Why leftists don't trust Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Deval Patrick
The contest for control of the Democratic Party between left and center is continuing apace. The latest battleground is over a handful of minority Democrats being groomed by the centrist establishment to run for office: Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.
If the center wants to win ( Read more... )
I had very serious reservations about Hillary Clinton, not because of corporate money particularly, but because she voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq, and because I hated pretty nearly every single thing her husband ever did during his presidency (DADT, DOMA, "welfare reform," locking up huge percentages of the African-American male population, etc.) - which, although he is a different person than her, did not tend to incline me toward trusting her, particularly since she played a part in supporting in much of it. If she had been running against someone significantly less horrifying than Donald Trump, I probably would have voted third-party, as I did against her husband in the first presidential election I was old enough to vote in. As a California voter whose vote stands virtually zero chance of swinging the electoral college, both because of how many other California voters there are and because of how firmly blue California is, I tend to see my vote as being primarily a way to send a message rather than an actual determining factor in who will be president, so I have felt free to vote third party as often as not. However, Trump is so horrifying that even from a strictly message-sending perspective, I felt in 2016 that it was far for important to do my part to try to make Trump lose by the absolute largest possible number of votes than it was to protest that I would have preferred a different candidate than Hillary Clinton.
And since it currently appears that Trump is likely to be running again in 2020, I do not really understand how "leftists" can really be more focused right now on nitpicking the records of really-pretty-decent-if-not-quite-perfect politicians like Kamala Harris (whose career I have been following for quite some years, as a Californian) than on the horror that is Trump. The very first item on the agenda has to be to get that rapist sociopath con man out of the oval office. In the spectrum of potential replacements that the Democrats could be putting forward for that purpose, Kamala Harris is infinitely better than when they came up with the bright idea of running John Kerry in 2004, when the #1 thing people were mad at Bush for was invading Iraq and oh hey, John Kerry voted to authorize invading Iraq, so Kerry was no alternative at all on that issue. Kamala Harris is not a billionaire seeking to use the presidency for the profit of her personal multinational corporation. Kamala Harris will not appoint her son-in-law to the job of brokering peace in the Middle East and also fixing every single other thing wrong with the world. Kamala Harris has never been heard boasting about nonconsensually groping people's crotches. Kamala Harris is a senator and a former state attorney general and actually knows something about the legal system and isn't treating the presidency like it's an entry-level job. Kamala Harris speaks in words more than four letters long and does not compulsively lie 5,000+ times per day, every single day of her entire life. I don't really care right now if she's told a few lies here and there once or twice. So has virtually every human everywhere, and in particular virtually every politician everywhere. Kamala Harris is a whole HELL of a lot better than anyone else we're ever likely to persuade enough not-that-bright Middle Americans to vote for to be able to defeat Trump. We should be thrilled if she actually gets the nomination. The thing to worry about is that she won't, and the Democrats will do something idiotic like nominating another billionaire with zero political experience and an off-putting fondness for character-limited social media, like Mark Zuckerberg, to run against Trump. Because the Democrats are ABSOLUTELY capable of that level of idiocy. Do not put it past them. They may yet do it.
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I don't think she'll have a hard time explaining her past either. All she has to do is say she wants to change the criminal justice system she worked within and can now work to change on a large scale. All our state attorney said was she won't pursue the death penalty because it's applied unfairly (it is) and our governor is trying to ruin her career. I hate this system that makes it so hard for people to do what's right. I don't think that excuses Harris but it explains it.
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-- why shouldn't politicians be asked about their record, especially this early out? that's the same response people had when criticizing hrc and that likely turned many people who weren't sold on her off of her. the democrats shouldn't be so afraid of challenges.
aside from dean, do you remember who were kerry's primary challengers?
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-- "Asking about" Kamala Harris's record is one thing, but I've recently encountered several Internet people screaming that she must be brought down, that the Democratic Party has already decided to make her their 2020 candidate and that she must be stopped at all costs, etc., which I thin is utter foolishness.
-- John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich.
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-- i haven't seen that, but i'm not surprised by it. i think there are a lot of people who feel that hrc was kind of "chosen" going into the last election and that has kind of scarred the way some people see the democratic party (and the way some people respond doesn't help the party's image, if that makes sense), and i do think there are racist, sexists who'll latch onto the tiniest ish to count her out (and play victims). luckily (for me), most of the conversations i've had or seen with leftists are more like "she could be swayed so don't count her out" or "i wonder what she'd say now."
-- right, thanks!
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