As presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s search for a running mate drags on, press coverage hasn’t failed to disappoint.
Useful coverage would lay out each potential pick’s background and qualifications. While you certainly can find that if you look hard enough, many journalists seem quite content to avoid content. The Washington Post‘s Aaron Blake (7/24/20) offered a nice helping of unedifying rankings in his “12 Most Logical Picks for Joe Biden’s Vice President, Ranked.” At number one, Blake put Kamala Harris:
Kamala Harris is the “most logical pick,” writes the Washington Post‘s Aaron Blake (7/24/20). His logic? “Nobody makes more sense than the senator from California right now.”
Another list, another list with Harris at No. 1. While others have been jockeying to climb up, nobody makes more sense than the senator from California right now, which has been the case for a while. About the best argument against her is that her 2020 presidential campaign wasn’t exactly a resounding success. But for a campaign showing a wide lead, she’s clearly the safest pick. And safe might be what the doctor orders.
Why does “nobody make more sense” than Harris? Why is she the “safest pick”? Perhaps Blake assumes you remember his three-line explanation from June, when he similarly offered rankings—or perhaps he doesn’t care. (For the record, she’s been the “favorite from the start” because of her “high-ranking résumé,” her “experience on the national stage” and the fact that “she has shown she is a capable messenger.”)
Over at CNN (7/30/20), Chris Cillizza has really been milking the drawn-out process, putting out new rankings so often (he’s currently at 16) you’d think he was running a gambling ring.
Much of the problem is that since the top contenders have already been fairly well-established for the last few weeks, most outlets don’t have much new ground to break. So what’s left? Mainly, politicians and operatives on all sides trying to create positive coverage of their team and negative coverage of their opponents—and journalists that seem happy to go along.
California representative and new short-list candidate Karen Bass took multiple trips to Cuba 40 years ago, and in 2016 called Fidel Castro’s death “a great loss to the people of Cuba.” Her opponents gleefully pushed out this “Cuba baggage” (AP, 8/6/20) to drum up a story about how this makes her dead in the water (because Florida!), and journalists happily complied. No matter that Cuban Americans make up only 6.5% of the population of Florida, and Cuba is for vanishingly few of them their primary motivating issue when voting.
As the response to Bernie Sanders’ positive comments about Cuba’s literacy program demonstrated (FAIR.org, 3/6/20), US political orthodoxy does not permit even hints at acknowledgment that longtime Official Enemies like Cuba might not be evil. Bass’s supposed Communist sympathies were the subject of widespread coverage—and not only in outlets like Fox News—under headlines like “I’m Not a Communist” (NBCNews.com, 8/3/20) and “Karen Bass Eulogized Communist Party USA Leader” (Politico, 8/4/20); the Atlantic (7/31/20) saw fit to devote nearly 3,000 words to an investigation of Bass’s relationship with Cuba.
Sometimes it happens even as journalists appear to be at least somewhat aware of what’s going on. In a Washington Post piece headlined, “Biden’s Delay in Choosing a Running Mate Intensifies Jockeying Between Potential Picks,” Annie Linskey (8/2/20) describes how “Biden allies” worry that the process is “pitting women, especially Black women, against one another.”
The piece refers to “nastiness,” “backbiting” and “currents…many of them sexist, that have been swirling for weeks,” seeming to attribute these largely to “allies of the women”—but it’s not always entirely clear who is being blamed. It’s certainly not the media, though, which appears merely as the vehicle for the nastiness. (Such as: “One donor implied to CNBC that Harris has too much ‘ambition.’ And former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a longtime Biden friend, told CNN that Harris can ‘rub people the wrong way.’”)
At the same time, Linskey offered her own piece as a vehicle for some sexism. Quoting Rendell on the “buzz” around Susan Rice, Linskey ate up without comment a tired trope used repeatedly in the past on women:
Her demeanor on television fueled the speculation, he said. “She was smiling on TV, something that she doesn’t do all that readily,” Rendell said. “She was actually somewhat charming on TV, something that she has not seemed to care about in the past.”
The “Year of the Woman” has come and gone, and come and gone again (Extra!, 9/92, 4/13), and yet we keep talking—in 2020—about how female politicians need to smile more (FAIR.org, 6/14/99; Intercept, 9/26/16). Biden may be breaking the mold by only considering female running mates, but the media sure aren’t straying from tradition.
JOE the, ” Iets’ have that Bush war —BIDEN and Kamala, the “,Iet’s keep those prisoners in prison in a prison system that’s no longer working HARRIS————-” –
——-wow, another war monger pair.——can we find some humanists, PIease???????
Great article. I still think one of our (fading) hopes would be that Biden and his team would choose a at least a bit leftist canidate as vice president. We from Europe just look with eyes wide open and not too great informed by our (just like in your country) biased media (and it is not better with so-called “leftist” papers like Berlin TAZ – they ran small campaigns against Sanders early on since 2017 as “left” newspaper). So my small hope was that Tulsi Gabbard, who endorsed Sanders in 2016, would be vice president. The roaring laughter I use to get when I tell this to american mail-friends is somewhat strange. It seems all are desperate by now, and I often hear, from who ever who is really poitically interested, the “we are doomed” scenario.
Concerning robust anti-feminism Europe is – apart from a lot of racists and far right people – doing a lot of lip service for feminism, and also lgbtq*x. Yet women still earn 20% less then men, and what Europeans praise are mostly rich, younger femaies, or women who helped to make this world a worse place like Margaret Thatcher. And our hipsters praise Lady Gaga for twitters like “hello world I love you”, where she tells us that she spoke to God and she told her we would be allright. Politically interested people tend to forget that Lady Gaga endorsed Hillary Clinton, and that in the end it is of no difference if a Republican started the war against Libya, or a Democrat, or a german green politician they are for wars, my goodness….) or a man woman or who ever.
Is it really impossible for ever that candidates like Sanders in earlier times, or Tulsi Gabbard or others would found a3rd party, a new one, integrating all who tried and tried for decades to change the Democrats into something they simply cannot be? So many people are tired and don’t feel any enthusiasm for Republicans OR Democrats.
Biden must choose Karen Bass so that after a biden victory, Bass can go after Trump and put him in chains for tax evasion, fraud, groping women and paying hush hush money, etc, etc.
Trump will fear and respect Bass and will surely attempt to flee to HK ,Macau or Russia !
Yes Jim, let’s turn this into a banana republic. Let’s have our newly elected leaders imprison their predecessors. You have no proof of tax evasion, just a general dislike of Trump. You have no proof of fraud. You have no proof of groping. You have no proof of hush money. You only have a dislike of the current president. Here’s a newsflash for you: we on the right hated Obama as much as you hate Trump. We didn’t riot. We voted. We didn’t go after Obama to put him in jail. You sir, make this country worse.
Tim,
+20 women and counting on President Donnie’s sexual misconducts….so arguing that “there is no proof” on it seems pretty weak. Also, his former fixer admitted to paying hush money. It is almost implausible to suggest that Donnie either A) didn’t know about it, or B) didn’t want the money paid.
“You” didn’t go after Obama to put him in jail because there was no grounds for such prosecution. There are PLENTY of grounds for Trump’s prosecution. Blagojevich from Illinois went to jail for what he did as Governor, are you suggesting that Trump can’t go to jail, because Obama didn’t break the law? Pretty silly argument.
Josh, as much as you’d like him to be guilty, there is no proof. Prosecutors would file and win if there were proof. Pretty weak argument from your side. Just wishful thinking. Paying hush money is not illegal. Settlements with non disclosures are precisely that. The proof against Obama is just now mounting. I’m not suggesting that Trump cannot go to jail. Where did you read that. I’m stating that our newly elected presidents have left their predecessors alone.
The best pick for Biden (ugh) may not be a woman, nor person of color; but may be a person who could best REPRESENT women, people of color, LGBTQI, equality, fair play, Human Rights, Civil Rights, International Law, foreign policy, domestic policy and reflects a greater intelligence, wisdom, awareness, engagement that … our current choices (very reminiscent of the last time… and look what happened then. Biden’s best choice would be Bernie… but then; we should contest the convention and with them around. Of course then, we could get rid of Biden entirely, and put in Katy Porter. If this is not done, we may be looking forward to another four years of … DETRITUS & further decimation… our souls & legacies are at stake.
Here is what we know about Biden’s VP pick: She will be a Neocon militarist who hates Russia (and perhaps China). As Biden’s already done, she will attack Boss Tweet from the Right, demanding that the US act more aggressively against those nuclear powers in their own spheres of influence.
She will be against universal healthcare, free college, student debt forgiveness, etc. She will be an uncaring sociopath, maybe a full-on psychopath. Like Joe, she will be a Republican in mufti, demanding austerity and cuts to the tattered remains of the social safety net in Amerika. She and her boss will distract from this atrocious attack with talk of “fiscal responsibility”. And – She will have ovaries! Yay?
And we also know that absolutely none of this will be discussed (or even mentioned) across the MSM, nor by pseudo-progressive outlets anywhere.
And that in a nutshell is the terrible reality Americans are hurtling towards at warp speed. The establishment Democrats have effectively destroyed our last chance for a humane, decent, intelligent candidate.
We are facing massive global warming, continued deforestation, vanishing aquifers, no real health care, a rapidly unfolding New Great Depression, resource depletion, crumbling roads and bridges, a tottering power grid nearing collapse, a real possibility of nuclear war — the list goes on and on.
Biden and his coming administration are a black hole into which the remainder of America will be swallowed. The sad reality is that the time for radical action is not short, it is gone; we have passed the point of no return. I am not a nihilist. I believe we should fight for a better world, but right now the future appears bleak indeed.