A Few Things To Consider Before Crowning Kamala Harris
Senator Kamala Harris at the 2019 Iowa Democrats Hall of Fame Celebration in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on June 9, 2019. Photo by Lorie Shaull via Wikimedia Commons.
My friend Berny Belvedere took to Arc Digital to write on what he perceives to be the potential reign of Kamala Harris as queen over the Democratic Party and possibly “12–16 years to run the country” as vice president and president herself.
I expect Biden to win the presidency this November - which means that, barring a cataclysmic event on the level of COVID-19 or entry into a new war, Biden’s choice of Harris is likely to be the most significant political decision he will make for the rest of his days.
It is also the most momentous VP decision of my lifetime, with only George W. Bush’s choice to enlist Dick Cheney coming close. Historically, we have a few examples of vice presidential selections going on to have huge national ramifications - some, such as Cheney, by design, and others, such as Andrew Johnson, Teddy Roosevelt, and LBJ, by unhappy accident.
At this point, it’s likelier than not that Harris will be president…
With Biden’s selection of Harris, we have a VP decision that we can sensibly expect, at the very front end of the process - that is, prior to the election, prior to her spending even a single second in the White House - to be massively significant. In fact, it can’t help but be, given the circumstances.
Mr. Belvedere lists six reasons why he finds Senator Harris’ prospects for political success to be nearly limitless. He concludes with the coda that “There are basically two ways she misses out on all this power and influence: (a) if Biden loses to Trump in 2020, or (b) if Biden’s tenure is a catastrophe. I think both are unlikely.”
While understanding this present election is far from over, let us proffer for a moment that Biden does indeed win the presidency in November, for the sake of taking the rest of the arguments on their merits.
Berny makes fine points that the inclusion of Harris on the ticket automatically catapults her to the top of the Democratic pecking order going forward. It is inarguable that the same questionable “bench” of Democratic presidential candidates, easily swept aside by Joe Biden once the Democratic Primary broadened out into areas with the traditional Team Blue constituency, will find challenging a sitting or former VP Harris a tall order. Smartly, Biden and his team have embraced the “generational change” optics as opposed to fighting the obvious: A Joe Biden that will be inaugurated at an age above the average lifespan of a president is an inescapable fact to be dealt with. If the Biden Administration has success, or at least isn’t a total disaster, it would stand to reason a VP Harris would be taking a star-making turn from it for her own quest to step behind the Resolute Desk. A successful run as number two, and presumably a powerful and active number two at that, would alleviate her own failed primary and give a sound springboard going forward.
Which all makes great sense on paper, but it requires a few too many tumblers in the machinations of time and political space lining up to be certain about. It is that item (b) Berny raises that should give observers pause in projecting the future of a Kamala Harris-era of Democratic politics.
More to the point — on what, exactly, are we basing the assumption of a successful Biden presidency? Since all other plans Kamala Harris has for the future are now predicated on Joe Biden not only winning but succeeding as President, we should consider how the next administration might look before we get ahead of ourselves coronating 2024/2028 as the President Harris years.
The 2020 election itself is setting up to be a point of eternal contention, one that will linger into the next administration regardless who wins. There is an increasing probability that we could end up with a 2000 situation on our hands, in which we do not even know who the president is until well past the day after America votes. With charges of “illegitimate” already being leveled, the known no-holds-barred attacks of Trump and company, and an already hyper-partisan environment, the odds are against a Biden Administration getting any kind of “honeymoon” period. Additionally, an ousted Donald Trump is unlikely to adhere to his predecessors and stay out of the limelight, and more than likely would be waging open warfare against all things Joe Biden if displaced by him.
The other national matter settled by the November election will have even more sway over the success of a Biden administration, and by extension the prospects of Kamala Harris. With every congressional seat up for grabs and 35 Senate seats in contention, Team Blue has dreams of having all three branches of government back under their leadership after their strong showing in 2018. While the House of Representatives is safely in Democrat hands, even a Trump collapse might not be enough to get a majority in the US Senate. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris both hail from the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body and know it well, but if Mitch McConnell is still the majority leader come January any major legislative achievements will be very tough sledding indeed. Talk of eliminating the filibuster in the Senate has grown louder, but such a fight would weigh down the early, crucial days of a Biden Administration that would be looking to strike while the political capital iron is hot, off what would have been an excellent Democratic cycle.
Recent history tells us early success, or lack thereof, is crucial to an incoming administration, and thus would be telling of the future prospects of Kamala Harris. Even if Democrats get both houses of Congress like Obama in 2008 and Trump in 2016, such an advantage is usually fleeting. Biden spent the primaries defending the signature legislative achievement of his VP stint, the Affordable Care Act, but also saw firsthand what that victory cost. That battle and others, coupled with the eventual cyclical nature of congress, saw a 2010 mid-term hand control back to Republicans. The short, two year window of Democratic dominance made the ACA the biggest achievement of the Obama presidency, since most of the rest of it had an majority opposition party to blunt policy efforts. President Trump didn’t even get that much of a win, settling for a tax cut measure as his biggest legislative achievement before Democrats came roaring back in the blue wave midterm of 2018, and the economic collapse of COVID rendered it a mostly moot political point anyway. With at least 34 Senate seats coming up in 2022, and all the House again, the prospect of a mid-term power switch — even if Democrats win it all in 2020 — once again looms large and could make the Biden/Harris window of opportunity not four or eight years, but practically a matter of months.
There are other things working against whoever is president come January that are already baked into the leadership cake. The economy, while somewhat stabilized from its spring collapse, is currently still very precarious. Some folks are imagining a roaring comeback as soon as COVID-related restrictions are lifted, but that is just that, hope. There is little evidence or data supporting belief in a rapid nation-wide rebound. Trouble is lingering not only in unemployment figures, a restricted job market where folks are adapting to distance telework if working at all, and businesses adapting to COVID constraints, but also in economic ripple effects from months of hard times and belt tightening. Already, states and municipalities are screaming about massively decreased revenue, and outside of federal assistance which may or may not happen with a divided congress, those agencies will be looking to make it up in cost cuts and increased taxes and fees. Neither of which traditionally bodes well for a shaky economy, or for a new administration that is only going to be able to blame Trump for so long without showing tangible improvements.
Politically, Kamala Harris may be fine even if a Biden administration doesn’t set the world on fire in policy or legislation implemented, at least in her own party. As Berny points out, the available Democratic bench for high national office is very thin at the moment. But it is important to note that while the Democratic side of the prognostication ledger stabilizes with a Biden win, the Republican side will not remain static. There may well be long-term fractures within Team Red from the Trump years, be they four or eight, but nothing heals a party quite like being in the minority with a new big bad to coalesce against. NeverTrump for all its noise and fury online dies the second a Trump presidency does, and most of the traditional Republican base will happily lock arms and forget old scores quickly against President Biden and the assumed rise of Kamala Harris. With the ticket so linked together due to all the reasons Mr. Belvedere points out such as age, ability, and their “simpatico” vision, the Republican party will be running against Kamala Harris from the second she is sworn in as VP. That is a lot of lead time to chip away at a candidate who is also yoked together with someone else ostensibly calling the shots.
Berny may well be right. Kamala Harris, at least on paper, is now set up with advantages few politicians in recent memory have enjoyed. If Joe Biden wins in November, she will indeed be a force to be reckoned with in the coming years. There is a very real chance things improve for the country and a VP Harris gets a Obama-like surge of “historic” support for not only the first woman president, but woman of color as well. But her success is not fully dependent on her, and if 2020 has taught us anything it is that things that can change, do change, and often in rapid and unpredictable fashion. Both the Obama and Trump administrations began with more clearly defined mandates and advantages than the Biden/Harris one is likely to start with. Both Obama and Trump had those that proclaimed the start of their administrations as “generational shifts”, and both found themselves with changed political landscapes quickly. Then there is still the matter that, VP or not, Kamala Harris is yet to win an election outside of California on her own accord, something she will have to do to become/stay President of the United States of America. Not to mention that four years, eight years, or twelve years are all long periods time for the next generation of Democrats to just sit and be happy with status quo. The assumption that all of Team Blue, many who rejected her in the run up to 2020, will be happy to defer to a VP or President Harris for so long is highly questionable. Plus, there is the little matter of winning the 2020 election first we sat aside earlier, where Senator Harris could become the third woman nominated by a major party for vice president following Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin in falling short, instead of the historic first elected.
If Berny Belvedere is right, and against all these obstacles and challenges this is the beginning of a 12-year or more era of Kamala Harris as VP and President, we will be able to agree on one thing looking back on it from the turmoil at the potential start of it: whatever advantages she began with, she will have earned it to make it so. If she even makes it that far. If Joe Biden wins. If.
What the Democrats have to grapple with, (And I believe Harris understands perfectly well) is that she is the embodiment of the Republican cultural grievance.
By conventional political theory, the Republican Party should be buried in a Goldwater level landslide. But the election will be very close, and even tip in their favor due to the implacable loyalty of the base.
So a President Biden or Harris and the Democratic party will need to use whatever means necessary to actually get the machinery of government to turn. Politically, this means turning a deaf ear to the cries of compromise since ethnic grievance is a binary, having no middle ground to meet at.Report
Yeah, it is wildly, ludicrously early to be saying anything about Harris beyond “she she has a shot at camping in the Naval Observatory for a few years.”Report
Part of the problem that I see is that Harris has a handful of problems.
I’m not saying that the problems are insurmountable. I’m not saying that the problems are worse than Trump’s problems.
I am saying that Harris has a handful of problems. They’re not even necessarily criticisms from The Right. They’re criticisms that we saw back in 2019.
Now, of course, it’s one thing to criticize Kamala as being insufficiently pure when you’re pushing for Warren to win the nomination and quite another when that same criticism arises in the Real Election… but the criticisms that had bite in 2019 ought to be dealt with in 2020.
Lest they still bite.Report
It’s ameliorated slightly in 2020 by the fact that she’s Bidens’ veep, which means his policies and positions are her positions.Report
Oh, yeah. I didn’t finish my thought in the middle there. My problem with Clinton’s problems weren’t necessarily that Clinton had them. It was the weird denial that she had any problems at all.
Like, remember the Parks and Rec episode The Debate? The spin room?
Ben: Hypothetical crisis: Leslie just tried to answer a question, but audibly farted and then threw up. Spin.
Chris: Leslie Knope is literally overflowing with ideas for this town. And speaking about methane, have you heard about her plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions?
Now, I understand that it’s the job of a particular breed of politician to spin on behalf of “their” candidate. Clinton collapsed at a 9/11 Memorial? That’s because she’s a strong woman who was powering through pneumonia. If Trump got sick, he’d stay in bed whining like a little girl! Not Clinton! She was strong and showed up and, yes, hit a point of exhaustion but that’s because she was strong enough to show up in the first place!
And it’s one thing to do that when you’re paid to do it.
Another to do that freelance and pretend that the people who say “okay, that was bad” are trying to harm “your” candidate rather than looking at the damn situation and seeing that Leslie Knope just audibly farted and then barfed when asked a question.Report
The “weird denial that she had any problems at all” is not a thing. All candidates have problems, and they get talked about, though no one remembers them when you win. Hillary’s problems were discussed in many places, though really strange s**t, unique, so far, to 2016, took up a lot of the oxygen that would normally have been devoted to the topic. People just didn’t want to engage you, here, on them — at least not enough to suit you. There were reasons for that.Report
While I can appreciate that you’re saying “no, it’s just that people weren’t engaging with you”, I can show you places where, no, we were arguing for a good long while. I was on team “she made a mistake”. Others were on team “what, are you saying she should have lied?”
Would you like me to find you links so you can read these exchanges for yourself?
Because I know how important it is to have evidence that you can look at with your own eyes.
But I also know that posting links to long pieces can be a distracting tactic and I don’t want to provide you with links if you’re not going to read them.Report
They did engage you a bit, but apparently not to your satisfaction, since you’re carping about it four years later. I’ve re-read the thread, and others, and I’d be shocked if someone actually took issue with the idea that HRC made some mistakes. There was discussion of the error of taking the “blue wall” for granted, which proved to be a huge mistake that nobody (well, there’s always somebody) disputes.There was also some discussion of what, if anything, she could, truthfully, if more artfully, have said to counter Trump’s lies about, for example, saving the dying coal mining industry, but that discussion did not prove fruitful and eventually petered out. Anyone who wants to can look and come to his or her own assessment of why it was unfruitful and petered out, but I would be surprised if anyone cares now.Report
The general idea is something like “of course Clinton made mistakes!” but when you get down to the specifics “you mean like the ‘deplorables’ thing?”, you get responses like “I’m not seeing that she said anything wrong there”. When it comes to the coal miners thing, you can read the argument that we had about them here.
Indeed, there’s always somebody.
For what it’s worth, I think that if the Democratic Leadership and had a long discussion over the mistakes they made last time and how they want to avoid those mistakes this time, that would be good and evidence of health… even if they didn’t make those discussions public.
But the whole high-level “nobody’s perfect, everybody makes mistakes” attitude toward the 2016 election isn’t the type of wrestling with what went wrong last time that gives me hope that they might recognize whether something is going wrong this time.
If you want me to point to a piece of evidence that the internal Democratic Leadership has learned a thing or two since last time, though, I’ll say that it was exceptionally smart to do this. That was smart and shows that *SOMEBODY* has been paying attention. (I hope it was Biden that made that call, honestly.)Report
It’s always nice to have at least one of the primary sources easily at hand.Report
All cogent points… but honestly, the only thing that really matters is this:
“The short, two year window of Democratic dominance made the ACA the biggest achievement of the Obama presidency, since most of the rest of it had an majority opposition party to blunt policy efforts. …[snip]…
even if Democrats win it all in 2020 — once again looms large and could make the Biden/Harris window of opportunity not four or eight years, but practically a matter of months.”
What’s ‘the one thing’ Biden/Harris do in 2021/22?
That’s both a rhetorical and actual question… let’s assume its a blow-out… what are they going to do with that window? Police Reform? Criminal Justice Reform? M4A? UBI? Immigration Reform? And will the thing they do make people think they spent their political capital wisely and well?
This is the week of the DNC, I assume we’ll get the “plan” … so my question isn’t snark… what are they going to do when they get the levers of power? Beating Trump alone won’t get them past 2022.Report
I once heard a trope (mostly true) that a congressman has 14-18 months to do real work, then its all campaign all the time. So your diagnosis of the window is astute.
I think the Biden-Harris Administration would need to do 3 things –
1. Shore up the ACA buy not only rolling back all the Republican rollbacks but also moving toward single payer.
2. Federal level police reform, including eliminating QA.
3. Find the most impactful part of the Green New Deal (i.e. most well paying jobs portion with the greatest environmental impact) and make it the center piece of their economic program.
Other things will be easy – legalizing marijuana would be a great way to raise taxes without raising taxes, plus accomplishing a LOT of popular criminal justice reform. Immigration reform as a legislative approach won’t fly – but how you manage the agencies will achieve the same effect.Report
My suggestion:
Voting rights and accessibility; Vote by mail, reconstruction of the USPS etc.
Nothing matters more than being able to hold free and fair elections in 2022 and beyond.Report
Dude… is this so meta that I don’t get it?
Future us: The one thing the Biden presidency did? Postal Reform.
Ok, Colonial.Report
What’s meta about it?
There are plenty of things a Biden administration and unified Congress can do to make voting in 2022 and 2024 easier.
And when voting is easier, Democrats tend to win more.
This seems like Politics 101.Report
Heh, this is why Mitch McConnel eats your lunch then drives to your house and has your Mom make him a sammich.
More seriously… if my original comment is correct (and maybe it’s not!) I’m suggesting you get one bite at the apple… one piece of signature legislation that’s going to usher in the Kamala Harris 12-16-yr reign of technocratic benevolence – which is the premise of this piece and the piece it’s critiquing.
If that signature legislation is Postal Reform?… then I’m suggesting that the people who pinned their hopes on Biden/Harris to make their lives better will beat the Democratic Party with all the spare mailboxes piled up in Indiana. DC will get statehood and elect 2 Republican Senators.
That’s Politics 101.Report
Postal improvements. Automatic voter registration. Nationwide vote by mail. Early voting. Voting Day a federal holiday. Aggressive Justice Dept prosecution of voter suppression and gerrymandering.
Investigation and prosecution of foreign election meddling.
What these are doing is pushing back against the two year window by making victory in 2022 and 2024 more likely.
When Trump says that easier voting means no more Republicans will be elected, believe him.Report
Also too- An election that results in a Democratic trifecta at the federal level will likely result in Democratic state legislative victories.
For instance, flipping the legislatures of PA or AZ or even Texas means the federal push for voting rights can be amplified by state level machinery which narrows the field that Republicans have to operate in.
Which becomes a virtuous cycle- making it easier to vote in flipped states makes it more likely to swing Democratic in 2024
Of course, there are a lot of cards that need to fall just the right way for all this to happen. But the point here is that voting rights is a critical issue, which is why Republicans have been so deeply invested in blocking it.Report
At least it’s more realistic than “they’ll pass a law that will make it easier to go to the dentist”.Report
Given power for any length of time would result in Team Blue…
1) Ripping itself apart because of its internal contradictions
2) Getting kicked out because of overreach.
3) People discovering that their solution(s) don’t work while the them out of power promises Utopia.
A ton of this instability is democracy math.
The gov has 100 units of some resource and there are 3 equal interest groups.
It’s ALWAYS possible for the group out of power to promise the majority a “better” split of that resource so they’ll benefit.
Start with it split evenly. ABC all get 33 units.
Next promise a 50/50 split to AB while C gets zero.
Next promise a 75/25 split to AC while B gets zero.
Next promise an even split.
If the gov plays Santa Claus and redistributes resources, then expect a lack of stability of government.Report
I have to second every single one of these (Well, gerrymandering isn’t ‘illegal’, and I doubt the courts will allow much medding in that, but other than that.)
But what I’d actually like to see is my ‘ID of last resort’ proposal. As in, anyone who does not have current ID (Well, I guess they could get it anyway.) can contact the US government and get some sort of advice on how to collect documentation of who they are, which could be neighbors and whatnot. And there will be a hearing scheduled.
A real hearing, in front of a lower-court judge. With witnesses (Or at least testimony from them) saying ‘I knew this person’s mother, I remember hearing about their birth, I met them as a child and knew them as they got older, etc’.
Anyone who thinks this person _isn’t_ this person is also free to weigh in at the hearing, somehow, I haven’t figure out exact details. It’s a public hearing.
Based on the preponderance of evidence, the US government then says ‘You are this person.’ (or not), and issues them an official ID. (Even non-citizens could get the ID, it would just say non-citizen. Proving who you are doesn’t prove you’re a citizen, but…showing who you were would often prove you were born in the US, which does.)
States are required to accept this ID as proof of who someone is when voting.
And what this does is seriously undercut a lot of voter suppression in ways that Republicans cannot plausible fight. It doesn’t matter if they get back in control if people now have photo IDs.Report
Even Guatemalans and Nicaraguans have ID. George Floyd had an ID. Every person in America who smokes or drinks has an ID. Kids under 21 often have several. In my state an official picture ID is available to everyone over age 14 for just $12.Report
…everyone who has an accessible birth certificate, and every record of name change, and whose isn’t spelled or anglicized differently, and can meet the other requirements. (We will ignore the fact that a $12 poll tax is still a poll tax.)
So you shouldn’t actually object to this, then? Because this would only be for people weren’t able to get an ID from their state, because they didn’t have documentation.
If everyone who wants one can already get one, then it’s no expense at all and we should just do it and shut up the left, right?
Although we do know that _a few_ people _have_ been denied, because they have literally sued over this. Sued over the fact that for decades the state accepted who they are,and accepts it in any other situation, but will not let them vote because all copies of their birth certificate were lost years ago.
But…that’s the left searching for people in _very unique_ circumstances to present in lawsuits, right? And maybe it’s only just like ten people in the entire country. So…why not solve their problem at the Federal level and shut everyone up?
Oh, and before you say ‘Inventing new form of ID is expensive, and not worth it for just a few people’…the Federal government could just give the people _passports_ (That is, the passport card, not the book.), which already exist, and are already acceptable by law as ID.
So there you go. Please state your objection to the Federal governing saying: For those _incredible rare_ people (At least, claimed to be incredible rare by conservatives) who cannot meet their state’s ID burden because the documentation has been lost, the US government will allow them to have a free hearing on their identity and make a official decision on it, issuing them a passport card that the person can use to get state ID…or just use as-is.
Do you have an objection to this policy?Report
I think we already do that. Everybody can get a valid ID or there would be adults out there with no way to buy beer and smokes, or get an EBT card, or access other government services, and the number of those seems to be just about zero.Report
Everybody who can get to the right place, during the proper hours, and can produce the appropriate pieces of paper.
The 90-year-old lady who lacks a birth certificate can’t do it. Having a program in every state with a phone number where someone who believes they are entitled to vote but lacks the requisite ID can call (or their child or neighbor can call) and the state will take it from there and bend over backwards to help them get that ID. With open records about who called and what work was done and how it was resolved. The PR value alone should be worth it to conservatives.Report
I note that when the Deepwater Horizon oil spill assistance was being paid out, there were a remarkable number of young and middle-aged people in south Louisiana who existed entirely outside the paper system for establishing eligibility. No birth certificates, no drivers license, no payroll records, nothing. From the perspective of the various levels of government they were non-existent.Report
People who can’t do this are always the legal plaintiff in cases about photo ID laws. Various places like the ACLU find those people, and use them to sue the state governments over requirements.
So the number is clearly not ‘zero’. All you have to do is look at the number of cases about this. The question is, is the number who fall through the crack in the dozens, or the tens of thousands?
If the number is as low as you think it is, then this proposal harms nothing. The US government is basically out the cost of a dozen passport cards(1), and as a bonus, there no longer are state photo ID lawsuits cluttering things up, because there’s a Federal remedy already existing, and the state can say ‘Go get your Federal ID’, and stop dealing with the fringe cases at all. On average, this would probably save money…just one court case is going to be more expensive than some hearings.
Of course, it’s not just a few dozen people, and would actually be slightly expensive…but you are required by Conservative Law to pretend it’s basically no one, so it wouldn’t cost anything. So again, I ask:
What is your objection to this? To the Federal government stepping in and solving the incredibly rare circumstances of people who cannot get ID to vote?
1) We shouldn’t be using a passport there, and it would saner if the hearings just issued a court order to the state telling them to issue the ID, but…that sounds like something states could challenge, and God knows what nonsense the Supreme Courts might invent there. Whereas a state can’t legally challenge a passport as ID, not only is that a Federal law, but that’s usually explicitly included under state law as an accepted form of ID.Report
And when voting is easier, Democrats tend to win more.
Democrats claim that Republicans are the stupid party. Republicans claim that Democrats are the stupid party. Who’s right? I don’t know, because they both look pretty stupid from where I’m sitting, but I can’t help noticing that there’s a strong bipartisan consensus that making it easier for the least intelligent and conscientious people to vote will help the Democrats rather than the Republicans.Report
Trump is screwing up the postal system! We need to vote by mail!
internal logic and consistency.Report
1st We need to vote by mail.
2nd Trumps loudly denigrates voting by mail then starts screwing the PS.
logic and timingReport
We need something right this minute that can be screwed with by the opposing party! Eve thought a union supporting our candidate is in charge of the procedure!
Yeah, that’s logical…
And by the way, correlation is not causation. But, long before that, we have heard about the numbers of F-ed up postal and gov’t mistakes in the various vote-by-mail schemes. Couple that with ballot harvesting and you get your election in doubt stories from the other side. Let’s just go back to in-person voting, at least until there is some sort of consensus and unified direction in the country. Keep both sides from fucking up.
Sorry, but the newest conspiracy story is as bad as the piss hookers. And when you mix it with TRUMPPPP!!!1!! it just gets weaker.Report
At this point, you are arguing with Donald Trump more than anyone here.Report
No, I am arguing with the two of you. But nice try, attempting to change the subject.Report
Some of the recent US attempts at vote-by-mail have had greater than 20% error rates. 20% of ballots in a New York election were simply tossed out.
Neither party will accept a hotly contested election where 20% of the ballots are dumped in the trash. That means more chaos, strife, and perhaps a brutal civil war that pits all the gun owners against all the non-gun owners. I’m pretty sure the NRA will win that one.Report
Thats not a failure of the balloting process or the post office. Its also not fraud. NIce try though.
https://theintercept.com/2020/07/16/new-york-mail-in-ballots-thrown-out/Report
Sure… but wondering what 19% user error will do to the ‘legitimacy’ of the election.
If Biden wins? If Trump wins?
What does either team do with 19% good faith attempted votes discarded?
Might be worse than fraud, when you think on it.Report
Who is going to find this persuasive, the voters who have been voting by mail for decades without any concern about “legitimacy” or “fraud”? The citizens of the five states that currently are all-mail voting?
Up until very recently, it was received wisdom that the elderly, military and rural residents, mostly Republicans, were the most frequent mail-in voters.
But now, suddenly, mailed ballots are some newfangled dangerous perversion which threatens the republic.Report
Received wisdom.
In other words, they were told that with zero proof, and are just expected to believe it.Report
There was a time were you. @Aaron_David, believed, with zero proof, that 58,000 illegal immigrants (which, fun fact, included me, personally) had voted in Texas, and that 95,000 had registered illegally.Report
No, I was posting an article that described it, along with many others that talked about illegal voting. That does not indicate belief, only a search for additional information. And, as that case was refuted (by you), we moved on.
But, George and Phillip above show an instace where 20% of ballots had issues, rendering them invalid. Chip is saying that it had been received wisdom that there were no problems when mailing in votes, but now, all-of-a-sudden(!) there are people saying there might be issues. Well, we are seeing an issue right there! How many other issues are there? We don’t know at this time.Report
Just responding to Philip H’s quotation:
“Of those that were mailed in by Manhattan voters, 8,939 ballots were invalidated for a variety of reasons by the staff review. That represents a 19 percent rejection rate. The leading cause of invalidations appears to be a failure by the voter to have signed and dated the ballot, according to several campaigns who have been monitoring the process.”
…in Manhattan. Did that happen, yes or no?
In a system that is *not* designed for Mail-in votes… with voters who mostly don’t vote by mail… will a drastic up-tick in Vote-by-Mail go
a) Swimmingly, systems are easy.
b) You have to understand, this is more of a 1st time test run… we’ll get it right eventually
c) We’ll know in our hearts who really won
I’m neither pro- nor con-Vote-by-mail… I’d like all of us to state in advance what level of Vote-by-Mail FAILURE is acceptable when
a) Biden wins
b) Trump wins
Like, let’s say today, right now… all unsigned ballots are counted or not.
All ballots without post marks (and not collected in special drop boxes) are counted or not
All ballots with Post Marks *after* the official deadline are counted or not.
Unsigned after the deadline ballots? Unsigned without a postmark not from a drop box?
Is and invalid-but-good faith ballot something we can define or something we’ll know when we see it?
Let’s assume it’s not 20% user error… is 10% ok? What about 5%? It’s the “you have to understand” argument that I’m looking to preempt when one side wins.Report
PS… this is the Michael Cain observation that it took years of planning and effort to get vote by mail stable just in CO. He’s warned us that vote-by-mail is a complex system that isn’t going to happen because we thing its a good idea for 2020.Report
Unsigned ballots are not counted.
Ballots without postmarks are not counted.
Ballots after the deadline are not counted.
Good faith is a wonderful thing, but the voters in the United States do not have it at this point. On either side of the political aisle. Election integrity needs to be established, not assumed.Report
Good luck with that.
I think by the time of the general the dismissed rate needs to be in line with normal dismissal rates – and yes even paper and digital ballots used day of get tossed for various completely legal reasons. What you see in Manhattan is indeed a system failure in that instructions and voter education wasn’t ramped up to meet the circumstances. There was a flawed assumption that people simply knew what to do, would read all the directions and then do it 100% right. Clearly that was a fail, and if it persists that’s on election officials no matter who wins.
As to post offices not canceling ballot they don’t need to cancel – again that’s almost something to be expected, and it shows that some election rules need to be updated, and that now overburdened post offices need some help. Part of the beauty of the primaries is they always uncover issues that can be solved by the general if we are arsed to solve them.Report
This is verging on comical, the attempt to make such a mundane and routine thing as absentee balloting into some bizarre invention.
The fact that New York had established rules for which valid and for what reasons, and enforced them with a clear and transparent process reinforces the legitimacy of the process.
What percentage of damaged, illegible, or incomplete in-person ballots occur? In 2000, it turned out to be quite a few!
And why don’t we hear all sorts of handwringing and fearmongering about them?
But this is all just dancing around the fact that Republicans don’t want full participation by citizens in the vote.
Because again, the higher the voter participation, the more Democrats win.Report
I hope Biden wins by at least 10%… because you folks are not prepared for this.Report
“You folks”…meaning Republicans?
I’m not the first one to note that as Republicans become increasingly aware of how unpopular their ideas are, they become increasingly hostile to democracy.Report
It’s interesting how you can accuse the other side of “hostile to democracy” in one post and support the idea of Court Packing and arresting of political opponents with another.Report
Marchmaine: Team Blue really needs to figure out how to hit the curve ball or they’re gonna keep striking out with runners in scoring position.
Chip: Oh yeah? Well, Team Red cheated by filling out their rotation with great curve ball throwers and no one likes them anyway.Report
Those Belarus protesters really need to get their act together.
No wonder they keep losing elections.Report
Heh… might be simpler than that: what’s the strike zone?
Aaron David gave a Strike Zone.
Chip… “you people…”
Don’t take my word for it… here’s NPR going, “uh, guys…” from yesterday.
At least the overconfidence of 2020 is totally different than the overconfidence of 2016.Report
Neither side is going accept a close result with mail-in ballots. If Trump wins a state by x%, that means x+1% of Democrat mail-in ballots were thrown away by Trump-supporting postal workers, or x+1% were rejected by wildly partisan and corrupt election officials, or x+1% were fraudulent ballots cranked out by Trump supporters.
The reverse is also true, for any value of x less than probably 10%.
In ALL states where the winner changes after election night, due to mail-in vote counting, the election will be considered “stolen” through ballot fraud, as the initially losing side diligently kept printing more and more fake ballots until they got the outcome they wanted.
And even in states where the validity of the mail-in-ballot isn’t directly challenged, the losing side will point out how mail-in-voting unfairly disenfranchises their side, with disparate impacts one whatever group can be claimed to suffer disparate impacts, such as the elderly, rural people, urban people, minorities, poor people who don’t have mailboxes, or more affluent people whose more exposed street-side mailboxes all got robbed.
And it doesn’t have to happen everywhere, just a few isolate spots where the county or precinct vote counters acted with reckless abandon to generate a fraudulent vote. My home town used to be run by a pair of corrupt officials (the Ball brothers). They ran the liquor, gambling, and prostitution, and counted all the votes. A Republican once ran against them and was irked to lose something like 5,000 to 0, swearing that he’d voted for himself so he should’ve gotten more than zero.
So what we’ll likely be left with as an election where the losing side does not accept the outcome. Democrats went all in on that in 2016, illegally wire-tapping the Trump campaign, then illegally trying to sabotage his administration or remove him from office, then impeaching him, calling him an “illegitimate President” the whole time.
They consider that a winning political strategy, and if Trump wins again there’s already a 100% chance they’ll stick with that strategy. The trouble is that it’s making Democrat parts of the country ungovernable, even by Democrats. They’re also war-gaming the idea of having Joe Biden encouraging Western states to secede. They want a civil war, and of course the Republicans would delight in giving them one that will go worse for them than the last time they tried it.
Mail-in voting makes all of that not just possible, but likely.Report
https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=307022073101112069087023101100091068053092085093022062113106085081027118009066087119029121027118122097010075007073088082006010008022074062017003085003071018107069058051106013123078089068124066001115085016074071000003099080024067108068125000110117&EXT=pdfReport
Here’s another little problem with mail in voting.
PHOTO: Rioters destroy Minneapolis Post Office 55406
Worse than self-disenfranchising, how are people going to get their checks?Report
Police reform if it was held this week. Wait 6 months and it may be a dead issue.
I’d love Immigration Reform.
I’d like Ethics Reform.
I’d be cool with Police Reform.
M4A is seriously unlikely. The amount of political pain would be too high to do it right.
Criminal Justice Reform is dull.
UBI would run into “math” issues unless you’re planning on eating the rich or making it so small it won’t do much.
My expectation is we have some minor handouts and pretend to do something about Green stuff. If Covid is still around it might be major handouts.Report
Yeah… I was just throwing out a few hot-buttons… I don’t think there’s any chance this is the team for M4A.
It’s certainly possible that they won’t campaign on anything in particular… they don’t *have* to to beat Trump. But really it becomes a question of what they do in the first 2-years that will set-up Harris/Biden for the next cycle. Doing nothing with all 3 branches of Govt. (the hypothetical here) would be a thing, but not a likely thing. So I’m wondering what does Biden/Harris build their empire upon?
I honestly don’t know at this point. But I kinda take issue with a prevailing Democratic notion that votes/voters are lifestyle choices. That’s going to end in a very surprising fashion (for some).Report
The simple, best, and most likely answer is infrastructure. Then the sales pitch is ‘The GOP got everyone laid off, we got them back to work!’ Or some such thing.Report
Sure… we’re about due for Infrastructure Week.
My follow-up would be… good idea, what infrastructure are we building? Roads and Bridges? Meh. Green Energy? Ok… does the math work? Cities in the Plains with high-speed Internet? Like China, but better?
What’s that… not building anything, just a “Guaranteed Job” program? Run. For. The. Hills.
But in principle… yes, America could use a building program that isn’t a proto-work-camp and doesn’t cater to the Big 5 (10) Cities. I’m all for it… in principle.Report
Funny thing about Green Energy: It creates loads of very high paying jobs.
People engaged in building wind farms make between 50-150 dollars per hour. And the USA has about 25,000 MW of wind farms under construction right now – enough to cover 1/3 of Texas peak demand.
The other curious thing about wind energy jobs, is overwhelmingly white. Probably 90% of the wind plants construction force is white, perhaps 8% Hispanic, 2% Native American, and I have only met one black worker (actually born in Houston). About 5% are women.
Green energy could provide the white working class [men] abundant, high paying, jobs, relatively unthreatened by automation in the short-mid term. The main thing standing in the way of these jobs is the Republican Party submission to their donors in the extractive industriesReport
No matter the signature piece, if it is in fact or is perceived as a boondoggle or in service of some narrow pet political cause it won’t work. But if the name of the game is ‘do something to justify electing Kamala in 2024’ I think it’s the hardest one to screw up. The challenge as always with party D is the irresistible urge to pander.Report
That probably is unlikely in first the two years, but I can see the Democrats fixing the dumbass problem caused by states not expanding Medicaid in some manner. The obvious way would be to extend the Marketplace subsidies downward, and they’ll probably do that.
Although, honestly, if we’re going to manually provide health insurance to some states entirely at the Federal government’s cost, it’s completely unfair to keep charging states that _do_ pay a tiny portion of the cost, especially since we gave large discounts to states that were hesitant.
We really need to stop _rewarding_ states that don’t want to spend money on the health of their citizens…if the Federal government wants something done, don’t keep bribing states to do it. Just do it.
At minimum, we should stop making the _responsible_ states continue to pay into Medicaid. By which I mean, stop making any states pay in.Report
You mean like Jonathan Gruber said they should do back in 2012?Report
No, I do not. He wasn’t even _talking_ about Medicaid, he was talking about the exchanges.
I am saying that states should no longer be asked to pay a portion of Medicaid.
The way we built everything, and will be made worse if we extend the subsidies downward, is that blue states that actually do what the Fed _want_ and help their citizens get health care end up paying a lot more than red states that don’t do that. The longer a state holds out, the better we make the deal for them.
This is obviously stupid.
And now we are a pretty historical point where states are literally out of money, whereas the Federal government can print more (And just needs to embrance MMT and start doing that.), it seems a perfect time to say: We are ending any requirements for states to pay anything,a nd will cover the costs ourselves. We will slowly be phasing out the currently state-run programs and putting them under our control, but that will take a while, until then, the state (or us if they want) can continue to run the program as before, but we will be providing all funding.Report
(Criminal Justice Reform is dull?!?!?)Report
Crime “X” should have “Y” years rather than “Z” years.
More money should be given to public defenders.
Anything else? Maybe hire more Black lawyers?
I’d like ending the war on drugs but I don’t think it’s included.Report
I guess I’m coming at it from the perspective that “police transparency” is part of Criminal Justice Reform.Report
“Biden has to pick a Black woman!”
“Biden has to pick a Black woman!”
“Biden has to pick a Black woman!”
That was all we heard for the last few months regarding his possible VP selection, and in the end, we have been presented with a person who could only pull 2% in the Democrat primaries for this very contest (7% in her own state.) And that isn’t very inspiring. She wasn’t a politician who cut her chops on tough electoral contests in a battleground state. And that isn’t very comforting. The state she represents is a given in electoral votes for the Dems. That isn’t very encouraging. She has a weak record as a Senator and a controversial record as a state Attorney General. That isn’t very helpful.
Was she picked solely because of her color and gender? If so, that, while both racist and sexist, doesn’t lend much support to the idea that she would be any sort of good politician, let alone a possible POTUS. My guess is that she is the result of internal squabbling among the party insiders.
And that is a bad sign.Report
Another problem with “Biden has to pick a Black woman!” is that members of the black community said “What?! She’s NOT black! She’s an Indian-American!” Which is in fact how the press celebrated her Senate victory, cooing over the first Indian-American woman ever elected to the US Senate. They never said she was black, and I didn’t even suspect she was black till she made it an issue in the Democratic primaries.
So the other day I watched two hours of Young Pharaoh discussing his views of Kamala, from what I must assume is a strong black nationalist viewpoint. What I learned was, paraphrasing, “She’s NOT black! On her father’s side of the family are huge slave owners, and her mother’s side are elite Dravidians!”
Her dad’s family owned over a hundred slaves, included two named “Sambo” at the same time. They also owned a Caesar, Hannibal, and Cicero. Her mother’s side of the family were racial elites who spent over a thousand years brutally oppressing people based purely on skin color, torturing, killing, and dismembering any blacks who dared recite from the Vedas.
Young Pharaoh went on to explain that white people stole the swastika from Ethiopians, and explained how Hindus have deep ties to child-sacrificing Satanist Aleister Crowley, and of course to the German guy with the funny mustache, and that their whole system is based on a hierarchy of human worth based on skin color, with blacks of course at the bottom, comparable to frogs and turtles.
So, there’s that. Then he went over Kamala’s history of gleefully locking up thousands of black people, even ones she knew were innocent, and even fighting the use of DNA evidence to free wrongly convicted blacks. I think we’re all pretty aware that her record as a DA wasn’t not exactly “woke”.
But onward, because I risked potential brain damage for two hours to bring you folks this vital information.
So he showed that Kamala Harris doesn’t even like black people. She married a Jewish Hollywood entertainment attorney (one whose skin is the same shade as hers, because she’s NOT black). But perhaps she would share concerns over her kids growing up in a racist society? Well, not likely, because her kids are Swedish Jewish Americans (like Scarlet Johansson), and blindingly white.
But he saved the best for last. His big problem with Kamala is that she supports pedophilia. Pedophiles got her elected DA, and very likely got her elected as California’s AG. Watching this part of the tirade, I though”That’s just crazy talk!” Sadly, it wasn’t.
The previous San Francisco DA, who she defeated, was building a strong case against 40 Catholic priests, and had hundreds of pages of internal Church documents, along with victim statements. During the campaign, the Church’s supporters (and presumably all the SF area pedophiles) threw lots of money into her campaign, so she won the election. Then she deep-sixed all those cases, and they’ve never since seen the light of day. Many of the priests have probably since died of old age. The previous DA has talked about it at some length in newspapers and in interviews on Fox News and elsewhere. Interesting, all the other fifty largest cities in the US prosecuted priests during the Catholic child abuse scandal. Every single one of them – except San Francisco under Kamala Harris, even though the previous DA left her 40 open cases of priest sexual abuse of minors.
So then she wins election to become California’s Attorney General. There her responsibility extended to Harvey Weinstein and all those Hollywood pedophile rings. How many pedophiles did she prosecute? Zero. Zero pedophiles in Hollywood.
And then we have Joe, notorious sniffer of little girls, accused sexual predator, and definitely considered to be “pedophile adjacent”. Who does he pick as VP? The one person who absolutely will not go against or expose any pedophiles.
Young Pharaoh took it even further, showing how Kamala’s sister went to pizza parties with the Podesta brothers (as confirmed by e-mails), and she worked directly for Hillary Clinton, whose husband of course kept flying down to Epstein’s pedophile island. Combined with Kamala’s stance on legalizing sex workers, most of whom will of course be underage girls, and Pharaoh was ready to blow his top. He disagrees with white people on just about everything, but is willing to share land with them, but on pedophilia, he’s right there with right-wing death beasts, ready to burn them at the stake. He’s convinced that Biden and Harris, and their backers, want to have sex with his babies.
So in sum, he made it quite clear that Kamala is NOT black and was picked by racist Democrats to further the oppression of black people, by once again conning them into voting for a non-American person who is a Trojan Horse for the black community. He further made clear that she hates black people, wants to lock them all up, and wants pedophiles to rape and murder black children. And it is for these reasons that Young Pharaoh and his 20,000 viewers (on that live stream), will certainly not support Biden this fall. Somehow I don’t think he can be swayed back into the Democratic fold by citing the ACA, economic issues, or some ad about drowning polar bears.Report
You know the best thing about white Republicans? The way they have their finger on the pulse of the black community.Report
One of his complaints is that white Democrats revile and destroy the black community while pretending to be its friend.
Young Pharaoh says Malcolm X was the most righteous man the black community ever produced.Report
Funny, I thought the Dems did.
Looking at Minn. they still do.Report
First…why are you thinking what Young Pharaoh says has any bearing on anything?
Secondly…Young Pharaoh stopped supporting Democrats quite a while back, and is also, more importantly, a professional paranoid conspiracy theoriest.
You trying to bring him into the election as a serious…a serious anything that vague relevant to anything is sorta like trying to bring in Alex Jones, because that’s who he basically is. Actually, he’s crazier than Alex Jones, which is a hell of a thing to say. Young Pharaoh has literally made videos on how to spot shapeshifter…and yes, he mean real shapeshifters, that’s not a metaphor.
And a good portion of his viewers _are people like you_, people tuning in to see what thing he says next.
The people who take him seriously are a) not very likely to vote,b) almost certainly think _everyone_ in the government is part of some conspiracy, or c) people who wander over from q-anon (Because that the conspiracy theories he’s just wandered into, and they’ve gotten curious.) and already not voting for Democrats.
Republicans are invited to continue to make really loud noises about it. Really really really loud noises about how her great-great-great-great-great grandfather might have owned slaves. You keep talking about that.
I’m sure at _some_ point you guys will figure out your misstep there, but it’s pretty funny watching it.
Sadly, no mainstream Republican has take the bait, but luckily, Trump is so undisciplined he probably will at some point.Report
You seem to forget that George is something of an expert on paranoid conspiracy theorists.Report
Yep. Only blacks who support Biden are “authentically” black. I’m sure Young Pharaoh represents hardly anyone at all. Yet a third of blacks say the selection of Kamala Harris makes them less likely to vote for Biden. As they say, Kamala Harris has the black vote all locked up. ^_^
Kamala herself used black convicts for forced labor when California prisons needed workers. It’s who she is. She laughed about sending a thousand people to prison for weed. She was a gleeful enforcer of Biden’s mass incarceration policy – except for pedophiles. Those got a stay-out-of-jail card.
Perhaps that’s part of the reason that Harris was polling worse than Elizabeth Warren, a fake Indian, among the black community in early primary states.Report
Trump support in the Black community – 8%
Biden support in the Black Community – 83%
(https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/21/politics/joe-biden-black-voters/index.html)
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/13/voters-approve-kamala-harris-vp-pick-394734
Thats really all you need to know.Report
Yes, it’s CNN.
Washington Examiner: Kamala Harris divides blacks: One-third diss pick, now ‘less likely’ to vote for BidenReport
And yet Rasmussen still has Biden +4 over Trump (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/national/)
Does make one question the Examiner’s conclusions doesn’t it?
That aside, 68% of black voters approve of her in an ABC/Ipsos poll.
(https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/abc-VP-2020)
Please find a different tree to bark up.Report
68%?! Only 68%!
Q: What do you call Democratic officials who get 85% of the black vote? A: Former office holders.
Meanwhile, Kimberly Klacik’s campaign ad on Twitter and elsewhere got 12.5 million views in about a day.
Her numbers blew Michelle Obama out of the water. I think she got more views than the DNC convention did, and viewers of that are about half what the 2016 DNC convention was getting – while people are stuck at home with nothing to do except watch TV.
And in August of 2016, Hillary Clinton was often up by 10 to 15. How’d that work out?Report
I’ll make a Trading Places bet with you that the latest GOP Black Friend doesn’t even get above 30% in her the district she’s running in.Report
Oh, of course she won’t. They’ll keep voting Democrat, which is why large swaths of their city look like a post-apocalyptic wasteland where people murder each other for sport. She’s running against Kweisi Mfume, former head of the NAACP, who along with Elijah Cummings have held that seat for the past 33 years. She ran against him back in April in the special election and lost 74 to 25. I doubt there will be much of a shift from seven months ago.
Her basic stance is “If you hate what’s happening so much, why do you keep voting for more of the same?” It may not generate much of a shift in her district, since her district has been like it is for decades, but it might sway some voters in other urban districts who are just waking up to the future where their city will be like Baltimore.Report
This is probably not over the margin of error if we get real serious about mail in ballots.
Much worse, it only needs to be a swing state or three who seriously screw this up.
IMHO we have no choice but allow mail in with the virus, but there is the real potential for serious Drama here.Report
She’s no Mike Pence.Report
Agreed. Pence is, by Conservative standards, that day ready to step in if Trump dies or is impeached.Report
I think we can all agree he’d be an upgrade.Report
I’m disinclined to believe the prediction of 12-16 years of Harrisian political ascendancy because it’s been a long time since we’ve had such a thing. Debatably the Reagan-Bush Administrations from 1981-1992, but really before that you’re going back to FDR-Truman, 1933-1952. Which can’t happen anymore 5hanks to the 25th Amendment. Alsotoo, the world moves much faster in the 21st century than it did in the 20th. Even Reagan-Bush faced some very serious political challenges in recessions and scandals. It’s just really really hard to stay on top for that long.Report
Harris’s political ascendancy didn’t manage to last from the Kavanaugh hearing all the way to the Iowa caucus. It was all over in about 15 months. It turns out that the more people see her, the more they don’t like her.Report
Remember that Karl Rove was building the permanent Republican majority, using wedge issues like SSM and defeating terrorism abroad. It lasted about 4 years.Report
I mean, in reality, even if I would’ve hated it, if the Iraq War hadn’t gone totally off the rails (ie. they hadn’t disbanded the Iraqi Army, etc.), not tried to privatize Social Security, not put a moron in charge of FEMA, and not stayed stuck in 2004 on social issues forever, while also going virulently anti-immigrant, a somewhat moderately conservative party on social issues, that’s pro-immigration, and moderately conservative on economic issues could’ve continued to win.
Now, you can argue all of the above is an inherent part of Republican Party governance, but I don’t completely buy that.Report
I think all those Republican politicians are supporting Joe Biden. As Will Rogers once observed, if the flies are circling you’ve found the outhouse.Report
Yes, but Rove was talking about the Republican party.Report
Uh oh. There Spectator made a brilliant suggestion about people Trump should pardon next.
The chief one I see is to pardon blacks in California who were wrongly convicted and sentenced to harsh jail terms for minor drug offences by *drum roll* Kamala Harris. He can invite their families into the Oval Office and make a huge deal out of it, too, over and over, all the way until November. He can even get Kim Kardasian and Kanye West to stand beside him when he does it, as he rails against Joe “Crime Bill” Biden and Kamala “lock’em up” Harris.Report