It's Kamala!

[Dill]

(08-16-2020, 06:16 PM)hollodero Wrote: I think many people not sitting in Vienna think the same thing. What I say imho is not inherently ignorant or illogical.

Yo, easy Hollo. Seems like I touched a nerve or two here. I was not at all implying that the view from Vienna is inherently ignorant or illogical. But I am implying that from that distance, while the numbers may be clear enough, they don't account for the way history and culture weigh differently on differing groups in US political discourse, and so on vp choices.  

By that same token of distance, there is absolutely no reason to suppose you and your neighbors would raise the meritocratic standard to fight a "rear guard action" to defend a US status quo, especially one you, personally, have always been critical of. You've generally been a touchstone of rational clarity in this forum. My humble apologies if I have given you the impression I thought otherwise. My intent was to SEPARATE, not conflate,  your defense of meritocracy from that of Ingraham and others by emphasizing the difference in context.

My mention of UT history was to suggest how a precedent was set in the 60s which continues to work today*, and so why the connection to right wing rhetoric is not "forced" but a concrete and continuing tactical problem. At least in my argument. Not sure how responsible I am for what other Dems or "leftists" make of race in US politics. But I have not separated race out from class/economic issues. E.g., my point about the UT Law School director specifically rests upon recognizing a class and economic disadvantage which is obscured by the meritocratic standard. 

Since I don't think Dem "pandering" to Blacks (and other minorities) has left them as "marginalized as ever" over my life time, I'll take another shot tomorrow at examining the question of whether a black female vp will or will not "change a thing," and what might constitute realistic expectations for such a choice.  

*I could have reeled off a series of examples of how the meritocratic argument has been deployed to protect racial/class privilege, decade by decade, which would illustrate this continuity. (I get particularly incensed when MLK is invoked to do this.) But I figured the post was already getting long and I thought current applicability was clear enough from that one example.