WTF 7/24/2024

Joe quits… Kamala is all but confirmed… 

I’m grateful that Joe Biden has ended his attempt to take shot at getting reelected as the president of the country.  For various reasons…  

Primary amongst those reasons are…

• I am not a real big fan of his role in promulgating and promoting laws and policies that overwhelmingly and mostly negatively affect we the people who are the most poor and/or usually people of color, in particular his role in creating laws that immorally incarcerated the just mentioned segment of our society…

And…

• While I have been promoting that Biden should be reelected president in my WTF columns, I frankly have had a growing apprehension that his campaign to get reelected was doomed to failure which would mean that we the people would be forced to endure the draconian future of another Trump presidency that would most probably bring the country to the precipice of ruination.

So in all honesty my heart wasn’t all that into riding with Biden for four more years but of the candidates running in November that I believe were electable… Biden was the “easy” choice over Trump.

Now with Vice President Kamala Harris looking to be the Democrats’ candidate going into the November election I can breathe a huge sigh of relief.

Yeah, Harris has her problems, but she is by far a lot younger than either of the two grumpy, and at times befuddled, old white men in Biden or Trump, and while she can be as prone to making political gaffes as both Biden and Trump are very often wont to do (which politician doesn’t at time or another?) she, in my opinion, is lot more in touch with the needs and wants of the majority of we the people especially the working class and the poor of we the people.  

And despite many past polls that had her losing to Trump, I believe her ability and tendency to speak bluntly and openly and ask the tough hard and honest questions means she will be the best candidate to beat the Trump and Vance ticket and the right wing’s ultra conservative and fascistic agenda of Project 2025.

Not all that long ago Republicans had departed their convention in Milwaukee confident that they were united behind their extremely flawed nominee, while Democrats were disenchanted with theirs. But now with Biden’s dropping out and endorsing Harris for the job, Democrats of all stripes… progressives and centrists, party veterans and insurgents, Black, White, Latino and Asian American, whatever and whoever… are coming  together and rallying around  Harris while Republicans are suddenly confused and worried.

Because now it’s a 59-year-old vice president and former senator and State Attorney General who could sometimes be hard as nails running against an old and erratic and convicted felon in 78-year-old Trump.

Until now, we the voters faced a choice between two deeply unpopular options: Trump the felon, the liar and a threat to democracy, or the Biden who was, in many folks minds, just cognitively unfit.

Now?

Biden in one fell swoop has turned the campaign on its head and has given the Democrats, and by default we the people, the best chance to beat the menace of a second Donald Trump presidency.  

Kamala Harris said 19 words in 2018 that taught us all we need to know…

A recent Washington Post op-ed remembered for me 19 words Kamala Harris uttered at the 2018 confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh that succinctly sums up everything we the people need to know about her candidacy to be our next president.

Harris, then a senator from California serving on the Judicial Committee, was trying to pin down Kavanaugh’s opinion on Roe v. Wade. And like a political Muhammed Ali he kept floating like a butterfly and dancing all around the issue with mostly double speak that said exactly not a damn thing. At one point he said,  “I have not articulated a position on that,” avoiding the fact that Harris was asking him to just that… voice a damn opinion.

Seeing she was beating her head against a seemingly brick wall she changed tactics and asked…

“Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?”

Kavanaugh was somewhat taken aback, and a tad flustered and said… “Um… I am happy to answer a more specific question, but… “

A smiling Harris said, “Male versus female,”

Kavanaugh was still befuddled…

Kamala simply repeated…“Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?”

Kavanaugh said, “I am not thinking of any right now.”

The op-ed then points out…  

“It was obvious that Kavanaugh was not planning to reveal his professional opinion on the legality of abortion, so Harris had instead gone straight to the heart of the matter.

Laws related to reproductive health care only impact female bodies. Overturning Roe v. Wade would primarily hurt women. The health and personal choices of women were monitored, restricted and regulated by the government in ways that men could not begin to imagine — in a way that Kavanaugh himself had clearly not begun to imagine, considering how long it took him to grasp Harris’s question. And if he would not articulate a position, then she would at least make him articulate the injustice.”

In the early hours since President Biden announced on Sunday that he would be endorsing Harris as the Democratic nominee, everyone and anybody seemed to have an opinion on how Harris should run her campaign against Donald Trump.

And maybe the answer is… the Harris that we were introduced to in 2018, when Trump’s pick turned up on Capitol Hill with the confidence that he was just there as a formality before being confirmed to be a Supreme Court justice.

Maybe the answer is the Kamala Harris that was present during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing is the candidate she needs to be… a clear-eyed, laser-focused, take no prisoners, accept no B.S… a shrewd and knowledgeable practitioner at the top of her game… who asks the right and very hard questions at just the right and most opportune time.

Maybe that’s the person we the people need now to run against a lying and convicted felon and confirmed sexual predator of women.

Another thousand words…