US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3457

On January 27 2022 22:01 Silvanel wrote:
@DarkPlasmaBall
However her gender and ethnicity was an important factor. Obviously, not the only one, she is not some random person grabed from the street and forced to be VP.

On January 27 2022 20:22 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


You're conflating eventual results (what has Harris done right/wrong, as VP) with pre-VP potential (she's qualified on paper, which helps to justify her as a runningmate during the general election). If a qualified candidate ends up being ineffective, that doesn't mean you get to use hindsight bias and redefine their original appointment or hiring as merely a diversity pick, just because things didn't work out. There's no crystal ball or oracle that tells us, ahead of time, that VP Pick X will do a better job than VP Pick Y, once they take office, which might make picking Y over X a dumb decision.

On January 27 2022 23:58 LegalLord wrote:

Her “pre-VP potential” was also addressed: she looks good on paper, but it would take little more than paying attention to the primaries to realize that her good-on-paper qualifications don’t hold up against even a token amount of scrutiny. Sarah Palin also “checked all the boxes” for a good VP candidate, at least by the standards you’re applying here. But I doubt you’d argue that “no one could possibly know” what kind of VP she might be had John Rambo McCain won in ‘08. Paying attention to Candidate Harris or Candidate Palin gives a good idea of what kind of VP we’d have - no crystal ball required.

Biden absolutely made it clear he was after a diversity hire when he said, mid-primary, “my VP will be a woman.” The argument about that that’s not the source of incompetence has already been addressed.

On January 28 2022 00:07 EnDeR_ wrote:


My issue with this take is that calling someone a 'diversity hire' is incredibly despective and condescending. Virtually all VP's are picked based on how they look and who they appeal to. Singling out Harris as a 'diversity pick' because she's black and female feels more than a bit... backwards, shall we say.

On January 28 2022 00:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


The same rebuttals everyone has already made against your stance are still relevant, whether you use "black" or "woman" as your point of contention. Some black people are qualified to be VP, and even some women, too! Wanting the VP to be a woman doesn't mean you're going to necessarily sacrifice quality for diversity. Not sure how many times this needs to be said by us, but I feel like we're at around half a dozen already.

Perhaps we could take a step back, and you could define exactly what your parameters are for what makes a candidate qualified or unqualified, because maybe the rest of us are just misunderstanding your semantics, or where you're setting the bar. We've already pointed out that it sounds like you're assigning higher standards to Harris than other candidates/VPs, so maybe you can clarify what your specific criteria are, in order to justify your assertion that Harris was nothing more than an unqualified diversity hire.

On January 28 2022 01:00 EnDeR_ wrote:


Biden needed to shore up support from a subsection of voters, said he would pick a VP to shore up said support and consequently picked a VP that shores up said support. The term 'diversity hire' is offensive (and racist) and you should not be using it.

On January 28 2022 00:44 LegalLord wrote:

When Biden in just about so many words says "my next hire shall be a diversity hire" I tend to assume that that is the intent. When competence does not follow, I would not be inclined to assume that the next instance of him saying "my next hire shall be a diversity hire" will be implied to already be someone who passed the competence bar.

I assert that Harris is not a good VP and that this was obvious during the campaign. Her identitarian appeal is not at all the cause of that, and it would be entirely incidental if not for the above Biden actions. I would not consider her being a black woman to be worthy of much attention in the first place, if not for the fact that Biden made it a goal to have a diversity hire. If Biden had said "I will choose the most qualified, reliable candidate ever" and chose Harris, the objection to that nomination would be purely on the grounds of that he made a bad call, diversity or no.

I can only link to my old posts that already answered these questions because either way I'm just repeating myself at this point.

As of yet, I've seen no real arguments:

1. That Harris is not a bad VP based on performance to date;
2. That this was not made clear by the bad performance during the primaries; or
3. That by the combination of Biden's explicit goal of "hiring a woman" and (1) & (2), that the argument of "competence is a given" is not an assertion made contrary to evidence that is clearly available.

Having laid out the case for all of the above, and having given some good examples of what criteria makes specific VP candidates and predecessors good or bad, I don't see anything more that I need to provide. If the response is "I disagree with those arguments but don't feel the need to explain why" - that's fine, but doesn't warrant any additional attention from my end.

On January 28 2022 01:11 LegalLord wrote:

If there's an alternative term to "somebody who is chosen primarily for belonging to a desirable set of groups based on their identity" rather than "diversity hire" that you would like to use, I'm open to hearing it. I certainly agree that it has unkind connotations, but I think it gets the right point across.

I would hope for a VP that can shore up weaknesses in a manner that has more depth than merely "checks off the identity boxes of interest." Presidential administration is about more than just belonging to a certain race or gender; at points it's also about policy and public outreach. Meeting the identity politics might be a nice bonus, but I certainly hope it's not the goal in and of itself.

On January 28 2022 01:23 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
No. Biden didn't say that. Seeking diversity is not the same thing as sacrificing quality for diversity.

On January 28 2022 00:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
You said that a qualified candidate would be any popular progressive politician, someone in a previous administration like John Kerry, or a bunch of other Democrats who were also just as unpopular as Harris (they all withdrew their nominations before the 2020 primaries even began). While it's true that Harris isn't progressive (although I don't think being progressive necessarily makes you a qualified candidate), nor was she in Obama's administration, I don't understand why Harris doesn't fall neatly into the third bucket, along with Castro and Booker (although, again, I don't see how this bucket necessarily makes you qualified, but I'm just working with your specific criteria).

On January 27 2022 09:17 LegalLord wrote:
A good candidate would have been someone who has strong "if Biden keels over, this person will be able to keep the lights on until next election" appeal.

On January 28 2022 01:31 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
Why do you think that some people think that diversity matters, when it comes time to choosing runningmates or advisors or employees? Your attitude towards diversity seems very flippant, and I'm inferring that you don't think there's actual merit to having people from diverse backgrounds contributing their experiences to the broader narrative and vision of a government or business, especially one that's been historically whitewashed for hundreds of years. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your stance though.

On January 28 2022 01:55 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
LL: "The primary criteria is: A good candidate would have been someone who has strong "if Biden keels over, this person will be able to keep the lights on until next election" appeal."

How the hell are we supposed to assess something like that? That sounds extremely subjective, not to mention completely hypothetical until Biden actually dies in office.

LL: "I consider competence to be the primary criteria"

Competence is the ability to succeed at doing something. Competence with respect to doing... what, exactly? For example, she was technically a pretty competent DA, even though we probably both agree that some of the things she successfully did were not things we'd want her to do (based on our political views being different from hers, in some respects). She successfully became DA. She successfully became AG. She successfully became a Senator. She successfully did things in each of those roles. Clearly, she's competent with respect to many things, but perhaps they aren't the type of things you're looking for? I don't know if it's fair to call her a generally incompetent person, and I feel that saying "yeah all these things show competence, but not the kind of competence I want to see from her" is moving the goalposts. Thoughts?

On January 28 2022 01:55 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
LL: "Biden unambiguously said "my next VP will be a woman.""

Asked and answered, multiple times, whether or not you're aware of how sexist your contention with this is.

On January 28 2022 02:39 EnDeR_ wrote:
Can we agree that all VP's, in general, are chosen based on how they appeal to different electorate groups? Or as you put it, 'checking the identity boxes of interests'. Harris is not special in this category. You could say the same thing about Biden when he was VP, or Palin, or Pence, or any other VP pick I can think of.

We can argue what a sad state of affairs it is that that is the main role of the VP, but that's a separate discussion. In this day and age, the primary purpose of the VP is to help win the presidential election by shoring up support, i.e. complements perceived weaknesses, of the presidential candidate. After that, they could just stay home and do nothing, and they would have just as much impact as if they were brilliant communicators doing the media rounds every day.

On January 28 2022 03:02 brian wrote:
and the contention you seem to be disagreeing with is that choosing a woman of color for her identity is a virtue unto itself. choosing a white man to add their experience to a historically white administration isn’t valuable. choosing a woman, or a black person is valuable, and it has nothing to do with ‘shoring support,’ as much as that is potentially also a perk of such a pick.

do you disagree with this sentiment?

On January 28 2022 01:39 LegalLord wrote:
I consider competence to be the primary criteria, and that if identitarian concerns supersede competence concerns that the criteria used to make the choice are wrong. That's not to say that diversity has no value, but evidently there's a lot more interest in defending Harris on the grounds of identity than on merit of job done, which strongly suggests misplacement of priority.

On January 28 2022 03:20 EnDeR_ wrote:


To your first point, as brian already outlined in their post, saying 'my team will have an old white guy as VP' doesn't bring any value so why would they state that? It was clearly an appeal to the progressive wing of the party and arguably successful in reeling them in.

With regards to your second post. I can't think of a single modern example (i.e. within the last decade) where the actions of a VP determined the outcome of a vote that wasn't already pre-determined by the numbers in the senate/house. Genuinenly asking here, I googled it but didn't come up with anything, most results are controversial things VP's have said and I don't really have the patience to trawl through all the results.