Category: Race,

George Skelton: Kamala Harris should have never run for president

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“The hard truth: Harris was a weak presidential candidate [emphasis: Peanut Gallery],” Duran wrote. 

Harris excelled in California politics because she’s part of a home state Democratic cabal, an insiders’ machine. But that machine doesn’t work outside California. [emphasis: Peanut Gallery]

…She hadn’t yet established herself in the U.S. Senate. And she hadn’t exactly excelled in her previous job as California’s attorney general.

…After being elected to the Senate in a 2016 cakewalk [emphasis: Peanut Gallery]…

…Harris’ lack of money was just a symptom of her failed presidential bid, not the root cause of its demise.  [emphasis: Peanut Gallery] Her downward slide in polls destroyed the confidence of potential campaign contributors in her ability to win, drying up the money flow. But the plunging poll numbers resulted from her inability to connect with voters.

And she couldn’t connect with voters because of the core weakness in her candidacy: a lack of cohesive strategy and clear [personalized message].

…The campaign was confident she would win the votes of African Americans in South Carolina and from fellow Californians. [Without much basis for that other than the color of her own skin, that incomplete thinking was an insult people of ALL backgrounds. Whoever thought she could have California liberals without actually being a liberal hasn’t seen too many campaigns.]

…Anyone who watched Harris as attorney general could have predicted this outcome. She refused to take positions on any state ballot proposition. Her excuse was that the attorney general writes the official ballot titles and summaries, and she didn’t want to appear biased. But that was nonsense. She was trying to avoid making political enemies, especially among law enforcement. [Which is understandable but not very courageous or principled. And it sure as shit doesn’t leave much room for paving a clear path forward.]

…“This is my third presidential campaign and I have never seen an organization treat its staff so poorly.” [This indictment doesn’t actually mean that she personally is difficult to work with but it does mean her top brass were. Like a President and their administration, the buck for that ultimately rests with her.]

George Skelton: Kamala Harris should have never run for president – Los Angeles Times

sigh…

Oh, and her refusal to shake hands and do selfies was cast by her campaign as a security decision. The Peanut Gallery believes wholeheartedly that there were indeed threats to her safety, threats a candidate who was not a woman and a POC would never have had to endure. The Peanut Gallery has also seen a lot of campaigns and a lot of Secret Service people in action and firmly believes this was a cop out and excuse for lazy and/or California style campaigning. The Secret Service are damn good at their job and they weren’t going to let anything bad happen to her. Basically this is the job she was asking for and reality is the place she was running for it. It’s harsh but true but she need to woman up or get out of the way. If Barack could manage to do selfies, shake hands, and bend down to talk to children she could too.

If you are too good to speak to early state voters (and make no mistake, this is how the campaign presented her) then you do not deserve to be in the running for the job.

If You Still Hate Michael Vick, You Might Be Racist

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We can’t consider the story of Vick’s rise and fall with understanding the context of the systemic racism that informed his life at every step, including his interaction with the criminal justice system and an American public intent on punishing people of color far more harshly than they do white people.

There is no shortage of evidence showing the profoundly racist double standards our society applies to black boys and men, particularly those who have found financial success or have any sort of public platform.

White boys make mistakes. Black boys are thugs. White boys have their whole futures ahead of them. Black boys are superpredators.

…Since pleading guilty to the dog-fighting charges 10 years ago, Vick has served nearly two years in federal prison, paid for the care of all of the dogs seized from his property, apologized sincerely and completely for his crimes, publicly campaigned for stricter laws against dog fighting and joined— on his own volition — the Humane Society of the United States’ campaign against dog fighting.

If You Still Hate Michael Vick, You Might Be Racist

hmmm

Kamala Harris’s decline in the polls, explained

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Kamala Harris’s decline in the polls, explained – Vox

Coalition building?! Don’t make the Peanut Gallery laugh. You can’t build a coalition relying on one firm for advice and only one demographic of voter.

We’re hearing a lot about concerns about her electability but that wasn’t a concern in Iowa or NH, both places that if she put the effort in and garnered a good finish could have really added that aura of electability to her candaciacy as he headed into places where that is more of a concern for voters, places like South Carolina.

Sigh… What a waste.

Kamala Harris Says She’s Still ‘in This Fight,’ but Out of the 2020 Race – The New York Times

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Throughout her candidacy, Ms. Harris faced concerns about her political strategy and her campaign’s organizational structure. She relied on a stable of California political strategists, led by the longtime political operative Averell Smith, who did not heed warnings from grass-roots organizers to invest more heavily in early voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire. Instead, the campaign focused on later primaries in states with more nonwhite voters, including South Carolina and California.

Her campaign miscalculated.

…Mr. Biden, campaigning in Iowa, called Ms. Harris “a first-rate intellect, first-rate candidate, real competitor.” He walked away when a reporter asked whether he would consider Ms. Harris as a running mate.

Kamala Harris Says She’s Still ‘in This Fight,’ but Out of the 2020 Race – The New York Times

Did she or her campaign take all of the next/female Obama hype she had been generating since before she ran for Senate too seriously? Because there was a certain arrogance behind some of her bad decisions on the campaign trail….

A lot of talk about where she fell on the ideological spectrum but did she &/or anyone on the campaign ever sit down and plot it out?

If she did a review of the finances this late in the game and made her decision on this where was she in the past six months? Did she even check her spending or have a skeleton budget she adhered to?  (Thinking about that private plane the Peanut Gallery saw taking off after one her events…)

What did unifying goals mean to her? This was the woman who spent most of 2019 not bothering to talk to voters in NH and Iowa because they were too white.

Can’t speak for Iowa but NH is full not only a white state state, it is a gray state, full of successful professional women in their sixties and seventies who were (by virtue of when they started their careers) barrier breakers themselves. …Women who naturally felt a kinship and empathy towards her as another barrier breaker. She blew those women off and their interest in her and they went from dying to hear from her to, “Oh, Well, I guess she doesn’t want my vote.” Not exactly the stuff of a unifier….

Did she not realize she was vulnerable to candidates too her in California? How could she possibly have put together a campaign plan without accounting for that? (Oh, that’s right. Her campaign had no plan!)

As for her breakout moment calling Biden not quite a racist… What kind of politician attacks someone for supporting a position they themselves also hold? (Hint: a total frigging idiot who doesn’t think things through. That’s who!)

Also, Democrats have a tendency to eat their own and attack those on their own side who came before them. Fair or not, attacking Biden was also attack the Obama administration. Candidates who do this might as well be pulling the rug out from under their own feet.

Oy…. what a waste!

Girlfriend of Philando Castile Diamond Reynolds Sues Minnesota Mayor for Defamation – Black Enterprise

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Diamond Reynolds, the girlfriend of the late Philando Castile, has filed a defamation lawsuit against Elysian, Minnesota, Mayor Tom McBroom over a 2017 tweet where he wrote that a settlement she won from the city would be spent on “crack cocaine.”

Girlfriend of Philando Castile Diamond Reynolds Sues Minnesota Mayor for Defamation – Black Enterprise

hmmm

Kamala Harris’ failed presidential campaign is bad news for Democrats (even her critics)

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Kamala Harris’ failed presidential campaign is bad news for Democrats (even her critics)

For fuck’s sake… Kirsten Gillibrand cut her own legs off before she entered the race by calling for WJC to retroactively resign. She pigeon-holed herself and didn’t expand her message when it didn’t catch on.

It stinks that Kamala didn’t run a better but she didn’t. She just didn’t. Maybe we should anointing people 2,4,6 years before the election? Maybe hiding in backroom with big donors isn’t the way to introduce yourself to voters…

Julian Castro went bitchy instead of finding a less abrasive way to get all of his great wonky points across. He was downright aggressive in trying to make Biden look old and it didn’t make seem forceful, he came across like the mean kids table in a junior high cafeteria. He also never developed a ground game.

The problem isn’t Bloomberg or Steyer, the problem is the three candidates did not enter the race in any way prepared. They needed mentoring and guidance and they either didn’t have or didn’t listen.

I wonder where all of these journalists and posters were while these candidates they loved so much were in the hunt. I wonder where they were in 2016. Did they volunteer or donate for the their preferred 2020 candidate or HRC? No? Then sit down and STFU. Whiny freaking children.

 

I do

 

 

Progressives cite racism, sexism in Harris exit: Women of color ‘get twice the scrutiny’

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Progressives cite racism, sexism in Harris exit: Women of color ‘get twice the scrutiny’ | TheHill

Yes, all of this exists.

Kamala Harris also ran a shitty, shitty campaign.  Bad hires, bad policy roll outs, piss poor strategy, and just a ridiculously ineffectual approach to just about everything.

The leadership skills show she showed were abysmal. In the face of racism and sexism, she needed to run a good campaign. She did not. If you cannot run a campaign, how do expect to run the country?

It’s sad the only African-American woman in the race has dropped out but sadder still is that her campaign didn’t have the organization or breath of experience, knowledge, and strategy that would have cast her in a better light.

Unfortunately Kamala’s dropping out is less of indictment of the our country’s lack of intersectionality and diversity and more of a statement on her own apparent lack of leadership and administration skills.

‘One of the hardest decisions of my life’: Kamala Harris ends once-promising campaign

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Her candidacy got one of its first major breaks in the first Democratic debate in June, when Harris pulled off a blistering ambush of former Vice President Joe Biden over his previous stance on busing, which prompted another review of his record on race issues. Harris’ performance sent her soaring in the polls, and the campaign raised $2 million in the 24 hours following the debate.

But the attack blew back on Harris when her own stance on busing came under scrutiny in the days after.

‘One of the hardest decisions of my life’: Kamala Harris ends once-promising campaign – POLITICO

Campaign Lesson Number 3: Only a moron attacks a rival for holding views that they, themselves, hold as well.

Also, anyone who thought she wouldn’t be held to higher standard than a white male candidate is an idiot. It was coming. It was real. No, it’s not fair but it is real and she did not seem prepared for it.

Kamala Harris Drops Out of the 2020 Presidential Race

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Ms. Harris also faced questions about her political strategy and her campaign’s organizational structure. She relied on a stable of California political strategists, led by the longtime political operative Averell Smith, who did not heed warnings from grass-roots organizers to invest more heavily in early voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire. Instead, the campaign focused on later primaries in states with more nonwhite voters, including South Carolina and California.

…“Sometimes campaigns can tear friendships apart but we have grown closer,” Ms. Klobuchar tweeted. “Her good work will continue.”

“Her campaign broke barriers and did it with joy,” Mr. Booker tweeted. “Love you, sister.”

Mr. Biden, campaigning in Iowa, called Ms. Harris “a first-rate intellect, first-rate candidate, real competitor.” He walked away when a reporter asked whether he would consider Ms. Harris as a running mate.

Kamala Harris Drops Out of the 2020 Presidential Race – The New York Times

Yes, there were fund-raising issues but they only manifested because of all of the other issues in her once promising campaign.  The lessons?

1.) POC and women candidates need to be better than their white/male counterparts. It’s an ugly truth but it is the truth.

2.) Iowa and NH are very white. They are also smaller populations which make retail politics easier and more effective to pull off. Both states like to go their own way though so there is a huge opening for new faces to succeed there. The media markets are so inexpensive it is staggering. The Peanut Gallery’s point here is that although they are very white states there are definite (and relatively inexpensive) paths to success for “outsiders” and “newcomers” who are WILLING TO PLAY BALL with retail-style campaigning. For all of those reasons and more,  blowing them off isn’t just poor strategy, it’s just plain stupid.

3.) Sticking to the message is how campaigns win. Changing up the message every other day is how candidates lose. Period.

4.) California is a big state. It is not the entire country though. Banking on a California campaign strategy while employing a tightly knit, closed circle of California-only consultants and leadership is, well, naive and a bit arrogant.

5.) If you can’t campaign in all of the different regions of the country, what does that say about your ability to conduct yourself among the varied cultures across the globe? Don’t answer that. Because it doesn’t say anything good.

6.) She picked a poor cycle to run as America’s “top cop.” We don’t need a law and order prosecutor. We need a reformer.

7.) Outside of La-la-la land donations dry up when candidates don’t do retail politics. Anyone who couldn’t see her war-chest drying up has never campaigned outside a major media market.

The Peanut Gallery doesn’t really see itself ever willingly voting for a prosecutor in a primary but it still wanted to see her do better than this.

It’s not the press, it’s not white men telling her sit down and be quiet, and it’s not ‘electability’ (whatever that means) that sunk her. It was piss-poor decision making that did her in.

The Peanut Gallery is secretly breathing a sigh of relief she finally dropped out. The country needs someone with more savvy and leadership skills than she showed.

The Kamala Harris Conundrum

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The Kamala Harris Conundrum

Exactly.

….Plus, her campaign has been an absolute shit-show. Yes, despite all of the candidates high opinions of themselves, they all have a lot to learn when they start out on the campaign trail. But also yes, Kamala has struggled with management, administration, policy deployment, and acknowledging that it takes different things to run and win in different parts of the country.  And yes, the last item is serious cause for concern. It speaks to her diplomatic ability and whether or not she is prepared to deal with other countries and cultures.

So many of us want to like her. … Or at least want to like her ins pite of her record but she is simply not ready for primetime.

Black Women Want to Be Excited About Kamala Harris. The Truth Is More Complicated.

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Harris will have to defend her record on criminal justice just as other candidates have to defend their own votes and positions. And black women know that for a black female presidential candidate, the stakes will be far higher than for her white male peers. Criticism of her character and policies is bound to be influenced by a lethal combination of racism, sexism, and cultural ignorance.

…Still the more I dug into Kamala Harris’ background, the worse I started to feel. I wondered whether I was being too hard on her or even holding her to a higher standard than I would a white male Democrat. Former Vice President Joe Biden admitted that he hasn’t been “always right” on issues of criminal justice. No candidate is perfect, and the idea that I might not support a black woman who is qualified for the job is excruciating. My life’s work is centered on black women and their stories, no matter how complicated those narratives might be. Was my hesitation premature and unfair? But the alternative is almost as painful—giving someone who looks like me a pass on actions that have hurt our communities. I want a black female president. But I want an end to mass incarceration for all black women, for all black families, even more. Who can deliver that? Could it be Harris? Maybe, but I need her to make that case.

Black Women Want to Be Excited About Kamala Harris. The Truth Is More Complicated. | Glamour

hmmmm

Pete Buttigieg Is a Lying MF

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“Kids need to see evidence that education is going to work for them,” Buttigieg explained whitely, when he was running for mayor in 2011. “You’re motivated because you believe that at the end of your education, there is a reward; there’s a stable life; there’s a job. And there are a lot of kids—especially [in] the lower-income, minority neighborhoods, who literally just haven’t seen it work. There isn’t someone who they know personally who testifies to the value of education.”

…Unemployment rate for black college graduates is twice as high as the unemployment rate for white grads. Black college graduates are paid 80 cents for every dollar a white person with the same education earns. White people leave college with lower debt and higher earnings. White kids get more resources, more advanced classes and have access to more technology. But Pete says it could all be solved with a vision-board.

…This is not just a lie of omission, it is a dangerous precedent. This is why institutional inequality persists. Not because of white hoods and racial slurs. It is because this insidious double-talk erases the problem by camouflaging it. Because it is painted as a problem of black lethargy and not white apathy. 

Pete Buttigieg Lies About Education Disparities

hmmmm

A Trump administration strategy led to the child migrant backup crisis at the border

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…“This will strain bed capacity,” authorities wrote in a discussion paper in February 2018.

..According to current and former government officials, and emails and memos detailing the Trump administration’s strategy, it is clear they knew that without enough beds in government shelters, children would languish in Border Patrol stations not equipped to care for them.

…[Policies also] made it harder for adult relatives of unaccompanied minors to secure the children’s release from U.S. custody. Enhanced vetting of sponsors — including fingerprints and other paperwork — and the sharing of that information between child welfare and immigration authorities slowed down the release of children and exposed the sponsors to deportation.

…The contractors tasked with carrying out the background checks and fingerprinting were overwhelmed, according to current and former HHS officials.

…The approach caused thousands of unaccompanied minors to be stranded in U.S. custody and exacerbated the appearance of a crisis on the southern border — a major element underlying the administration’s public request for billions of dollars in additional funding from Congress.

…A few months after the policy was implemented, HHS officials determined that it was not improving child safety. They concluded that the added vetting was redundant and needlessly extended the time children remained in custody.

…The administration also developed and rolled out its family separation policy in the spring of 2018, part of its “zero tolerance” approach at the border. The months-long initiative, which separated thousands of children from their parents, compounded the need for shelter space.

A Trump administration strategy led to the child migrant backup crisis at the border – The Washington Post

mmhmmm

South Bend black leader endorses Biden, rebukes Buttigieg

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Davis also scolded Buttigieg, saying the mayor’s woes attracting support from communities of color “is not a new problem for him.”

…But Buttigieg, who is polling at 0 percent with black voters in Quinnipiac’s latest South Carolina survey, didn’t have to answer for some of his campaign’s recent racial miscues, such as the revelation that some South Carolina black leaders were surprised to see themselves named as supporters of Buttigieg and his Douglass Plan for black America.

“It’s very difficult and very frustrating to talk about a Douglass Plan when he did not perform that while he was the mayor here in town. A Douglass Plan should’ve been implemented in South Bend, Ind.,” Davis said. “He should’ve run on that in the 2011 or at least 2015 campaign, run on it, had success with it, shared it with Indiana, run nationally. I would’ve been the first one to champion that. But to see that he champions it across the country when it wasn’t practiced here has brought me great concern.”

South Bend black leader endorses Biden, rebukes Buttigieg – POLITICO

hmmmm

Another Confederate monument comes down, this time in North Carolina

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A judge ruled this month that the group [that donated the statue in 1907, the Winnie Davis Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy] did not give sufficient evidence supporting the monument’s continued presence in front of the courthouse.

Another Confederate monument comes down, this time in North Carolina – CNN

hmmm

Trump Administration Separates Some Migrant Mothers From Their Newborns Before Returning Them to Detention

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Advocates also report that some asylum seekers in the Western District of Texas who have given birth in USMS custody were forced to hand over their newborns to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS). Reuniting with their newborn hinges on their release from federal custody, and whether they can access legal help to navigate the child welfare system.

…Dr. Shelly said she doesn’t know if the U.S. citizen newborns of detained parents are eventually adopted or whether detained patients are deported without regaining custody of their babies. The OB-GYN is also unsure if foster parents have any obligation to remain in communication with parents remanded to USMS custody.

According to USMS, the onus for child care placement is on the detained parent, though it appears as if asylum seekers who give birth in USMS custody don’t have many choices at all.

…U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) could release these women shortly after they are first apprehended, and then refer them to organizations like Annunciation House that can offer support as they pursue asylum and prepare to give birth. But that’s not what happens.

Trump Administration Separates Some Migrant Mothers From Their Newborns Before Returning Them to Detention – Rewire.News

Jeezus….

A mom grieving her 4-year-old daughter was pinned to ground by Arkansas police

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A mom grieving her 4-year-old daughter was pinned to ground by Arkansas police

Jeezus….

No amount of confusion or incompetence is a valid excuse abusing civilians.

This kind of racist overreach is unacceptable in a law abiding society. Hope the family sues the entire community into the stone age over this.

The only way errant police forces are brought to heel is when the community demands it and the only way communities are brought to a point where they demand better behavior from the police officers they employ is when member of the community are unable to ignore the consequences of unlawful and thuggish behavior of the police is when other services are compromised.

If a community is brought to its knees by a suit and other services such as ambulances and schools are unable to give the community what they need, only then will people demand their police officers obey the law.

So to repeat: here’s hoping this family sues the entire municipality beyond bankruptcy all the way back to the stone ages.