Let's haver some fun with the VP nomination. Who would be your choice? Feel free to post the rationa

Yeah. Biden was never a governor, but he is easily the best President I can ever remember of getting real tough legislation through with the slimmest of majorities. (If only the Dems had and handful more senators and kept control of the House!)

His decades in the Senate and then as Vice President were much more important than what any Governor without Federal Govt experience could ever bring to the table.

Kamala is already showing amazing growth from her unsuccessful run in 2020 to now.

 

I hope not. The stuff that's come out so far should be disqualifying.

 

What stuff is that again?

 

You light skin dudes had a good run in the 90s. Al B. Sure, Christopher Williams, even G-Money from New Jack! And in sports you had Jayson Williams of the Nets.

 

And is the most likely to lose a state that otherwise she would win.

 

He wrote an anti-Palestinian op ed in the 90s saying “Arabs are too violent to form peaceful societies.” Was asked about it the other day and instead of disavowing it said “are you seriously asking me about something I wrote when I was 20?”

Still hasn’t apologized for it.

 

Fetterman has concerns about Shapiro for V.P., aides tell Harris’ team

From a fellow Pennsylvanian.

Fetterman has concerns about Shapiro for V.P., aides tell Harris’ team https://t.co/M5SWgtgenj

— POLITICO (@politico) August 4, 2024

 

Harris doesn't need Shapiro as VP to deliver PA in my opinion. He could help tremendously as a surrogate for sure, campaigning on her behalf. But she needs someone with better broad based country wide appeal, with less downside risk.

 

I’m much more emotionally connected to this decision than I’ve been previously. The high stakes, of course. But also the tight timeframe, this feeling that this is an opportunity to ratchet up the momentum a bit more, win several news cycles as the media compare this person to Vance.

He may be the least dynamic campaigner, but were I forced to choose, I’d have to go with Kelly. Between Kelly, Walz, Shapiro, and other highly attractive options that have been discussed, Kelly is the one that seems to me to about future governance, and not just gaining a slight advantage in the election. If there’s one issue that causes more headaches than any other for Dems it’s the border, and Kelly brings not only deep expertise there, but cross party respect in Arizona. Kelly would be a statement that Harris, unlike Trump, takes the issue seriously and wants to fix what’s broken, as opposed to just using it as something to get the base wound up.

 

There is nothing any Democrat could do to "fix" "the border problem".

 

Yeah but Fetterman is the new Manchin. I regret having him on our team.

 

The way Dems went to the mat for him but he can't defend the house Dems while the GOP attack them is wild. Like you want to be Twitter saying stuff but not picking up the phone? I am doing some work stuff now but there like 2 other instances, I have blanked on but will come back to.

Oh and welcome back to America!

 

Do you think passage of the legislation that Trump killed off in the House would help? There’s no easy “fix” of course. But Dems have been poor at recognizing that there are legitimate concerns about border security and, in so doing, they’ve given the GOP a wedge issue. Not that Trump gives a shit about actually trying to improve border security or deal with the root causes behind why so many undocumented people attempt to enter the country. For someone who gins up his base by using fear, anger and racism, it’s an ideal topic.

Kelly is extremely well respected by both parties in Arizona for his understanding of border issues and his commitment to trying to improve the status quo. If chosen as her running mate and elected, I’d imagine Harris would give him a central role in addressing border security, and proving a path to citizenship for individuals who’ve already lived here for years. If not to fix the border, to dramatically improve the situation, and to begin to make it a less effective issue for the GOP.

 

Look, I'm very biased. Personally, I'm for essentially open borders both as a philosophical exercise and also as a pragmatic one to clip the cables on the demographic timebomb that's about to explode. Plus I've yet to hear a compelling argument about stopping immigration that doesn't boil down to racism in the end.

But I also know for certain that on a purely political level, when the Democrats completely solve every Republican demand regarding immigration and the border, the Republicans will simply make more demands regarding immigration and the border.

 

Here’s the oped. Think the quoted tweet deals with Shapiro’s reaction, which is significantly worse than anything he said when he was 20.

Josh Shapiro's article, with a reply.

Shout out to the librarians. https://t.co/J1DZf4msEr pic.twitter.com/xdcIUa5oU9

— Adil Haque (@AdHaque110) August 2, 2024

 

Good job by the researchers. Can't have a VP with this issue. Let alone considering how young people are upset about Israel's actions in the war with Hamas and Hezbollah. No need to bring this to the forefront.

 

You ain't kidding. Suppose she had already chosen him. A bunch of young people staying home because an unrepentant hothead was one step away from the White House is not needed right now.

 

I thought his OpEd was going to be worse than what he wrote. Problematic for sure through a 2024 lens. But he wasn’t exactly wrong. Palestinian governance (and a lot of MENA governance) is institutionally weak. There are a lot of reasons for this (Balkanized cultural pockets, corruption, outside regional and “Western” influence, arbitrary boundaries). Outside of a firmly established authoritarian leadership, it is very difficult to provide sufficient long or even medium term guarantees wrt international agreements, and yeah, the groups are pretty battle hardened. PLO/Hamas, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, responses to the Arab Spring elsewhere. It is difficult enough for more robust democracies to hold up their end of the bargain (Rabin v Netanyahu visions, Trump in the US, Brexit, etc). He was correct to be skeptical and his only flaw was in not at least briefly acknowledging Israel’s shortcomings or in contrasting PLO/Hamas power struggles with maybe a Jordan to highlight this as more of an institutional problem rather than a cultural one. In other words, it’s not that Arab/MENA societies are too violent. It is that many governments are too fragile (and that violence is a sign of that fragility) to backstop those agreements.

It’s a shame that this OpEd written by a 20 year old 31 years ago is problematic because he’s not exactly wrong in his thinking…but it is problematic.

 

I think one reason that we have so few young candidates for either party is that they grew up in an era where everything they ever did or said is on a video or cloud drive somewhere.

Man I'm glad nobody had cellphones at the bars I went to after rugby matches.

 

It's problematic because it's racist as hell was wrong to boot: he's saying that, of the two people who shook hands as part of the Oslo agreement, Arafat was the one who was likely to be killed. Which, given what's happened since, is darkly amusing.

 

He’s arguing that Arafat didn’t have the authority given the political realities of both parties to insure that deal. And if you were to go back to 1993 and equal odds were made on who would be assassinated in the next few years Rabin (by anyone) or Arafat (by a non-Israeli actor), I don’t think you’d see a lot of action on Rabin from people in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel or anywhere.

Jordan got a peace because Hussein could guarantee it. Egypt got a peace because it was still (relatively) easy to achieve and Sadat paid for it. Lebanon and Syria have always been messy as hell and there has been a “pseudo peace” w Lebanon. When you run an election post Oslo Accords with two infant political parties both of whom have paramilitary wings and one of them boycotts the entire election, that’s not a sign of stability.

I don’t agree with Shapiro. Now or then. I think the agreement needed to be made because it is the best deal that can be made with the hope that leadership/power coalesces around Arafat. The agreement promotes the opportunity for institutional stability to take root.

But JMO: Shapiro shouldn’t be on the ticket because some people will view this as racist rather than a commentary on political/institutional stability of one of the parties to the agreement.