We rethink the week with Dean Spiliotis, Civic Scholar and Presidential Scholar at Southern New Hampshire University; Stephen Pimpare, Professor at the University of New Hampshire and a nationally recognized expert on poverty, homelessness, and U.S. social policy; and Robert Hennelly, investigative reporter for The Chief/Leader, a public employee union journal in NYC, for NJInsider, Slack.com, and @stucknation.
We discuss what Kamala Harris brings to Biden’s ticket as the first Black woman and first Asian-American to be nominated for VP. As a child of immigrants — a first-generation American — she reminds voters that all of us have similar immigration stories. For some of us, these stories occurred a couple of generations earlier than Kamala’s did. But for most of us non-Native Americans, our families all experienced the perspective that our country was built on the work of immigrants (and slaves), who tried to assimilate to achieve the American Dream, to become an integral part of American society. The new immigrants share many characteristics of the earlier ones: a work ethic, perseverance, innovation, their desire to be woven into the American quilt, their caution and their ambition.
We also discuss the suppression by Pres. Trump and the Republicans of the opportunity to vote (especially suppression of people of color’s ability to vote). Trump’s Postal Commissioner is actively (and probably illegally) working to undermine the ability of the USPS to reliably handle and deliver the expected mail-in ballots in November’s election. Even if this voter suppression does not actually achieve a majority of votes for Trump, it will probably sow enough chaos to give Trump an audience when he claims that the election was fraudulent and that he should remain in power after the election.
On the other side of the aisle, Joe Biden (and Democrats like Rahm Emanuel) are still conceptualizing the need to build a bipartisan coalition with moderate Republicans (and some Democrats) who voted for Trump even though they had previously voted twice for Obama. Instead, Biden should be focusing on building a more viable coalition between the old, centrist “New Democrats” — which took control of the party in 1992 — and the growing (and younger) progressive members of the party. We wonder whether Kamala Harris will recognize the need to unite the Democrats by moving the new administration’s policies to reflect progressive values. And if Harris does recognize this need, will she try to — and will she succeed in — persuading Biden and Congressional leaders to move in that direction too?
