"Biden picked Kamala as VP purely because of identity politics,"
That's a part of it, but not the whole story. I suspect that another part of it is because, in Kamala, Biden saw a female version of Obama. That's why I myself supported the Kamala VP nomination back in 2020. I hoped that she could and would become a second version of Obama.
Well, The Biden-Harris ticket is a reflection of the Obama-Biden ticket in that way. The issue is I don't think you can be groomed into becoming a charismatic adored Democratic party leader. You either have it or you don't. Obama had it, and Biden's attempt at recreating the ticket many years later (2008 to 2020!) pushes too hard towards the idea that Kamala could have been improved. The tickets are also the same in that the VPs were seen as weak presidential candidates, many were shocked when he picked her because of how poor her presidential candidacy went, but that's also part of the upside you get when choosing them as your VP - they may not be able to aspire for more.
In any case - I fundamentally understand that her non-racial and gender identity aspects seem appealing - the California prosecutor. The issue is that in the year 2020 during the great Floyd, cops' stock tanked and Kamala's fundamentals were worse.
The whole moderate cop thing all stinks. He should have went with a more conventional choice imo.
Anyone from the democratic bench really. My personal pick would have been Klobuchar, but my guess is the majority of them would have been better picks than Kamala.
The betting markets has Demmings up there as well because she was a black woman who was a police officer. I think she made sense because she’s from Florida, but the same criticisms would hold. A police officer VP during 2020 doesn’t seem like a strong pick to me.
Kamala seems more attractive so she has than on Demmings at least. I’m ambivalent on Demmings.
A police officer could at least reassure moderates and swing voters that the Biden ticket rejects the very stupid and radical idea of defunding the police.
Sure there are tradeoffs. The issue with pandering to minority representation is that if picking klob results in say, a half percentage point increase among old white voters, you win bigly.
The main point is less that it would impact the election in a major way then (I think the performance would be a wash honestly) it’s that Klobuchar would have been able to be a strong leader in event of Biden stepping down. A stronger VP pick also would increase the calls for him to step down to a fever pitch. This is partially why I think he picked Kamala in the first place - to avoid that outcome
TBH, if he’d perform better among Midwestern whites with Klobuchar but worse among minorities, then he might have lost Georgia and thus Georgia’s two US Senate seats, since Trump wouldn’t have waged a verbal campaign against the election security in Georgia afterwards and thus reduced GOP turnout in the two Georgia US Senate elections in January 2021, which allowed the Democrats to win both of those US Senate seats. A GOP Senate would have been a tough nut for Biden to crack, I would suspect.
FWIW, I do think that Trump is unique due to January 6 and the amount of support that he was able to muster for it within his own party, even if his attempt was half-assed and ultimately failed. But Yeah, Trump won't be able to run again if he wins a second term, unless he gets SCOTUS to use the unconstitutional constitutional amendment doctrine to strike down the 22nd Amendment.
Trump, as awful as he is, did not deserve to get assassinated. He's more akin to Viktor Orban (plus term limits), not akin to, say, Hitler or Stalin. Though I do dislike Trump and the GOP for their general anti-immigration stance, as an immigrant to the US myself and a naturalized US citizen. But unfortunately this is something that resonates with a lot of Republicans. In regards to illegal immigration, I'd compensate for it by importing many more global cognitive elites. But I don't view illegal immigrants as bad people or anything like that. In fact, they and their ancestors have been a part of the greater Western civilizational space for over half a millennium by this point in time.
"Constant comparisons to Hitler and the idiotic retort that “well would you have wanted Hitler assassinated?” are gesturing to a political environment that we are nowhere near. Trump is not Hitler."
TBF, even assassinating Hitler in July 1944 was a mixed bag, since by that point, almost all of the victims of the Holocaust were already dead and since Hitler's military incompetence arguably benefitted the Allies. Wouldn't want to replace Hitler with someone more competent, right?
Of course, if I was a Jew in Lodz or in Budapest in July 1944, then I might have felt very differently about this.
I haven't thought much about Hitler assassination plots, I always assumed it would have been a good thing. Nazism strikes me as contingent on the man himself and killing him would have been the end of it.
Assassinating him at the very tail end - I suppose I'm less sure. I don't know what that alt-history would have looked like.
Really, even killing Hitler a couple of months before July 20 would have been much better since that way Greater Hungary’s Jewry would have been almost completely spared from the Holocaust.
Killing Hitler in 1939 or early 1940 would have been much better, of course.
Yeah, killing Hitler would have been a good idea before he did his damage, assuming that he wouldn’t have been replaced by someone more competent but still evil and ruthless. Killing Hitler near the end of the war ensures that the lion’s share of Hitler’s damage still occurs but also that Germans can claim that they were stabbed in the back twice, in both World Wars.
"Biden picked Kamala as VP purely because of identity politics,"
That's a part of it, but not the whole story. I suspect that another part of it is because, in Kamala, Biden saw a female version of Obama. That's why I myself supported the Kamala VP nomination back in 2020. I hoped that she could and would become a second version of Obama.
Well, The Biden-Harris ticket is a reflection of the Obama-Biden ticket in that way. The issue is I don't think you can be groomed into becoming a charismatic adored Democratic party leader. You either have it or you don't. Obama had it, and Biden's attempt at recreating the ticket many years later (2008 to 2020!) pushes too hard towards the idea that Kamala could have been improved. The tickets are also the same in that the VPs were seen as weak presidential candidates, many were shocked when he picked her because of how poor her presidential candidacy went, but that's also part of the upside you get when choosing them as your VP - they may not be able to aspire for more.
In any case - I fundamentally understand that her non-racial and gender identity aspects seem appealing - the California prosecutor. The issue is that in the year 2020 during the great Floyd, cops' stock tanked and Kamala's fundamentals were worse.
The whole moderate cop thing all stinks. He should have went with a more conventional choice imo.
Who would you have proposed in place of Kamala?
Anyone from the democratic bench really. My personal pick would have been Klobuchar, but my guess is the majority of them would have been better picks than Kamala.
Also, what about Val Demings?
The betting markets has Demmings up there as well because she was a black woman who was a police officer. I think she made sense because she’s from Florida, but the same criticisms would hold. A police officer VP during 2020 doesn’t seem like a strong pick to me.
Kamala seems more attractive so she has than on Demmings at least. I’m ambivalent on Demmings.
A police officer could at least reassure moderates and swing voters that the Biden ticket rejects the very stupid and radical idea of defunding the police.
Even before George Floyd’s death, non-Asian minorities disliked Klobuchar:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/23/black-activists-joe-biden-amy-klobuchar-vice-president-275326
https://www.newsweek.com/black-latino-groups-leaders-want-anyone-amy-klobuchar-bidens-vice-president-1505822
Sure there are tradeoffs. The issue with pandering to minority representation is that if picking klob results in say, a half percentage point increase among old white voters, you win bigly.
The main point is less that it would impact the election in a major way then (I think the performance would be a wash honestly) it’s that Klobuchar would have been able to be a strong leader in event of Biden stepping down. A stronger VP pick also would increase the calls for him to step down to a fever pitch. This is partially why I think he picked Kamala in the first place - to avoid that outcome
TBH, if he’d perform better among Midwestern whites with Klobuchar but worse among minorities, then he might have lost Georgia and thus Georgia’s two US Senate seats, since Trump wouldn’t have waged a verbal campaign against the election security in Georgia afterwards and thus reduced GOP turnout in the two Georgia US Senate elections in January 2021, which allowed the Democrats to win both of those US Senate seats. A GOP Senate would have been a tough nut for Biden to crack, I would suspect.
FWIW, I do think that Trump is unique due to January 6 and the amount of support that he was able to muster for it within his own party, even if his attempt was half-assed and ultimately failed. But Yeah, Trump won't be able to run again if he wins a second term, unless he gets SCOTUS to use the unconstitutional constitutional amendment doctrine to strike down the 22nd Amendment.
Trump, as awful as he is, did not deserve to get assassinated. He's more akin to Viktor Orban (plus term limits), not akin to, say, Hitler or Stalin. Though I do dislike Trump and the GOP for their general anti-immigration stance, as an immigrant to the US myself and a naturalized US citizen. But unfortunately this is something that resonates with a lot of Republicans. In regards to illegal immigration, I'd compensate for it by importing many more global cognitive elites. But I don't view illegal immigrants as bad people or anything like that. In fact, they and their ancestors have been a part of the greater Western civilizational space for over half a millennium by this point in time.
"Constant comparisons to Hitler and the idiotic retort that “well would you have wanted Hitler assassinated?” are gesturing to a political environment that we are nowhere near. Trump is not Hitler."
TBF, even assassinating Hitler in July 1944 was a mixed bag, since by that point, almost all of the victims of the Holocaust were already dead and since Hitler's military incompetence arguably benefitted the Allies. Wouldn't want to replace Hitler with someone more competent, right?
Of course, if I was a Jew in Lodz or in Budapest in July 1944, then I might have felt very differently about this.
I haven't thought much about Hitler assassination plots, I always assumed it would have been a good thing. Nazism strikes me as contingent on the man himself and killing him would have been the end of it.
Assassinating him at the very tail end - I suppose I'm less sure. I don't know what that alt-history would have looked like.
Really, even killing Hitler a couple of months before July 20 would have been much better since that way Greater Hungary’s Jewry would have been almost completely spared from the Holocaust.
Killing Hitler in 1939 or early 1940 would have been much better, of course.
Yeah, killing Hitler would have been a good idea before he did his damage, assuming that he wouldn’t have been replaced by someone more competent but still evil and ruthless. Killing Hitler near the end of the war ensures that the lion’s share of Hitler’s damage still occurs but also that Germans can claim that they were stabbed in the back twice, in both World Wars.