The rather unprecedented events of the last two months have elevated Vice-President Kamala Harris to be the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the November election. After President Biden’s disastrous performance in his June 28th CNN debate against Donald Trump, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi led the charge to have him step down as president. Her argument was that he would likely lose to Donald Trump and also place control of the House and Senate in GOP hands. Many commentators agreed with that analysis and the MSM became an echo chamber for their concerns.
About one month later, July 21st, Biden decided to take the advice. This was the first time since Lyndon Johnson dropped his re-election bid in mid-stream in 1968 that such a thing had happened. Biden now endorsed his Vice-President Harris to replace him. Yet at this time, there was less than one month until the convention. Reportedly, only Marianne Williamson even tried to explore contesting Harris. But since there was an early ballot roll call two weeks before the convention, this made it even harder to rally any kind of challenge. So there was no state by state delegation pitch by alternative candidates. There was simply no time. Kamala Harris became the appointed candidate. There was no debate, no opposition, no public interview by the media and no questions asked why the DNC accepted such a will-nilly process which allowed no opposition. After all, in 1968, both Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy ran against Vice-President Hubert Humphrey.
Because of the memory of the violence in Chicago in 1968, the DNC arranged a huge police force outside the convention floor so protestors could not become visible on camera. They also allowed no Palestinian/American to address the huge congregation on the Israeli invasion of Gaza with its thousands of civilian casualties. Perhaps that would have been a flashback to the Vietnam protests at the Chicago 1968 convention. Meanwhile, Harris has tried to track left on domestic issues, like housing. But she seems to be more or less another Biden or Hillary Clinton on foreign policy. There is no urgency to end the wars in Ukraine or the Middle East. One could create a lot of housing with the tens of billions America is supplying for those wars. And let us not forget: it was Harris as Attorney General of California who opposed a retrial for Sirhan Sirhan in the death of Robert Kennedy.
Years ago, when she first ran for president, this author did a review of her record at the time, which included the RFK case. We reprint these here as a reminder of who she was and is.
Read Part One
Read Part Two
