Saturday, November 07, 2020

Biden/Harris Diversity

 From Jennifer Rubin, a writer at the Washington Post:

8 comments:

David in Cal said...

Disgusting comment. Trump himself has a blended Jewish and Gentile family. Pretending that Trump supporters are bigots is real bigotry.

Aside from Rubin's accustion being false, it's also counter-productive. Rubin apparently buys into Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" POV. I don't think I'm a deplorable person. I don't like it when someone who knows nothing about me says that I am. We Trump supporters are energized by this kind of nastiness.

Cheers

P.S. This should be a time for Biden supporters to be happily discussing all the good things President Biden is going to do. Why isn't Rubin writing that column?

David Appell said...

Hi David,

I think you make a good point about MAGA supporters. Rubin is making a bad and unworthy assumption.

That wasn't the part of her words that I liked and I should have noted that.

Biden/Harris is more "blended" than Trump/Pence. I welcome that. How will some feel about having a black/Asian woman for VP? Obama faced racism, overt for some, subtle for others (such as Trump's birtherism).

For the record, I don't think you're deplorable. And I've always thought Hillary Clinton was wrong to say that. (It might have cost her the election.) I grew up not far from where she said that, so I grew up in deplorable territory.

Cheers.

David in Cal said...

Thanks for your comments, David.

IMHO Obama's race helped him more than it hurt him. YMMV.

I don't think people will care about Harris's ethnicity, unless she becomes President. The VP just isn't important, as former VP Garner explained:

Garner was re-elected Vice President with Roosevelt in 1936, serving in that office in total from March 4, 1933, to January 20, 1941. ... He famously described the vice presidency as being "not worth a bucket of warm piss". (For many years, this quote was bowdlerized as "warm spit".)

Cheers

J. D. said...

DiC:I think your double standard here is indicative of why Trump and his supporters are not held in the highest regard. The tweet you call disgusting is very mild compared to many of Trump's and those of his sons. Same for the behaviour of his fans at his rallies calling for opponents to be locked up etc. Trump fans did nothing to temper his behaviour. In fact they encouraged it.

OTOH Biden is setting just the right tone in attempting to bring the nation together and saying he will be a president for all the people and trying to calm tempers rather than inflame them. Meanwhile Trump and his cronies are doing everything they can to undermine confidence in the American electoral system which puts lives at risk. If Trump had done more for the majority of the electorate who didn't vote for him rather than just pandering to his base then maybe he wouldn't have lost the election last week.

David Appell said...

Thanks David. But why are Trump & Pence & some on Fox News intentionally mispronouncing Harris's first name? It's an intentional show of disrespect, of saying in effect 'your weird first name means you're not a real American.'

David in Cal said...

J.D. - In today's world, being a racist is considered horrible. There are many examples of people who were fired for making a single racist comment. I don't believe you can find a Trump comment about all Democrats of comparable seriousness.

I agree with you that Biden says the right things

Cheers

David in Cal said...

David - I agree that intentionally mispronouncing Harris's name is childish and inappropriate.

Cheers

J. D. said...

In today's world, being a racist is considered horrible. There are many examples of people who were fired for making a single racist comment. I don't believe you can find a Trump comment about all Democrats of comparable seriousness.

Of equivalent seriousness? She didn't actually call anyone racist so how could anyone lose their jobs? My point was you have taken offense at something you have taken personally when Trump makes juvenile and offensive tweets all the time. Some of them put people's lives at risk. Journalists for instance.

One particular tweet that that I thought was outrageous was the one aimed at Bubba Wallace after colleagues of his found a noose in his garage which they wrongly thought was meant to intimidate him. Wallace had to endure a wall of criticism for something that wasn't his fault. Trump waited until it had died down and then as if to keep the controversy going tweeted that Wallace should apologise. At the end of the tweet he included a dog whistle to his supporters about the Confederate flag. This behaviour aimed at increasing tensions rather than reducing them is the opposite of how a president should be behaving.

He uses his Twitter feed as a bully pulpit to attack even the mildest criticism of him. His sons use their feeds as means of "owning the libs" to increase their standing with conservatives. The same conservatives who take offense at any perceived slight on them. Hopefully now he's lost the election he and his family will just fade away but whilst conservative voters think this behaviour is something to be admired then their replacement is unlikely to be any better.