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Kamala is ready, and so is America

Posted on by angelo

With a few exceptions, Democrats have closed ranks.

They remain loyal to President Biden, at least for now, despite his deeply troubling debate performance with Donald J. Trump last week.

No, my dear Biden supporters, he didn’t just have a bad night. This shocking performance deeply concerned me and millions of other Americans that he might not be healthy enough to continue.

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Being president is challenging enough. Doing this job and running for re-election must require almost Herculean endurance. Doing all this at 81? I am almost 20 years younger than the president and I don’t know if I could handle the physical and mental demands that it entails.

I understand why Biden is running again. As he has said repeatedly, he believes that the election is, as in 2020, a fight for “the soul of America”: either democracy survives another day, or the would-be dictator Trump returns to what he sees more as a throne for retribution than a virtuous platform for public service.

But the time has come for Biden to step down, and the right person to replace him is Vice President Kamala Harris.

Yes, racists hate her and independents will have a hard time convincing her, but Harris has advantages.

Like more than half of the country’s voters, she is a woman. In fact, I would argue that whoever replaces Biden must be a woman.

Except for the way he treated Anita Hill during the confirmation hearings. Supreme Court Justice Clarence ThomasBiden has built a reputation as a staunch defender of women’s rights, especially since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. WadeBut Biden, like me, will never be able to fully understand what it means to be treated like a second-class citizen simply because you have a uterus.

If Biden is the man of honor he claims to be, and I believe he is, he will support Harris and endorse her for his party’s nomination.

The repeal of Roe v. Wade The law not only restricted women’s reproductive rights, it also stripped women of a portion of their citizenship by allowing right-wing lawmakers and judges to dictate what women can do with their own bodies. No legislature in the country has been able to muster the votes to pass a law controlling what men do with their sperm (aside from storing it), but if a woman tries to avoid having children by means other than contraception, she can’t have a baby. rhythmic methodThe so-called “small government” conservatives are ready to usurp the expertise of qualified health professionals and control the entire process.

Harris is the perfect messenger. With 70 percent support for abortion rights nationally, she has already proven herself to be a powerful and effective messenger on the issue. It’s also important to note that restrictions on abortion rights have a disproportionate impact on women of color.

Harris would also be the perfect critic of Trump’s criminality and his ongoing indictments at the state and federal levels. California Attorney General and a local prosecutor before that, Harris has the bona fides and experience to deal with the consequences of the GOP’s decision to select as its presidential standard-bearer an unrepentant, twice impeached and 34-time convicted felon who is also credibly accused of attempting to overthrow the U.S. government and stealing top-secret government documents.

And let’s not forget his recent guilty verdict in a nearly half-billion dollar corporate and real estate fraud case in New York and the fact that he was convicted of sexual assault and defamation.

Harris has also proven herself on the foreign policy front, having ably represented the White House around the world on issues as varied as the war in Ukraine, migration and the dangers posed by climate change.

Young voters and voters of color would be crazy for Harris. Biden has struggled to keep both groups in his fold this election cycle compared to 2020.Harris was born to immigrant parents and identifies as Black and American Indian..) Progressives and minority groups have criticized her tough-on-crime record as attorney general. as a betrayal of its most progressive positions as local prosecutor, but if her choice means history is going to be made, I’m confident they will rally to support her.

Democratic Party insiders worry that a decision by Biden to abandon his White House bid could lead to a free-for-all between his potential replacements. The best way to avoid that is for Biden to make his unwavering support for Harris loud and clear.

And why not? If she was good enough to be your running mate in the 2020 campaign, and good enough to have been within a heartbeat of the presidency for the past three and a half years, then she must be good enough to take on the party’s nomination.

There will be skeptics – there always are – but if Biden is the man of honor that he claims to be, and I believe he is, he will support Harris and endorse her for his party’s nomination.