Bumbling Biden's Bet on Black Ballots

As I predicted at the start of the year, Joe Biden got the democratic nomination for president and will face off against the orange monkey in November in what can only be described as a shitshow waiting to poop. One thing that I didn't attempt to predict, however, was who would be his pick for VP. Biden announced his choice yesterday, and it's CA Senator Kamala Harris. As expected, most Democratic pundits and elected officials are praising the choice, although I personally don't think Harris is going to win any states for Biden that he wasn't already going to win (or lose). Let's break this down a bit more.

During one of the Democratic primaries, Biden came out and said that he was going to choose a woman as his VP if he got the nomination. Being the cynical bastard that I am, I cannot help but wonder if he would have done this if the question had not come up during the debate. Maybe he would have, maybe not. But whatever - good for him - women make up half the population of the US, so it seems pretty reasonable to me that the presidential ticket would be made up of one man and one woman, and there are certainly plenty of capable and qualified XX-chromosome humans out there to choose from (the country is really not ready for a transgender woman as a top elected official - although I actually do think that will happen before we ever get an atheist).

Then the George Floyd thing happened, and suddenly there was all manner of public (and probably not-so-public) pressure on Biden to choose a black woman as his running mate, which he ultimately ended up doing (technically, Harris is half-black, half-Indian). This, on the other hand, I do have a problem with. If Biden really believes that Harris was the best qualified candidate then I can't fault him, but frankly, there are plenty of women out there who would have been a better choice (Elizabeth Warren immediately comes to mind), and they were passed over because of the color of their skin. Hmm, smells like racist motivation to me. I really don't think Harris would have been the pick if it weren't for the current state of racial upheaval in this country.

That being said, let's take a look at Harris' record first, starting with the most important question if Biden wins: is she qualified to be president? Biden is 77 years old, and who knows if he'll even live to the end of his first term, so he'd better choose someone who will be prepared on day 1 to assume the presidency if necessary. I think Harris does OK here. She was attorney general of California and is currently a US senator, so she's got experience on the national stage, plus she was a candidate for president in her own right, so it's not like she's not used to media scrutiny. She doesn't have the sort of executive experience that you might find in a governor (ex: Michelle Lujan-Grisham of New Mexico), however, nor does she have the high-level decision-making experience that you might find in a former cabinet member (ex: Susan Rice). She is certainly more qualified to be president than the orange monkey. So is my left nut.

Is Harris more qualified to be president than other women that Biden could have chosen? No fucking way. If we're looking for women who have been involved in a presidential administration in the past, that would have to go to Susan Rice, Condoleeza Rice (not that Biden would pick a Republican), or, fuck, even Hillary Clinton (wouldn't that have been a hoot!?). If we're looking for women who have executive experience, Grisham of NM or Whitmer of MI would have been better choices, although from what I have seen of her, I have not been impressed by Whitmer. Harris has never been in charge of anything substantial; senators are just cogs in the machine, and attorneys general are merely the heads of one department of their state government - not even heads of an actual branch of government. So she doesn't have the experience making the the kinds of life-and-death national security big decisions that would be asked of a president, nor does she even have the exposure to such things.

As for her record....

If we're being charitable, it reflects the position of someone who was afraid to stand up for what she believed in, lest it piss off the masses; if we're being cynical, which we usually are, it demonstrates the waffling of a political opportunist. Harris argued against statewide standards for body cameras, defended law enforcement officials accused of misconduct, even after a state prosecutor falsified someone's confession. She referred to herself as California's "top cop" and fought against releasing prisoners even after the SCOTUS called California's overcrowded prison system equivalent to cruel and unusual punishment. She was against legalization of marijuana until 2014, an advocate for civil asset forfeiture without conviction, and was a proponent of the 2018 FOSTA-SESTA law which sent many sex workers back to the streets to solicit clients.^[1]

Those who support Harris claim that she's seen the error of her ways, so to speak, and has come around to a more progessive perspective on law enforcement and criminal justice reform. Maybe this is true to some degree, I don't know, but what I see here is a candidate that, like Biden, is going to be someone that people vote for because they are voting against the other guy, not someone that they are enthusiastically voting for, and so we're set up for another election with lackluster turnout. There were multiple candidates in the democratic primary that I could have enthusiastically voted for, but instead, we got Biden, whose only real claim to fame is that he was in the room with Obama for 8 years. That was his response to pretty much everything during the primaries - "I was there, man!"^[2] I don't know enough about the various other black women that Biden was considering to know if I could have enthusiastically voted for any of them; Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (I think that's her name) was the only one who really caught my attention.

What about the other commonly-cited reason for choosing a particular VP candidate, i.e., that they'll help deliver votes from their state or some other specified voting bloc? Harris won't help Biden in California; there's no possible scenario, short of most of the coast falling into the ocean, in which CA votes for a Republican president. I also don't think Harris really helps Biden get a whole lot of black votes in places where he wasn't going to get them already. She might help him get some women, although I think right now women are already pretty anti-Trump, so again, I'm not sure how much of a boost Harris is going to bring to the ticket. It's possible that Harris might encourage increased turnout among voters (likely in one of the previously mentioned categories - black or female) who were otherwise going to stay home, but in general, people don't go to the polls to vote for the VP. For the most part, unless the VP candidate is just shockingly bad (hello, Sarah Palin!), it doesn't matter that much. Nobody voted for Obama hoping that they were going to get Biden.

Now let's look at the racial element. It is undeniable that race was a factor in the selection of Harris. Maybe Biden is thinking that he can get both the black vote and the Indian vote by choosing someone of mixed ancestry, but y'know, here's what I think is kinda fucked up. There are more Hispanic/Latino people in America than there are black people, by like 2 percent or something like that. The breakdown is 63% white, 15% Hispanic, 13% black, if I remember correctly. We've had a black president, but outside of the primaries, we still haven't had a Hispanic president/VP candidate (I'm not sure if this holds true for the various minor parties, but certainly there hasn't been one put forth by the elephants or the jackasses). Why hasn't there been any pressure to choose a Latino running mate? Is it because cops don't shoot Mexicans at the same rate they shoot black people, and so there isn't as much faux white guilt about it? Yeah, I know, that's sort of a fucked up thing to say, but it's also a serious question.^[3] It really seems to me that in the wake of all of this BLM stuff that every other ethnic group has been relegated to the shadows.

I think the argument goes something like "if XYZ is fixed for black people then other ethnic groups will benefit" but that just sounds like wishful thinking to me. What makes anyone realistically think that if racism towards black folks improves that it's going to also improve for Hispanic or Asian people? Many of the common reasons that people cite for their antipathy toward these other ethnic groups aren't the same as their reasons for being racist towards black folks - e.g., you're not likely to see people complaining about black illegal immigrants coming to take their jobs or flying the flag of some African country instead of the American flag in front of their house.

Anyhow, I guess my point is that I'd be OK with the selection of Harris for VP if she actually were the most qualified candidate out there, or even the most qualified female candidate out there, but she's really just an uninspiring diversity hire who probably does little to help or hinder Biden's chances of winning. Nobody who was already going to vote for Trump is going to change their mind because of this, and I think it's also safe to say that no Biden voters are going to switch over to the orange monkey because of Harris. Just once, I would like a candidate that I can actually vote for instead of always having to choose between a giant douche and a shit sandwich. Is that too much to ask?

Fuck it. Vote Kanye!