My response to the Harris detractors…

I responded to a Medium writer’s post that resembled more a venting of an outburst of hate than any logical reasoning. She brought up 5 points (very summarized and included in my writing) that I rebut pretty easily and if you’re someone who really feels like Harris is the wrong candidate for POTUS for all of or even a subset of these reasons just take a moment to review what I wrote, put aside preconceived opinion and consider them in the way I present them:

#1- Guilty of helping cover up Biden’s decline

I’ll give some leeway to the notion that Biden has declined in some fashion that makes him less effective today than 4 years ago. Certainly not so bad as to be mentally incapacitated though…

While I agree that trotting out a less functional leader in public only to have him embarass himself in stressful situations is absolutely wrong, just take a moment to consider the repercussions of the staff and administration of one of the world’s powers publicly fostering doubt in the mental capacity and decision making of its Supreme Leader? When the USA sneezes, the entire world feels it. Historically, a country that has a weak and befuddled leader is open to being exploited economically, ambassadorially through shitty foreign policy, and mostly militarily. Rome fell because of ever worsening and weakening leadership. The USSR collapsed because the citizens saw that the Party was fracturing and the economy failing due to the poor decisions of leadership over decades of corruption.

Conversely remember Ronald Reagan — it was extraordinarily rare to see old Ronnie do pressers or State of the Union speeches to joint sessions of Congress in the last couple years of his second term — because he was already showing profound signs of mental decline by that point. His administration and Bush Sr were running the government and enforcing policy late in the term, and truly most good to great presidents hire their staff with sufficient talent and abilities to do autonomously even when POTUS is fully engaged and informed. The world didn’t fall apart during that time either. VPOTUS is supposed to be 100% onboard with everything POTUS does, not to weaken POTUS in the eyes of the country or the world. Trump would absolutely not tolerate anyone in his administration suggesting he lacked the mental and intellectual capacity to run the country — in fact we’ll get into that in point #3.

#2 — The Gaza debaucle and foreign policy in general.

Firstly, the USA doesn’t have responsibility, own or set Israel’s foreign policy. Nor does POTUS have any ownership of their prime minister or how a government is elected and built out of coalitions. Biden could demand Netanyahu stand on his head outside on the White House lawn and Netanyahu would tell him to go fuck himself. The best that can be hoped for is for a coalition of Israel’s allies and supporters to pressure Netanyahu to capitulate and sign a cease fire agreement that would stop the slaughter. While October 7th and the military reaction to it are on Hamas and its evil leadership, 100% of the fault for everything happening to civilians in Gaza from the end of 2023 to now is entirely in the hands of Bibi and his coalition of far right parties in the Knesset — beyond trying to eradicate Hamas entirely, Bibi is doing everything he can to stall being brought to justice for corruption, bribery and will extend the war as long as he can to do so. The Israeli people and the country as a whole, as well as the citizens of Gaza are unfairly being persecuted for one man’s selfish purposes in Israel, and the actions of an Islamic caliphate in waiting in Hamas. There are ways to eradicate Hamas that would involve the Arab world taking it in their hands — allowing Israel to do this will just further isolate Israel and make peace in the middle east a far distant dream.

Now, the southern border situation has been a pure clusterfuck that was created over three prior administrations — the rush for free citizenships from Bush II in 2001 that had 50,000 undocumented immigrants be granted the right to apply for US Citizenship and overwhelm the USCIS system (I was applying for my Permanent Resident status at the time, and it added three years to the process), the failure to issue better controls and fortify the border over illegal immigration by Obama, and then the Gulag solution Trump implemented. Trump did nothing to solve neither the “invasion” nor the drug trade except to separate kids from parents and then lose the keys. Numbers increased because there was a humanitarian crisis on the Mexican side and something needed to be done to address that (Mexico hasn’t been too cooperative about stopping the migrations to date). But if you note the numbers today, through the executive order to seal the border to immigrants now the totals per month are at multiyear lows in terms of humans crossing, and trending downwards.

#3 — Harris’ staff turnover rate

FFS has everyone forgotten the MAGA-cle carousel that was the Trump administration?

Lets take a look at the Trump Administration and analyze what that turnover rate is?

According to The Brookings Institute, 92% of his A-team was replaced in the 4 year period he was in the White House. Additionally 9 of his 15 (60%) core cabinet people were replaced over that time, including his Chief of Staff which was IIRC at least three times. Compare that to prior presidents average turnover of 72% and you see that this was an administration that was in turmoil. Do you think this will change? Biden’s turnover has been 71% and 13% of his core cabinet. Sure, Kamala has had numbers that have come close to and mirror Trump’s 92% — but no one really brings that comparison up, instead only focusing on these numbers as a reflection of Harris being a difficult person. But there’s a difference between the two — Trump fired his staff because they didn’t align with his vision of how much authority and the resulting actions he had available to him (a.k.a. to be a dictator) and Harris has the flaw of not choosing the people with the same degree of care that say Biden has, resulting in people leaving her staff because they either have better opportunities in the private sector due to their experience, or general misalignment in the team’s policy goals. That is more about political experience in identifying, hiring and networking than about anyone’s “likeability”. Trump had top notch political help from the moment he stepped off the escalator, while Harris was a fringe candidate in 2020. So dont try to equate Trump with Harris in this specific example.

4# — Harris’ Campaign Skills — I think you can plainly see that this has changed considerably — given 8 years experience now at the Federal level and building political networks as well as inheriting a really savvy campaign engine from Joe means that you’ll see a far more polished and put together campaign. Additionally, with further hiring of skilled election operatives there will be little to no fear of attacking all of Trump’s weaknesses in terms of his record as POTUS, the Agenda 47/Schedule F/Project 2025 policy plans that will be implemented in the first 180 days if we allow him to be elected, and no hesitation to rip him a new asshole in debates if Trump doesn’t cancel them out of fear.

The GOP are afraid of Kamala and what she represents, which is the betrayal of the trust of women in the USA who have believed and trusted that government should be fighting to protect body autonomy and the right to be treated equally — Trump and the GOP have only shown themselves to represent a Gilead type dystopian future and have been actually vocal about eliminating offramps for women in abusive relationships or who have been raped and carrying the rapist’s babies to term. Bringing these issues to the forefront while demonstrating practical competence with foreign policy and continuing Biden’s job creation efforts will be a winning combination for most people in this country.

#5 — Approval Rating — this will most certainly turn around as the messaging about what she’s been accomplishing in the administration gets communicated out. Commentators and political experts have already called out that Trump’s number is his ceiling of approval, while Kamala’s is her floor — it will only get better from here.

That said, I have to liken this to the adage of the two hikers who run into a Grizzly in the forest. As they turn and run away from the charging Grizzly, the first hiker says to the other “do you think we’ll outrun this Grizzly?” to which the second says “I dont need to outrun the Grizzly, I just need to outrun you”.

Kamala doesn’t need to do anything more than to outrun the demented Trump and gain more trust in her competency and honesty than him. And 6 days into her focused campaign that is really already happening.