Kamala Harris wants the Democratic nomination for president in 2020. Is she a Bernie Sanders-style progressive or a Hillary Clinton-style corporatist centrist? That depends which Kamala you look at. The one whose positions look great on paper, or online? Or the one who parties with rich donors in the Hamptons and enforces capital punishment?
Kamala Harris: Two Great Candidates in One!
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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When Hillary lost, critics hinted that she may have played up identity politics too much and that it cost her.
Kamala Harris outdoes Clinton on emphasizing what divides us. That is not how Obama won. She won’t win.
Don’t underestimate the gullibility and simple-mindedness of the Democratic Party’s 30% of the electorate who show up at the polls on election days.
Democratic office seekers firmly believe that their party is the best option of all bad options, and so will not reach out to the 40% of registered voters who don’t buy their shit on election day.
The DNC is corporate centrist, and they have a tight control over the nomination process. A progressive is not going to win because a progressive is not going to get the nomination.
The DNC should find a minority candidate with the last name of Trump. Their motto could be: A Trump will be president, so you want as well pick the one that isn’t an old white male.
+1
😀
:: sigh ::
I keep hoping for a true progressive. Bernie got surprisingly far (probably woulda taken it if the DNC hadn’t cheated)
In general, the newest batch of candidates are somewhat lefter-ish. Maybe we’ll get some real incrementalism out of it. (meaning actually moving left – even if slowly – as opposed to drifting to the right while making leftish mouth noises.)
Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary, etc. …
Many of the female candidates are damned either way. If they aren’t strong enough on something, they’re being “women.” If they’re too strong on something, they’re “trying to be men.” It’s a losing game either way, and as a result, it’s like the people who go into casinos and stagger out, hours later, astonished, simply astonished, that they’ve lost their life savings.
Nancy Pelosi is a particularly odious example, in my opinion, of this, as was HRC. You’re shooting yourself in your foot if you make your gender identity your main talking point, then try to argue about how it doesn’t matter. Seriously, think about it.
“I’m a female doctor.”
“You mean you are a gynecologist? A doctor who focuses on female medical issues?”
“No. I mean I am a female who is a doctor.”
“Bully for you! Join us in the 21st century. Lots of women are doctors. What kind of person qualifies it like that?”
“No. You don’t understand. I’m a female doctor. That’s a big deal.”
“No. Not really. Women are lots of things: doctors, astronauts, murderers, retail clerks. Gender, even in this modern era of non-binarity, is usually evident. I knew Hillary Clinton was a woman even before she explained that she was one.”
“No. You don’t understand. I”m a female doctor and my gender is totally irrelevant to my abilities. That’s why I keep bringing it up, over and over, even when I behave just like every asshole male doctor you ever had to deal with. Don’t you see that my gender, which is totally not relevant, is the main thing I should bring up every time I can squeeze it into the conversation?”
I notice that the female politicians I tend to agree with the most are also the ones who don’t invoke their gender the least. Nancy Pelosi might be quite proud of being the first female Speaker of the House. I’d think it would be something more impressive to be proud about if she had been an effective Speaker of the House.
Damn the lack of editing! “… agree with the most are also the ones who invoke their gender the least.”
I remember back when everyone said “Lady Doctor” without fear of ambiguity.
The times they are a changin’ … but I doubt we’ll lose the qualification any time soon.
Maybe this is a generational thing. And the Dem Leadership is part of the Boomers who like having the “yay women in politics wow that’s so impressive” candidates. I think the younger generation is not so impressed, they take it for granted that women are in professions,politics, etc. As a Californian, I’ve seen Kamala Harris’s rise to power. She is very smart but always very cautious, in order to get up the next rung in the ladder of power. The opposite of Berniecrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez(I heard an interview on the Intercepted podcast before her victory over Crowley and I was impressed,,,but this is not what Dem Leadership wants).
> think the younger generation is not so impressed
ay-yup. I have a lot of hope for the Millennials. They don’t do sexism and sexual-orientation-ism. They just assume everbody’s equal and what’s the problem?
Yay and wow that’s impressive!
[Going off the PC rails…]
Maybe someday we will say “gentleman doctor” for those rare male individuals who get their MDs. In general women are better suited to be doctors. They’re better communicators, more empathic, and have steadier hands. That’s not to say that some males might not be as good as most females, but we wouldn’t want to discriminate would we?
How does Harris get away with running on her record? It’s been a few years, but I think I remember that she was the DA or some such in San Francisco, and the murder clearance rate there was less than 10%! (or something like that) And this at time when there were shootings and murders every night, it seemed. Sure, it was mostly black gangsters killing other black gangsters, and with the “no snitching” culture and all, I guess those are hard to solve, but still, the clearance rate under Harris was appalling.
When she was California attorney general, Harris was advised by prosecutors to file civil enforcement actions against OneWest Bank for gross misconduct. She did nothing.
Steve Mnuchin donated to her. Mnuchin was the chairman of the bank. Now, of course, he is secretary of the treasury.