I'm no fan of Joe Biden, but with Kamala Harris as the nominee the Democratic Party will have completed its evolution into a more tactful mirror image of the Republicans under Trump (or really what the Republicans have been becoming since Nixon): rally the masses to vote by stirring up racial resentment, all the while serving the interests of economic elites. Yeah, let's talk about complicated 40-year-old issues like busing (bussing?) while not addressing the economic pain without which Trump wouldn't have been elected.

Don't get me wrong. What Kamala Harris did to Biden was brilliant. If I may dredge up some presidential campaign history, it was like what Lee Atwater did to Michael Dukakis in 1988 with the Willie Horton ad. As someone who wants to see this nation finally bring about some progressive change, Kamala Harris was always the Democrat I feared the most. In retrospect, if anything, I underestimated her (and overestimated Kirsten Gillibrand).

Let's just remember though. Kamala Harris has plenty more race cards left to play, and when she's done with Joe Biden, she's going to be looking for the next competitor in her way. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, watch out. I can't wait to see how Bernie's record of marching for civil rights with MLK is going to get twisted into some history of out-of-touch racism.

Kamala Harris is a billionaire approved candidate with a law and order/lock 'em up background. Yeah... no thanks. Democrat like her have been working hand in hand with the Republicans to turn America into what it is today. Again, no thanks.

I'm pro-Harris and Harris/Warren is my dream ticket. Watching her at the debate was masterful.

To the Harris supporters, would she retail well in the swing states, e.g., Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Missouri? I suspect she is more of a big city coastal/beltway candidate than one who could speak to common midwest working people and farmers. If she were nominated, I hope she proves me wrong for the country's sake.

@4

You don't seem to know which states are dominated by big cities, and which ones still have largely rural populations... or that 7 of the 13 present-day swing states are coastal.

I'm not inclined to take your worries about any particular candidate seriously.

I’m vehemently pro-Sanders and mildly pro-Warren.

I am still on the fence/relatively against Harris. Attack Biden all she wants, I still haven’t heard a good explanation of her relationship with the OneWest criminal case. The Iraq War and the financial recession of 2009 were huge HUGE elements events, and what the players did in the aftermath of each should influence how we think about them. Harris let Mnuchin and Soros’ OneWest bank off the hook and only fought mildly hard for foreclosed owners. She is suspect and should not be trusted. Harris has been making good sounds when she has no power to do anything (due to being in a minority party), so I’d like her to sit and let’s see what she actually believes if and when the Democrats do get power before elevating her to POTUS.

Everybody else in the Democratic clown car can go screw.

@5

Can you link me to the pages on Harris and Warren's campaign websites where they advocate ending all restrictions on immigration?

Medicare for all doesn't sound like as much of an electoral problem, since 55-70% of Americans support it, depending on how it's defined and phrased in a given poll.

@7 You deftly explained why candidates have gotten younger and less experienced. It it not about the good things you have done, it is about avoiding the bad things. If only we could nominate an infant (oh wait, the Republicans beat us to it).

Oh, to be clear, you are a fan of Sanders, but he will be attacked very quickly for some bullshit thing he did thirty years ago if he becomes the front runner, let alone the nominee. How he handles it will likely determine the election. This is what passes for political discourse these days I'm afraid.

@9 To that point, what good things of note has she done?

@ 11,

Well, there is this:

“Such an honor to be back home in San Francisco to celebrate #Pride,” she tweeted. “Remember, we will leave no one to fight alone.”

She later rode in the parade alongside husband Doug Emhoff. Kris Perry and Sandy Stier were in the car with the couple, according to SFGate. The lesbian couple served as plaintiffs in the court case challenging California’s Prop. 8.

The couple’s lawsuit brought down the proposition, which blocked marriage rights for same-sex pairs. After the win, Harris, then California’s attorney general, officiated the Berkeley couple’s marriage at San Francisco City Hall.

“After we defeated Proposition 8, I was so proud to come right back here to San Francisco City Hall and perform the first marriage of Kris Perry and Sandy Stier,” she recalled. “We did all that together, and so now what is our job, then? Our job is to celebrate our success and rededicate ourselves to the fight, because we still have a fight before us.”

https://www.advocate.com/politics/2019/7/01/kamala-harris-dazzles-san-francisco-pride-technicolor-jacket

Original Andrew @12, point well taken. I can't think of a greater profile in courage than a Bay Area politician coming out as pro LGBTQ civil rights.

@7, Bernie is a non-starter, and he has a zero chance of winning against the current Toddler in Chief. Why?
1 - Because he's past he sell-by date. If he were to win, he would be the oldest president in US history. He'd be 78 on day one, 82 by the end of his first term. I'm sorry, but that's just way too old for the job. He's well into the age where most people's mental function begins to decline, assuming they live that long in the first place.
2 - He's spent most of his life as a socialist. He has a strong core of support, but not enough to beat tRump. Trump would call him a socialist every day of the campaign, and would wipe the floor with him.

I'm liking Harris precisely because of her performance at the debate. The dems need someone who is a tough, charismatic campaigner, who can kick Trumpy's ass. Harris is good at that kind of campaigning. I like Warren, though I don't think she's as good a campaigner, and would have a tougher time beating Trump. I like Buttigieg, and he's doing surprisingly well for a complete unknown, but he's awfully young and inexperienced. He's setting himself up well for future runs, though. I wouldn't mind Cory Booker, and think he could beat Trump (his campaigning style is sort of similar to Harris'). Biden has always been a bit of a gaffe-machine, and he's nearly as old as Bernie. He should have never jumped into this campaign. None of the rest of them seem to be able to break past about 3% in the polls, and aren't serious contenders at this point. Whoever wins should appoint Inslee as head of the EPA. :)

Kamala Harris's journey into yesteryear issues and conflating Biden's, admittedly tone deaf, babbling into something profound didn't sway John Lewis and Jesse Jackson who lived through that history. Her quest for better recognition is to paint a narrative that is historically inaccurate and disingenuous. She's capable of dong better and I hope she does.

@15 So, you’re an Anybody But Sanders guy because...you think he’d lose even though he won specifically in the rural areas where Democrats lost ground in 2016? Instead, you’re going to go with the centrists even though they lost 3 of the last 5 elections, including the one against Trump?

That’s some good strategizing. I guess?

@15 Also, I LOL’d at Jay “Boeing tax credit” Inslee being nominated as head of the EPA. I love sarcasm.

Bernie is the trump of the left. His cult is just as rabid and willing to believe and say whatever they want to keep their narrative of him pure.

Sad he's such an old white states rights (unless it gets in the way of his presidential run) guy representing the whitest state in the union who latches onto progressive politics when it's politically convenient.

Cantwell took on Enron and won. Whats Bernie actually done for the people besides being a stooge for the NRA for years, trying to tie an increase in immigration to the destruction of social services, and wagging his finger at women? Sure he talks a good talk, but what has he actually managed to accomplish?

Harris didn't take down Biden, she took down the Democratic Party.

Biden is a decent guy who represents the best of the Democrat Party for the past 50 years.
(He was a loyal and capable VP to America's first Black President for 8 years, who has uttered nary a peep in his defense. Typical cowardly weasel behavior from Obama...)

And yet, to Harris and today's 'woke' Leftist Biden is too racist.

Sure, Harris make's the point that we have made here for years, that the Democrat Party is the most violent racist institution in the history of America, by far, extending far into the 70s, but you kids needed to hear it from her, we guess.
(Someone who saw Lester Maddox and Herman Talmadge and Richard B. Russell, Jr. firsthand has no illusions about the nature of the Democrat Party....)

We agree with Christopher; a Warren/Harris ticket would be Ideal, indeed.

@19 I love how the 2020 primaries are exposing 2016’s Clintonites as the rabid center-right Party Line anti-Bernie haters they are.

Sure, Maria Cantwell never signed on for Single Payer, and sure she isn’t actually running for President against Bernie, but that 2003 victory against Enron, two years after their downfall, was sure something to hold against Bernie?

Pridge, you’re going even further off the rails than you did in 2016.

Sanders would have lost. Even more of the Hillary cult would've voted for Trump than they did when they switched to McCain in 08. That is, if Trump found a white woman to run as VP. And one thing is for sure, Sanders does not have the groundswell of support as Obama had. He's losing young voters this time around as well.

Sanders' support was predominantly due to there only being two candidates to choose from. Now, we don't have to choose two unlikable candidates.

If she's the nominee, she has my vote, but Warren all the way for me.

One Test Could Exonerate Him. Why Won't California Do It? https://nyti.ms/2k5u6CS

So tell me again why Democrats tolerated this old racist as Vice President for 8 years after letting him serve in the Senate for 36 years?

Whichever one of these ambitious rich people can get the public riled up about Climate Change has my vote. Skin color doesn't matter when the water runs out and the rivers are full of polluted run-off. We're all going to cook to death together if we don't get serious about this shit.

@21 - SureJan.gif

@21 - I mean if the answer to "what has he actually done for the people of Vermont or anyone besides himself" is nothing, you could have just said that instead of waxing poetic with narratives line the trump cultists do.

Not surprising though, the common political overlaps between those two groups is pretty telling.

If Harris has what it takes to beat Trump she's got my vote but as a San Franciscan it's going to fucking hurt to cast my ballot for her.

@28, can you explain "as a San Franciscan it's going to fucking hurt to cast my ballot for her"? I'm curious.

@29 I want to say it's her work as a prosecutor but honestly it's her connection to our little version of Tammany Hall.

She's smart, tough, and probably could have risen to power without Willie Brown's help—but instead she welcomed a series gifted, do-nothing, six figure positions that she wasn't qualified to be in, on our dime. This isn't about her sex life, it's that among her many great qualities, ethics and concern over corruption does not seem to be among them and I'd be critical of anyone that participated in that culture the way she did.

Read "Kamala Harris Says She Was a Progressive Prosecutor.
Her Record Tells Another Story" and decide for yourself.

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/7/2/kamala_harris_not_a_progressive_prosecutor

By gosh here's another: "Kamala Harris Is an Oligarch's Dream Politician"

"Harris is everything the US empire’s unelected power establishment wants in a politician: charismatic, commanding, and completely unprincipled. In that sense she’s like Obama, only better.

Harris was one of the 2020 presidential hopefuls who came under fire at the beginning of the year when it was reported that she’d been reaching out to Wall Street executives to find out if they’d support her campaign."

"But the establishment doesn’t hate Trump because he opposes them; he doesn’t oppose existing power structures in any meaningful way at all.

The reason the heads of those power structures despise Trump is solely because he sucks at narrative management and puts an ugly face on the ugly things that America’s permanent government is constantly doing. He’s bad at managing their assets.

Kamala Harris is the exact opposite of this. She’d be able to obliterate noncompliant nations and dead-end the left for eight years, and look good while doing it.

She’s got the skills to become president, and she’ll have the establishment backing as well. Keep an eye on this one."

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/kamala-harris-is-everything-the-establishment-wants-in-a-politician/

Speaking of MY fave, United States Senator Bernie Sanders:

"New York Times reporter Sydney Ember has a problem with Bernie Sanders—which may be why the paper has her cover him."

"Ember is supposed to write reported articles, not op-eds, but she consistently paints a negative picture of Sanders’ temperament, history, policies and/or political prospects in the over two dozen pieces she’s done on him. This makes sense, given the New York Times’ documented anti-Sanders bias, which can be found among both editors and reporters alike.

Ember was hired by the Times in 2014 to cover advertising and marketing for the paper’s business vertical Dealbook. She started covering politics in May 2018, and immediately got the enviable assignment of covering one of the leading contenders for the 2020 Democratic nomination.

Ember came to the New York Times with a resumé limited to the finance industry: She was an analyst for BlackRock, the biggest global investment management corporation, and the largest investor in coal plant developers in the world. (Her husband, Mike Bechek, is also in the investment business; he was a senior associate consultant at Bain Capital, where his father was CEO.)

Ember has a multi-prong approach to undermining Sanders: She went to great lengths to avoid calling him the frontrunner until he was “no longer” one; she attributes his political positions to attention-getting, self-serving ulterior motives; frames even his victories and the popularity of his ideas as weaknesses; cherry-picks polls; presents opinions as facts (claiming he’s “outflanked on the left by rising stars like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and Beto O’Rourke”); and creates false equivalency between Sanders and Donald Trump."

Much more, over to Truthdig:

https://www.truthdig.com/artic
les/the-new-york-times-has-it-in-for-bernie-sanders/

@33, continued: "'Ember’s March 29 article, “Bernie Sanders Says ‘No’ to Incrementalism, Highlighting Divide Among Democrats,' started with a neutral enough headline, but ended with a harsh critique by a fierce Sanders opponent, whose politics the reporter misrepresents:

'The path to the White House and to majorities has to be in a pragmatic, progressive area,' said Jim Kessler, executive vice president for Policy at Third Way, a center-left think tank. 'If you go too far left, Donald Trump gets re-elected and Republicans control both houses of Congress.'

'Our heads are in the clouds, but our feet are also on the ground at the same time,' he added. He cited his group’s universal healthcare plan, which he said was 'just as ambitious' as Mr. Sanders’ proposed 'Medicare for all.' There was, however, a key difference:

'It just doesn’t blow up the system,' Mr. Kessler said. 'It builds on the existing system.'"

'Cause who doesnt Love handing 'Healthcare" Corps
twenty-five fucking percent, right off the Top?
You want Death Panels?
We GOT 'em.

"But Third Way is a fiscally conservative, not a 'center left,' think tank. Given the state of public opinion, a group that pushes to cut Social Security and Medicare, and calls raising taxes on billionaires 'soaking the rich' is to the right of centrist. In 2013, of 29 trustees on Third Way’s board, 20 were investment bankers, three were CEOs and two were corporate lawyers."

The Democratic Establishment totally screwed Bernie over in 2016.
It is hard not to see Trump as some kind of terrible, awful, harsh Karmic Justice...

(btw we recently became aware that Hillary had JFK Jr killed to keep him out of the NY Senate race for the seat she would take. That makes us sad beyond words, he had a tragic tough life, but not surprised. They are going to have to create a new hotter Circle of Hell before Hillary kicks the bucket...)