(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . What's the Problem With Kamala? [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-05-27 Vice President Kamala Harris One of the Republican themes for the upcoming 2024 presidential election is going to be “Joe Biden is going to die,” followed quickly by “Then Kamala Harris will become president.” A party that enthusiastically embraces the possible death of an opposing candidate as a good talking point tells you a lot about that party. Still, I’m sure there’re Democrats out there fretting the fact that the possibility of Harris becoming president will result in losing votes to whichever terrible candidate the GOP trots out for its side of the ticket. Why? What’s so wrong with Harris? The answer here is simple: nothing. Harris is a smart, experienced, politician. She’s held the second and third highest offices in the country: vice president and senator. Her policies align with Biden and her party. If you like the direction Biden has taken the country, then you should be okay if Harris is forced to take the wheel for a few years. How do the Republicans have any real argument there? This is a party that gave us Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate in 2008. A party that embraces a pro-rich, anti-poor-and-middle class, anti-environment, anti-women, anti-LGBTQ, racist agenda. This is a party that’s vowed to control women’s reproductive rights with ultra-restrictive abortion laws. That’s willing to crash the world economy if it’s deficit-reduction plan of cutting programs for the poor while protecting tax windfalls for the rich isn’t put in place. That wants to ban books it doesn’t like. That includes trans kids and immigrants among its culture-war targets. That houses a faction that would be happy and willing to help Vladimir Putin crush Ukraine. This is a party that brought us The Great Depression, The Great Recession, and the Covid pandemic/recession that stands as the gold standard for mismanaging a deadly virus and adding tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths in the process. This is a party where two wannabe fascist dictators currently lead its primary field – Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. Two men who’ve made abuse of power an art form and have laid claim to the darkest corners of our country’s psyche. They’ve emboldened hate, propagated fear, and put a target on the back of anyone who isn’t a white, Christian heterosexual. Kamala Harris would be infinitely times a better president than anyone the GOP offers. Democrats should be embracing her, endorsing her, and thanking their lucky stars that they have someone of her caliber in the second chair of their party. Maybe the two greatest presidents in history were Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Quick, who were their vice-presidents? For Lincoln it was Hannibal Hamlin and Andrew Johnson. For Roosevelt it was John Nance Garner, Henry Wallace, and Harry Truman. Unless you’re a student of history, you might not have been able to name them all, except maybe for Johnson and Truman who became president after the deaths of Lincoln and Roosevelt. This isn’t to downgrade the very important position of vice president, but realistically, in a country so strongly divided, do you think that who’s the vice-presidential candidate is going to cause a wave of defections either way? Swing voters? The agendas, policies, and vision for our country of two parties are so diametrically opposite that whoever the running mate is shouldn’t make a difference. Of course, it won’t help if various factions of the party start taking shots at Harris in lieu of understanding that the stakes of the upcoming election are too high for any of that foolishness. Harris is a solid choice for VP. She’ll do a good job if destiny thrusts her into the top spot. Is she Joe Biden? No. At this point Biden remains a severely underrated president despite his list of legislative accomplishments and his leadership in solidifying our relationship with our allies and dealing with the situation in Ukraine. This is what Democrats have to say forcefully: We don’t apologize for our president. We don’t apologize for our vice president. We’ll match our team with yours any day of the week and twice on Sunday. We’re better. We’re better for the country. We’re better for the world. When we’re in charge, we move forward. When you’re in charge, we go backwards. Yes, Harris is a lightning rod for the Right. That’s fine. Her party has to make sure that lightning illuminates the fact that she’s another great reason to vote Democrat. *** Thank you for reading my post. You can see more of my writing on my blog: Musings of a Nobody. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/27/2171707/-What-s-the-Problem-With-Kamala Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/