Kamala uninterviewed?

This will be a gripe of short-lived relevance, but I still wanted to say it out loud because there are other themes implicated that have more enduring nature.

About the Harris candidacy, I keep seeing:

“Harris has yet to give an interview…”

As if that's some kind of gotcha that shows weakness, fear, or lack of validity.

She's not exactly hiding. Barely more than a month ago, she was advocating for Biden. All of a sudden, she is thrust into a situation that was not anticipated. She has done extraordinarily, being at once a Vice President and a candidate, charged with assembling a team, approving preliminary messages, selecting her own Vice President after numerous interviews, syncing up on messaging with Walz, preparing presentations for the convention, and surely meeting with a zillion people who have competing theories of how she should spend her very limited time.

I don't know about you, but that's more than I get done in a month.

Not to mention the fact that her job up until now has not been to make policy but to support Biden's policy. It will probably take her a little while to work out how to articulate a strategy of her own, and how to present it in a way that is respectful of the fact that she's still Biden's VP.

All to say it doesn't look to me like ducking anything. It looks like walking straight into a firehose. While it will be interesting to hear an interview, I write off any delay as saying there are only so many waking hours in a day. Few people have assembled a campaign at all in that time, much less one with this amount of momentum. I think she's doing great.

But it's equally reasonable to note that an interview is really not going to shed any more light. It's a form of outreach to be sure, but there aren't secrets that are likely to be uncovered in that way. The people who are against her are hoping there will be a gotcha moment, but I think her policies to the extent that she has them formed yet, are on display. At this point we are trusting values, because that is what this election is about.

I am not a Democrat, but an Independent. By that I mean that I don't vote on anything or anyone just because I'm part of some tribe, I think things through. And I would be writing this same essay if it was Liz Cheney running and she had not sat down for an interview. I know enough about her and her values from what she stood up for in the Jan 6 hearings to know Democracy would be safe under her. I would be unwaveringly saying the same thing as I'm saying about Harris right now: democracy is on the line, and that matters more than anything.

So if you know anything about me, and there's no reason you should—I'm just a random guy with an opinion, you know that climate is in fact my top priority. And that I disagree with Kamala on some really material things about climate, mostly urgency. And she used to be against fracking and seems to have moderated. That's not great. But it doesn't change my unconditional support for her one iota.

Because if Trump is elected, there will be…

• no discussion of science,
• no chance for climate at all,
• no civil rights,
• no protective government agencies,
• no part of government, nor property entrusted to it, that is not for sale,
• no safety for anyone gay,
• no safety for women,
• no safety for people of color,
• no freedom of religion,
• no dignity for the elderly,
• no respect for injured or fallen heroes,
• no respect for people with disabilities,
• no real safety for anyone who is not straight, white, male, young, and rich,
• no safeguards for the environment,
• no workplace safety,
• no employment safety and fairness standards,
• no sane public health policy,
• no chance for fair elections in future elections.

Whatever I might think about Harris—or even Cheney in my hypothetical—and her policies, seems small compared to worrying that democracy is secure. And, believe me, I would disagree with Cheney way more than Harris. But my point is that small partisan matters are not the issue right now, and even large partisan matters are dwarfed by the threat to democracy. Partisan reasons are not the reason to cast a ballot one way or another. Not this year.

Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy. There should be no higher priority than making sure he does not become US president.

We'll be lucky if the cancer that Trump has planted does not cause a bunch of people to challenge election results without basis and then have the morally compromised Supreme Court that he has stacked approve such antics, completing a procedural coup.

Serious damage has been done to our democracy, and it is limping along as it is. A strong showing for Harris and a Democratic Congress is a chance to have enough time to mend some things.

Otherwise, it's probably game over for US democracy, and a short road from there to game over for the world against climate change as petro-state dictators gain an edge at a terribly bad time.

Any attempt to suggest that Harris needs to sit down and discuss something in more detail completely misses the point and makes no sense to me.

• Democracy, not autocracy.
• Hope, not fear.
• Joy, not anger.
• Acceptance, not division.
• Lawfulness, not lawlessness.
• Constitution, not bullies.

Those are the things Harris stands for, and you aren't going to learn anything materially different from that in an interview. It'll be quite interesting to hear what she says in an interview, but she is not derelict for not having sat down for an interview. We have enough information for now, so let's cut her some slack. She should be getting credit for managing priorities well enough to give us the important things first. That bodes well for the future.

 

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Author's Notes:

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This essay originated as a post on Mastodon. It has been edited to fit the richer format of this venue, and somewhat edited to include additional content not in the original post, so you could think of that post as an initial draft.

The image was created by so-called “generative AI” via Abacus.AI and its interface to the FLUX.1 facility via a chat interface. I'm not sure how happy I am about the idea of these tools, but find myself needing to learn how they work, so I figured I'd use this as an experiment to see how they work. The prompt I used to get this graphic was:

“Make a graphic in black and white that shows, in silhouette form, two people sitting in comfortable chairs, facing each other. One of the people, the person to the right as we're looking on, is Kamala Harris in a pantsuit, and the other, to the left as we look on, is a generic news person doing the interview. There should be a coffee table between them, with a coffee cup on each side so that each would have something to drink if they needed it. Assume that the two are being recorded for television, so it is not necessary for there to be a visible microphone or any note-taking material.

And yes, if you're paying attention, it didn't take all of my instructions. The result was not a silhouette, for example. It just confirms that these tools are not as good as people often say. They make mistakes. Sometimes really conspicuous ones. But this was the best I got after several attempts, and was good enough for this very flexible case. I still am not a big fan of these tools, both for their environmental footprint and because they confabulate freely. They don't really understand, just mimic. That it drew anything at all suggests there were probably other things humans had done that were close enough that it could crib from them. But I'll gripe in more detail about all this on another day.

About the Kamala Candidacy

I have some thoughts on the sudden shift Sunday from a Biden/Harris ticket to a Harris ticket. I'm just going to bundle them all together here.

An Unusual Transition

I think it's going to be difficult for Kamala to develop a different position from Biden on issues where she disagrees. Her position as VP has required that she echo Joe's position, not make her own policy, but as the Democrats' primary candidate, she must feel free to differ.

It's important that Joe give her express permission to disagree publicly on matters. He can still be the decider for the present administration, but they need to understand that she might differ, so they must be explicit about this.

In some cases, he may want to shift positions. In others, they might need a transition plan. In others still, they should give people a heads up that there will be a difference. This is how democracies work. It's odd, but we should be proud, not embarrassed or ashamed, that there is some complexity to it. That we can do it in a civil way is exactly the kind of thing we want to preserve, and to keep the Republicans from destroying.

Residual Biden Baggage

Biden was not just laggging in the polls because he was old. He had taken other actions that alienated voters that Kamala can get back if she is careful.

One example is the Gaza genocide. Many felt Biden was complicit in this by continuing to send weapons and not pushing harder on Israel to stop. Frequent references were made by Netanyahu to the idea that it must defend itself, but no rational person thinks you have to kill an entire society, every last man, woman, and child in order to defend yourself. Many have defensibly called this a genocide, even though a formal ruling on the matter will take longer than most of these people have to live. In February, however, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel must take steps to prevent any acts of genocide in Gaza, and many took this as a clear hint that what they were doing was in range to be considered a genocide.

It is important that Kamala not follow in Biden's footsteps in appearing to be complicit in this, and in fact work with President Biden to make sure the US has taken a hard stance on that even now. Not only is this important for a purely humanitarian reasons, but she's running on law & order, and it's a bad look to be aiding and abetting someone who may later be charged with war crimes.

Moreover, within the US, there have been peaceful protests of the treatment of people in Gaza that have been summarily labeled as antisemitic. Police forces have had a far too strong hand. There is a Constitutional right to peaceful assembly that some say has been intentionally violated. There is a block of voters who are outraged and have been blaming Biden for that. This is a chance for a reset.

Democracy Now produced an excellent video on this matter, interviewing Annelise Orleck, former chair of the women's and gender studies department and the Jewish studies department at Dartmouth College, who suffered a violent arrest and said in the interview "People have to be able to talk about Palestine without being attacked by police." Kamala needs to adopt a more discussion-friendly position, again because this kind of hard line approach is more appropriate to the GOP.

Certainly I have had discussions with people about why it's important to vote Democrat in this election, to avoid a monster getting into office. Rightly or wrongly, there are voters who in good faith have concluded that the policies so far under Biden are those of a monster as well. Trying to discuss degrees of monsterness is not likely to be Kamala's path to success in such discussions.

Democrats need to stand for the idea that political problems are resolved by discussion, which may sometimes involve peaceful protest as protected by the Constitution.

To navigate this, I think Kamala establish some clear guidelines to clarify Democratic policy on this. I suggest at least these rules of thumb, which seem to me to be fair to both sides in this debate:

• Israel has a right to defend itself.
• Genocide goes well beyond mere “defense” of Israel.
• One can challenge Israeli policy without being antisemitic. (A US State Department web page explicitly clarifies “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic”)
• Engaging Palestinians in a civil way does not imply one is pro-Hamas or antisemitic.
• Peaceful protest is Constitutionally protected.

Picking a Vice President

Not because he is Jewish, but specifically because (as discussed above), he's taken hard line stances against protesters, Shapiro would not be a good choice of of Vice President. Picking him would not be healing. It would open questions of Constitutional violations and police brutality that would distract from a clean campaign.

I have been swayed by the large amount of support I've seen from others, and the observations that he's an excellent speaker and debater, that Pete Buttigieg is the right choice for Kamala's VP.

I'm not 100% sure that Pete is being considered, though I definitely feel he should be. Among those that the media seems to think are being considered, I see Mark Kelly as my second choice. Mark doesn't seem like a bad guy, but he's not as dynamic and engaging as Pete, who I really think could bring a lot more real energy to the campaign.

Skeletons in Kamala's closet?

At this point I really don't care if there are skeletons in Kamala's closet. She checks enough boxes right now that I'm ready to back her in spite of bumpiness that might come up.

I've seen various claims in news articles and on social media that Kamala's past record will soon be seen by the public as its own kind of baggage, that the Democrats are in a euphoria, not paying attention to her past record, and about to be surprised. I'm not especially worried about most of that, even where I might disagree.

Of course, I reserve the right to complain and to suggest she modify policies I don't like. But that's consistent with my real concern, which is that she stand for civility and especially peaceful resolution of disputes through civil discussion, and for the Constitution as we have traditionally known it before the GOP recently started to challenge and dismantle it.

Democracy is under attack. Honestly, if Liz Cheney had registered Democrat and was Biden's VP with the necessary popular support, I'd probably vote for her. Not because I want her policies. I disagree with most of what I've seen of her taste in social policy. But because right now at this point in history, our biggest concern is to stabilize our democracy, and I know she would reliably do that. Fortunately, I know that Kamala will keep the Constitution safe and will have better policies—even if I might still disagree with a few. Once we're safe from Project 2025, and better safeguards are put in place, we can get back to ordinary partisan bickering.

My biggest concern is Climate Change, but even that has no chance without a functioning democracy. So we have to fix democracy first. Science cannot function without an open exchange of ideas, free of censorship or the injection of propaganda. Project 2025 is putting the unfettered exchange of ideas in severe jeopardy, so we have to definitively stop that.

I do hope we hurry, though, because the Climate Change is not waiting.

 

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Author's Notes:

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The photo of Kamala is a size-reduced version of the public domain Official portrait of Vice President Kamala Harris at Wikipedia.

Stayers and Steppers

I have issues with all the discussion over Biden. People seem to be talking at crossed purposes. I think some are not listening to what others are saying. That's super disrespectful, but also hugely unproductive because there's no point arguing against something no one is saying.

For example, some are seeing this as pro-Biden vs anti-Biden. That's a huge misunderstanding. The ones asking Biden to step aside are almost exclusively people who like and respect Biden. They're NOT “against” him. They're interested in seeing Dems win, and they don't think Biden can.

I'm going to refer instead to Stayers and Steppers. Stayers are those who think Biden should stay, and Steppers are those who think Biden should step aside. I conjured these words so they don't have pre-attached senses of Good vs Bad. They're just people divided by their preferred tactic for winning the election.

It comes up in Biden v. Trump discussions that folks say to vote Biden because he's not an autocrat. I also hear some Stayers saying that Steppers should stop talking about forcing a candidate on voters that they didn't vote for, that that's autocratic. It's not autocratic. The process is messy, but it's not autocratic.

Many of us have used terms like fascist and autocrat loosely for our whole lives because we never needed the terms to refer to our reality. We now risk seeing these played out in horrifying reality, so let's be more careful with words.

I do think who takes over and why is important, though. Kamala's whole job is to be the backup for Biden. So she's the obvious choice. I agree opening the convention to a fight among other candidates will create both chaos and resentment. Skipping a well-qualified woman of color will be conspicuous. Let's not do that. But, either way, it's not autocratic.

There are people who don't like Biden in this, and might even be described as anti-Biden, but that group is not the Steppers. I'll call the third group the Disillusioned.

Some Disillusioned are just shrugging quietly, some are actively bitter. This group either won't vote or will vote third party. The Disillusioned are not Steppers. They don't care any more what Biden does, because they've washed their hands of it.

The fact that there exists a Disillusioned group is the primary reason, I think, that Biden's numbers are suffering. He was suffering even before the debate. But the debate gave us a reason to talk about Biden's poll numbers. The Steppers are worried about how many Disillusioned there are. In many cases, they've talked to the Disillusioned to try to get them to come back, to explain how important it is to back the Dems. That discussion usually goes nowhere and is painful. For the Stayers not to acknowledge that the Steppers have made such good faith arguments to the Disillusioned that the Stayers have pointlessly made to the Steppers (because the Steppers are not the ones walking away, they are just remarking on the fact of others doing it) is super-annoying and incredibly disrespectful and unproductive.

People have become disillusioned for may reasons, but Gaza is a big one. No amount of saying the war should finally end is going to get them back. They're mad about the genocide, and they're hearing “it's time to end this” as “our genocide has killed as many as is productive.” That doesn't appease them. They need an admission that a very bad thing is already done and still ongoing and we've supported that. They think someone must take blame. It's hard to see the Disillusioned-by-Gaza coming back at all, but if they do they'll want Biden, who made us complicit, gone. For that reason alone, Biden cannot heal this by staying.

Some Disillusioned are also worried about age. Some may have seen someone among family or friends go downhill. They know how quickly it can happen. They know it doesn't happen all at once, but at first it's "now and then". No amount of showing a good day will convince them there aren't bad days. That's going to still haunt them. To them, Biden's reassurances sound like a promise of a brave face that may hide a hidden truth.

Plus, defense of Biden's gaffes gives cover to Trump's.

Some Disillusioned just don't want a choice of two old white guys. That's only fixed by Biden stepping aside.

Biden and the Stayers keep showing us people who like him, but no Stepper doubts there are such people so that helps not at all.

The Stayers point to good days, but no amount of good days rebut the possibility of bad days.

The Stayers point to past accomplishments, but no past accomplishment is proof of a future one.

A lot of pointless, wasted talk at crossed purposes.

The Steppers aren't the ones walking away. They're just observing that OTHERS are.

Tonight's [July 11, 2024] press conference did not speak to those others.

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Author's Notes:

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This essay by me was originally published on Mastodon on July 12, 2024. Click through to see some discussion that followed.

Only very light editing was done to create this almost-mirror copy, to make a references to “tonight” clearer and to make better use of bold and italic, which are not available on Mastodon.

Note from the original essay:

I wanted to refer to logical proof rules for universal and existential quantifications, but I went for less nerdy English instead, hoping to be more accessible to all.