Tag Archives: Kamala Harris

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Reprehensible response!

Donald Trump received a grooved pitch straight into the strike zone … and he whiffed.

On purpose!

Trump today was asked to disavow a racist rant that Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris is not qualified to run because her parents are immigrants.

“If she has a problem you would have thought she would have been vetted by Sleepy Joe (Biden),” Trump said.

Do you get it? Trump won’t say the right thing, which is:

“Of course I disavow this rant. It has no place in a discussion of presidential politics. The Constitution stipulates that candidates for president and vice president must be ‘natural born’ U.S. citizens, either by their birthplace or the citizenship of their parents. Sen. Harris was born in Oakland, Calif., and she certainly qualifies. Now, let’s squash this nonsense.”

But … the Racist in Chief didn’t go there.

Donald Trump is consciously, deliberately appealing to the very worst in his base of supporters. He is an utter disgrace!

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Why discuss this … at all?

I cannot believe we are engaging in yet another discussion of “birtherism” involving a prominent American politician.

The defamation of Sen. Kamala Harris shouldn’t even be discussed at any level, except for one major point: One of the principals involved in this matter happens to be Donald John “Fake News Master in Chief” Trump.

Harris came into this world in Oakland, Calif. Her Indian mother delivered her after conceiving her with her Jamaican husband. Donald Trump has given this hideous matter a bit of air simply by stating he would “look at” whether she is qualified to run for vice president on the Democratic Party ticket.

This is ridiculous. It also is a blatantly racist attack on a woman who has risen dramatically to national stature after assuming her U.S. Senate seat in 2017.

One might have hoped, albeit naively, that the birther issue had died when Barack Obama left the presidency. It hasn’t, quite obviously. What does the Obama birther matter have in common with Kamala Harris? Donald Trump was part of the Birther Brigade that spread the lie about Obama, just as he has joined the crew that is smearing Kamala Harris with the same defamatory idiocy.

I would say that we “deserve better” from the president of the United States. However, I have to remind myself that the racist managed to get elected to the office he occupies. We just cannot mess up a second time around.

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Not so strange after all

Media pundits continue to make something of a ruckus over the recent political history involving Joseph R. Biden and Kamala Harris, that Harris roughed up Biden in a couple of debates before she dropped out of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary contest.

They’re now on the same Democratic ticket. So I am left to wonder: Why the fascination? It’s hardly the first time political rivals have hooked up, buried the hatchet and locked arms in the fight against a common opponent.

In 1960, Sens. Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy fought for the Democratic nomination. They spoke harshly of each other. LBJ pulled out at the end of that primary fight. JFK was looking for someone to help strengthen him in the South. So he turned to Sen. Johnson. They won that race. Fate, though, tragically intervened when JFK died from an assassin’s bullet in November 1963.

In 1980, former Gov. Ronald Reagan and former CIA director/U.N. ambassador/former congressman/former special envoy to China George H.W. Bush butted heads for the Republican nomination. Bush chided Reagan’s fiscal policy as “voodoo economics.” Reagan survived and then selected Bush to be his VP. The two of them served together through two successful terms.

In 2008, for heaven’s sake, Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden fought for their party’s nomination. Biden didn’t last long. He took his shots at Obama, who fired back at his foe. Obama got nominated and had Biden at his side for two terms.

So now it’s Sen. Harris who’s being examined. Is she loyal enough? Does the presumptive nominee trust her to be a team player?

Biden has been through the VP vetting process. He knows what to ask, where to look.

Harris’s selection is historic. Many have made much of that fact, given her racial and ethnic background. Biden’s decision to select her, though, doesn’t look like much of a gamble. LBJ, George H.W. Bush and Biden himself already have blazed recent trails that led them all to the vice presidency.

Let’s worry less about the recent past between these two politicians and concern ourselves more with the policy positions they share and will take to the fight against Donald Trump and Mike Pence.

It’s game on, man!

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Detestable ‘theory’ returns

Donald Trump is pushing the definition of detestability to the limit. For all I know, he might have exceeded it already.

Trump could have squashed the birther baloney being floated about Sen. Kamala Harris, who’s about to join Joe Biden on the Democratic presidential ticket. He didn’t do it. Just like he kept alive the idiocy about President Barack Obama.

Harris’s parents were born in Jamaica and India; her dad is Jamaican, her mom is Indian. Harris was born in Oakland, Calif. She is qualified to run for vice president.

Trump got the question about the birther crap. He said he would “look at it.” Trump’s idiot son-in-law, Jared Kushner, continued to fan the flames when he said “It’s out there” and that he sees “no reason” to dispute Harris’s constitutional qualifications to run for public office.

Stupidity reins supreme in the White House.

Trump needed to say only this when asked about the ghastly birther “theory”: Let’s stop this nonsense right now. Sen. Harris and I have plenty on which to disagree. She is as American as I am. Let’s debate the issues and put aside this hideous rumor.

He didn’t say anything of the sort. The reality is that Donald Trump gives this crap currency simply by refusing to squash it, kill it dead.

He is disgracing the presidency once again.

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‘I’ll look at it’

There you go. The president of the United States had a chance this week to shoot down in flames the latest lie about a politician who happens to be “of color,” that she somehow isn’t constitutionally qualified to run for public office.

Instead, Donald Trump said “I’ll look at it.” The “it” being reports that U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, a California Democrat who is now set to be nominated as her party’s vice-presidential candidate, was born somewhere other than the United States.

This is a racist rant that needs to be plowed under. Why in the name of presidential statesmanship doesn’t Donald Trump do so? Well, I know why. It’s because he is no statesman. Trump is a racist chump who trades on innuendo and invective.

Moreover, Trump is a card-carrying member of the lunatic/wack job/fruitcake/racist wing of what used to be a great political party.

Trump, you’ll recall fomented a similar lie about President Obama. Then he surrendered, offering a tepid “He’s a citizen of the United States” response to a question about the birther lie.

For the record, Sen. Harris is the daughter of a Jamaican man and an Indian woman. They met in California. They got married and they produced a daughter. Little Kamala came into this world in Oakland. Calif., in 1964. There. She’s a U.S. citizen. She is fully qualified. End of argument, yes?

Hardly. It will continue for as long as Donald Trump gives such idiocy any sort of currency, which is what he did with his “I’ll look at it” non-answer.

I like the response given by Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, who called the birther baloney a “racist, ignorant lie.”

It’s all of that … and I also would call it “hate speech.”

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Battle is now joined

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We have just witnessed the first exchange in what is going to be more than likely the most miserable campaign for the U.S. presidency that many of us can remember.

Maybe in all of American history.

Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Kamala Harris spoke to us back to back about the abject failures of the Donald Trump-Mike Pence administration.

My initial takeaway, though, has to do with a personal aspect of the relationship between the members of the Democratic Party presidential team.

It is that Joe Biden does not carry a grudge. It was Harris, you’ll remember, who drew a bit of Biden’s blood during a Democratic presidential joint appearance when she hit him hard over his Senate opposition to federally mandated busing of school children.

The fact that Biden would select Harris to run with him tells me in stark terms: That’s OK; you took your best shot and I survived. Now, join me in this fight to the finish.

I am looking forward to watching this campaign unfold, even though the misery we can expect will be deep and will be intensely personal. That’s how Trump rolls.

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Welcome to the show, Sen. Harris

There once was a time when candidates joined national campaigns and their opponent would offer them a tepid “Welcome to the fight” greeting.

Not these days.

U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris became former VP Joe Biden’s running mate this week and Donald Trump began a Twitter torrent lambasting the California Democrat for being a weak Democratic primary presidential opponent.

Trump said Harris is the kind of candidate he dreams about. He calls her a champion of the “far left.” Hah! I’ll go instead with some of the progressive outfits who complain that Harris isn’t “far left” enough for them.

In reality, the more I consider Harris’s candidacy, the more I buy into her mainstream moderate approach to governance.

She is a former prosecutor, meaning she hunted down bad guys and put ’em in the slammer. She is no one’s fool. Harris is tough, resilient and vows to work as hard as she can to elect Biden as the next president of the United States.

Harris teamed up once with the late Beau Biden, the former VP’s son, in pursuing fraudulent bankers. Beau Biden happened to be attorney general in Delaware while Harris ran the California justice department.

The old days of common courtesy are gone. Donald Trump is lying in wait (pun kind of intended here, if you get my drift). He is going to cast every possible aspersion he can on Sen. Harris, not to mention what he plans for the former vice president.

Neither of them needs to respond in kind. They have plenty of political action organizations ready to do their own version of the kind of dirty work they can expect from the Donald Trump-Mike Pence team.

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Digesting this VP choice

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I admit my political bias regularly and without apology. I mean, we all have bias, we are imbued in it, it propels our political principles.

At least it propels my principles.

I lean toward the Democratic Party. I have been voting for president every four years since 1972 and not once have I cast a presidential vote for a Republican. I don’t regret my votes, although as I look back on one of them with decades of experience under my belt, I might have thought differently about the 1976 race between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford.

I say all this as a cautionary tale to the excitement many of my fellow pro-Democratic Party voters are feeling today with the selection of Sen. Kamala Harris as the party’s latest vice-presidential pick.

She’s already made history by being the first woman of color to be chosen. She is black and she is of Indian descent; her father hailed from Jamaica, her mother from South Asia. That’s historic!

Sen. Harris now stands on the brink of making even more history in 88 days by being elected the first woman as vice president.

I am trying mightily to temper my excitement. I am going to succeed in tamping it down. How do I know that? Because I fear that Donald Trump, the current president of the United States, has the resources and the willingness to deploy them to win re-election to a second term. He will do whatever it takes to win.

Now, I most certainly don’t want that to happen. It is a fear that well might keep me up at night as we get closer to Election Day.

My bias remains as strong as ever. My desire to see Joe Biden elected president is at full boil. I intend to use this blog toward that end. I feel compelled, though, to reel in my excitement at the prospect until we get much closer to the election. I need assurances that the excitement is warranted.

I am hoping Kamala Harris can excite millions of Americans who are as frightened as I am at the prospect that Donald Trump can repeat the astonishing political fluke he performed in 2016.

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Sen. Harris? Let’s ponder this pick

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I will start with a bit of candor about U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris.

She was not my favorite choice for Joseph R. Biden’s vice-presidential running mate. Of the names that rose to the top, my preference gravitated toward Susan Rice, the former national security adviser during Barack Obama’s second term as president.

I also would have gotten fully behind U.S. Rep. Val Demings, U.S. Rep. Karen Bass, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Harris, though, is the one.

Now, that all said, I am left to place my faith in the selection process that Biden — himself a former vice president — used to make this dramatic selection. Biden served with great distinction as VP during the eight years of the Obama administration. President Obama has said many times that his selection of Biden was the “first major decision I made” as a presidential nominee and he never regretted it.

So, Biden presumably went through the same grueling process to which he was subjected during his own vetting to be VP during the Obama years.

In one respect, Biden’s selection of Harris suggests that the former VP, indeed, holds no grudges. It was Harris who drew blood from Biden during one of the Democratic primary debates when she challenged his boasting of being able to work with segregationist senators. Biden could have held that against her. He didn’t.

As some observers have noted already, this new Democratic team reminds them of Republicans Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush teaming up in 1980 after Bush called Reagan an adherent of what he called “voodoo economics.” The Reagan-Bush team steamrolled to two landslide victories.

Do I have any concerns now about Kamala Harris? Again, I will defer to Joe Biden’s knowledge of the vetting process. If she checks all the boxes to Biden’s satisfaction, then that is good enough for me.

Just as Joe Biden wasn’t my first pick to lead the Democratic challenge against Donald Trump, Kamala Harris wasn’t my first pick to join him in that effort.

Now that they’re a team, I’m all in.

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Democratic POTUS field thinning out as it should

You cannot refer to U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris as a “top-tier” Democratic Party presidential hopeful, because were she such she wouldn’t be announcing her withdrawal today from the 2020 race for the White House.

She joins Montana Gov. Steve Bullock as the most recent presidential wannabes to call it a campaign.

This in-and-out business with the current field of Democrats vying to be nominated to run against Donald Trump is getting a bit difficult to track. Harris and Bullock never got traction. Neither did Beto O’Rourke, or Tim Ryan, or … whomever else has come and gone. There remain a boatload of others who should call it quits and leave the contest to the actual frontrunners.

Then we have these late entries. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is in because, he says, the current field is too weak to take on Trump. No one stands out as someone who can defeat the president; so, Bloomberg says he’s the one. He surely can outspend Trump, given that his personal wealth dwarfs that of the president, who has boasted about his own filthy richness. And then we have former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, whose entry baffles me. I don’t know what he brings to the campaign that isn’t already personified in many of the others.

As for Harris, she was another one who entered the contest with high hopes and high expectation. She’s now about to be history — in terms of the presidential campaign.

I will await the further culling of the field as these joint appearances continue and the Democratic National Committee keeps setting the bar for inclusion in these events even higher.

Moreover, I am looking forward to the Democratic Party getting a nominee who can deliver a knockout blow to the fraud who masquerades as president of the United States.