Are Harris and Booker Running For Vice? And If So, Which White, Male Presidential Candidate Is The Conscious, Black, Female Democrat Supposed To Support?

  

             I’m not much of a gambler. 

However, Vegas is offering some pretty tempting odds for the 2020 presidential race.  Donald Trump is predicted to win. They’re giving him + 140 odds (meaning a bet of $14 will get you $140.00), Joe Biden is + 600, O’Rourke is + 700, Sanders + 800 and Harris is + 900 and so on. But I’m not trying to make a quick buck. I’m just tired of living in an America where I feel like I have a target on my back because I’m black.  Right now, we can’t as a nation, even agree that black lives matter. Which means that when my two sons or I get pulled over or pulled aside by anyone in this country, we’re literally scared for our lives.   

Steve Bannon was recently quoted saying that a Harris-O’Rourke ticket would be the Democrats best shot against Trump in 2020.  Although he’s suspect as a source, I was actually pretty excited about what felt like a free, helpful hint from Trump’s former BFF. So, I brought this intel to a black, female friend of mine who is also a long-time Washington insider.   

“So, I heard that a Harris-O’Rourke ticket might win?”   

I tried to tamp down the excitement in my voice, but it was too late. The truth was that the more I thought about it, the more I believed Steve Bannon to be right. We are talking about Harris, a career politician and sitting mixed-race female senator running with O’Rourke, the bilingual Texan who has been compared to a Kennedy.  I thought that a Harris-O’Rourke ticket might be the game changer that we wanted, but I needed my friend to co-sign this theory because she’s never been wrong.   

It was she who broke it down for me in 1996 when I thought that Dole might actually beat a post-Lewinski-scandalized, Bill Clinton.  It was she who knew that Obama would win by a landslide in 2008 and told me that he’d be reelected in 2012. And it was my friend who delivered the news to me in August of 2016, that Hillary Clinton would not win the upcoming election. 

“You don’t mean…” I’d faltered. 

“Yes,” she nodded gravely. 

“But all of the polls say…” 

“The polls are wrong.” Her voice was soothing, as though she were calming a child down after a temper tantrum. 

“You mean HE’s going to be…?” 

“President Trump,” she said without flinching.  She had already processed this unthinkable reality. 

So, this time, I sat in front of her expectantly, waiting for her verdict on Bannon’s prophetic offering. 

What say you, now soothsayer?

She looked up from salting her tofu scramble with a bored stare. 

“You know Harris and Booker aren’t running to win, right Laura? You understand that they’re just running for Vice.” 

Say what? 

“You can’t run for Vice President.” 

I was trying to fight the feeling of disappointment I felt rising in my chest. 

“Of course not,” she said impatiently.  “But Trump is a juggernaut, and neither Kamala Harris nor Cory Booker has the numbers to beat him in any scenario.  However, Vice is possible.  With Biden, Bernie or Beto, Vice is possible. 

Biden, Bernie, and Beto – OH MY!

***

“It’s far too soon to be talking about running mates.”  

This was said by Kamala Harris on the last Sunday in March.  It was the first 90-degree day of 2019, and there were about 50 of us gathered in the backyard of a close friend of mine to support Kamala in her bid for the 2020 Presidential nomination. However, her statement startled me because it felt a little like she was reading my mind.  Sure, I was listening for her position on policies and evidence of her passion and intelligence. But I was also trying to gather up any clues that might verify my friend’s frank, straight-forward conclusion.  I was close enough to make eye contact with her, so I gave Kamala my best plaintive look. 

Thank you, Kamala, for mentioning running mates.  Because if my friend is right, I’d really like to know now if you’re actually running for Vice President. Moreover, if you are, what’s the most helpful thing to do? Continue to support you or should I campaign for one of these white men running against you instead?  

If the money is on Biden, Bernie or Beto to beat Trump (and according to the Odds Shark-app, it is), then should I just cross my fingers that whoever gets the nod picks Kamala Harris as their running mate?  But there’s also an argument to be made that Senator Cory Booker might be a more attractive black running mate because he’s a man.  But perhaps Steve Buttigieg is a more attractive running mate than both of them, as he is a young, white, man who checks a box that Harris and Booker can’t – LGTBQ.

 I would love, love, love to see this enormously qualified, mixed-race, black, female being sworn in as President in January 2021, but I feel like I’m operating in a vacuum here in Los Angeles.   I have no idea whether or not America is ready to put a black woman in the oval.  And at the end of the day, the only thing I am really interested in is the most potentially successful combination – the one that can beat President Trump.  

Last year, the #Resistance movement celebrated when former Governor, Jerry Brown signed a bill to move California’s Presidential primary up to March 3. This date-move puts California on the first slate of Super Tuesday contests, which gives The Golden State an early chance to take down a hated president, but it also gives us Californians less time to decide.  For the first time in a long time, while our votes really do matter, we have less time to make sure that the candidate we support and believe in, is also the candidate that can win against Trump.  And if my friend is right, I might have to be willing to put aside my desire to see our first black female President take office next year, in order to bet on a sure thing.

Ten Reasons Why I Thought The Movie, “US” Was Trash (AKA Terrible)

WARNING: This week’s blog is FULL of spoilers

Let’s get this out of the way, I thought Get Out was a fantastic movie. Furthermore, I thought Jordan Peele was incredibly smart to make his directorial debut a horror film about racism.  Because let’s face it – racism is scary.

So it makes sense that I couldn’t wait to see US, the movie.  I found the trailer to be both thrilling and chilling (by the way, that trailer editor should win the Golden Trailer Award – yeah, that’s a real thing).  I bought my tickets online in January, making sure that my boyfriend, his daughter, my mother and I had our favorite seats at The Arclight Theater in Sherman Oaks. I kept checking the rating on Rotten Tomatoes every few days to make sure it was still 100 percent fresh.

Finally, the day had come.  It was time to see US.

The house was packed and buzzing with nervous/excited chattering.  I held onto my boyfriend’s arm as the lights went down and the opening scene-music began. Ten minutes in, I was utterly engrossed, trying frantically to play chess in my head with Peele, determined to figure out the plot-twist before he revealed it at the end of the film.  My heart raced when the red family suddenly appeared at the end of the driveway. Moments later as the red boy shimmied up a tree like a leopard, I heard myself emit a shriek with the rest of the audience. Out loud, I warned the family away from the windows for fear that they would be easy targets for the red family.  But as soon as the red family got inside and the “tethered” Adelaide started speaking, I felt my antennae go up.  It was the same feeling I had when I first heard the details of Jussie Smollett’s alleged hate-crime attack.

Hold up, something isn’t making sense here…

Okay, here are my top ten gripes about US:

1)    When the “Red” Adelaide enters the house for the first time and tells her long, distractingly tedious, “Once upon a time” story about being a shadow, not ONCE does she mention the fact that she is the original Adelaide, a child who was abducted and placed with clones underground, while her “shadow” assumed her life. Don’t you think that would have come up? I mean, wouldn’t that have been the first thing out of your mouth?

2)    This colony of clones or “tethered people”: 

She says the government made them and put them down there, right?  So was the government keeping them there all those years?  If so, how?  And why didn’t they provide actual food for them? Also, if they’ve only ever eaten raw rabbit meat, how are they so athletically superior to regular humans? 

3)    What’s the deal with Jeremiah 11:11? I looked up the Biblical verse, and it still doesn’t make sense.

4)    If the captured-as-a child-Adelaide could move around freely and organize all those clones into a whole Hands-Across-America thing, why the F*%k didn’t she go back above ground and run her little butt back home to her real family?

5)    And speaking of Hands Across America – what was the point of that?

6)    Were some of them ZOMBIE clones?  If not, then why didn’t the white-guy clone die after Gabe delivered a crowbar into his skull?

7)    Why did Peele decide to over-explain some things and not to explain other things AT ALL?

8)    Why did "Red" keep handcuffing or tying up Adelaide when she caught her? Why didn’t she just kill her like she said she wanted to over and over?  (I know, I know, we need "Adelaide" for the sequel, but then throw me some explanation as to why “Red” wants her alive please.)

9)    What was up with Jason and the magic trick? Wasn’t it just a ring made out of a lighter flint?

10)    My biggest gripe:

I was not scared. 

I’m not saying that I didn’t jump a couple of times at the pop-outs, I’m not made of stone.  But I’m saying that it just wasn’t scary. I’m talking about that kind of bone-chilling scary, scared-to-turn-the-lights-out-when-its-time-for-bed scary, scared-to-look-in-the-bathroom-mirror-for-fear-of-seeing-two-reflections scary. 

It just wasn’t scary.

But I do think some people were scared – the critics.  I feel like critics were too scared to pan Jordan Peele’s much-anticipated sophomore effort because Get Out was so innovative, fresh and intelligent. And yes, also because he is mixed-race-black (yeah, I said it) and they don’t want to be on the wrong side of history here.  It’s kind of like that old children’s fable, The Emperor’s New Clothes.  You know the one where the Emperor is fooled into paying for a whole, new invisible wardrobe and all of his subjects are too afraid to admit that they can’t see his outfit, so they praise it instead?

So, in conclusion, I think that the scariest thing about seeing US, the movie, might be admitting to your friends afterward that you just didn’t understand it.

Here’s Why Black Twitter Has Anointed House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi The Patron Saint of Shade

Shade:  Subtle sneering expression of contempt for or disgust with someone — sometimes verbal and sometimes not. Slang term for insult.

The clap back.

I know that even if you didn’t watch the State of The Union address (all 82 minutes of it) unless you’ve been on a complete social media fast this week, you had to have seen one of the thousands of memes of Nancy Pelosi sitting behind President Trump while he addressed the nation on Tuesday night. Nancy eye-rolling, Nancy busily fact-checking her copy of his speech and of course, Nancy Pelosi clapping.

I kind of held my breath when I turned on the State of The Union Tuesday night.  I feel like we as a nation, are so inundated with sketchy, biased news stories from the “far” sides of both major parties. So sometimes I try to clear my mind of prior prejudices and give this administration a chance to be better than the way they’ve been portrayed in the media.

But this time, like every time, I ended up getting the political equivalent of a gut punch.  It really hurt my feelings when that chamber full of white men in suits stood and cheered when our President described The Caravan as murderous, drug-dealing immigrants or when he used terms such as, “ripped from the womb” or “execute the baby” when describing late-term abortions. Side note: I know it’s controversial, but I still honestly don’t understand why ANY man gets a say on what a woman does with her body.  And why, when a woman makes the oftentimes painful decision to terminate a pregnancy, it’s a matter for the courts and not a medical professional.

So, now I’m feeling like, Oh MAN do I miss HIM (you know who I mean).  It was all so different, so much better when HE was delivering this address.  It was the safest and most taken care of, in a national sense, that I’ve ever felt...

Sorry, I’m back now.  I had to get a tissue.

So, Tuesday night I was sitting at my desk watching the State of The Union and feeling more and more distinctly unsettled.  And I almost turned it off because sometimes watching him speak fills me with so much fear and anger that I can’t shake it off for days at a time.  And I have to be really mindful of things that disturb me, as I’m in recovery and my emotional balance is everything. If I’m thrown into a continual state of disturbance, I could stand to lose the most important thing in my life — my sobriety.

But again, I digress.

Anyway, I’m about to turn it off, because I feel like there’s no respite from the barrage of hurtful things coming out of his mouth. And I think that of course, Nancy is like a hostage behind him, like she has to be the very picture of dignity up there, representing our nation.

I need another side moment here.  Until recently, I wasn’t a big fan of House Speaker Pelosi.  The irony of her being The Speaker was that her actual speaking voice irked me to the point where I would rush to lower the volume whenever she appeared on TV. Plus, I’ve always thought of her as frail, scattered and soft.  In fact, until this business with the shutdown and the wall, I was not-so-secretly disappointed that she hadn’t been voted out as Speaker.

But then I, along with the rest of the nation, watched as she and her BFF, Senator Chuck Schumer, bravely stood their ground during one of the riskiest, scariest games of chicken that America has ever seen.  By refusing to fund “The Wall" they subsequently forced our president to reopen the government without having to compromise a thing. Meanwhile, Nancy had already quietly canceled his January 23rd SOTU ("I'm writing to inform you that the House will not consider a concurrent resolution authorizing the President's State of the Union address until the government has reopened"). And then even after he reopened it, she still made him sweat a little before rescheduling it.  In case you missed this in school (I did), the President cannot just show up to deliver the State of the Union - he or she must first wait for a written invitation from The Speaker of the House.

Okay? Mad respect.

And for the first time, I became aware of the real power she was concealing under that fluttery, fragile demeanor.

So anyway, back to Tuesday night, while it was hard not to be entirely captivated by those stunning female-lawmakers dressed in all white, it was really NP who was the star of the night.  With every set of eyes on her, she was Leonard Bernstein up there, conducting the whole dang event. We all watched her for the signals; when to dismiss, when to rise, when to groan and of course when to clap.

That clap.

I found myself watching to the end, fully engrossed in the “show behind the show.”  I needed an ally to view the event with even a modicum of safety, and that ally turned out to be, none other than, Speaker Pelosi and the funny little way she claps.

Nancy’s daughter, Christina Pelosi had this to say about her mother’s clapping.  A clapping style, which, by the way, has now earned her mother the internet equivalent of a standing ovation:

“Oh yes, that clap took me back to my teen years.  Frankly, it means that she’s disappointed that you thought this (whatever it was) could work — but here’s a clap.”

So, I gotta go with Black Twitter on this one. After this year’s State of The Union, House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi is indeed The Patron Saint of Shade.  And long may she reign.