What a great choice! by Ruth Neuwald Falcon

I’m excited. Joe Biden has picked a running mate with intensity and ferocity. She also has charm and style. She’s experienced and smart, and could step into the role of president should the need arise. We have been so dispirited for so long. It feels like, with this choice, the cloud is beginning to lift. It is up to us to do everything we can to make that feeling a reality.

From rival to running mate: What ‘fearless fighter’ Kamala Harris brings to Joe Biden’s ticket—USA Today

Long a Republican Safety Net, White Middle-Class Voters Are Slipping From Trump’s Grip—Time

Scientists Uneasy as Russia Approves 1st Coronavirus Vaccine—US News & World Report

August 11, 2020

What a great choice!
by Ruth Neuwald Falcon, Seattle, Washington

Unlike the current inhabitant of the White House, who banishes people when they disagree with him, Joe Biden has chosen someone who challenged him head on about race and busing in the first Democratic debate last year. In 2017, during the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing investigating Russian election interference, Harris’s rapid-fire questioning of then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions caused him to be “visibly flustered.” On the second day of Brett Kavanaugh’s hearing for his Supreme Court appointment, she “left him stumbling and speechless.” In 2019, she accused Attorney General Bill Barr of stalling and refusing to answer her questions about the White House “because he knew doing so would open himself up to perjury allegations.” She made them all squirm with her intelligent and forceful questioning. She will not be cowed by the bully in the White House, nor by the sycophant who currently occupies the office she is running for. “She’s not worried by Donald Trump,” Cory Booker said to Anderson Cooper this evening. “Donald Trump should be worried by Kamala Harris.”

Today’s announcement has energized me. It is not a matter of agreeing with all positions and all previous actions of either candidate. We all have complicated histories and have made decisions that we might make differently today. But as a woman who was engaged in the second wave of the women’s movement when I was in my twenties, I feel this choice in my bones. I am strengthened and encouraged by it.

Diane Delmar wrote me yesterday: “There doesn’t seem to be a leader with the stature of Roosevelt to bind us together.” She is still right that it won’t be over when the election is won. And it is true that Joe Biden is not FDR. But he is a decent, experienced politician, with a heart and a conscience. He knows the value of truly surrounding himself with the most gifted and talented people in and out of politics. He is willing to be challenged. My respect for him has greatly increased with this choice. I wager that his administration will be populated by most of the candidates who appeared on that debate stage with him last year.

I’m excited. What a strange and unusual feeling. I like it.