Tag Archives: Kamala Harris

national news

VP list narrows rapidly

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Politics at the presidential level can be ruthless, brutal and unforgiving.

Kamala Harris is in the midst of a search for someone who will agree to run with her as vice presidential nominee in this year’s race for the White House. The vice president reportedly favored Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, given his standing as a champion for gun reform and his staunch views on border security and immigration overhaul.

Suddenly, though, other factors seem to have nudged Kelly off the top of the VP ladder. The new favorite appears to be Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

The overarching issue might have everything to do with whether Arizona can elect a Democrat to replace Kelly in the Senate, where Democrats hold a narrow edge over Republicans.

As for Shapiro, he’s a first-term governor in a state that is now tilting toward Harris in her fight against Donald Trump.

I do know this: The Democrats have a much deeper bench from which to make this choice than the Republicans. To that end, it is good that Vice President Harris is taking as much of the limited time she has available to her in making this most critical decision.

national news, political news

Let’s get busy, Mme. VPOTUS

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Vice presidents rarely, if ever, can run on the accomplishments achieved by the presidents whom they serve.

Thus, it becomes imperative that Vice President Kamala Harris build a program for the future as she prepares to be nominated for president by the Democratic Party.

Harris and her team have conducted a flawless, seamless, perfect transition from VP running mate to becoming the top half of a presidential ticket. It happened, quite literally, overnight … when President Biden ended his re-election campaign and handed the party banner to his governmental partner.

Another truism is that campaigns always are about the future, not the past. While the GOP nominee Donald Trump keeps trying to relitigate The Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen, Harris should look forward and tell Americans what they need to hear.

President Biden talks about making rich Americans pay their fair share of taxes; VP Harris needs to remind us all that the uber rich won’t end up in the poor house if they have to carry their share of the tax burden. Will the VP carry forth Biden’s infrastructure package, his climate change initiative, his efforts to reduce inflation, his superb job creation efforts?

We shouldn’t be consumed about complaints that have no basis in fact. We should look ahead to the future that, from my vantage point, looks pretty bright.

Mme. Vice President, it is time to get busy.

national news

Campaign suddenly sizzles

When was the last time a presidential campaign thought to be mired in moribund monotony has sprung to life literally overnight with the emergence of a new candidate?

Do you give up? No worries. I can’t think of an earlier time, either.

President Biden, the former oldest man to seek the presidency, surrendered his re-election campaign. He anointed Vice President Kamala Harris as his heir apparent … and then it hit the fan!

Harris raised $120 million in a single day. She has scarfed up thousands of endorsements, not to mention enough delegates to secure her nomination as the Democratic Party nominee next month.

Young voters tell pollsters they are excited again. So are women who are still furious over the Supreme Court decision that ended the right to an abortion.

VP Harris, meanwhile, is beginning to hone her attack rhetoric against Donald Trump, reminding voters that as a career prosecutor, she has taken on sexual assailants, crooks and frauds. “I know Donald Trump’s type,” she tells campaign rallies.

It has been a remarkable, not to mention rapid, acceleration of Democratic enthusiasm for the top of their party’s presidential ticket. The party was worried about whether its presumptive nominee has the wattage to stay in the race.

He vows to stay the course. Then … he declares that his reverence for the office he is “honored” to serve is eclipsed only by his “love of country.” The time has come, Joe Biden said, to hand the reins to a younger group of leaders.

Thus, a new campaign was given life instantly by a simple act of patriotism.

May the new frontrunner maintain her high energy for the next 100 days. This blogger looks forward to typing the words “President Kamala Harris.”

Uncategorized

Harris needs to keep climbing

Kamala Harris, to state the obvious, has a huge mountain to climb as she campaigns for the presidency of the United States.

It is easy to fall into a public relations trap being laid by those who are enamored of the huge push the vice president has received since President Biden handed her the frontrunner’s torch the other day. Biden surrendered his re-election campaign, endorsed Harris to succeed him as the Democratic nominee and as POTUS. Thousands of other endorsements have poured in, giving Democrats a gigantic emotional boost as Harris prepares to accept her party nomination.

The mountain she must climb rests in the person of Donald Trump, the Republican nominee. Trump continues to cling to a razor-thin polling lead, despite all the missteps, gaffes, the lies, the disjointed campaign blunders … you name, Trump has done it.

Yet — for the life of me — he remains strong politically. I am holding out the greatest hope I can muster that Trump will not hold up under the intense scrutiny that awaits him.

Let’s remember a key point. Trump and his MAGA cultists were fond of reminding us that Joe Biden, at 81 years of age, would be the oldest party nominee ever. Biden didn’t get that far. “The oldest ever nominee” tag now falls on Trump, who’s 78 years old and is showing every one of those years each time he takes the stump and flies off the rails with his nonsense.

I will encourage the vice president to never surrender as she continues to carry her message forward. She has energized millions of Americans just by agreeing to carry the Democrats’ banner into the next great political battle.

I happen to be just one newly engaged American patriot who wants to see her make history once more. All she has to do is win this election.

national news

DEI hire? Yeah … they all are!

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The rant we’re hearing now from Republican critics of Vice President Kamala Harris is that she was a “DEI hire” made by President Biden as a form of affirmative action.

What utter nonsense!

What does DEI stand for? Diversity, equity and inclusion. Right-wing educators want to rid public education of DEI references, contending that they are “woke policies” that need to be expunged from public education.

More trash!

Let us ponder vice presidential picks dating back to, oh, 1960. You will learn, as I have learned, that DEI has existed in that process for far longer than anyone case to remember.

John F. Kennedy picked Lyndon Johnson to be vice president because LBJ would help the ticket do well in the South; LBJ also was a master legislator, whereas JFK had little experience. In 1968, Richard Nixon picked Spiro Agnew because Nixon thought he needed help luring the “ethnic voters” to his cause. In 1976, Jimmy Carter selected Walter Mondale to diversify the ticket geographically and because Mondale also had keen legislative instincts.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan tapped George H.W. Bush because of his deep foreign policy experience; Reagan had little of it. Bush then turned in 1988 to Dan Quayle to lure the younger voters of America. In 2000, George W. Bush needed foreign policy help, so he turned to Dick Cheney. In 2008, Barack Obama selected Joe Biden because Biden also had years of foreign policy experience that was lacking in the background of the young presidential hopeful.

Now we have Kamala Harris running for president. GOP critics are accusing her of being a DEI hire. Why? She’s the first Black American, and first American of South Asian descent to serve as VP. Every example I have cited in this blog post is symbolic of a DEI hire in one form or another.

This cheap-shot criticism is pure racist and sexist demagoguery in its most crass form.
national news

Kelly for VP

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Never have I stated my preference for whom a presidential nominee should choose as a running mate … until now, maybe.

I figure it’s a personal choice. I also know that it’s everyone’s business who gets the nod because when we cast our ballots, we do so for the presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Let us never forget that the VP is next in line to the top job in case the president cannot serve.

Vice President Harris has been thrust into the role of Democratic Party presidential frontrunner, courtesy of President Biden’s sudden withdrawal from his re-election campaign. Time is short. Harris must make her choice known no later than Aug. 7.

Chop, chop …. as they say.

So, who should she select? One name surfaced immediately after Joe Biden announced his decision to step down.

Arizona U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly.

Kelly has a been a Democratic star since taking office in 2023. He has disagreed with Biden administration border security policies. By and large, though, he’s been faithful to the party hierarchy.

Kelly is a former astronaut, having flown aboard shuttle missions until NASA grounded the fleet.

And no mention of Kelly can be done without noting that his wife, former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, was grievously wounded in a shooting that thrust her husband immediately into the world of becoming a household name as he rose to speak on his wife’s behalf.

I am grateful beyond measure that Giffords is still with us and has made tremendous progress in regaining her ability to communicate.

I shall be frank. Mark Kelly’s Arizona roots are critical, too. Kamala Harris will need that state if she is to be elected POTUS. Time is not her friend.

2016 election, national news

More unsolicited advice for the VP

Let there be not a hint of doubt that Vice President Kamala Harris is getting loads of unsolicited advice from experts, faux experts and just plain folks who want her to be elected president this fall.

You may count me as one of those folks.

If there is a lesson to be learned about why Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in 2016, one need look no further than to the grievous strategic and tactical errors Clinton made down the stretch.

National polling had Clinton leading Trump by 2 to 3 percentage points; that polling, by the way, turned out to be accurate, as that was the margin of the popular vote victory Hillary scored against Trump.

But ….

She erred in refusing to visit three key battleground states down the stretch: Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — all of which went for Trump on Election Day and sealed his Electoral College victory. Clinton took voters in those states for granted, thinking they were in the bag for her. So, why bother?

Clinton learned the bitterest lesson imaginable. She most certainly should have bothered.

What might be the advice that Vice President Harris receives as the 2024 campaign ramps up? Do not, under any circumstance, take the voters of any state for granted. Harris will have plenty of polling experts in her corner. She’d better heed their advice.

And if that advice tells her to visit certain states that might appear to be too close for comfort, she’d damn well better heed it.

national news

Praise for the unspoken

President Biden today deserves a bouquet for something he didn’t mention in his brief remarks to the nation.

He never mentioned — not a single time — any reference to the difficulty that led to his decision to withdraw his bid for re-election to the nation’s highest office.

I want to offer a hearty congratulations to the president for sticking to his script and for declining to enter the viper’s pit with the critics who continue to insist he has lost his edge, that he no longer is fit to hold the office to which we elected him in 2020.

He surrendered his campaign and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his worthy successor, presuming she wins the election this November. Biden spoke of the high honor he earned by “serving as your president” and said the time has come to “pass the torch” to younger leaders.

Joe Biden will face history’s judgment in due course. I believe historians will treat his time as president with the dignity it deserves. He has been a consequential president with a lengthy list of accomplishments for which he can take credit.

I am proud of him and am proud to have cast my vote for Joe Biden as our commander in chief.

national news

Blog to chart new course

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Now that we have dramatically reset the 2024 presidential campaign — with Vice President Harris taking over from President Biden as the Democrats’ new standard bearer — I want to announce a new strategy for High Plains Blogger as we move toward Election Day.

This blog intends to concentrate more on the new energy that Harris brings to the campaign and less on the blathering and yammering of the GOP nominee, Donald J. Trump.

That doesn’t mean your blogger is going to ignore the idiocy that flies out of Trump’s potty mouth. It means only that I will save my comments for those mutterings the media deem newsworthy.

To be honest, I am more engaged now in this campaign than I was prior to the president’s exit from it. I didn’t want to engage in the silly crap about whether he has dementia … which he doesn’t! But, yes, he has slowed a step or two since 2020. He is 81 years of age. Now that he’s stood down, that leaves Trump as holder of the title of “Oldest Man Ever Nominated for U.S. President.” We’ll need to listen carefully to how the GOP nominee handles himself when the heat gets turned up.

Harris’s ascent to Democratic nominee in waiting was only logical. Biden chose her to be VP because he wanted someone who is able to step in as POTUS. We’re far from that event occurring. However, it makes complete sense that she step in to succeed the president as the party’s nominee, given that he has taken himself out of the game.

I intend to focus this blog on Vice President Harris’s progress as this campaign gets fired up.

national news

Harris moves quickly into top spot

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Well … that didn’t take long, given the notion that some had posited that next month’s Democratic National Convention would devolve into a chaotic floor fight to determine the next presidential nominee.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who inherited the role of 2024 Democratic frontrunner when President Biden dropped out of the race, has enough pledged delegates for her to secure the nomination before they bang the gavel in Chicago.

The hunt is on for a vice-presidential running mate. Harris has named former Attorney General Eric Holder as head of a task force to vet potential nominees, looking for any possible skeletons in their closets that could damage the ticket.

VP Harris is moving with cool dispatch as she secures the nomination. She has earned Joe Biden’s ringing endorsement, declared that she and her husband Doug Emhoff “love Joe and Jill Biden” and is preparing a breakneck schedule of campaign events in “battleground states,” sone of which were thought to be in Donald Trump’s hip pocket.

I don’t know about you, but I am feeling newly invigorated by what I believe is occurring in the race for the White House.