Hi All,
Well let's get the bunting out and celebrate that the Democrats in America have nominated a 'woman of colour' to be their Vice Presidential candidate. Clearly this isn't just an act of woke (there now has to be a female and or BAME person on the ticket), but also a clever bit of politics. Joe Biden if he wins in November would be even older than Trump at 78. The Presidency is a demanding job and he'd be seeking re-election at the age of 82. My thought is that the plan is that if he wins he will maybe do a year, retire and let Harris take over mid term, giving her and the democrats an inbuilt incumbency advantage for 2024: Harris is centre -right : not like odious far left 'squad' in the House ( actually they'd be at home in Corbyn's Labour, but Corbynites would probably see them as centralists) . Plus the American people will get their first woman of colour and first woman as President without having the tedium of actually being elected as a President first, making America more into a Parliamentary form of government.
The other thing to note is that the Guardian and other left wing papers are fawning over this choice, the only actual reason is colour and gender. Except that if these papers looked a little deeper they would note that Harris is actually a lot more right wing than them. In actual fact I'd say that on balance Harris is as right wing, maybe more so, than our own person of colour and female Home Secretary Pritti Patel.Harris had a similar job in California where she was decidedly unliberal in regards to justice and prison sentences . Yet the Guardian and the left generally absolutely detests Pritti Patel and in my view has often used racial slurs against her ;allowing a cartoon portraying her as a cow with a ring around it - she's a Hindu in whose religion cows are sacred animals, but and of course calling a woman a 'cow' is offensive on its own terms. Or put another way if 'the other side' had done this about one of their own liberal types there would be hell to pay.
That neatly sums thing up because, of course, the left et al, aren't really interested in the career development of women or gays or persons of colour . They are more interested in being tribal. Note not ideology , because as noted Harris is more right wing than your average liberal or labour politician in the UK and is closer to the British Conservative party. However because her label is Democrat and not GOP or not Conservative she will get a free pass over her past actions as being centre right and be adorned NOT by the record and NOT by party philosophy (right or left) but because she has a certain skin tone, certain genitalia and belongs to a certain tribe , in a certain political party.
That's a very low bar and frankly it's insulting to her and to women and all the other things that some one makes an achievement just because of a characteristic and not their character, beliefs, record or action.
