There is an interesting wrinkle in the arguments about who Biden should choose. Bass has suggested that she would not be interested in running for President later, which would allow a Biden presidency to be transitional, paving the way for a new generation, allowing primary voters to choose who the next candidate is, without setting a Vice President as a clear favorite.
Some supporters of Harris see this as sexist, a view of ambition as a negative in women in a way that doesn't apply to men.
Josh Barro sees the ambition criticism as nonsense.
Jonathan Chait notes that the scientology flap reveals a downside to picking politicians who aren't all that ambitious.This is such a nonsense take. Suppose Biden picks Susan Rice. And then people say “You passed over Kamala for being ‘too ambitious’!” Is the implication that Susan Rice is not ambitious? Whoever gets put on the ticket will be an ambitious woman.
Nobody will remember this controversy in a month.
It’s a lot easier for Harris’ camp to take umbrage at Kamala Harris being passed over for Woman To Be Named Later than to explain why the specific woman named as the VP candidate is a worse exemplar of women’s empowerment (and very likely first woman president) than Harris is.
and that’s why nobody will remember the controversy in a month — either Harris will be on the ticket, or another woman liked by Democrats will be, and the focus will be on who is the candidate, not who isn’t the candidate.
Jamelle Bouie thinks ambitious people will govern better.One reason you want an ambitious VP is that they’ll organize their career to avoid things like this that would look bad on the national stage
ie Harris has been looking to move up all along, and has avoided these land mines. Bass hasn’t.
i continue to think this is total beltway politics brain, divorced completely from the question of governing. whoever biden chooses should a) be prepared to be president and b) should want to be president
reversing the ship of state after trump will be an all hands task and the vice president should be chosen with that in mind, especially since the choice will have almost no weight on voting in november.
if biden wins and keels over a month later the vice president should not only be able to quickly take over the job but should have a vision of what she wants to do with the office.
Sincerely,
Thomas Mets
Those are good points. It may not be wise to choose a VP who hasn’t been vetted on a national level.
It is odd that Harris is being knocked for being too ambitious to lead. Biden is 77. There should be someone not only capable but very willing to take over in case his health declines or some other unfortunate event occurs.
Trump is doing terribly right now. Biden really has to make sure his pick doesn’t give Trump any much needed ammunition. The Benghazi thing is ridiculous but you just know the Trump campaign and Fox News will talk about it nonstop if Rice is chosen as Biden’s VP.
Dark does not mean deep.
China does only want peace, not because of any inherent peace-loving nature, but because its military sucks and the leaders have no illusions about its strength. Even an invasion of a much smaller and poorer country risks getting dragged into a costly and embarrassing quagmire. After all, if China was really this power-hungry expansionist power, why have they waited 70+ years without invading Taiwan?
It's not Trump's influence that breaking up our alliances, it's the fact that all of America's allies, particularly in Asia, are in reality client states with little in the way of foreign policy autonomy, who all resent to some degree how unequal these partnerships are and that they are repeatedly forced to subordinate their own geopolitical interests to America's. The Obama era policy of building this unified front to encircle and pressure China failed because countries like Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, etc. have just as many disagreements with each other as they did with China, and Americans don't really understand those dynamics well enough to play peacemaker, and so we could do nothing aside from telling these countries to shut up and get with the program. Though I'm sure everything will magically be better once Biden gets elected so he can go around telling his funny racist anecdotes and forgetting what country he's in.
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"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." - Sinclair Lewis
“It’s your party and you can cry if you want to.” - Captain Europe
You're projecting a bit here, whitewashing history isn't really a thing in China and if anything, writers tend to over-emphasize the negative parts. The official propaganda is largely seen as amateurish and cringeworthy, and there isn't anywhere near the same kind of flag-waving chuddery you'd find here.
While they don't whitewash it, they are certainly happy to censor it.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/03/asia/...ntl/index.html
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Do you really think that censorship has made people completely unaware of an event that happened only 30 years ago? If people want to remember an event, they will find a way regardless of what the government wants. If they want to forget, then no amount of media coverage can make them remember.