Kamala

Don't know about you but I have no intention of trying to #resist this. I'm all the way in.

https://t.co/HbmmRbkVNU https://t.co/S7eOgFJG3g

— President “ramble-parade of lies and boasts” (@realworldrj) August 11, 2020

Harris's undergrad degree is from Howard, which Republicans will probably complain is inside the Beltway, and JD from the University of California at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco—Biden, of course, went to the University of Delaware and got his law degree at Syracuse. So not merely no Ivy degrees but two state school degrees between them. Somehow this is the most moving for me.

Also, Harris is the first Asian American and the first Caribbean American and the first first-generation child of immigrants on both sides nominee, and the first one with a Jewish spouse, making her a veritable feast of intersectionality. And like everybody else I can't wait to see her use those debate chops we've seen at Senate Judiciary hearings on poor Michael Pence.

This was certainly the best choice Biden had, probably inevitable but certainly pleasing. Rose Twitter calling her a cop and the Trump machine calling her a radical leftist who has captured poor Joe in her bloody claws more or less cancel each other out. Her own ideas have advanced since she was a DA—she's the second-most leftist member of the Senate, according to the DW-Nominate system, which TBH doesn't give you the results Chuck Todd or Rose Twitter might offer, which got me into a hilarious Twitter war the other day:

Behind Warren (top left used to be Tammy Baldwin last time I was following this list, and everybody was calling Hillary Clinton a neoliberal though she was considerably left of Obama, let alone Biden). Very interesting! I wonder why people ignore this.

— Yas, Semite! (@Yastreblyansky) August 2, 2020

No. It's the DW-Nominate score for members of the 116th Senate, intended to represent where politicians stand on a two-dimensional version of the scale from "left" to "right" https://t.co/LX1Dx3c83Q, which found Warren and Harris as the first and second most "left" members.

— Yas, Semite! (@Yastreblyansky) August 2, 2020

I personally don't believe there can be a completely useful objective measure of how "left" people are, which is why I always put it in scare quotes, but if you expect the measure to wholly agree with your own fashion concepts...

— Yas, Semite! (@Yastreblyansky) August 2, 2020

Come on now, not even the most diehard, revisionist Kamala stans think she's a real leftist. That's just absurd, unless you're operating with the base assumption that even "extreme" liberalism is largely center-right. Not sure where the "faulty understanding" is on my end.

— Weston David Pagano (@westonpagano) August 2, 2020

3. Her vote on the Sanders NDAA Amendment is clearly explained here https://t.co/RZAXs6Fgjv

4. M4A has always been a fashion statement, not a plan.

— Yas, Semite! (@Yastreblyansky) August 2, 2020

5. Harris stans worship her because she's relatively "moderate". I'm not one of them (if I'm a "stan" it's for Warren but I DON'T want her nominated for VP, which I think would be a waste of her talents and a poor political choice), though I think it's fine if Biden wants her.

— Yas, Semite! (@Yastreblyansky) August 2, 2020

Since it is in fact saying SOMETHING on the basis of real data, rather than saying "well no true leftist would agree with this therefore it's wrong" I want to ask what is it saying? Is there a better vocabulary for describing it?

— Yas, Semite! (@Yastreblyansky) August 2, 2020

The DW-Nominate score is kind of like IQ; it doesn't mean what the scientists want it to mean, but it's reliable, so it must mean something. And whatever it is is certainly to Harris's credit. Maybe someday I'll try to figure out what it it is. In the meantime, I really enjoy her baffling expectations of what those tired words like "left" can be used for.

It's practically Korean soap-opera perfect that much of her service as California attorney general was at the same time as Beau Biden had the same job in Delaware and they had a real personal and professional and wonky connection:

During her time as attorney general, she found a camaraderie with the younger Mr Biden, as they would strategize together on cases and compare notes. Former aides of the two camps told the Associated Press that the pair used each other as sounding boards, and even their staff formed close relationships with each other.

When there were negotiations with banks during the foreclosure crisis, one former Ms Harris aide told the Associated Press she talked or texted with the younger Mr Biden daily.

Thank you @KamalaHarris from me, Jill, & all the Bidens for your kind remembrance of Beau today.

My dad used to say that you know you are a success as a parent when you turn & look at your child & realize they turned out better than you — I'm so proud of the man Beau became.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 30, 2019

That almost makes it look as if the famous debate collision with Joe Biden was a bit of a setup.

“There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me,” Ms Harris said during the debate while targeting Mr Biden for his role in opposing mandatory busing....

“I don’t hold grudges. I’ve made it really clear that I don’t hold grudges. I think it was a debate, it was as simple as that,” he said in a recent interview.

She's a great dancer, too.