Quick, Democrats: Name your next President…

We were told that whatever it is that Joe Biden  is now would announce his choice for Vice-President today. Today it has been announced that the decision will be put off for another week. This is bad news for the Trump Deranged, the “resistance” and the news media (but I repeat myself), though so far I haven’t seen any articles from that news media explaining why.

The entire Biden/Democratic victory plan is to make the election between Trump and Not-Trump, a fantasy Rorschach ideal that doesn’t exist. The more Biden hides, the fewer details about him are revealed to apathetic and lazy voters who barely knew who he was during the Obama administration and before—Neil Kinnock? Who’s that? What Clarence Thomas hearings?—the more likely Biden is to get elected. Then there’s the senility problem. And the sexual harassment problem. And his enabling  influence-peddling by his son problem. Soon we’ll have more details of his participating in the framing of General Flynn, and lying about it.

The news media will help keep as much of this out of the public consciousness as possible, but there are limits, and one of the biggest limit sis that Biden has to have a real person as his running mate, and he is painted into a corner. He has to pick a woman—this was pre-ordained for whatever candidate the Democrats chose the second the #MeToo wave began, if that candidate wasn’t female—and the George Floyd Freakout made it mandatory that the choice be a black woman, making the pool ridiculously small. Worse, a majority of the public has seen enough to figure out that between Joe’s advanced age and advancing IQ deficit, whoever is VP is more likely to become President than anyone elected to that office in US history.

No one on Biden’s list is qualified. None of them. An ethical candidate running under the banner of an ethical party would decide that if the demographically desirable VP options weren’t up to the job, then he couldn’t pick any of them. But race is all that matters to this mutation of the Democratic Party, and winning is all that matters to Joe.

How hard is it to choose a VP? Biden has had months. Delaying this decision is an ominous portent of his leadership ability; you would think he could just put all the hacks and mediocrities in a hat and pull one out. What the delay tells us is what I have alluded to for a while: every choice alienates part of the base or a key voting group. That’s what the internal polling is saying. “Somebody” is the perfect candidate for VP, just as Candidate X would be certain to beat Trump. Joe can’t be Candidate X forever, and the  is no “Somebody.” There is Elizabeth Warren, who, while being a clever demagogue, is white. Ding! There is Stacy Abrams, whom Biden, or whoever is pulling his strings, obviously doesn’t want, and who has no Presidential qualifications at all. There is Senator Kamala Harris, who is a woman, black, and flunks both the #MeToo test (she slept her way to the top) and the systemic racism test (She put an awful lot of black men in prison). On top of that, she was resoundingly rejected by Democratic voters in the Presidential primaries. I would bet my head that internal polling shows Biden’s margin over Trump dropping alarmingly when Harris is added to the ticket in simulations.

Then we have the “black officials nobody’s ever heard of” group which does fit the shadow candidacy battle plan, but apparently also is flopping in the polling. Take, for example, Rep. Karen Bass, D-Caif., a contender for  Joe Biden’s running mate who is female and black, but otherwise completely undistinguished. Just as D.C. buzz had it this week that Joe might be tending her way, her past comments praising Fidel Castro and the Church of Scientology surfaced. Her explanation for both were less than inspiring. In fact, they were desperate and pathetic.

“The Church of Scientology I know has made a difference, because your creed is a universal creed and one that speaks to all people everywhere,” Bass had said from the podium at a Church of Scientology opening in 2010, captured on video. “The words are exciting of your founder, L. Ron Hubbard, in “The Creed of the Church of Scientology”: that all people of whatever race, color or creed, are created with equal rights.”

Yesterday, Bass released a statement explaining that she spoke at the Church because she  “found an area of agreement in their beliefs — where all people, of whatever race, color, or creed are created with equal rights, which is what my remarks were about. Since then, published first-hand accounts in books, interviews and documentaries have exposed this group. Everyone is now aware of the allegations against Scientology,“Back in 2010, I attended the event knowing I was going to address a group of people with beliefs very different than my own, and spoke briefly about things I think most of us agree with, and on those things — respect for different views, equality, and fighting oppression — my views have not changed.”

Lame.

Who didn’t know about Scientology in 2010? She referenced the cult’s science fiction writer founder, L. Ron Hubbard and referenced his book: how can she say she was unfamiliar with the cult? And since when did the infamously doctrinaire and controlling Church of Scientology endorse respect for different views, equality, and fighting oppression?

Even more problematical for Bass–and Biden—were her words of praise for Fidel Castro in 2016, after the Communist dictator died. She referred to him as “commandante en jefe” (commander in chief), and said his passing was a “great loss to the people of Cuba.”  Cuban-Americans, a crucial voting bloc in Florida, beg to disagree, but that will win her Michael Moore’s vote.

In a piece in The Atlantic this week, Bass huminahumina-ed that she hadn’t fully realized how Cuba and Castro were seen in Florida, as opposed to in California. “If I had to make that statement over again, I wouldn’t use those words,” she said. To MSNBC, she blathered,  “I have talked to my colleagues in the House about that, and it’s certainly something that I would not say again. … I have always supported the Cuban people, and the relationship that Barack Obama and Biden had in their administration in terms of opening up relations.”

Wow. That’s even lamer than her Scientology excuse!

It is beyond argument that the Democratic strategy of keeping Americans as uninformed as possible regarding its Presidential candidate is wildly unethical: dishonest, unfair, cynical, and Machiavellian. It cannot, however, keep the identity of Biden’s Vice-President secret until November. That’s a serious problem, and one the Democrats and Biden deserve for their attempt to fake their way to power.