always, is un-American, racist and fun of rage and hatred towards women. Is that news to anyone?

Kamala Harris Made The Case: Trump's Presidency Has Failed

This Kamala Harris speech she gave this afternoon is good, not the greatest, not even that special-- except for one thing: it was carried live yesterday as Trump was getting ready to addressed the #CocaineConvention. Viewers of MSNBC, PBS and CNN have heard it all before. Fox viewers hadn't-- until today. Heads must have been exploding.

"Donald Trump," she explained to people who have never heard it before, "has failed. At it's most basic level Donald Trump doesn't understand the presidency. He thinks it's all about him. Well, it's not. It's about you; it's about all of us, the people... Donald TRump has failed at the most basic and important job of a president of the United States. He failed to protect the American people, plain and simple. Trump showed... a reckless disregard for the well-being of the American people. A reckless disregard for the danger a pandemic would pose to American lives, for the devastation it would do to our economy. For the damage it would do to communities of color who have been subjected to structural racism for generations. For the chaos that would upend of daily lives, make it impossible for many of our children to go to school; make it impossible to live normally with a sense of certainty. He never appreciated that a president swears an oath before God and country to protect America against threats seen and unseen. It's his duty; it's his obligation to protect us. And yes, he has failed, miserably.

Donald Trump's incompetence is nothing new. That has always been on full display. But in January of this year, it became deadly. Thats' when the threat on a virus that would endanger the world first emerged. Trump dismissed the threat... Trump still doesn't have a plan. He still doesn't have a plan... President Trump got it wrong from the beginning and the he got it wrong again and again. And the consequences have been catastrophic. And here's why Trump has been so unwilling-- and unable-- to deal with this crisis. First, he was fixated on the stock market... He was convinced that if his administration focussed on this virus, it would hurt the market and hurst his chances of being reelected. That mattered to him more than saving American lives. Second, right at the moment we needed Donald Trump to be tough on the Chinese government, he caved... Instead of rising to see the most difficult moment of his presidency, Donald Trump froze. He was scared and his was petty and vindictive."

While she was talking and while Trump was no doubt chopping up his Adderall for tonight's event, Change Research released a new nationwide survey showing that "The economy, jobs, and cost of living remains the number-one issue in the country and in the battleground. This issue was thought by many to be Trump’s strength and his best case for re-election before COVID-19, but majorities nationally disapprove of the job he is doing handling the economy (53% disapprove) and helping people’s pocketbooks (54% disapprove), and only 51% approve of his handling of his handling of the economy and pocketbooks in the battleground. While the shifts among Republicans were the most significant, the assessment and outlook of Democrats and independents also improved. 60% of battleground voters still rate the economy negatively, 59% still rate the US job market negatively, 51% are still pessimistic about the US economy in the year ahead, and 56% are still pessimistic about the unemployment rate. But this is also the first time that we have seen these economic metrics moving in a positive direction in several weeks."

That said, this is from our good friends at Brave New Films...

Foreign Correspondent: Is Kamala Harris A Hawk? Biden’s Veep Pick Has At Times Embraced Militarism And Even Attacked Trump From The Right

The Challengers by Nancy Ohanian

-by Reese Erlich

Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin hasn’t forgotten a 2017 meeting with members of Senator Kamala Harris’s staff to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The Israeli land and sea blockade was causing massive unemployment as well as shortages of food and electricity. Benjamin and other progressive activists wanted the Senator to criticize Israel’s policies and end the siege.

“You could just see the blank stares from her aides as we spoke,” Benjamin recalls in a phone interview from Washington, D.C. “They argued that Israel has the right to defend itself. There was no sympathy for the Palestinians.”

This week, activists are recirculating a photo of a smiling Kamala Harris standing next to ultra-rightwing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in November 2017.

“She’s proud of her ties with Netanyahu and [the] Israeli government,” Benjamin says.

This week, Joe Biden picked the California Senator as his vice presidential running mate. Just as her history as a law-and-order prosecutor is now getting closer scrutiny, so should her foreign policy views.

Harris closely adheres to Democratic Party mainstream policies, which under President Barack Obama brought us wars in Syria, Libya, and Yemen, as well as escalated wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“She has views close to the Obama Administration, nothing that would be an exciting departure from US militarism,” says Benjamin, a contributor to The Progressive. “They are certainly different from Bernie Sanders’s.”

Trump criticized

Harris, like most Democrats, has often been at odds with Trump’s foreign policy.

“The current President,” she wrote in a 2019 candidate questionnaire to the Council on Foreign Relations, “seems intent on inflicting further damage to US credibility by disregarding diplomacy, withdrawing from international agreements and institutions, shunning our allies, siding with dictatorships over democracies, and elevating sheer incompetence in his decision-making processes.”

But instead of offering a progressive alternative, Harris often attacks Trump from the right, criticizing him for cozying up to leaders in North Korea, Russia, and China. For example, she supports sanctions against Russia for meddling in Ukraine and annexing Crimea.

Marco Carnelos, a former Italian ambassador to Iraq, tells me from Rome, “I understand that Russia may be sanctioned over Crimea. Are we sure that the same zeal will be applied to Israel if it should annex the West Bank?"

Carnelos also highlighted Washington’s recent outpouring of sympathy for Uighurs, a Muslim minority in China. “I’ve never seen such concern for this specific Muslim population from the US,” he says. “A few years ago, no one cared. Now that the US is in conflict with China, it’s a little bit suspect.”

Carnelos believes that the US uses human rights and national security issues to protect US business profits from Chinese competition. He notes the ramped-up attacks on Beijing coincide with fierce competition from companies like phone manufacturer Huawei.

“It is absurd that after thirty years,” he says, “the US discovered China is ruled by a Communist Party!”

No plan to end wars

Harris denounces Trump’s “endless wars” but offers no specific plans to end them. During her presidential primary campaign, she failed to commit to withdrawing all US troops from Afghanistan, even by the end of a first term in 2024.

On Iran, she told the Council on Foreign Relations, the US must rejoin the nuclear accord “so long as Iran also returned to verifiable compliance.” She would also seek changes in the agreement to “supplement some of the nuclear deal’s existing provisions, and work with our partners to counter Iran’s destabilizing behavior in the region, including with regard to its ballistic missile program.”

Neither Harris nor Biden have specified whether they would immediately lift US sanctions once Iran returns to the agreement, from which the Trump Administration unilaterally withdrew in 2018.

Harris has taken some progressive stances. She co-sponsored bills in 2018 and 2019 with Bernie Sanders calling for an end to US support for the war in Yemen. She criticized the regime in Saudi Arabia for waging that war and for its human rights violations, including the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

“The US and Saudi Arabia still have mutual areas of interest, such as counterterrorism, where the Saudis have been strong partners,” Harris has said. “But we need to fundamentally reevaluate our relationship with Saudi Arabia, using our leverage to stand up for American values and interests.”

Tom Gallagher, a former member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and once a progressive challenger to Representative Nancy Pelosi, acknowledges that “Harris is no gem on the Middle East.” But, he adds, “a future Biden Administration won’t be as ridiculously one-sided as Trump.”

Harris opposes the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, commonly known as the CPTPP. She calls for an end to Trump’s “tariff wars” and supports “pro-labor, pro-environment trade deals.”

“That’s a plus,” says Gallagher. “On trade matters, the Democrats have gotten the message. Labor and environmentalists have impacted the mainline leaders.”

Hope for the future?

The activists I interviewed think Harris is a better choice than über-hawk Susan Rice, who was also in the running. Rice pushed for the disastrous Libyan war and praised the air wars in Somalia and Yemen.. They also note that Harris has at times engaged in dialogue with progressives.

“Even though I disagreed with her politics,” says Code Pink’s Benjamin, “I found her accessible and charming. At demonstrations, she would sometimes come out to chat with us.”

Friendly chats won’t be enough, however, to change the foreign policy of a future Biden Administration.

“There’s already been a lot of pressure on Biden,” as progressives fight over the Democratic Party platform, Benjamin says. “We’ve seen a coming together of groups who don’t normally work together.”

In the past, she notes, some liberal and progressive groups were reluctant to criticize the Obama Administration’s militarism. “I don’t think people will make that mistake again.”

Does a Republican Have To Win Before a Progressive Can Run for the White House?

Is the Democratic Party transitioning its base from working people and progressives to #NeverTrump Republicans and whoever this guy represents?

by Thomas Neuburger

In the wake of Kamala Harris's pick as Joe Biden VP, I want to look again at something I covered in June (see "What's the Earliest a Progressive Democrat Can Be Elected President?"). There I made the following assumptions:

Because no progressive Democrat will run in the primary against an incumbent Democratic president, either the Party must be reformed — or a Republican must first take the White House — before a progressive can win the presidency.

Will the Democratic Party self-reform? Can it be reformed by others? Opinions vary on that. Those looking at the election of AOC, Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush and the near election of Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020 would say "Yes, we just need to keep pushing."

On the other hand, those looking at what looks like the start of AOC's "acquiescence" to Party leaders (see Ryan Grim's discussion of that here); the lock-grip that Obama, through Biden and now Harris, seems to have on Party decision-making; and what looks like the deliberate transitioning of the Party from a base that supports the AOCs and Bernie Sanders of the world to a party that welcomes John Kasich to its Convention, George Bush to its circle of love, and Nicolle Wallace, Bush's White House Communications Director, to a choice two-hour slot on its house news network, MSNBC — those people see a different picture, a picture of solidifying, not loosening, neoliberal control.

Those differing opinions vary by demographic. That is, the closer one is to Democratic Party politics, even as a strong progressive, the more likely that person is to see reform in the headlights, just about to happen. The further one is to Democratic Party politics — the more one dwells in the world of the plebs, the civilians, the mass of voters and non-voters — the more the prospect of reform seems left in the dust, a diminishing dot in the Party's rear-view mirror.

Even mainstream writers like Thomas Frank ask (I'm paraphrasing), Which party represents the lower 90%, the workers of the country? Which represents the people? And they answer, Neither.

Is it possible a viable, non-fringe progressive Democrat will challenge an incumbent Democrat for the presidency? I have yet to see it, the Party wouldn't allow it, and the rules of the game, which place a premium on playing within Party leaders' boundaries, don't permit it.

To confirm this idea, note that even the "rebel" AOC failed to endorse Cori Bush, running against incumbent Democrat Lacy Clay, an endorsement that, had the race been close in Lacy Clay's direction, might have mattered. The record of Bernie Sanders' ultimate acquiescence to Barack Obama and surrender to Joe Biden makes the same point.

Which leaves us with this: A progressive will run a viable primary campaign only if no incumbent Democrat is in the race. That means the public might be offered a progressive option:

• In 2024, if Biden loses to Trump.
• In 2028, if Biden wins and Harris loses in 2024.
• In 2032, if Biden wins, Harris wins in 2024, but loses in 2028.
• In 2036 or later in all other cases.

No one wants Trump to win, which means 2028 at the earliest, and that's only if a Republican is elected in 2024. Not a charming prospect.

Inside-the-box thinking says that challenging Party leaders must not overly disrupt the Party itself, a party that neoliberal leaders almost completely control. This is where inside-the-box thinking has gotten us — a Biden-Harris ticket and no one else with any chance of winning to vote for.

Perhaps out-of-the-box thinking is needed next time around, something along "in your face" and "open rebellion" lines. Careful, respectful, quiet and "polite" rebellion may just not be enough to fix what ails us, what's already gone so wrong in the only country we have to live our lives in.
 

Good News: California Gets A New Senator

Yeah, Biden picked Kamala Harris as his running mate. It was probably the smart political move-- certainly better than Susan Rice, who he really wanted. Everyone seems to like the idea. Obama, who probably had a lot of influence on this choice, said "Joe Biden nailed this decision." David Axelrod coined a new word: "Kamalat." I can't imagine there is one Democratic Party careerist who isn't saying something positive, effusive, supportive. I'm not a Democratic Party careerist so let me just say I never voted for her when she ran for anything here in California and I'll be happy to keep that record going in November. Oh, yeah, she's absolutely better than Biden. I wonder if she'll try to talk him into keeping her pal Mnuchin in place after they win. In any case... I'm way more interested in who Gavin Newsom picks to replace her in the Senate, where she actually does have a stellar voting record, significantly to the left of where Newsom stands on most things.

The most reasonable-- relatively speaking-- right out of the box public comment I saw from any official group came from PDA executive director Alan Minsky:

As we saw during her own presidential campaign, Kamala Harris is a political weather vane. First she was for Medicare for All, then she wasn't. She failed for years to hold police accountable for gross misconduct in California, then touted her commitment to police accountability in the wake of George Floyd's murder. While her penchant for taking positions broadly palatable to the corporate donor class raises concerns about her dedication to progressive principles, her habit of aligning her stance with the prevailing political winds gives us some hope. We will fight every day to hold Vice President Harris to the higher ideals she often espouses, and make sure those winds blow decisively in the direction of a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and a level playing field for working families everywhere.  

Someone knocked on my door the other day. I wasn't expecting anyone. A door knock is strange these days. It was a young lady, appropriately masked, holding a clip board. She asked me to sign a petition for a recall of our bungling corporate Democratic governor. I was happy to. A friend of mine, from the upper echelon of the Democratic Party, called me 2 minutes after Biden announced that he had chosen Kamala as his running mate. My friend told me she hopes Newsom appoints himself to the Senate seat-- "At least we'd get him out of the state."

I don't think this Senate seat is going to a white male, not even one named Newsom. Cross front-runner Adam Schiff off the list, as well as desperate hopefuls Eric Swalwell and John Garamendi. I doubt Newsom will sell it to Tom Steyer. And, I know the whole genealogy thing, but-- like it or not-- Eric Garcetti is viewed as a white man.

My guess is that Newsom's going to pick a proven, well-qualified person with a minority background. There was an on-line rumble for Katie Porter but a freshman congresswoman (also white) is probably not what Newsom has in mind. I also think he's looking for someone from Southern California, which leaves out two other social media heroes-- Barbara Lee and Ro Khanna.

That leaves six people I think he's going to look at-- well, five, because he's not really going to look at Kevin De Leon because he hates him and, Kevin is probably going to run for mayor of L.A. anyway. My list is of all southern Californians, all accomplished members of minority communities and all probably popular choices. Congressmembers Karen Bass and Ted Lieu have a ton of relevant experience-- she was Speaker of the Assembly and he wrote and passed the best legislation out of Sacramento in decades. She's an African-American and he's an Asian-American. He's also a veteran, not a bad thing in the state with the most vets; and he's wildly popular for his outspoken criticism of Trump. If I was making the choice, I can't see how I would pick anyone but Ted. But I'm not; Newsom is and I imagine he's most likely going to chose a Latino.

So... Hilda Solis is very progressive, a former congresswoman who Obama picked to be his Secretary of Labor. She's currently an L.A. County Supervisor. I'd love to see her get the job and I think she'd be a great senator Californians would love.

Xavier Becerra is also a former member of Congress, currently serving as Attorney General, having taken that position when Harris left it to become a senator. He was once thought of as potentially "the next Speaker of the House" and he's been good at the jobs he's had and would also be a relatively popular choice.

I hear, though, that Newsom likes Alex Padilla, the Secretary of State, more. Presumably, a lot will be riding on how smooth the November elections in California go since that's Padilla's biggest job. (The new voting machines in L.A. sure suck bad and thanks to Brad Friedman I now don't know for certain if that's Padilla's fault or not.)

Kamala Harris or Susan Rice? The Veepstakes Appears To Have Kicked Out Two Truly Terrible Choices

Former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, reportedly one of the last of Joe Biden's finalists for Vice President

by Thomas Neuburger

Events on the VP selection front are moving quickly, and so far, it appears from all I can gather (private conversations, news stories, tea leaves left in news stories), that the choice is between Kamala Harris and Susan Rice.

These are two terrible choices, to be clear, neither of them like the Elizabeth Warren of some people's dreams or the Tammy Baldwin of some others. But if we must have a terrible VP choice, these are among the very worst pick from. Both are women and people of color, so each checks those high priority boxes. Beyond that, though, each brings a different set of highly undesirable qualities to the table. Let's take a brief look.

Two Bad Choices

Kamala Harris, former San Francisco District Attorney and CA Attorney General, was by the account of several lawyers in my acquaintance, one of the worst DAs and AGs in the country.

In addition to all the bad deeds that have been made public recently — prosecuting parents for their children's school truancies; jailing marijuana users, then laughing about using the drug herself when it became to her advantage to do so; and the fact that she "repeatedly and openly defied U.S. Supreme Court orders to reduce overcrowding in California prisons while serving as the state’s attorney general" — there's the little-known 2010 evidence-tampering scandal that resulted in the dismissal of over 1,000 of her DA office's prior court cases due to tainted chain of evidence, and the fact that Harris and her office failed to reveal this problem until the story came out.

Because of this mismanagement, was forced to dismiss a great many cases "in which convictions had been obtained and sentences were being served." In what was called a "scathing decision," Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo wrote in May 2010 that Harris "failed to disclose information that clearly should have been disclosed."

Lawyers will say it's a lawyer's job to know the validity of her chain of evidence and also to disclose any problems with that evidence to defendants. Harris did none of those things, preferring to let those already convicted and serving time to languish in jail rather than reveal a politically damaging failing of her office.

Another Harris negative: She failed to win California, her home state, and in fact was forced to drop out before a truly embarrassing showing in the primary. (If I recall correctly, she was polling close to 3% nationally as the primary approached.) Even though California isn't a must-compete state for Biden, since he'll most likely win it comfortably, Harris's lack of pull is national.

Less is known about Susan Rice, and that may be points in her favor. But if she's the VP pick, people will get to know her quickly — and learn to not like her just as fast. To summarize the reports I've seen, she has no political background or instincts, a chilly and aloof "I know better than you" personal manner, absolutely no domestic policy experience or identifiable positions, and a "love of war" foreign policy stance.

In other words, Rice is the exact opposite of an excellent choice — a person without political skill, possessed of Obama's hauteur with none of his charm, and who views the outside world through a Hillarist neocon lens. 

She's also, from as much as I can gather, the most likely pick. Not only do rumors favor her, but there are now reports that people in Biden's circle are strongly opposed to Harris, in part because "she's too ambitious and ... will be solely focused on eventually becoming president." 

Those who argue this would be right. Ambition is the only star Kamala Harris sails by. Which leaves us with Rice, unless a surprise is in the offing.

And An Opportunity

I want to close with a personal note. Given that...

a) No good VP choice will be made by the current deciders, and that

b) This race may not be winnable by the Republicans under any circumstance save a midnight visit to the White House by the Ghost of Donald's Future

...I think the very worst choice for VP may harbor the very best outcome for progressives. More on that later, but if so, it looks like we may have quite a promising opportunity ahead of us.
  

Is Biden Really Choosing Between Two Ex-Cops as VP?

by Thomas Neuburger

According to Charles Gasparino, a Fox News reporter whom you may or may not consider reliable (not because he's Fox; because he's Gasparino), Joe Biden has narrowed his VP search list to two names — Rep. Val Demings of Florida and former presidential candidate Kamala Harris of California.

Both are women, both are people of color ... and both are ex-cops of one stripe or another.

Kamala Harris is certainly a familiar name — ex-Attorney General of California and a former "top cop" who for years ran a "tough on crime" agenda. As the Guardian put it during Harris's candidacy phase, "In her career as a prosecutor, [Harris] supported increased criminalization of sex work, took no action in key police abuse cases and defended a troubled prison system. ... Among the many policies now drawing renewed scrutiny, Harris’s approach to sex work, police reform, prisoners’ rights and truancy reveal the tensions between her record in law enforcement and her current progressive rhetoric."

Tulsi Gabbard famously eviscerated Harris over her record as prosecutor during the August 2019 primary debate in Detroit:

"Senator Harris says she's proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she'll be a prosecutor president. But I'm deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana.

"She blocked evidence — she blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California."

Gabbard merely scratched the surface of all that's wrong with Harris, but this much is enough in these post-George Floyd times.

Val Demings is less well known, but aside from having been elected to the House in 2016, she's the former police chief of Orlando. A simple search, in Wikipedia no less, produces this damning information:

"According to a 2015 article in The Atlantic, the Orlando Police Department "has a long record of excessive-force allegations, and a lack of transparency on the subject, dating back at least as far as Demings's time as chief."^[10] A 2008 Orlando Weekly exposé described the Orlando Police Department as "a place where rogue cops operate with impunity, and there's nothing anybody who finds himself at the wrong end of their short fuse can do about it."^[11] Demings responded with an op-ed in the Orlando Sentinel, arguing that "Looking for a negative story in a police department is like looking for a prayer at church" and added that "It won't take long to find one." In the same op-ed, she cast doubt on video evidence that conflicts with officers' statements in excessive force cases, writing, "a few seconds (even of video) rarely capture the entire set of circumstances."^[10]

"In 2010, an Orlando police officer flipped 84-year-old Daniel Daley over his shoulder after the man became belligerent, throwing him to the ground and breaking a vertebra in his neck.^[12] Daley alleged excessive force and filed a lawsuit. The police department cleared the officer as "justified" in using a "hard take down" to arrest Daley, concluding he used the technique correctly even though he and the other officer made conflicting statements. Demings said "the officer performed the technique within department guidelines" but also said that her department had "begun the process of reviewing the use of force policy and will make appropriate modifications." A federal jury ruled in Daley's favor and awarded him $880,000 in damages."

Of course, this just touches on the problems with Demings tenure as police chief. The Atlantic article quoted above says bluntly, "The [Orlando police] department has a long record of excessive-force allegations, and a lack of transparency on the subject, dating back at least as far as Demings’s time as chief."

In a just world, this would damn her VP chances, just as Amy Klobuchar's record as Hennepin County Attorney, home of Minneapolis, damned her VP chances, at least for now.

But this is not a just world. The presidential race has devolved into a contest both candidates deserve to lose, and Democratic voters have a choice of not voting for president or voting for a candidate who, Baptist-like, will prepare the way for the Next Donald Trump as surely as Barack Obama prepared the way for this one.

The presidential race is now Joe Biden's to lose. If indeed he's choosing between two tough-on-crime, pro-police candidates as his VP and successor, he appears to be trying to lose it, or testing how low he can go in progressive voters' eyes and still win.
 
  

Kamala Harris Has Nothing To Offer Anyone-- Which Is Why Her Campaign Is Nearly Dead

Having recently shuttered her offices in New Hampshire, Kamala Harris was in Iowa yesterday, desperately trying to keep her faltering campaign afloat... by handing out cookies at a Des Moines senior center. It isn't working. Her RealClearPolitics Iowa polling average is 3.8%. The most recent YouGov poll for CBS News showed her in 6th place. If she wants to save her political career, she should gracefully bow out now and endorse one of the two progressives in the race. I can't see that happening.

Nationally, she's doing about the same-- 3.8% polling average, in a weak and hopeless 5th place. In California she's in 4th place, far behind front-runners Bernie, Elizabeth and Status Quo Joe, struggling with Mayo Pete for first place among the single digit candidates. In fact, she isn't doing well anywhere. In first primary-in-the-nation New Hampshire, she's not even a factor, now having fallen behind Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard. This week's new Emerson poll for WHDH:

To me she's always been a political opportunist from my own state who stands for nothing at all except her own careerism. I never voted for her for anything-- nor would I. She's blowin' in the wind and will never get out from under having set criminal bankster Steven Mnuchin free in return for a campaign contribution. She's not a conservative; she's not a liberal. She's a Kamala-ista, who will say or do whatever it takes to promote herself-- the ultimate garbage political hack.

Yesterday, the Washington Post's Chelsea Janes took a look under the hood and kicked the tires in an aptly titled piece, Harris faces uphill climb amid questions about who she is. She caught up with her in South Carolina where early conventional wisdom was that as a black woman-- kind of black-- she would have a leg up among a Democratic electorate that is mostly black. That hasn't panned out. Back to RealClearPolitics: her polling average for the state is 6.3%-- behind Status Quo Joe, Elizabeth, Bernie and even the young racist Mayo Pete. The brand new Quinnipiac poll of South Carolina voters is worse than that-- 3% and in 7th place! Janes diagnoses her nearly dead campaign as having "displayed a desire to be everything to everyone that has instead left voters with questions about who she is, what she believes and what her priorities and convictions would be as president. As a result, her candidacy is now teetering, weighed down by indecision within her campaign, her limits as a candidate and dwindling funds that have forced her to retreat in some places at a moment she expected to be surging. After last week’s debate in Atlanta, where she won high marks, her advisers were simply hoping she did well enough to inspire people to donate enough money so that she could air a new ad. As of Wednesday, they hadn’t."

At the outset, [lame-brained] party leaders viewed her as one of their best chances to beat President Trump-- a rising female star with a mixed-race background who could rebuild the coalition of voters that propelled Barack Obama to the presidency.

That sense was affirmed at her launch rally in January, when she bounded onto the stage in Oakland and lit into Trump, to the delight of a crowd of more than 22,000 people. Trump, himself, praised Harris at the time for having the “best opening so far” and a “better crowd, better enthusiasm” than the other Democratic candidates.

But Harris has struggled to re-create that level of enthusiasm. While she has consistently sought to be the candidate who could appeal to all parts of her party, she has veered from one message to another in an effort to kindle support.

“If she doesn’t turn it around in the next couple months, what I think we may end up saying what doomed her candidacy is there just wasn’t any clear rationale,” said Paul Maslin, a longtime Democratic pollster who has watched Harris’s evolution for years. “She didn’t give the voters-- they didn’t give the voters-- a clear sense of ‘why am I doing this.’

“I think in California, I know a lot of people in the Bay Area and in San Francisco . . . were always a little worried about that,” Maslin said. “Was she up or down, here or there, and it sort of played itself out unfortunately. She’s been the biggest, I think, negative surprise of the campaign.”

Harris staffers and advisers acknowledge that they are not in the position they expected to be two months before the Iowa caucuses. Some say privately that they know Harris likely needs other candidates to falter to regain top-tier footing, but they also point hopefully to polling that shows many voters have not settled on a candidate.

...At first, Harris pitched herself as the candidate “speaking truth” and asserted that she alone would talk candidly about the nation’s problems, including racism, sexism and gun violence. But she tiptoed around specific aspects of her record, which undermined the truth-talk, as did equivocations on Medicare-for-all and other policies.

In June, she decided to embrace her record as a prosecutor more directly in a speech in front of the Charleston chapter of the NAACP, where she explained why she became a prosecutor, why she was proud of her work, and why she decided to try to make change from the inside.

“I knew the unilateral power prosecutors had with the stroke of a pen to make a decision about someone else’s life or death, whether someone will be charged or let off,” Harris said then. “I knew that it made a difference to have the people making those decisions also be the ones who went to our church, had children in our schools, coached our Little League teams and knew our neighborhoods.”

After that speech, which ended months of treading carefully around her record, Harris hopped in the car and told her staffers “that felt good,” they said.

But her approach soon switched again, as Harris built a stump speech and an entire bus tour through Iowa around what she called a “3 a.m. agenda”-- issues she said keep Americans up at night. The message was meant to position her between the more sweeping ideological platforms of Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and the return-to-normalcy agenda of former vice president Joe Biden. But Harris, so direct in prosecutor mode, never seemed as confident delivering that broader message.

As her message shifted, Harris took further criticism for shifting positions on Medicare-for-all, something many of her fellow candidates have since done, too. Initially, Harris said she “wanted to get rid” of private insurance. Then she released her own version of the plan that included a role for private insurance, a switch she said she made after listening to voters.

Her debate performances also fluctuated. In the first debate, she delivered a blow to Biden when she pointed out she was the product of a busing initiative to end desegregation-- a plan Biden opposed. Biden and his campaign later suggested that Harris’s current position on that issue-- support for busing as one of many potential tools to desegregate resistant localities-- was the same as his then. After an initial bump in the polls, Harris sunk again. Harris’s campaign hoped the attack would paint Biden as out of touch with current attitudes toward racial justice, but many older voters said they found Harris’s attacks opportunistic and off-putting.

Biden fought back in a debate a month later, using Harris’s health-care shift to paint Harris as an equivocator.

“This idea is a bunch of malarkey,” Biden said. “And to be very blunt and to be very straightforward, you can’t beat President Trump with double talk on this plan.”

In response to an up-and-down summer, Harris’s campaign retooled her pitch again. She settled into another version that plays on her past: “Justice is on the ballot.” Harris argues that injustice is at the heart of many of the country’s ills and that she is the candidate best equipped to deliver justice. Her campaign thinks it’s a message that suits her-- following the Liberty and Justice Dinner in Des Moines earlier this month, her campaign signed up 136 precinct captains, covering almost 10 percent of state’s precincts in just hours, according to her Iowa staff.

Harris has also been hindered by the internal dynamics of her campaign, which is run by her sister, Maya, along with longtime advisers and their partners in a California-based consulting firm. Multiple people in and around the campaign described competing power centers and said it’s unclear who, exactly, is in charge.

Within the campaign’s Baltimore headquarters, there continues to be unrest about decision-making, according to several people familiar with its inner workings. They say that Juan Rodriguez, one of Harris’s California consultants who took over the reins midway through her 2016 Senate campaign, holds the title of campaign manager but does not always have the final say, particularly on policy positions and messaging. Often, they said, no one knows who has the final word. None could outline the campaign’s decision-making structure.

...The conflicting visions of Maya Harris and her sister’s other advisers complicated their decision on how to deal with the candidate’s record as a prosecutor in San Francisco and as California’s attorney general.

Maya Harris, whose political leanings developed in liberal activist circles, advocated a more apologetic posture to appeal to criminal justice advocates and black activists-- and has tried to pull her sister further left, according to multiple campaign staffers and longtime Harris allies. Other advisers opposed that approach, wondering what Harris could offer to voters if not her criminal justice résumé, and suggested she trumpet it. Initially, they settled somewhere in between, using her record as a prosecutor to explain her experience but not necessarily leaning on it as a staple of her pitch.

...Staffers and surrogates argue Harris hasn’t gotten the same media attention as her white or male colleagues. Harris has begun talking about “the donkey in the room”-- the fact that no woman, let alone a woman of color, has ever won the presidency before.

That's the messaging before candidates drop out and try to salvage their damaged careers. Kamala's California Senate seat is up in 2022. Let's hope a progressive reformer is smart enough to start building a campaign now.

No, Mayo Pete Is Not A Real Contender-- And Neither Are Wayne Messam, John Delaney Nor Michael Bennet

Fake candidates Mayo Pete and John Delaney

Yesterday's poll from ABC News and the Washington Post by Langer shows once again that the establishment narrative that Mayo Pete is a contender is just false. With Status Quo Joe at the top with 27%, Elizabeth and Bernie follow with 21% and 19% respectively while Mayo-- "running some consultant-driven campaign with some vague ideas that are designed not to offend anyone"-- at 7%. The Fox News poll also shows Mayo at 7% and the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll has Mayo at 6%.

Although the pollsters did their best to erase Bernie from their analysis 4 issues made that difficult for them. Voters responded to these Langer questions in a way that made Bernie-denial more difficult:

• Who best understands your problems?

• Bernie- 30%
• Status Quo Joe- 22%
• Elizabeth- 20%

• Who is the most honest and trustworthy?

• Bernie- 27%
• Status Quo Joe- 26%
• Elizabeth- 16%

• Who will bring needed change to Washington?

• Bernie- 25%
• Status Quo Joe- 24%
• Elizabeth- 24%

• Who is closest to you on issues?

• Bernie- 25%
• Status Quo Joe- 25%
• Elizabeth- 20%

The Fox poll shows another insurmountable problem for Mayo. Most voters think Biden, Bernie and Elizabeth would beat Señor Trumpanzee. They also think Trumpanzee will beat Mayo Pete. Just 30% of voters think Mayo trumps Trump. The Fox poll also shows most voters agree with Biden (72%), Bernie (68%) and Elizabeth (62%) on issues but just 43% agree with Mayo on the issues.

As far as the boomlet the establishment has been working to create for a new candidate... that ain't happening, especially not for Hillary (who is preferred over just one primary candidate: Mayo) or Bloomberg:

In Iowa, notoriously hard to poll and more dependent on organizing than on anything else, polling shows younger voters-- those under 45 years old, have next to no interest in Biden at all. He's in 4th place, with just 2% from voters under 30 years old and 3% with voters under 45 years old. It's pretty much the same story in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada-- voters under 45 see Biden as a fossil with zero vision running entirely to gratify his ego or, as Elizabeth Warren put it in Iowa a few days ago: "running some vague campaign that nibbles around the edges is somehow safe, but if the most we can promise is business as usual after Donald Trump, then Democrats will lose."

If voters over 65 dominate the primaries, Biden will win the nomination. If voters under 45 turn out in big numbers Bernie will win. Nothing will help Kamala Harris and "her empty ideology" though.





John Harris essay at Politico over the weekend, The 7 Big Bets that will decide who wins the White House in 2020 offers premises the campaigns are counting on: "Biden is betting that the support of African-Americans and labor will compensate for the diverse vulnerabilities of his campaign [and] Trump is betting that the economy stays robust for another year and that he emerges from a likely House impeachment, paradoxically, with his supporters energized and his reelection prospects brightened. But many of the most important wagers shaping 2020 strategies are not as visible to the naked eye." Here are their big bets that make some sense:

• Biden needs to hope that the debates, Twitter, endless cable chatter, will amount to very little and that the primary electorate is really looking for a moderate, that the moderates are the ones who are really going to show up, the sort of older-sector of the Democratic Party, they’re the ones that are going to come to the polls and that are going to caucus. That worked for Hillary in the 2016 primaries and played right into Trump's hands in the general. (Mayo Pete is counting on the same premise.)

• Democrats want a disrupter (like Republicans did in 2016) and that's Bernie's bet and Elizabeth's bet. "This is fundamentally a wager on the nature of the times, which are being shaped by a younger and more diverse electorate eager to use politics as a leveling instrument to attack entrenched power in government and corporate America alike... There is an implicit bet that the country has, if not moved to the left, then at least voters will not be repulsed by some of these positions that are further to the left and they’ll be united in their desire to oust Trump from the Oval Office."

• Bernie's most ardent backers regard him as different, not just a politician but the leader of a movement. "Sanders' big bet is that this movement has the capacity to grow, and to appeal to voters who have not previously participated in Democratic contests. If true, this could give him staying power in the race even if he has yet to score big victories by spring. From early on, Sanders has demonstrated strength with younger voters, with Hispanics, and with working-class voters."

• Voters don't give a hoot what pundits, pollsters, media and operatives from the political establishment think. That's the hope that anyone but Biden holds, but especially Marianne Williamson, Kamala Harris, Mayo Pete, Cory Booker, Julian Castro, Amy Klobuchar, Tom Steyer, Andrew Yang, Joe Sestak, Steve Bullock, Wayne Messam and Michael Bennet.

Kamala Harris Failed-- One Very Big Reason Why She Deserved To: Her Record As Attorney General

Aaron Glantz's new book, Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall St. Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions of Out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream is generally horrible for Trump's inner circle. Amy Goodman: "Aaron Glantz reveals how the 2008 housing crisis decimated millions of Americans' family wealth but enriched President Donald Trump's inner circle, including Trump cabinet Steve Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross, Trump's longtime friend and confidant Tom Barrack and billionaire Republican donor Steve Schwarzman." In short, crooks from the Trumpland Swamp-- the aforemented Mnuchin, Ross, Schwarzman and Barrack-- took advantage of a rigged system to transfer billions of dollars from individual homeowners into their own pockets during the Great Recession. None are in prison and none have been charged for their grand scale crimes. But one of them was almost charged and could have easily been serving prison time now... instead as Trump's crooked Treasury Secretary helping Trump violate the emoluments clause of the Constitution every day of the week.

But, as Politico reported yesterday, Glantz also reveals Kamala Harris' sordid and disgraceful role in this mess. He wrote that "Harris not only allowed Steve Mnuchin’s OneWest bank to get away with foreclosing on tens of thousands of state homeowners, but then tried to bury the evidence."

"Consumers wonder how is it that we all got so far behind" and so many Americans lost their homes in the Great Recession, Glantz-- a two-time Peabody Award winning journalist with California-based Reveal and the Center for Investigative Reporting-- said Monday in an interview.

“The answer is all of these officials screwed up and dropped the ball-- and hid it. The time period when all this homewrecking occurred was during the Obama presidency, and when AG’s like Kamala Harris were on the job," he said. "It happened on her watch. And she’s never been really forced to tell the other story-- and wrestle with the truth of what happened."

In California, Mnuchin-- now the Treasury secretary-- acquired regional banks like OneWest with the federal government’s help; the banks got billions in subsidies as they foreclosed on 35,000 homeowners in the Golden State alone, Glantz reports. Harris did little to stop that bleeding-- and later tried to suppress evidence of her inaction, he argues.

"Harris’ deputies recommended that their boss sue the bank," Glantz said, citing the bank’s loss-share agreement with the FDIC, which stated that Mnuchin’s bank could only receive payments from the government if it followed proper foreclosure procedures. "If the state of California found OneWest violated those rules, the payments could stop-- saving not only homeowners... but government coffers as well."

"[But] despite a strong recommendation from her staff," Harris never legally pursued Mnuchin’s OneWest bank, he says. "As a result, no one at OneWest faced prosecution-- and no one got their homes back."

...Earlier this year, Harris told the San Francisco Chronicle that she "didn’t have the legal ability," because "the rules were written in favor of the banks"-- an argument Glantz reports was disputed in a 25-page memo produced by Harris’ own staff. "Case NOT filed despite strong recommendations," reads a cover sheet atop the memo, Glantz writes.

He said the Mortgage Fraud Strike Force Harris launched does get credit for taking action, but mostly went after "small potatoes" offenders. On bigger fish, however, her staff "did investigate OneWest, and did recommend prosecution-- but she did bury their report and declined to launch a prosecution," he said. "That happened."

Glantz writes in Homewreckers that "the only reason we know about California’s investigations into OneWest today is because David Dayen of the news website The Intercept obtained a leaked copy," and published it in January 2017. "By then," Glantz reports, "Harris was no longer California attorney general-- she was a U.S. senator."

It's worth noting that Mnuchin was a mega-donor to politicians-- all Republican politicians... except one: Kamala Harris. These were the Mnuchin contributions I was able to dig up for 2016

• Republican National Committee- $309,600
• New Jersey Republican State Committee- $10,000
• Connecticut Republican Campaign Committee- $10,000
• Republican Party of Tennessee- $10,000
• Republican Party of Wyoming- $10,000
• Republican Party of Louisiana- $10,000
• Republican Party of West Virginia- $10,000
• Republican Party of Virginia- $10,000
• Republican Party of Mississippi- $10,000
• Republican Party of Arkansas- $10,000
• Republican Party of South Carolina- $10,000
• New York Republican Federal Campaign Committee- $10,000
• Paul Ryan (R-WI)- $5,400
• Scott Walker (R-WI)- $2,700
• Donald J. Trump (R-NY)- $5,400
• Kamala Harris (D-CA)- $2,000

Just a coincidence?

By the way, Harris' RealClearPolitics polling average is 5.4% and in her home state, which she once hoped would propel her into the presidency, she's not in the top tier:

• Elizabeth Warren- 23%
• Status Quo Joe- 22%
• Bernie- 21%
• Kamala- 8%
• Mayo Pete- 6%

14 Million People Watched The Debate Thursday-- Enough To Lower Biden's Irrational Standing In The Polls?

Right after the Thursday night ABC News debate ended, CNN.com published a column by their in-house pundit Chris Cillizza asserting that Biden was a winner and Elizabeth Warren a loser. Many decades ago I was managing local San Francisco bands. One of them was The Readymades and I had booked them an opening slot for a big touring band-- maybe Roxy Music?-- at a bigger venue than they usually played. I was disappointed when the top critics in town for the big newspaper didn't show up. However, towards the end of the headliner's show he made his entrance and came right over to me and asked me how the show had gone. I told him how great my band was-- a somewhat biased report-- and how the two bands were a perfect match. That review appeared in the newspaper the next day. I can't imagine that Cillizza actually watched the debate and came away with the idea that Biden did better than Warren; I wonder if it was Biden's campaign manager told him that was the case.

The following morning Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent did a more thought-provoking piece on the debate, Think Castro Was 'Mean' To Biden? Get Ready For An Absolute Bloodbath. "Biden's Democratic rivals," he wrote, "have now begun to raise questions about his age and mental competence. But they are doing so ever so gingerly, and even apologetically. President Trump is not being nearly as cautious or circumspect. In that contrast resides something that deserves more attention about the Biden age issue. The question isn’t merely whether Biden has the stamina for a grueling campaign, or whether Biden will be able to handle debates with Trump. It’s also whether Biden or indeed other Democrats are prepared for the massive onslaught of absolutely brutal and distortive attacks that Trump and his propaganda apparatus will wage on this particular front-- attacks that you can be certain will include all sorts of shamelessly propagandistic media manipulation and outright disinformation tactics."

James Hohmann also covered the Castro attack on Biden: "Castro follows in the footsteps of Eric Swalwell, who ripped into Biden and told him to 'pass the torch' during the first debate only to get nowhere. The California congressman dropped out days later. Castro certainly won’t. This isn’t fatal. But the exchange illustrated Biden’s underappreciated strengths. While he’s widely perceived as having a tenuous lead in the early polls, Biden’s support has thus far proven remarkably durable. At the same time, however, Castro broached an issue that is of genuine concern among many Democratic leaders and may have foreshadowed what’s to come as the field winnows and lower-performing candidates become desperate to break through.”

As the Boston Herald reported this week, "Biden has lost his lead in New Hampshire with U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders jumping ahead in what is now clearly a three-person race for the Democratic primary, a new Franklin Pierce University-Boston Herald poll shows. Sanders tops the poll at 29% of likely Democratic primary voters. Biden comes in second with 21% of the vote and Massachusetts U.S. Sen Elizabeth Warren is third in the poll with 17%.

And it isn't just New Hampshire Where Biden Is No Longer "Frontrunner"

And that was before Biden flopped Thursday night. Politico's John Harris: "Biden’s previous uneven performances didn’t dislodge him atop the race, and so caution is justified in predicting bleeding wounds from this one. Even so, discursive answers on substantive issues like deportation of undocumented immigrants and Afghanistan, an oddly dated reference to a 'record player,' disrespectful digs and patronizing swipes from rivals, all raise the question: Can he withstand four more months of this before actual Democratic voting begins?”

Eric Levitz asked the question all Democratic primary voters need to ask themselves: Would You Leave Joe Biden Alone With Trump? Levitz's 3 main takeaways from the debate that Cillizza thought Biden won: "The Democratic front-runner cannot speak in complete sentences when he is feeling tired or defensive. And 90 minutes of debate is enough to make him tired. And a reference to something that he said about race in the 1970s is enough to make him defensive." They left him feeling "rather apprehensive about the prospect of the Democrats sending Joe Biden into battle against Donald Trump next year. A three-hour debate can be tiring. But a 14-month campaign would seem considerably more so. If Biden can’t keep his talking points straight for an entire evening, what shape will he be in after running the gauntlet between today and his televised showdowns with the president next fall? And if a pointed question from an ABC News anchor can reduce him to spasms of anxious blather, how well will he hold up when Trump comes after his family? ...To my eyes, the following exchange between Biden and ABC News’ Linsey Davis on the question of our collective responsibility for slavery reads like dialogue from an obscure Beckett play-- but to an objective observer, perhaps this reads as a thoughtful, cogent answer from a man manifestly equipped to be the next president of the United States:"

Linsey Davis: Mr. Vice-President, I want to talk to you about inequality in schools and race. In a conversation about how to deal with segregation in schools back in 1975, you told a reporter “I don’t feel responsible for the sins of my father and grandfather. I feel responsible for what the situation is today, for the sins of my own generation, and I’ll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago.” You said that some 40 years ago, but as you stand here tonight, what responsibility do you think that Americans need to take to repair the legacy of slavery in our country?

Joe Biden: Well, they have to deal with the … Look, there is institutional segregation in this country. And from the time I got involved, I started dealing with that. Redlining, banks, making sure that we are in a position where-- Look, we talk about education. I propose that what we take is those very poor schools, the Title 1 schools, triple the amount of money we spend from $15 to $45 billion a year. Give every single teacher a raise to the equal of … A raise of getting out of the $60,000 level.


Number two, make sure that we bring in to the help with the stud-- the teachers deal with the problems that come from home. The problems that come from home, we need … We have one school psychologist for every 1,500 kids in America today. It’s crazy. The teachers are required-- I’m married to a teacher. My deceased wife is a teacher. They have every problem coming to them.

Make sure that every single child does, in fact, have three, four, and five-year-olds go to school. School! Not daycare, school. We bring social workers into homes of parents to help them deal with how to raise their children. It’s not want they don’t want to help. They don’t know want-- They don’t know what quite what to do. Play the radio. Make sure the television-- excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night. The phone-- make sure the kids hear words. A kid coming from a very poor school-- er, a very poor background will hear 4 million words fewer spoken by the time they get there.

Davis: Thank you, Mr. Vice-President.

Biden: No, I’m going to go like the rest of them do, twice over, okay? Because here’s the deal. The deal is that we’ve got this a little backwards. And by the way, in Venezuela, we should be allowing people to come here from Venezuela. I know Maduro. I’ve confronted Maduro. Number two, you talk about the need to do something in Latin America. I’m the guy that came up with $740 million to see to it those three countries, in fact, change their system so people don’t have to chance to leave. You’re all acting like we just discovered this yesterday! Thank you very much.

This is what President Obama had in mind when he warned Biden to think long and hard before running and embarrassing himself and his family. Levitz wrote that nominating Biden is "a needlessly risky bet to make, given the party’s myriad other options. Polling continues to indicate that, contrary to conventional pundit wisdom, Bernie Sanders is a formidable general-election candidate. Elizabeth Warren’s favorability has steadily increased throughout the duration of her campaign, as has her standing against Trump in the polls. But if you are more moderate in your ideological sympathies, or nervous about nominating someone 'too progressive,' there are plenty of sharper centrists you can back. Cory Booker is a gifted orator. Amy Klobuchar is good at winning elections in the Midwest. Beto O’Rourke is tall. Before Thursday, none of Biden’s ideologically sympathetic competitors had dared to explicitly sell themselves as a more mentally 'with it' alternative to Uncle Joe. But after Julián Castro (clumsily) went there during the debate, Booker embraced the 'many people are saying Joe Biden’s lost a few steps' line of attack."

My one fear is that a Trump-Biden general election will hinge about which one is more senile and which one lies more. What could possibly discourage voters from bothering to turn out? Nielsen reported that the debate had 14 million viewers on ABC and Univision, beating everything else on TV. Millions more watched on their computers. I suspect that "Sleepy Joe" could never hold up against Trump. Tom McCarthy, reporting for The Guardian wrote that "while Castro’s attack on Biden might not have landed, the frontrunner repeatedly seemed to fumble the facts: he at one point mistakenly referred to Sanders as the president, he badly botched the name of the Moms Demand Action gun safety group and he said nonviolent offenders shouldn’t be in prison when he (apparently, aides later said) meant nonviolent drug offenders. When he got in trouble, Biden got punchier, and sometimes wilder, with an answer on education confusingly swerving into the previous topic, Venezuela and foreign policy.

Jacobin's Branko Marcetic wrote that we all know how these debates go: "moderators will drape a right-wing framing around their questions, almost everyone will attack Medicare for All, and Joe Biden will misrepresent his record." He conceded that Thursday night Biden's performance was "surprisingly nondisastrous... By clearing the extremely low bar of appearing coherent and not having any of his body parts malfunction on stage, Biden has already been awarded top marks for his performance, even declared the winner. But it’s important to remember that Biden’s performance rested on a patina of lies. Challenged by moderator Jorge Ramos on the distinctly Trumpian nature of the 'Obama-Biden' administration’s immigration policies, Biden dubbed the comparison 'outrageous.' 'We didn’t lock people up in cages,' he said. 'We didn’t separate families.' Both are untrue."

As fact-checkers quickly pointed out, Obama and Biden infamously did detain immigrants, including children, in cages. And while it’s true the administration didn’t make snatching children from migrants an official policy as Trump has, breaking families apart, sometimes permanently, was a cornerstone of the Obama-Biden approach to immigration, usually by arresting and simply disappearing the undocumented parents of US citizen children, but also, under the Alien Transfer and Exit Program, by separating families traveling together at the border, including minors. Pressed by Ramos for dodging the question, which asked if Biden and Obama had made a mistake by deporting as many people as they did, Biden was forced to re-endorse the policy, saying that Obama “did the best thing that was able to be done at the time.”

When the issues of mass incarceration and segregation came up, always fraught territory for Biden, the former vice president engaged in more rewriting of history. “I’ve been involved from the beginning,” he said about the fight for black civil rights, later repeating that “from the time I got involved, I started dealing with” institutional segregation.

This, too, is false. Biden was reviled by educators and the civil rights community for the Biden-Eagleton amendment, passed in 1977, which forbade what was then the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) to spend money on school busing. In 1980, the Education Commission of the States voted to declare the amendment the most “far-reaching” legislative roadblock to civil rights enforcement. On the 25th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1979, the Civil Rights Commission published a report that bitterly noted the lack of progress on desegregation and specifically criticized the law. The commission’s chairman charged it had “aided and abetted” anti-integrationist forces, called for its repeal, and labeled it “one of, if not the major civil rights issues confronting the country at this time.” Political scientist Stephen C. Halpern called it a “death knell” for the use of the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s Title VI in education, and it ground desegregation efforts to a halt around the country, including in Chicago. Ironically, it had no effect on the court-ordered busing initiative in Biden’s hometown of Wilmington, the ostensible reason he had crafted the amendment.

In the process, Biden staked out a position on desegregation that was far from liberal. He nonsensically claimed there was a “conceptual difference between desegregation and integration,” charged integration with being “racist and insulting” in some of its forms, and even said that integrating people “so that they all have the same access and they learn to grow up with one another and all the rest” was a “rejection of the whole movement of black pride.” As he explained to the attendees of a fundraising dinner in 1975, the liberal idea that the United States owed its strength to its status as a “great melting pot” was “a bunch of poppycock because we know being black and white and Christian and Jew breaks us apart.” By the time Biden, who entered the Senate with a reputation as a civil rights advocate, ran for president in 1986, his hometown paper noted his major legislative accomplishment was arguably a tough-on-crime law he had authored with former segregationist Strom Thurmond.

With a history like this, it’s hardly surprising Biden would gloss over it.