I could be wrong, but I expect Harris to depart from Biden’s virtually unstinting support of war criminal Netanyahu in his slaughter of innocent Palestinians, for example
On what basis? Not her statements. Not her record. Not her funding. Not her endorsers. I'm all for hope, but not naivete.
One basis is Michael Moore’s substack, in which he mentions unnamed sources who behind the scenes say Harris has been heavily pushing Biden to change his Gaza policy. Admittedly that may be a thin reed, but there is certainly precedent for vice presidents to publicly stay loyal to their president on controversial issues while privately pressing for a change of policy on those same issues. Two examples: Vice President Humphrey privately repeatedly expressed deep skepticism about President Johnson’s Vietnam War debacle, in response to which Johnson repeatedly derided and humiliated him.
When Humphrey eventually became the Democratic presidential nominee, he openly broke with Johnson by calling for an end to the bombing of North Vietnam. Example two is Biden and Obama. Biden publicly expressed support for Obama keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan, while privately pressing him to pull them all out, which he eventually did when he himself was president.
But Harris has done no such thing. How is the situation in any sense analogous?
I had a feeling you’d jump on that sentence and
bold it.
No, Harris has not done the same thing. But the real analogy is the behind-the-scenes part. If it’s true that Harris, behind the scenes, is pressing Biden to change course on Gaza, that’s the point to focus on. If she is doing that, then, presumably, if elected, she will change course. But wait, now we get ….
Also, unless my history books left out something extremely important, Humphrey lost his election.
OK. So if we go with THIS comparison, you should be GLAD she isn’t deviating from Biden’s Gaza policy during the election, because the Humphrey example suggests she might then lose.
In reality, there’s little comparison between Vietnam and Gaza. The Vietnam War was all-consuming in America in 1968. The Gaza war has a fraction of the impact in 2024.
Although it should be noted too that after Humphrey called for an end to the bombing, he quickly rose in the polls, in which he had been lagging by as much as 16 points, and very nearly caught Nixon. The election was a cliffhanger. Historians have since discovered that NIxon committed treason by scuttling behind the scenes a Johnson peace deal.
So your advice to "elect x and see what happens" cannot apply.
What’s the alternative? Elect Trump. Then’s your choices, Trump or Harris, like it or not. You say you’re voting for Harris. What good does it do to belabor Harris over Gaza, when doing so may in fact turn off some perhaps small number of voters from voting for her? But in election as close as it seems, that small number may hand the White House to Trump.
We have only Humphrey's word and yours as to what he "would have done" if the office were actually his. The exact ssme kind of testimony you're telling me to ignore when it's Harris telling us what she plans to do.
You don’t have my word on it. I was 11 years old at the time, FFS. I’m not saying to ignore what Harris says. Harris is not the president. Let’s wait and see what she does when and if she is.
But have a look around the forum. It us filled with "liberals" excoriating those protestors as anti-semitic, Marxist traitors, and angrily denying that any such genocide even occurred. It was just a police action to save Israel from terrorists.
Police action is Harris' strong point, of course.
Around THIS forum? I’ve seen none of that here.