Today, as the Democratic Joe Biden-Kamala Harris team began to campaign together to win the 2020 election, the contours of the upcoming political contest became clearer. The Trump campaign seemed curiously befuddled by Biden’s choice of Harris as a running mate, although surely its leaders must have known she was among the top choices. Their messaging about her was confused. On the one hand, they claimed that she was soft on crime and a radical who wanted to defund the police; on the other hand, they said she was too tough as a prosecutor. The Trump campaign settled on the idea that Harris is a dangerous radical, a label that will be hard to pin on former prosecutor Harris, especially as Democratic progressives complain that she is too moderate.
Regarding the self-contradictory messaging on Kamala Harris from the Trump campaign: this reminds me of something common when I was on my high school debate team. If an opposing team was entirely unprepared for the argument introduced by our team, and responded all over the place like the Trump campaign, we'd say they're "just throwing all their cards at us", since the talking points and scraps of information used by high school debaters were usually kept on index cards. The Trump campaign has no idea how to parse through the Harris nomination and its ramifications, so they are just throwing things to see if they stick. (The index card was the information retrieval method commonly used back in the pre-Cambrian age when I grew up. No judgment, please.)
But I think this also points out something about Trump and his team: they are exclusively interested in power, and not really in policy except insofar as it keeps them in power. They never had a coherent policy point-of-view, not to mention political philosophy. It was about winning, and keeping the base well-fed with propaganda. It's the "Southern Strategy" Prof. Richardson talks about in her book: the oligarchs/plutocrats want their aristocratic libertarianism to prevail, so they convince poor/working class/middle class/suburban white people that the "others" are stealing their cookie-crumbs and messing up their pretty suburban lawns, and thus get them to buy into the cults of wealth and whiteness that keeps them on top.
I think that the women falling into this broad "white, non-one-percenter" category are beginning to see through this ruse, if not the men. That's why, given a free and fair election, Trump is toast. So it's the "free and fair" part we need to look out for with an eagle-eye. That and any post-November-3 antics that Darth Realtor and his imperial storm-troopers might have in mind.
The difference between Biden and Harris’s intelligent, coherent address and Trump’s vague word-salad ramblings and misogynistic and racist name calling couldn’t be more stark. I had almost forgotten what it was like to hear from real leaders who can speak clearly and knowledgeably about a topic. We must all do whatever we can within each of our own abilities to ensure that Biden and Harris win this one in a landslide. And then be willing to support their victory when it is inevitably challenged by trump. Finally, there is hope.
The Biden-Harris speeches yesterday beginning their campaign where wonderful to watch. Clear, concise, and inspiring to a 68 year old white “suburban housewife”. Trump and his Republican Senators must be voted out in November. I really found the Native American schools to be opened in September very disturbing news. I missed that before reading your letter. To mandate the reopening of schools during the pandemic which has already affected the Native Americans disproportionately is smallpox, Trail of Tears, and every single despicable action against the indigenous peoples is just more of the same racist behavior being repeated.
Kamala Harris will give intelligent bark and incisive bite to Biden's more dignified, decent, unifying man approach. She is going to be a very sharp, strong, loyal and absolutely essential support in enflaming the Democrats and the whole nation to get rid of Trump while offering hope for a better medium/long term future even if Biden is a one-term-President. She'll follow on from Paula Reid and make Trump "walk out" when confronted with his lies, racist/sexist obscenities and socio-economic inanities.
I was brought to tears listening to Biden and Harris. As someone else here suggested, I had forgotten what it's like to hear intelligent and articulate people present their case to the American people. There is so much suffering and sadness at this time, it was genuinely uplifting to hear words that convey caring for the American people. Senator Harris will do much to bring the Biden campaign alive, while continuing to point out the "huge" failures of the tRump administration. We must keep watch on ways the tRump thugs will threaten the election, and then be sure to VOTE.!
Trump calling Harris a radical is almost laughable. He is the most radical president in my lifetime. He and his GOP enablers have dismantled 60 years of social and environmental progress, and they've made a joke of the rule of law or adherence to the Constitution.
As others here have stated, it is so nice to hear articulate and logical ppl speaking without the hateful incoherent ramblings coming from the White House the last 3 years. However, with the abject ignorance that seems to have infected a majority of Americans, both with the pandemic and politics, I fear that the idiots will still win the election by deception.
My biggest fear right now is the openly brazen attack on our Postal Service by the Posemaster General, Louis DeJoy, installed by #45. How can someone with clear conflict of interest hold that position and also implement clearly destructive policies (cutting staff, removing sorting machines) continue in that position without being challenged in some substantive way except calling him out? Is there no course of action to remove him immediately? The complicit Repugnant Party is so corrupt, but how can they so blatantly get away with what should be an illegal action?
Put down my “please vote” postcard pen. Turned on TV for first time since the Cuomo daily briefings to watch the virtual VP announcement. Both acquitted themselves well. Kamala has a genuine warmth and speaks to the camera audience naturally. It’s going to be a pleasure to hear her “lay out the case” for Joe Biden. I was expecting him to pick Susan Rice and so jubilant and impressed that he chose Kamala instead. He knew what he and we needed going into the future-VP Kamala Harris! At the end, both couples stood together looking so blessedly “normal” when compared with the Trumps and Pences. ❤️🤍💙
I was in tears watching two honorable, compassionate, intelligent people speak to the heart and souls of not just the US, but the world. I wonder if the Trump family is already working on asylum arrangements with Putin. He certainly owes them a favor or two.
For eight years, Americans grew conditioned to well-seasoned clarity, compassion, and intelligence from Obama. And, for eight years, the attacks never ceased from the Tea Party crowd. Just enough trash-talk stuck, and combined with a cup of racism and pinch of youth-complacency, 2016 cooked up an electoral college win for Trump. Now, for four years, we've grown conditioned to lies, insults, stupidity, racism, bigotry, and crudeness from Trump. Doubling down on this recipe is not going to work for Trump, I don't think. Americans have become numb to it -- it is no longer motivational. I think the contrast with Biden/Harris is too strong and the contrast with where we were/versus where we are is too stark. Only idiots want four more years of this crap. We just need to keep Joe and Kamala safe and healthy!!
Besides all the other hideous things going on, the mainstreaming of QAnon by politicians hortifying. Think about this: we have a president who suggests bizarre treatments for the corona virus and praises a crackpot Texas doctor who believes alien DNA treatments and nocturnal demon sex are real. And now we have politicians who openly endorse QAnon conspiracy theory within their campaign. At what point did we, as a nation, delegitimize rational though and analytical thinking? My cynical brain tells me there are way too many Americans out there ripe for targeting by Trump and every other nut case running for office, writing for right wing publications, and/or doing the right wing talk show circuit. The people who get their information from those platforms will not turn to legitimate or trustworthy news platforms because they've been brainwashed. I am so upset by the implications I can't even articulate my thoughts clearly.
Encouraged, discouraged, but, ultimately hopeful. Thank you Professor Richardson. I was thrilled when Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris as his running mate and I was impressed while watching their first event together. We will all have to do everything we can to support them and rid our country of Trump and his henchmen and enablers.
Just a quick example of what we’re dealing with on the other side: on FB, I posted the news that Colin Kaepernick and Dr. Fauci are receiving Robert Kennedy humanitarian awards. Someone said she hopes Fauci enjoys his in Gitmo, where he’ll go for crimes against humanity, saying DO your research people! I said I think she and I don’t do research in the same places. She said, show me what you have to refute that hydroxychloroquine is a cure for Covid! So I posted over 15 studies published in NEJM, JAMA, etc. and including studies from Brazil, Germany, and Australia, who I assume are not controlled by Dr. Fauci. In particular, the Germans are so good at studies, theirs alone should have put the argument to bed. She said all those are Deep State players, that doctors on the ground have the answer and it works but they get fired etc. for saying so, and I can go with “my” science but she trusts the “doctors.” She’s a nurse, someone I had thought was conservative but not a conspiracy monger.
Regarding the self-contradictory messaging on Kamala Harris from the Trump campaign: this reminds me of something common when I was on my high school debate team. If an opposing team was entirely unprepared for the argument introduced by our team, and responded all over the place like the Trump campaign, we'd say they're "just throwing all their cards at us", since the talking points and scraps of information used by high school debaters were usually kept on index cards. The Trump campaign has no idea how to parse through the Harris nomination and its ramifications, so they are just throwing things to see if they stick. (The index card was the information retrieval method commonly used back in the pre-Cambrian age when I grew up. No judgment, please.)
But I think this also points out something about Trump and his team: they are exclusively interested in power, and not really in policy except insofar as it keeps them in power. They never had a coherent policy point-of-view, not to mention political philosophy. It was about winning, and keeping the base well-fed with propaganda. It's the "Southern Strategy" Prof. Richardson talks about in her book: the oligarchs/plutocrats want their aristocratic libertarianism to prevail, so they convince poor/working class/middle class/suburban white people that the "others" are stealing their cookie-crumbs and messing up their pretty suburban lawns, and thus get them to buy into the cults of wealth and whiteness that keeps them on top.
I think that the women falling into this broad "white, non-one-percenter" category are beginning to see through this ruse, if not the men. That's why, given a free and fair election, Trump is toast. So it's the "free and fair" part we need to look out for with an eagle-eye. That and any post-November-3 antics that Darth Realtor and his imperial storm-troopers might have in mind.
The difference between Biden and Harris’s intelligent, coherent address and Trump’s vague word-salad ramblings and misogynistic and racist name calling couldn’t be more stark. I had almost forgotten what it was like to hear from real leaders who can speak clearly and knowledgeably about a topic. We must all do whatever we can within each of our own abilities to ensure that Biden and Harris win this one in a landslide. And then be willing to support their victory when it is inevitably challenged by trump. Finally, there is hope.
The Biden-Harris speeches yesterday beginning their campaign where wonderful to watch. Clear, concise, and inspiring to a 68 year old white “suburban housewife”. Trump and his Republican Senators must be voted out in November. I really found the Native American schools to be opened in September very disturbing news. I missed that before reading your letter. To mandate the reopening of schools during the pandemic which has already affected the Native Americans disproportionately is smallpox, Trail of Tears, and every single despicable action against the indigenous peoples is just more of the same racist behavior being repeated.
Kamala Harris will give intelligent bark and incisive bite to Biden's more dignified, decent, unifying man approach. She is going to be a very sharp, strong, loyal and absolutely essential support in enflaming the Democrats and the whole nation to get rid of Trump while offering hope for a better medium/long term future even if Biden is a one-term-President. She'll follow on from Paula Reid and make Trump "walk out" when confronted with his lies, racist/sexist obscenities and socio-economic inanities.
I was brought to tears listening to Biden and Harris. As someone else here suggested, I had forgotten what it's like to hear intelligent and articulate people present their case to the American people. There is so much suffering and sadness at this time, it was genuinely uplifting to hear words that convey caring for the American people. Senator Harris will do much to bring the Biden campaign alive, while continuing to point out the "huge" failures of the tRump administration. We must keep watch on ways the tRump thugs will threaten the election, and then be sure to VOTE.!
Trump calling Harris a radical is almost laughable. He is the most radical president in my lifetime. He and his GOP enablers have dismantled 60 years of social and environmental progress, and they've made a joke of the rule of law or adherence to the Constitution.
Saludos from a US expat in Spain! Happy to be one of those 150,000 new donors.
As others here have stated, it is so nice to hear articulate and logical ppl speaking without the hateful incoherent ramblings coming from the White House the last 3 years. However, with the abject ignorance that seems to have infected a majority of Americans, both with the pandemic and politics, I fear that the idiots will still win the election by deception.
My biggest fear right now is the openly brazen attack on our Postal Service by the Posemaster General, Louis DeJoy, installed by #45. How can someone with clear conflict of interest hold that position and also implement clearly destructive policies (cutting staff, removing sorting machines) continue in that position without being challenged in some substantive way except calling him out? Is there no course of action to remove him immediately? The complicit Repugnant Party is so corrupt, but how can they so blatantly get away with what should be an illegal action?
Put down my “please vote” postcard pen. Turned on TV for first time since the Cuomo daily briefings to watch the virtual VP announcement. Both acquitted themselves well. Kamala has a genuine warmth and speaks to the camera audience naturally. It’s going to be a pleasure to hear her “lay out the case” for Joe Biden. I was expecting him to pick Susan Rice and so jubilant and impressed that he chose Kamala instead. He knew what he and we needed going into the future-VP Kamala Harris! At the end, both couples stood together looking so blessedly “normal” when compared with the Trumps and Pences. ❤️🤍💙
I was in tears watching two honorable, compassionate, intelligent people speak to the heart and souls of not just the US, but the world. I wonder if the Trump family is already working on asylum arrangements with Putin. He certainly owes them a favor or two.
For eight years, Americans grew conditioned to well-seasoned clarity, compassion, and intelligence from Obama. And, for eight years, the attacks never ceased from the Tea Party crowd. Just enough trash-talk stuck, and combined with a cup of racism and pinch of youth-complacency, 2016 cooked up an electoral college win for Trump. Now, for four years, we've grown conditioned to lies, insults, stupidity, racism, bigotry, and crudeness from Trump. Doubling down on this recipe is not going to work for Trump, I don't think. Americans have become numb to it -- it is no longer motivational. I think the contrast with Biden/Harris is too strong and the contrast with where we were/versus where we are is too stark. Only idiots want four more years of this crap. We just need to keep Joe and Kamala safe and healthy!!
Besides all the other hideous things going on, the mainstreaming of QAnon by politicians hortifying. Think about this: we have a president who suggests bizarre treatments for the corona virus and praises a crackpot Texas doctor who believes alien DNA treatments and nocturnal demon sex are real. And now we have politicians who openly endorse QAnon conspiracy theory within their campaign. At what point did we, as a nation, delegitimize rational though and analytical thinking? My cynical brain tells me there are way too many Americans out there ripe for targeting by Trump and every other nut case running for office, writing for right wing publications, and/or doing the right wing talk show circuit. The people who get their information from those platforms will not turn to legitimate or trustworthy news platforms because they've been brainwashed. I am so upset by the implications I can't even articulate my thoughts clearly.
Encouraged, discouraged, but, ultimately hopeful. Thank you Professor Richardson. I was thrilled when Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris as his running mate and I was impressed while watching their first event together. We will all have to do everything we can to support them and rid our country of Trump and his henchmen and enablers.
I’m thrilled about Biden-Harris. But 1,500 Americans lost in one day? Horrifying.
Just a quick example of what we’re dealing with on the other side: on FB, I posted the news that Colin Kaepernick and Dr. Fauci are receiving Robert Kennedy humanitarian awards. Someone said she hopes Fauci enjoys his in Gitmo, where he’ll go for crimes against humanity, saying DO your research people! I said I think she and I don’t do research in the same places. She said, show me what you have to refute that hydroxychloroquine is a cure for Covid! So I posted over 15 studies published in NEJM, JAMA, etc. and including studies from Brazil, Germany, and Australia, who I assume are not controlled by Dr. Fauci. In particular, the Germans are so good at studies, theirs alone should have put the argument to bed. She said all those are Deep State players, that doctors on the ground have the answer and it works but they get fired etc. for saying so, and I can go with “my” science but she trusts the “doctors.” She’s a nurse, someone I had thought was conservative but not a conspiracy monger.
When Joe Biden chose Kamala Harris, my husband said, “Yay! 46, 47 I like to call them.” I have hope!