UnNews:Kaine welcomes Harris to obscurity
| Where man always bites dog | ✪ | UnNews | ✪ | Thursday, May 23, 2024, 15:26:59 (UTC) |
| Kaine welcomes Harris to obscurity | 
|
12 August 2020
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- One day after presumptive Democratic Party Presidential nominee Joe Biden selected California Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate, Tim Kaine sent the candidate his props.
Kaine, for those who forget, was Harris's counterpart in the ill-fated Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016. And enough do forget that a daily newspaper here felt the need to explain this in the headline.
Kaine sent the props from the floor of the U.S. Senate, where he still represents one of the mid-Atlantic states, probably. Harris would have heard them, if she had been in her seat in the Senate. But she was in Wilmington, Delaware, at a basement press conference with Biden, as the two sought to bond with the American electorate by reading from Teleprompters through Coronavirus face masks.
Kaine spoke during Special Orders, an hour in which senators can take one minute to speak about anything, as the chamber and the gallery are generally both deserted and the C-SPAN cameras are switched off. He praised Harris as the first African-American to appear on a Presidential ticket, as her mother immigrated from India and her father came in from Jamaica, both of which are virtually African, or at least plenty dark. "Props" is African-American for "congratulations."
Apart from that, though, she is definitely a woman. Kaine did not credit her with firsts in that department, however, prudently giving both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin the benefit of the doubt.
Kaine is a mere asterisk in the 2016 campaign, though he did get a televised debate with his Republican counterpart, the eminently forgettable Mike Pence. Kaine sent Harris best wishes toward her own journey toward the footnotes, saying obscurity will help the public forget the time she claimed her running mate hung out with segregationists and the time she endorsed Biden's sex-crime accusers. Harris's shifting policy positions have already been forgotten, as her own campaign for the 2020 nomination crashed and burned days before she could find out whether she would lose her home state. Getting through November 3 should usher her into obscurity for good, America's version of Europe's "Right to be Forgotten."
"This is a good day I believe for the country," Kaine added.
Minor-party candidates have a more direct route to the memory hole, including all Vice-Presidential and Presidential candidates of the Libertarian Party. 1992 Reform Party VP candidate James Stockdale embraced forgettability most eagerly, opening a debate appearance by wondering, "Who am I? Why am I here?" The questions were never answered to the candidate's satisfaction, as his hearing aid took that moment to fail, and he spent the rest of his life never knowing who he was.
However, the record for obscurity must belong to Ronald Reagan's Vice President, George H.W. Bush, whom no one remembered even though he eventually became President in his own right for four years. Bush only became famous decades later, when he developed the habit of pinching women's bottoms.
Sources[edit]
- Alex Swoyer "Hillary Clinton's VP pick Tim Kaine praises Kamala Harris as Joe Biden's running mate". Washington Times, August 12, 2020