Because Trump didn’t do it in the midst of a campaign, which is what people are criticizing Biden for doing. Reagan is a more like for like.
As for the popularity of striking down race as a factor for admissions, I have a very strong feeling that this will be one of those things that will dramatically change after it happens (like how abortion was not really all that important to Protestant Christians until Roe). I have a feeling that it will definitely have the effect of increasing the motivation of the Black Democrats for which this is a big issue to the polls.
Let me throw this conspiracy theory out there. Ignore the “he promised” line for a minute, if Biden nominates a Black woman for SCOTUS, it make it that much easier to ditch Kamala as his running mate in 2024.
Isn’t her approval rating in negative numbers by now?
FTR I have no clue what the hate on Kamala is. Hell, I’d rather have her as President than Sleepy Joe and she is better than Quayle was or Palin would have been. But every time I hear about her it’s about how she is the worst Dem in office ever.
There is an awful lot of dislike for Harris out there. To my mind, it slots neatly into the contortions of hatred that certain facets of mostly Republicans go through every time we have a woman with power: H. Clinton and N. Pelosi are two recent examples. I see a lot of anti-Pelosi sentiment in my small sample (extended relatives), along with some conspiracy theories about how power-mad she is.
I imagine that race factors into it somewhere as well, but there’s a really hard core of misogyny out there. I can’t imagine that it’s a very large number of people, but if they’re loud enough (behind their anonymous memes etc.) they can have an outsized infuence.
Personally, she’s in the same category as Biden for me: even within the viable Democratic candidates, we could have done better, but we could also have done a lot worse.
Yup. I get mailings from both parties, and leading up to the last election, all the Republican stuff was about how if Biden was elected it would mean that Pelosi was in power. It was really bizarre – they didn’t actually say anything about Biden, it was all about Pelosi and even more weirdly, Hilary. Apparently Biden is just a puppet for Hilary.
If he doesn’t run in 2024, he doesn’t have to worry about ditching Harris. IMHO the Democrats would be better off with Biden and Harris both not running. Let the primary be about new faces and debating what new things we should be doing going forward rather than focusing on defending the Biden / Harris record. In other words, better to be on offense than on defense, at least in this situation.
And yes, he should keep his promise to nominate a Black woman. The sooner the better. At the very least he should put out a self imposed deadline, something like “I will make my nomination by no later than the end of the month.” I mean it took Trump only 8 days from the death of RBG to the nomination of ACB, and then less than 1 month from the nomination to her final vote on the floor of the senate. Maybe that was because it was just before the election and he had to rush the job? No, that’s not the case. It took only 12 days between Kennedy announcing his retirement and Kavanaugh being nominated. This sort of nuts and bolts of not getting things done is part of the problem with Biden and Harris, and why we need new blood for the 2024 election.
Yes, I remember well all the “Joe and the Ho” rhetoric, where we were constantly told that Harris basically slept her way up to the point where she could be selected for her token minority status. So when I hear the vague comments about Harris “not being very popular” I have to consider how much of that is simply due to the sheer malignancy of the right’s misogynist and racist rhetoric. They simply hate her for what she represents regardless of what she does or says, much in the same way they’ve hated Hillary for all these years.
Which is not to say there aren’t valid reasons to criticize Harris (or indeed for “Sleepy Joe”, to use the standard RW smear) but most of what’s driving the dislike has little to do with reality and everything to do with irrational hatred.
After the Democrats had held the White House for eight years, the default expectation, due to the usual time for a change dynamic, was a GOP victory in 2016. Clinton winning the popular vote was more of an achievement than realized. Another way to say it is — a nominee hated by the GOP isn’t by itself a reason to expect the candidate will lose. Each Republican (and Democrat) only has one vote, no matter how sure they are about it.
Not to worry about upcoming Senate hearings on Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, Rand Paul promises that unlike Democrats, Republicans will take the high road.
“We will keep an open mind, making no rushed or harsh judgments ahead of time, and judge the nominee based on their character, experience, and their knowledge of the law.”