- Joe Biden selected California Senator Kamala Harris as his VP.
- The reaction?
- Largely positive from the Democratic Party with the hope she may energise the campaign. KH last night said trump ran the economy like everything ‘else he inherited straight into the ground’.
- The left of the party have missed out on power again: Schumer, Pelosi, Biden and Harris have all kept distance from them: see Sanders’ Campaign Press Secretary tweet. KH has been accused of a record in criminal justice that was at odds with progressive reform ‘Kamala is a cop became a common refrain’.
- Crucially Harris offers few obvious vulnerabilities for Trump to attack. The President accused her of gleefully embracing the ‘lefts radical manifesto’ and calling for ‘trillions in new taxes’. Yet these lines are not sticking, with Republicans both saying ‘Bernie got burnt’ and that she is controlled by the left-wing mob. The repeated line is Harris is “Extraordinarily nasty”, after she challenged Biden over race.
- Are KH’s contradictions a ‘riddle that Trump can paint as an unknown quantity’, whilst Harris ‘is simultaneously too liberal and too insincere’ for progressives. Terrifying conventional conservatives and demoralising progressives against Clinton worked for Trump in 2016 but this requires a nuanced debate and ‘the election to be about something other than Trump’.
- Whilst we don’t know yet what electoral advantage Harris brings – being from Dem stronghold California – and expected to increase – already Biden committed – black vote, her selection offers further proof of Biden’s preference for someone he can work with in office. Their close personal connection reflected when Biden tweeted how he had watched Kamala work with his late son Beau to tackle the big banks.
- Steady, safe but boring Biden he remains. But will the pandemic relief negotiations reveal policy differences between the two, as Harris wants to give Americans ‘$2000 a month’
After congress failed to agree a compromise, Donald Trump signed four ‘executive actions’ that he said would ‘extent unemployment benefits and provide tax relief’. Its expected Trump’s use of $44billion of funding from the Disaster Relief Fund that is normally used for hurricanes or fires will be challenged in the courts. Does this policy sound familiar? Well if you’ve watched House of Cards it might.