Veep Bets

[Derec]

Harris - her record as a prosecutor hurting minorities is what got her campaign to fall apart.

How was she hurting so-called "minorities" specifically?

 

[Derec]

For that matter, Harris also ‘failed to catch fire.’

True. That was about you saying you supported Warren for president in the primaries. That is over. Veepstakes are a whole different ballgame. Harris would be a good fit for Biden. Warren would not.

She didn’t last nearly as long as Warren did. Note: Harris was always in y top four or five. I still like her. I’d just rather see Warren and a more productive greasier agenda. She’s got a lot more experience than Harris.

Greasier agenda? What do you mean?
And I disagree that Warren has a "lot more experience" than Harris. I would put their experience as comparable, with Harris being significantly younger.

 

[laughing dog]

Yeah, I'm not saying Tulsi should be the veep. I'm just reminding people what made Klobuchar drop out, and it was when Tulsi demolished her on the issue of race.

I know you are serious, but that is delusional. Klobuchar had never gained much traction at all.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Abrams has deep and impressive experience in executive positions. She has far more experience than Trump. Her background:

LMAO! Nothing you listed constitutes "impressive experience in executive positions".

Have you ever worked in the private sector? The typical CEO of a large publically traded company makes a 100 times more executive decisions than a typical governor in a day, and a 1,000 more executive decisions compared to an owner of a real estate company.

 

[Derec]

Have you ever worked in the private sector?

Yes, of course.

The typical CEO of a large publically traded company makes a 100 times more executive decisions than a typical governor in a day, and a 1,000 more executive decisions compared to an owner of a real estate company.

What "large, publically[sic] traded company" was Stacey Abrams CEO of and when? Please be specific.

Furthermore, your listing of her vast "executive experience" looks like resume padding, given that you saw fit to include her undergrad teaching assistantship at Spelman as executive experience. I am surprised you didn't list a paper route too! And what you did is similar to other Stacey Abrams pumping I have seen. Her experience is being inflated like a helium balloon.

 

[lpetrich]

Kamala Harris is front-runner for Biden’s VP — regardless of what Jim Clyburn thinks - The Washington Post

Nevertheless, Clyburn, who has urged Biden to pick an African American as his running mate, has made clear that is not an absolute requirement for him ...

One can hypothesize that Clyburn is trying either to push a vice-presidential pick who is not African American, or knows that Biden has his heart set on someone who is not African American and is giving him cover. I wouldn’t overthink this. Clyburn is a pragmatic, savvy politician and knows the only thing that matters is winning. I suspect his advice is genuine: If you think an African American contender is the best fit, fine. But if not, don’t worry.

Fair enough.

First, the left wing of the party that is still grumbling about not getting Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as the nominee may pine for a more progressive running mate, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). ...

Second, Biden does need to maximize African American turnout. ...

Third, age should not be overlooked as a factor. ...

Author Jennifer Rubin nominates Kamala Harris.

It would be impossible for the left to object to her, and she’d be an added plus not only for winning African American voters but winning in swing states (e.g., Michigan, Pennsylvania) where the African American vote can be decisive. In addition, she is young enough (55) be the nominee in 2024 (if Biden doesn’t run) and in 2028. If one figures in her relationship with the Bidens and her ability to skewer Trump, she remains the front-runner — despite Clyburn’s remarks.

I agree that she would be a good choice.

 

[Derec]

I agree.

Biden’s Most Ridiculous Veep Prospect

 

[Harry Bosch]

I agree.

Biden’s Most Ridiculous Veep Prospect

Shoot. That probably seals it. Rich Lowery has already been an incredible democratic supporter. Dems should do whatever he says, he's always looking out for us.

 

[fromderinside]

Naw. I expect Joe to go back on his word. He's gonna pick Bernie. Why not put both feet in the grave.

The key is Rigor m-----

 

[funinspace]

Have you ever worked in the private sector?

Yes, of course.

The typical CEO of a large publically traded company makes a 100 times more executive decisions than a typical governor in a day, and a 1,000 more executive decisions compared to an owner of a real estate company.

What "large, publically[sic] traded company" was Stacey Abrams CEO of and when? Please be specific.

I think I'd have to agree with Derec, I just don't see Abrams as having 'large' corporate executive experience. The latest position she has/had in your list was NowAccount Corp, which looks pretty tiny. The mayor/manager of a 100,000 sized city would have a lot more shit to deal with than what her background suggests.

I'd say Biden has several much more qualified choices to pick from...Harris and Klobuchar just for starters.

 

[southernhybrid]

I will support whoever Biden chooses but I'm sick of people saying that Abrams isn't qualified to be VP, so I'm going to share a little bit of information about her that I'm guessing a lot of people don't know.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2020/05/14/stacey-abrams-political-power/?arc404=true

Abrams excelled in academics and was always in advanced studies, which meant she was routinely the only black student in her classes. Because one of the two TV channels that the family received was PBS, Abrams watched that network religiously, read the dictionary and devoured the books and encyclopedias her parents managed to buy for their children.

When the family moved to Atlanta, Abrams ended up at a performing arts high school, where she became her class’s valedictorian. College was next. “I applied to Spelman, Swarthmore, Vassar, Sarah Lawrence. I was leaving the South,” she says, recalling that the South was all she knew, and she wanted a different experience. “I only applied to Spelman because my mother tricked me into it.”

At Spelman College, a historically black women’s college in Atlanta, she had double majors in physics and philosophy, with a minor in theater. It was the first time she would be steeped so broadly in black life and culture outside of her family home. Johnnetta Cole, who later led the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and was the school’s president at the time, became Abrams’s mentor. Cole encouraged young Abrams — who was perpetually raising her voice — to get involved, attend meetings and bring about change. Abrams did that and then some, on and off campus. When the Rodney King verdict came down in Los Angeles in April 1992, acquitting the four police officers who brutally beat the motorist, Atlanta and many other U.S. cities exploded into protest and violent rebellion. A couple of months later, Abrams was in the back of a protest, watching, when some young black folks burned the Georgia state flag because it contained the Confederate symbol (she did not personally hold the flag as it burned, but she organized the protest and obtained the permit), a fact that her opponents raised during her run for governor. Soon after that incident, Spelman hosted a town hall with Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson in which Abrams dissed the work of the first African American elected to lead a major Southern city.

“I berated him for not doing enough for young people,” Abrams recalls. “I was very irate and then ... I gave them my number, and I gave my parents’ number. ‘[Here’s] where I’m going to be, if you have any questions.’ ” Jackson was very offended and questioned what Abrams knew. It was a bold move for a young woman to challenge a trailblazing black man who was seen as an important leader throughout the South. She told him that she attended city council meetings and zoning meetings and that she knew he wasn’t doing enough. The town hall aired on local television. Despite the confrontation, when Jackson created an Office of Youth Services the next year, 1993, she was the only undergrad college student hired. It was her first taste of life in politics.

After Spelman and graduate and law school, Abrams became a tax lawyer because working in the mayor’s office showed her that if she wanted to be a public servant, she needed to learn how the entire system worked. At age 29 Abrams was appointed deputy city attorney by Mayor Shirley Franklin, another history-making Southern black politician. Franklin was the first woman to hold the post and the first black woman to be elected mayor of a major Southern city. Abrams ran for and was elected as a state representative in 2006; she rose quickly in the Georgia legislature and became Democratic Party minority leader in 2011.

She calls herself a “pragmatist,” which is a necessary asset for a Democrat in a state long controlled by Republicans. She also embraces the label “progressive”; in the race for governor she campaigned on expanding Medicaid. Ideologically, she falls somewhere between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden: As her state’s Democratic leader, she worked on behalf of low-income and middle-class residents, defeating sales taxes; she championed reproductive rights, supported military families and protected public education and Medicaid from budget cuts; and as a mentor she launched a program to train young people in Democratic Party politics. In my reporting I have heard grumblings that some black Democrats in Georgia did not feel Abrams was always with them in political fights, but there’s wide agreement that she is focused on taking action and getting results. To do that, Minority Leader Abrams crossed the aisle often to work with Republicans. One of her admirers is Nathan Deal, the former two-term Republican governor of Georgia.

Abrams is the author of eight romance novels under a pseudonym, started two small businesses, is a New York Times best-selling author under her own name and is a superfan of “Star Trek” and Southern hip-hop, including one of her favorite rappers, Ludacris. She is scholarly, but she can also wax poetic on football. She is a policy wonk, but she can effortlessly pivot to sending goofy memes to the children of good buddies. She is a pop culture junkie who also is very literate on the sway and potential of technology. She is secure in her identity as a black woman but also sees herself as appealing broadly to people of all colors and identities. (Exit polls in the Georgia governor’s race proved her right about that.) She is effusive about the accomplishments of her sisters and brothers but also talks openly about her brother Walter’s long-term battles with mental health and drug addiction. Politics is a profession that attracts fakers, but it seems to me that Abrams is, for lack of a better phrase, mad real.

In 2018 and immediately after her defeat in 2019, Abrams helped to create three organizations: Fair Fight Action, which advocates against voter suppression (and has a lawsuit in the discovery phase against Brad Raffensperger, in his official capacity as Georgia secretary of state and as chair of the State Election Board); the Southern Economic Advancement Project (SEAP), which aims for equality of opportunity; and Fair Count, which seeks to get communities of color, rural populations and other marginalized groups counted in the 2020 Census. At the Fair Fight office in Atlanta, I meet Abrams’s parents in a small conference room. Before the fan frenzy around her, before the passionate support of such A-listers as Will Ferrell, Oprah Winfrey and Mike Bloomberg, before she found herself the subject of countless media profiles, and before she became an in-demand expert on political talk shows as well as a guest on “The View,” she was their daughter.

I'm just giving a l little bit of information about her qualifications from a very long article about her life that was published recently in WaPo. It's fine if she's not your first choice, but she is every bit as qualified for the position as the other potential candidates. I personally believe she is more qualified than Harris. I think Susan Rice is another very qualified potential VP candidate. But, I'm going with Joe regardless of who he chooses to run with him. If not Stacey, my hope is that she will be Georgia's next governor. We'd probably be in much better shape if we had her in office instead of Kemp.

And, I believe that the reason that so many Republicans are suddenly writing distasteful editorials about her is because they are afraid of her. Otherwise, why the fuck would they care who Biden chooses, since they aren't going to support him?

 

[funinspace]

I will support whoever Biden chooses but I'm sick of people saying that Abrams isn't qualified to be VP, so I'm going to share a little bit of information about her that I'm guessing a lot of people don't know.

I'm not sure if I'm being tossed in this lump (as it came after my post), but all I said was that I thought there were others more qualified; and questioning Harry Bosch's argument that she has significant large corporate exec experience. I would not suggest she isn't qualified. Not saying she isn't smart, isn't well articulated, or otherwise not talented.

And yeah, I'd support Biden pretty much regardless of who he picks...

 

[Derec]

Not saying she [...]isn't well articulated

From what I have seen, all her joints seems to be working properly.

 

[Derec]

I will support whoever Biden chooses but I'm sick of people saying that Abrams isn't qualified to be VP, so I'm going to share a little bit of information about her that I'm guessing a lot of people don't know.

Admittedly I do not think she is well qualified. That doesn't mean I think she might not become well qualified with some more seasoning. She should have ran for Senate this year instead of endorsing that preacher man.

Abrams excelled in academics and was always in advanced studies, which meant she was routinely the only black student in her classes. Because one of the two TV channels that the family received was PBS, Abrams watched that network religiously, read the dictionary and devoured the books and encyclopedias her parents managed to buy for their children.

She went to all-black, all-female Spelman, so the "only black student" doesn't apply to her undergrad career.
And I never said she wasn't smart.

Abrams is the author of eight romance novels under a pseudonym,

LMAO!

And, I believe that the reason that so many Republicans are suddenly writing distasteful editorials about her is because they are afraid of her. Otherwise, why the fuck would they care who Biden chooses, since they aren't going to support him?

If current trends continue, Biden is likely to win no matter his running mate, since Trump is screwing up so badly on the COVID crisis. And Biden is old. So whomever he choses for Veep has a better than usual chance to ascend to presidency. And Abrams is just not ready for that kind of responsibility.

 

[southernhybrid]

For those who want Warren as VP

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/us/politics/democrats-biden-warren-ticket.html

Mr. Biden and Ms. Warren are members of the same generation, Democrats shaped by modest upbringings who became United States senators and candidates for their party’s presidential nomination. But with Mr. Biden now actively considering Ms. Warren to be his running mate, it’s their ideological differences — and whether they can build a complementary, productive relationship — that will ultimately determine whether she emerges as No. 2 on the ticket.
Their recent conversations have become a critical quest to find common ground and measure whether they have moved beyond their policy disputes of the past 20 years. Mr. Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is a political moderate, a former vice president and a deal-maker who believes in the bipartisan promise of Washington. Ms. Warren is a liberal from Massachusetts, a former Harvard Law School professor as likely to throw a bomb as to shake a hand in Congress, who has clashed with Mr. Biden on issues ranging from bankruptcy law to the future of Obamacare.
Should Mr. Biden select Ms. Warren, the Democratic ticket would be a marriage of contrasting policy ideas and governing philosophies unlike any seen since Jimmy Carter, the moderate governor of Georgia, chose Walter F. Mondale, the liberal senator from Minnesota, in 1976. And some Democrats are arguing that might be precisely what Mr. Biden needs as he tries to unseat President Trump — particularly at a moment when the country’s deep economic despair could demand bold action of the type Ms. Warren pushed for during her candidacy.

I didn't realize that the two of them have been in such close contact. She wouldn't be my first choices but as I've said before, I will support whoever he chooses. I just thought that those who would love to see Warren as the VP pick might enjoy this

Mr. Biden has not said when he will announce his decision. But Ms. Warren and two other female senators who also competed for the party’s nomination, Kamala Harris of California and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, are at the top of Mr. Biden’s list, according to Democrats close to the selection process.
Ms. Warren has not made a secret of her interest in the position, sending signals even before she formally dropped out of the presidential race in February. She answered “yes” without hesitation when Rachel Maddow asked her on MSNBC in April if she’d accept the offer. And she has been calling former President Barack Obama to make clear her eagerness to do what she can to help Mr. Biden.
Mr. Biden, aides said, admires Ms. Warren’s intelligence and her command of domestic policy, particularly economic issues. He thinks she would be a political asset in a campaign, given the passion of her supporters and an ideological résumé that might reassure more liberal Democratic voters who remain skeptical of Mr. Biden’s record of moderation and conciliation.

 

[PyramidHead]

Jennifer Rubin once called me handsome

Picking Klobuchar would be a smart move for Biden, who mainly appeals to centrist Democrats, as Klobuchar would help him with the crucial centrist Democrat vote. It also would help him win the Midwest states, as Klobuchar finished a strong 5th in the Iowa caucuses and her home state of Minnesota has only been blue for the last 50 years or so. I am a journalist for major mainstream news outlets and know a lot about politics.

Picking Warren would also be a good move, as Warren supporters are primarily upper middle class, well-educated white coffee shop managers and professional wellness consultants, who would otherwise vote for Donald Trump. She compliments his centrism with her radical proposals, such as abandoning Medicare for All and endorsing every centrist woman running for Congress over their progressive challengers. The only people she refuses to endorse are people like AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and others who absolutely don't represent a maligned and alienated bloc of left-leaning voters. And the Bernie people just LOVE Warren for her steadfast support and principled, selfless dedication to grassroots movements like the one she fucking kneecapped by staying in the race through Super Tuesday. I have a blog if you want to read it. It's chock full of takes like these.

Abrams, though, would be the obvious choice for Biden, as she appeals to the valuable segment of the population who isn't utterly appalled by Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged being one of her favorite novels. She ruffles some feathers with her willingness to work with Republicans, but if anything is sorely missing from Biden's general election candidacy, it's the fact that his platform and record are only 80% identical to that of any Republican from 1990, and to win over those finicky moderates he should shoot for at least 90% overlap.

Next week on my podcast I'll be talking to Chip O'Fuckle, who just wrote a book about how AI will solve the Flint water crisis and is a pedophile. Why can't our political system pander to everyday folks like me?

 

[southernhybrid]

I will support whoever Biden chooses but I'm sick of people saying that Abrams isn't qualified to be VP, so I'm going to share a little bit of information about her that I'm guessing a lot of people don't know.

I'm not sure if I'm being tossed in this lump (as it came after my post), but all I said was that I thought there were others more qualified; and questioning Harry Bosch's argument that she has significant large corporate exec experience. I would not suggest she isn't qualified. Not saying she isn't smart, isn't well articulated, or otherwise not talented.

And yeah, I'd support Biden pretty much regardless of who he picks...

No, sorry. I didn't mean to direct that post at anyone in particular. I'm beginning to think that due to the many well qualified women to choose from, that Biden is having a hard time deciding who would be best.

 

[Elixir]

I will support whoever Biden chooses but I'm sick of people saying that Abrams isn't qualified to be VP, so I'm going to share a little bit of information about her that I'm guessing a lot of people don't know.

I'm not sure if I'm being tossed in this lump (as it came after my post), but all I said was that I thought there were others more qualified; and questioning Harry Bosch's argument that she has significant large corporate exec experience. I would not suggest she isn't qualified. Not saying she isn't smart, isn't well articulated, or otherwise not talented.

And yeah, I'd support Biden pretty much regardless of who he picks...

No, sorry. I didn't mean to direct that post at anyone in particular. I'm beginning to think that due to the many well qualified women to choose from, that Biden is having a hard time deciding who would be best.

Like both of you, I'll vote for him - or a Haggis if it's the only choice besides Trump. But I'd really like to hear a candid expression of the criteria Joe will use to make his decision. Will he choose someone for immediate political advantage i.e. someone who will "bring in" voters who might otherwise not vote for him/them, or will he choose based on who would make the best President should he croak the day after inauguration? I know the Party line is "both", but in truth that's not how it works. Something is the prime consideration.

 

[Toni]

Care to explain how you got "anybody but a woman" out of that, especially when Biden has already said he's going to choose a woman?

I wasn’t responding to Biden’s promise. I was responding to the post. And the horror expressed at selecting a woman who has the nerve to be over 50

No, you didn't. You said nothing about age. You were specifically hung up about the rejection of a woman as a candidate ("Yeah, anybody but a woman."), which is absurd, given that every "short" list contains nothing but women.

nm

 

[Toni]

Yes, that exactly what I said.

Very doubtful.



Thanks, kid.

signed

The woman who taught people young enough to be her kid how to use a lot of computer programs, use wifi, AND make cookies.

Well, I haven't seen you toss your hat into the ring. Can you deliver Georgia?

Nor have I seen you and blessed few of your generation step up.

I do have some family in Georgia but it's probably not enough to deliver the state.

I'm sorry that you don't get that you spat on an entire generation of women for when they were born---while neatly bypassing the nice white guys that nobody thinks twice about whether their age, their color or their gender should be an issue. Although really: their ages, their genders and their color really are huge issues. But hey, they swing a dick so that's a pass on those issues.

No worries. Nothing I haven't heard/dealt with for the past 50+ years.

The old white guys were “neatly bypassed” because they’re not even a possibility, nor is any other guy. I feel like I’m reading posts by someone as comprehension-challenged as Half-Life.

nm