Kamala Harris, Our Next President?

 Contrasting Harris and Trump

1. Kamala Harris was a respected prosecutor
Trump is a disreputable actual criminal felon

2. Prosecutor Harris is highly educated and demonstrably intelligent
Trump is... not

3. Prosecutor Harris prosecuted sexual predators
Trump IS a sexual predator

4. Prosecutor Harris prosecuted the owners of scam colleges that ripped off students
Trump WAS the owner of a scam university that ripped off students - until he was stopped by law enforcement

5. Attorney General Harris helped win a settlement against five banks that helped homeowners harmed by those banks
Property owner Trump defrauded homeowners and was caught and forced to repay nearly all the money from the defrauded victims of his crime

6. Harris has released her tax records and been transparent about her business dealings
Trump has famously never released his tax records and been intentionally vague and obtuse about his wealth and business dealings, beyond boasting boorishly about how wealthy he is

7. Harris supports women's rights to self-determination as it regards health care decisions and pregnancies and would work to restore women's rights on this front
Trump boasts that he caused the overturning of Roe v. Wade

8. Harris is a stellar role model for women, girls and all good people
Trump is a stalker of women and girls and just not a good man - Trump boasts and laughs about sexual assault and abusing his wealth and privilege to ogle teenaged girls while they were dressing

9. Harris would not try to deport "all" undocumented immigrants, nor would she refer to them crassly as "the illegals"
Trump has promised to try to deport all undocumented immigrants as soon as he wins (IF he wins), never mind the shattering economic impact such a policy would have on average US families and employees

10. Harris has zero instances of her being indicted or convicted of crimes and no impeachments on her record
Trump, as we all know, was impeached twice and in the last four years has had dozens of indictments against him, resulting (so far) in 34 actual felony convictions

Additionally, so far as I can tell, Harris has no criminal colleagues or close allies in her coterie
Trump surrounded himself with many corrupt people resulting in at least 9 criminal convictions of his allies and staff (or former staff)

To be clear, I have policy disagreements with Harris and I hope she has learned from some of her policy mistakes in the past... Harris does not speak with the overwhelming fluid, compelling elegance of the Obamas... She (like the rest of humanity) is a flawed person running for an important office. But from all appearances and given the known data, there's just no contest between Harris and Trump as to who the better, more intelligent, more decent candidate is.

We'll see where this goes.

Is Deporting ALL Undocumented Immigrants a Rational Theory/Policy?

No. The answer is, No. Not even close.

Set aside the human rights notions that humans have human rights including the right to self-determination and to move from places they view as unsafe to places they view as safe. Just forget that.

Also, forget the overwhelming biblical and faith-based notions of welcoming immigrants and doing unto others as you'd have them do unto you.

Forget human kindness and decency.

The GOP and the "project 2025" types are saying that, given a chance, they will deport ALL undocumented immigrants. That's something north of 10 million people.

But think about it. What are the economic results of suddenly removing/deleting 10 million people from the US economy... from the US workforce? Do we know?

Yes, we do. According to a wide variety of economic experts, the result of such a policy (IF they could pull it off) would be economic disaster for the US economy. The data from experts:

Of those 11.3 million, we estimate that 7 million are workers. What is the economic contribution of these unauthorized workers? What would the nation stand to lose in terms of production and income
if these workers were removed and returned to their home countries?

Mass deportation of 11.3 million unauthorized immigrants would also remove these 7 million workers from the U.S. economy, reducing the total number of U.S. workers by nearly 5 percent.

[They crunch the numbers and...]

The main findings of this report are as follows:
• A policy of mass deportation would immediately reduce the nation’s GDP by 1.4 percent,
and ultimately by 2.6 percent, and reduce cumulative GDP over 10 years by $4.7 trillion.

• Mass deportation would cost the federal government nearly
$900 billion in lost revenue over 10 years.

• Hard-hit industries would see double-digit reductions in their workforces.

https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/10/massdeport1003-summary.pdf

And economist after economist, research after research say the same thing. And it's only reasonable. You can't just delete 5% of the workforce and the income and consumption and tax base that those people represent and expect that it won't harm the economy. Indeed, it will probably harm the "regular US workers" the most (Trump and his level of super-wealthy may well not be impacted significantly, but most of us are not super-wealthy, are we?).

Trump's proposed mass deportations would backfire on US workers

...The immigrants being targeted for removal are the lifeblood of several parts of the US economy. Their deportation will instead prompt US business owners to cut back or start fewer new businesses, in some cases shifting their investments to less labor-intensive technologies and industries, while scaling back production to reflect the loss of consumers for their goods.

Prior episodes of mass deportations and exclusions have occurred at several moments in US history. Research has shown that, far from generating economic benefits, their net effect was to reduce employment and earnings for US workers—in the short run and long run.

https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economics/2024/trumps-proposed-mass-deportations-would-backfire-us-workers

I could go on and on. But just read what scholars and economic experts are saying about this very bad idea. Trump's policy change (which he probably can't implement now any more than he did in his first adminstration) would devastate our economy and have widespread negative consequences.

One of the starting points for conservative ideology is reasonably weigh the consequences of an action or policy, and that we should watch out for unintended consequences. Indeed.

We All Need More Kindness

We all need more kindness, more patience, more grace, more love.

We desperately need less violence, less vitriol, less demonization of the other, especially the Struggling Other, the marginalized and poor, the ill and down and out.

Prayers for Donald Trump and the person killed in the shooting, as well as those harmed in the shooting.

Prayers for the shooter - who was not much more than a child - and their family.

Prayers for the violent and those who promote violence, that they will choose other ways.

Prayers that we all take action to see an end, or at least a lessening, of violence. Especially violence and harm towards those who struggle.

What IF Biden Steps Down?

Great Cloud of Witnesses

I do not pretend to be a genius when it comes to politics and I sure don't know if Biden should or shouldn't step down. This is not a call for him to step down. Having said that, however, if his health is failing, it would not be unreasonable for him to step aside. He's certainly earned his rest. Clearly, him considering stepping down is now on the table, so let's talk about it.

So, IF he steps aside (many are asking), who could possibly run? I've seen conservatives say things like...

"All the names put forward have significant negatives and don't seem to be particularly strong candidates."

I would just respond to THAT notion by saying... setting aside that conservatives disagree with Democratic policies for whatever reasons, are you kidding me? "Significant negatives..."? Especially as compared to the GOP alternative (but truly, even aside from that)? Really?

Just three examples of many great choices.

1. Kamala Harris

A. She's the vice president!

B. Before that she was a successful senator and before that, a respected lawyer.

C. All of which is to say she is highly educated, smart and has political history and savvy.

D. Additionally, she's been an inspiration to girls, women, women of color and their allies in reaching the heights she has. She is the first woman vice president. She's the first person of color in that role.

E. She's relatively young, so no worries of her being "too old."

F. And, of course, she's not irrational nor does she talk like an idiot or make promises of prosecuting her political enemies.

For 1,000 reasons, she's an extremely qualified candidate and far and away better than the convicted candidate. I'd love to see her debate Trump.

2. Andy Beshear
(I'm sort of hoping that IF there's a shift away from Biden, it would be a Harris/Beshear ticket, but then, I'm prejudiced for the Kentuckian)

A. Governor of Kentucky

B. The very popular Democrat governor of a very red state. Kentuckians, by and large, love Andy.

C. Highly educated, clearly intelligent, well-spoken and familiar with and experienced in politics.

D. Like Harris, although he is a highly intelligent and skilled lawyer, he has never promised to use the justice system to prosecute his political enemies.

E. Like Harris, I would love to see Beshear in a debate against Trump.

F. Also quite young and yet, educated and experienced with a clear history of wise political leadership.

3. Pete Buttigieg

A. Another highly educated, clearly intelligent, very experienced politician

B. All of the above points about Beshear are true for Buttigieg, as well

C. Military service

D. Multilingual (maybe not completely fluidly in all cases, but clearly familiar with multiple languages and able to answer questions in multiple languages - that compared to Trump, who tends to speak English at about a 3rd to 5th grade level).

E. Would destroy Trump in a debate.

That's just three super strong candidates right off the bat.

In ALL of these, it would be nice to have intelligent, respectful, respectable adults in office. In each of these people, they have lovely and supportive marriages (not that this is a requirement) and are actually part of and relatively faithful to their particular faith tradition. They each have demonstrated that they know the Bible better than the other candidate (not that knowing the Bible is a prerequisite for being president, but if you're going to present yourself as a religious person, you should actually be familiar with that religion - Trump is clearly not, although he is willing to shill a poorly-made, overly-expensive Bible to people willing to lose their money in Trump's name).

None of these very intelligent, very experienced leaders have any scandals or arrest records, whereas their opponent is NOT intelligent and is a moral disgrace for many reasons and is clearly corrupt and a felon, to boot.

With each of these candidates, none of them are perfect people, of course. Each of them have things I strongly disagree with in their politics and policies. But are they qualified and strong candidates? Of course, they are. "Significant negatives" for these (and other) candidates? I just don't see it.

++++++

I will note that I didn't mention Michelle Obama. I think it is a given that she is of course an extremely qualified and strong candidate for the office if she wanted to run. I think she would almost certainly win in a landslide, so strong she is as a candidate and just a clearly wise, good person. But she's been consistently clear that she's not interested in the job and so, I didn't mention her.

Beyond her, the list of qualified, strong candidates is pretty long. I just chose three of the most obvious candidates from my point of view, not to say there aren't other qualified candidates.