Biden's Choice
Obligatory Seriousness on Candidate Harris.
While I only look at the broad outlines of electoral politics in America. I actually wish people would pay more attention to the court system. With any luck, this may be the moment. I doubt it, but stranger things have happened. You see I am sick to death about people talking about police and about the presidency. Even people who obsess over the ‘prison industrial complex’ never come forth with relevant and accurate numbers that might shift the conversation. Police don’t put people in jail. Presidents don’t convict suspects. The numbers I want to see are the records of judges, juries, prosecutors and defense attorneys in a state by state court case summary.
I’ve heard a heap of bad things about candidate Harris. I hear she’s a ruthless prosecutor and unflinching in her blunt force ambition to tread on the backs of convicts or anyone else to the top of her profession. I suspect that she has ample ball-busting credentials to satisfy the most ardent of whatever flavor and wave of feminists are enthused by such leaning in. Given that the Vice President has been hinting he’d choose a woman, the intersectional appeal that Harris presents as a black / asian female is something of a slam dunk, again for people who find such attributes particularly salient.
What I find most interesting and consequential about Biden’s choice is that Harris is expressly not Elizabeth Warren.
Although I dislike and distrust Donald Trump as much as any non-partisan American with a healthy amount of skepticism on the integrity of the parties and their processes of elimination (double entendre intended), he does have the requisite amount of gumption to defend some good old American laws, orders and conventions unapologetically, by jingo. The Progressive wing of the Democrats, on the other hand have done such a marvelous job of celebrating obscure intersectional combinations while various small parts of Seattle and Portland descend into chaos it’s difficult for me to decide whether they aim to mimic Caligula or Nero. Of all the Progressives, neo-Marxists and various alt-lefties that might have pulled Biden’s presidency leftward, Warren posed the most credible threat. She gave us all a moment to think she might ride or die with Bernie. Her facility and cred with identitarians I think is unrivaled. To my knowledge Harris hasn’t played such cards, and of course she won’t have to.
So with any luck, and quite enough bunting, balloons and bouncing babies, Harris and Biden will be able to put up a credible campaign around no one being above the law, and may present such a face to the American {middle / moderate / mediocre} that says something vaguely to the effect of a return to normalcy, decency and respect for the velvet glove wielded by an iron lady. I just wonder how much gas this must be giving Hillary Clinton.
So as the lights and knives go up around candidate Harris, my prediction is that she will err on the side of defending police officers and sell BLM across river if not totally down it. She will awaken some interesting backlash in genuine liberal bleeding hearts for her prosecutorial zeal and errors as well, and she will stand firm for a new kind of ‘cablanasian’ middle icon not seen since fellow Californian Tiger Woods so identified himself. In other words, she will awaken a new groundswell of emotion not heretofore seen in this excruciating political season. It won’t be the same emotion as that around AOC and The Squad, nor will it be particularly well-felt among those exasperated by the prospect of four more years of decrepit old presidents without a new idea between them. It will be emotional.
And so it begins.