I've never seen a good argument why anything in the confederacy should be honored. Those were people who did not want to be a part of America and waged war against America. To support the confederacy is to support treason.

Even if his mother had been a Moor, Beethoven would not have been African-American! He would have been African-German or, possibly, Arabic-German.

@ 1,

Same. I had no idea there were still military bases named after Confederates. It’s not normal to honor traitors who enslaved, tortured, and murdered Americans, then waged war against the United States. This country is so sick from racism.

My youngest stepson, sequestered in Seattle for the indefinite term from his college in Boston, has been watching The Last Airbender pretty much incessantly for the last couple of weeks (apparently his second run) and of course we've been watching as well. It's - okay, nothing to write home about in terms of cutting-edge anime - but then, I've tuned out a lot of it, so maybe I'm not the best judge of its quality.

Crisp Cobb from Hunter-Orr is the perfect Juneteenth snack.

My ex was born at one of the bases. I was born at a USAF base, none of which were named for Confederates.

My prediction is still Warren, but if it's Harris, that's good too.

I heart Elizabeth Warren, but can we please pick a VP younger than 70? The last thing we need is to have the Prez and the VP both well past normal retirement age.

Although I'm very resistant to taking a VP pick out of the Senate, Harris has the smarts to be a good adviser to Biden.
Plus she will be parodied for the next 4 years by SNL. If not her, then for God's sake Warren - and the 4 years of Kate McKinnon impersonations on S N L!

Holyoke must be upriver from NYC. I've known about Juneteenth since before starting Kindergarten there in the mid 60's. Consequences of being a Texican by birth I guess.
Having never celebrated it may actually be suitable punishment for the moron.

"A few weeks ago, they (our National Guard!] were helping gas protesters: Now look at them [helping out at the Unemployment!]!

A few Months ago is when we Needed them.
Whattf took them So Long?
and here I thought us
Smarter than that.

C'est le vie at least they're Working on it!
So, Kudos!

I really hope it's Warren.

8 - If you heart Elizabeth Warren, you can set aside your ageism.

I'd rather have Warren running a Cabinet department or two, honestly.

If we could just get the U.S. Army National Guard to remove Trump / Pence bodily from the White Trash House. They can also help tear down the Wall (I wonder what Roger Waters, of PInk Floyd fame, is thinking right now?).

@1 & @3: Agreed. Spot on, thirded, and for the WIN on the current Confederacy-related issues.
@13 Phoebe in Wallingford: Biden / Warren 2020 sound good to me!

wow, that is quite a bombshell, Klobuchar dropping out of VP contention and all but endorsing Harris. At this point you would have to conclude that Harris is the presumptive nominee.
Not bad. I like her.
She is tough, like me.
That C.V. of hers will be helpful in reassuring voters alarmed at recent abolish the police rhetoric.
And the California angle, I think that will be good. I predict that will play better in Midwest swing states than you might expect.

@17 Just seeing that news — Wow! I think it'll be a Black woman, probably either Harris or Demings or Bottoms.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-biden-runningmate/klobuchar-pulls-back-from-consideration-to-be-bidens-running-mate-idUSKBN23Q0HF

I would increase my vote for Harris if they caught her in bed with a woman, actually.

Then she could say "I'm not just bi-curious, I'm bi-furious!"

Phoebe it’s not ageism. I’m an old man (with an adult grand kid in her mid 20s, do the math...) and I don’t want an older candidate. Biden, like Warren is generationally out of touch with what the majority of people feel today. That’s been an issue with the Democratic party for decades save for the blips of Clinton and Obama (neither of which I consider particularly progressive). They haven’t sent the ladder down to bring those younger up and are still pursuing policies that are counter to how most people feel. Sanders is more in tune with what’s going on but the party needs leadership for the long term. Septuagenarians don’t offer that and Obama has abandoned any sort of a unifying messaging or inspiring any sort of long term development or continuity of leadership. It took more than three years of this goat fuck for Obama to say anything substantial.

The entrenched power structure of the party has done no favors for younger persons. They take the largest parts of the electorate for granted. The always fight the last war. For as big a shit storm as Trump is at least he inspires his supporters. Is anyone really enthused about Biden? The only thing he has going for him is he’s not Trump. To get a fair shake for regular folks we’re going to need leadership that consists of more than a few coffin dodgers holding on to their last vestiges of power. The party has failed to develop future leaders and that’s how they get stuck with candidates like Biden, Warren, Clinton and Sanders.

@17 kallipugos: I like Kamala Harris, too. If Warren doesn't get the nomination for DNC VP, please may it be Harris! In an ideal situation (for me, anyway), the ultimate DNC Presidential / VP bid for 2020 would be Warren / Harris.
Here's hoping enough people in Midwestern swing states and in the Southeastern states have finally been awakened by the floodgates of hell over the past three years and five months too long by the current Evil Empire.
Attention, average Joe and Jane U.S. citizens: If you give a fuck about preserving your livelihood, the quality of the water you drink and the air you breathe; your health, your family, your retirement savings, your future and that of future generations, then VOTE DEMOCRAT ALREADY.

Warren for Senate Majority Leader.

She could transform the future of this nation, perhaps even more so than if she were president.

@22- I totally understand your perspective- I'm Medicare eligible and I was disappointed at how the primaries played out for exactly the reasons you gave, BUT...
Last election cycle when Hilary had an enthusiasm gap and she seemed a foregone conclusion, that was fatal.
We just have to check our cynical, jaded attitude and get behind this ticket and push a little and that means things like yard signs and bumper stickers and all that stupid shit.
I mean, at our age we have learned that sometimes in life you just have to fake it a little... I'm reminded of that Leonard Cohen line- "...papa you promised to play..."

Seems like whoever put the poll together missed a huge opportunity to include former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton.

Stacey Abrams.

Trump must lose. Our country cannot endure another four years of his being president and assume it would remain a functioning constitutional republic. The continual lying; grotesque, obsessive need for approval; appointment of sycophantic mediocrities when he even bothers to appoint someone to a vacant position; the blinders-on attitude regarding climate change, COVID-19, and almost every environmental concern; a foreign policy full of boasts but few concrete results in Korea, the Middle East, China, and elsewhere; the endless stream of abusive tweets; his history of con artistry (Trump University; the Trump Foundation; lying about how he "earned" his wealth); and on and on. Let's put our differences aside for long enough to elect a sane, competent enough Joe Biden and VP. Trump must lose. Biden is flawed, yes--but he's good enough. I'm rooting for him big time.

22 - Good points. But remember we had Buttigieg, Booker, and other younger candidates who didn't make the cut so we have to choose from the old wise ones we have now. Essentially, the younger candidates are not living up to our expectations. That isn't ageism.

26 - I think Hillary would be a great choice, but their chemistries are all wrong with each other.

Warren. The woman who lied about her ancestry in order to receive privilege points and took space and funds away from those it was meant for. Yeah, she's swell. I predict that one day, it could be in 20 years or 200 years, her portrait will be removed from the walls of Capitol Hill. You all need to be thinking further down the road. What will people think of you, 200 years from now, for supporting the wh*te woman who oppressed insert proper PC-approved term here?

Biden-Bottoms, a ticket many could get behind.

@3 The naming of bases for Confederates was contemporary with all those statues going up all over the place and you gotta figure part of the same phenomenon. They were mostly founded to train the Army used for WW1 though at least one (Fort Hood in Texas) was created during WW2.

It would be interesting to know the specific politics around the selections - everything happens for a reason. Benning in Georgia is named for a prominent Georgian (and a gold plated asshole judging by his Wikipedia page), while Fort Hood in Texas is named for a Confederate general from Texas. So a pattern emerges.

Jim Cros segregationists were an important component of the Democrat's coalition in the first half of the 20th century - the QAnon lunatics are correct when they talk about this. But the story of how they departed from the Democratic party in response to shifting demographics in the years after WW2 is the central feature of American political history leading to our condition today. These bases are a vestige of a bygone age.

"To think Biden is the best the Democrats have to offer."

It's a damn site better than the drug-addled, incontinent conman the GOP is doting over.

I have about 20 people higher on my list of preferred Democratic nominee over Biden, and I still have my Warren sticker on my car. However, I don't think a Biden-Warren ticket makes sense - she doesn't bring another demographic to the table (plus the age factor). Usually VP candidates are added because they can bring their state (which might be a swing state) or they bring a specific demographic. I think the possible candidates from Florida, Georgia or New Mexico make more sense.

@38 In my opinion as a casual observer of politics, that is probably the logic of a lost age - when politics was much more explicitly regional. In days of yore, there were conservative and liberal components in each party - they weren't sorted the way they are today - every politician and every issue arranged along a single line with the right-most Democrat to the left of the left-most Republican.

Al Gore couldn't even carry his home state at the top of the ticket and that was 20 years ago.

@34,

You tell 'em gramps. If those lousy college kids were truly concerned with securing a bright future for the country they'd be binging on The Andy Griffith show and playing Parcheesi!

@37 - I agree. But it's also plausible that Biden and Warren also deal with incontinence from their advanced age as well as any of the women VP candidates from urinary stress incontinence. Fortunately, Depends and other adult underwear and pads can alleviate this condition from being debilitating. They're designed to fit so well that they're unnoticeable. We really don't know who's incontinent and who's not. Given that it's such a manageable condition, I fail to see why it's an affliction you continually project when you couldn't possibly have such intimate knowledge.

@14:

Let me ask this: if, for the 2019-2021 biennium ESD had requested a funding increase of, say, $20 - $25 mm for computer system upgrades and increased capacity to handle a potential massive increase in unemployment applications of about 15% of the total workforce due to a projected pandemic-like situation, how loudly would you have been screaming about the "absolute waste of taxpayer money on a pie-in-the-sky hypothetical scenario"?

@34:

You mean unlike my generation, where college kids binged on MTV and Pac Man? Or the one before that where they binged on reruns of "Gilligan's Island" and played Twister all night long?

@2 Right? How is Beethoven anything-American?

@47 Exactly, Beethoven definitely could have been Black, but Black =/= African-American for people residing in Europe.

I voted for Warren, but I would go with Tammy Duckworth. The main goal with a VP pick is to help you win an election. The first priority is to pick someone who is well respected across the board. That is by far the most important consideration, and no one elicits more respect than Duckworth. I doubt that Trump will even come up with a nasty nickname for her, and if he does, he will be condemned even on Fox News (and you'll see Republicans running away from him).

The second goal is to unite the party. I don't see that as a huge problem this year, nor do I think it is as important as gathering undecided votes. Biden has always been in the middle of his party, and will simply flow back and forth with it (which is why he is moving left now). https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-pandemic-has-pushed-biden-to-the-left-how-far-will-he-go/. Duckworth will get votes from disgruntled veterans -- essentially peeling away votes that trend Republican. Duckworth is young, thus balancing the ticket, while also a woman of color. It is a safe choice, but the right one: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/29/tammy-duckworth-is-bidens-safest-smartest-vice-presidential-pick/

Lanse dear, if you ever picked up a book, you would know that the Democratic/Republican stand on race has evolved over time - not that Republicans were ever particularly welcoming to black people - and it basically flipped when LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act, and Nixon developed his Southern Strategy.

So the Democrats were racist sixty years ago. That's a shameful part of the history of the Democratic party. But the Republicans have gone full-throated racist since the 1960's - and went even more racist when St. Ronnie ascended to the office.

History! Ain't it grand?