I'm confused... why do even Democrats seem conflicted on Kamala Harris as a replacement of Joe Biden?
memfree @ memfree @lemmy.ml Posts 16Comments 210Joined 2 yr. ago
memfree @ memfree @lemmy.ml
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2 yr. ago
It would be more useful if Biden did the Court thing rather than waiting for Harris to maybe do it if she wins. What if she doesn't win? What is she wins, but the existing Court does yet more damage between now and then?
I do agree with you that Biden was a good President. I've never seen a President that did all the stuff we wanted, but they've always faced opposition and had to make comprises to get anything at all pushed through. I really wanted nationalized health care, but the best Obama could do was Obamacare -- which isn't great, but is sooo much better than the whole 'pre-existing conditions' denial system we had before. I really want the U.S. to stop backing Israel because of the Gaza crisis, but I don't want to see all the surrounding nations to wipe Israel off the map if the U.S. isn't there. I thought Biden gave a fantastic State of the Union speech. We know it was on a teleprompter, but he delivered with energy and style. I suspect his decline (as with so many other aging people) has been uneven/sporadic, so I can't even blame anyone for 'hiding' his decline because I bet everyone was seeing lots of good days in there, too -- at least until the last month or so.
Off topic: I have a relative going through a sudden decline. She's been old for a long time, but the last couple months have been a dramatic change for the worse despite no particular health issue. She's just suddenly much, much older and even her neighbors are commenting to us family. Seeing it in her, I imagine Biden might be going through the same thing.
He's now announced that he's endorsing Harris. https://www.vox.com/politics/361827/biden-drops-out-2024-kamala-convention
Moments later, Biden released another statement endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to take his spot atop the ticket.
"My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made," the statement said. "Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this."
What is clear is that the presidential contest is entering uncharted territory for the modern era.
Washington state and New Jersey specifically allow certain types of euthanasia, but I'm not sure how illegal it is -- or any 'suicide' is -- in different places. Is euthanasia a crime in your state? Is (attempted) suicide?
Murdering someone **else ** is a crime, so it is nice to have laws specifying how a person can legally help someone without being charged with murder.
The U.S. has historically not 'punished' suicide as much more than a misdemeanor, if at all. From PDF paper from 1962:
As stated by a leading authority on criminal law30
When a man is in the act of taking his own life there seems to be little advantage in having the law say to him: "You will be punished if you fail." ... What is done to him will not tend to deter others because those bent on self- destruction do not expect to be unsuccessful. It is doubtful whether anything is gained by treating such conduct as a crime
England, on the other hand, was very hostile to suicide until it was decriminalized in 1961 (paper is too old to mention current status):
A person who committed suicide was punished at common law by burial in the public highway with a stake driven through his body and by forfeiture of his goods and chattels to the king.' Attempted suicide was apparently punished like any other misdemeanor.
If Biden steps away, Harris is the only realistic chance. Various groups would be offended if the VP -- who is also a woman, and is also a black woman -- was bypassed. Further, there is an easy flow of money from Biden to Harris without having to muck with shuffling funds through different PAKs. Lastly, Harris avoids tomfoolery about how delegates must vote if republicans try to go to court about it.
I fear you are correct that Harris is not a favored candidate when placed against other Democrats, but that doesn't matter as much as swing voters in a few states. Sadly, the current polling I've seen suggests those critical voters don't like her. That said, I think she has the chance to come out with a new message for a path forward. Maybe they'd vote for that? I don't know. She'd need to be positive, strong and also to absolutely ridicule Trump.
Side note: I've seen a couple articles suggesting the most progressive dems want Biden to stay while the more moderates want him out because they think it will help in Congress. Samples:
wait'll I tell ya 'bout Regan!
I love Bernie, but after his heart attack in 2019, I was worried the public would reject him for health reasons.
... had I known then where we'd be now... sheesh.
Why not vote (D)? The Rs plan on contesting the voting everywhere all the time, and if the last round was any indicator, they will even contest in places the win, so.... IF the goal is to take votes from Trump, it would probably be better to show that even in fire red areas, there are still some cool blues.
let's see how this goes down: https://www.thedailybeast.com/bob-menendez-rumors-of-my-resignation-greatly-exaggerated
True, but I'd still rather infrastructure to be publicly held utilities. Energy suppliers are a strange case because any company can become part of the grid, but the power lines to our homes are generally controlled by one entity. I want at least that entity to be responsive to the public, but I also don't want random suppliers taking down the grid.
Your take on Harris interests me. I, too, worry that the needed swing voters might skip on voting for non-whites, or for a woman, but I figured they'd all be OK with a prosecutor who prosecuted drug offenders while it was against the law. I understand California specifically might be angry about that, but I'd have guess the rest of the country would be OK.
Sigh.
Those weren't MY points. It was just proof you do not choose to read. You said:
Not just legislation that he signed, three things that we got because Biden has the big desk and not literally anyone else with a D by their name.
The reply was the politico piece, and you claimed nothing on it counted. I checked. You were wrong. I posted 3 you missed and added two more (with links) which you ALSO ignored.
I didn't bother with obvious stuff like defending Ukraine, strengthening alliances that had faltered, or surging the economy (especially since I think most economic stuff is a lagging indicator if under any Presidential control at all). If you weren't going to read the politico article, why waste my time? I only waste my time now so the trolling becomes obvious to all.
Point taken, but would they warn non-customers? Would they bother making forecasts for rural areas or other places where it wasn't cost-effective for the number of properties they insure?
In my dream world, Biden is currently refusing to step down because he wants the RNC to focus on him, but he will hand the torch to Kamala in the next week or so before it is too late to change any ballots (Ohio and such).
CTRL+F "executive order"
- (farming) ...executive order directing agencies across the government to promote competition and take on monopolies.
- (pot) ... executive order directing the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct a review of all available cannabis science
- (AI) ... executive order starts the clock for more than a dozen federal agencies to figure out what the gold standard for “safe, secure and trustworthy” AI handling should be for their own operations
And that's just the little stuff you didn't notice -- not the big stuff like the SAVE Plan for student debt (also an executive order) or caregiver support.
I guess that is besides the point, which seems to be redefining everything Biden has done as ineligible. I'm guessing you'd say Regan gets no credit for ending the Berlin Wall since HE didn't tear it down.
Read the lines before that -- or at least read the "also" to notice stabbing is a secondary injury.
Mostly: just put the avocado down! ERs feel the need to warn about how common an accident this is, so why tempt fate?
People lose their grip on the avocado and accidentally slice their palms or fingers, doctors have warned. When this happens, there’s a high likelihood of people accidentally severing their nerves or tendons. However, people also tend to stab themselves in the hand as they attempt to use the knife tip to remove the avocado pit.
From the Sun:
Wolfe recommended holding an avocado down on a cutting board and slicing into it with the dominant hand, cutting around the fruit at the equator, then rolling it halfway over and cutting again, according to CBS New York.
Whenever it comes down to definitions I like to go to expert definitions rather than common language. For food (are tomatoes a fruit?) I use FDA definitions, for which the definition of bread excludes what you'd mean by "cake".
- Layman readable synopsis (bakerpedia)
- Sec. 136.110 Bread, rolls, and buns. (fda)
- Sec. 136.115 Enriched bread, rolls, and buns. (fda)
I don't think the FDA defines cake, but it does specify how different types of cakes, brownies and such should be labeled (search for "cake" here).
I'm paranoid that if/when governments get in an argument, foreign infrastructure will either shut off or escalate pricing such that the public suffers (and yells at their local leaders to 'do something!').
I liked the (long) piece over here: https://slrpnk.net/post/11395506
tldr;
You can’t blow up a social relationship. The total collapse of this society would provide no guarantee about what replaced it. Unless a majority of people had the ideas and organization sufficient for the creation of an alternative society, we would see the old world reassert itself because it is what people would be used to, what they believed in, what existed unchallenged in their own personalities.
Proponents of terrorism and guerrilla-ism are to be opposed because their actions are vanguardist and authoritarian, because their ideas, to the extent that they are substantial, are wrong or unrelated to the results of their actions (especially when they call themselves libertarians or anarchists), because their killing cannot be justified, and finally because their actions produce either repression with nothing in return or an authoritarian regime.
Chinese-backed companies have distinct advantages over competitors in the U.S., such as heavily subsidized supply chains for raw polysilicon and unfinished solar modules, as well as low-cost government financing.
U.S.-based Convalt, for example, is struggling to bring online 10 GW of U.S. capacity at a factory it started building in upstate New York in 2022.
"If we are to succeed, we need American manufacturers like Convalt to survive this onslaught of low prices, to build factories with capacities that allow us to compete against the largest global firms, with Chinese beneficial ownership," CEO Hari Achuthan said
This is one of the many reasons it is a bad idea to privatize utilities/infrastructure. That said, U.S. subsidies helped destroy economies across the globe (like Jamaica's dairy farmers via world bank loan rules), so it is basically 'fair play' for China to play a similar game.
But she has name recognition now that she's been VP. That is a huge bonus.