If media leaks can be believed, Biden’s veepstakes are narrowing down to Senator Kamala Harris and Rep. Karen Bass, with Susan Rice lingering in the background.
That these are terrible choices ought to go without saying.
Kamala Harris flubbed her run and has no base in the black community. Obama was able to overcome that problem eventually, Kamala has shown no sign that she can. This is a major problem for a political pick premised on appealing to black voters.
Black people hate Kamala. BLM really hates her and isn’t shy about going after black DAs. Just ask DA Lacey in Kamala’s backyard. Harris, like Obama, is a white liberal’s idea of a black politician. Obama managed to win over the black community, and the black leaders who fought him had to grumble and make peace with the inevitable.
Unless Kamala can do that, she might be toast.
It’s why the Congressional Black Caucus is pushing one of its own swamp creatures, Rep. Karen Bass for the slot. While Bass would be fine in the black community, good luck with Florida if Biden picks a Castro fangirl.
An event blurb in an October 1975 issue of the communist Daily World newspaper describes Bass, then 22, as “leader of the Venceremos Brigade in southern California.” Bass herself explained her work for the brigade to a doctoral candidate working on a 1996 Ph.D. dissertation submitted to the Fielding Institute, titled “Women Activists of Diverse Backgrounds: A Qualitative Study of Perceived Influences and Values.” “Another critical influence for Bass began, at age 19, and spanned the next five years: Cuba,” reads the document, written by Dawn Noggle, who is currently the director of mental health services for the Maricopa County correctional system. “As a ‘brigadista’ and then organizer for the Venceremos Brigades, Karen visited Cuba every 6 months.”
Bass’ Cuba-related work drew the attention of the Los Angeles Police Department, which had successfully infiltrated the local wing of the Venceremos Brigade. Per a 1983 LA Times article, a 1973 LAPD intelligence document described Bass as a “leader” in Venceremos, which was alleged to “train revolutionary-prone Americans in terrorist tactics and guerrilla warfare while claiming to harvest sugar cane.”
Why settle for Bernie, when you can get the real deal.
During the hearing, a sheriff’s deputy from New Orleans told the subcommittee that he had infiltrated the group and been subject to extensive questioning and indoctrination sessions. “To be a member of the brigade, you had to be confirmed as a Marxist-Leninist,” he said. The New York Times wrote up his testimony under the headline “Undercover Agent Tells of Cuba Trip With Red Youth Unit.”
Two years after Bass’s first trip, the head of the Dade County, Florida, bomb squad testified to the Senate Internal Security Committee that interrogations of members of violent organizations in America had led his group to the Venceremos Brigade. In 1977, the FBI produced a report alleging that some members of the Venceremos Brigade received weapons training.
. In 1982, a Senate Judiciary subcommittee held a hearing featuring a former member of Cuban intelligence who had defected to the United States. He testified that Cuban intelligence had connected with members of the Brigade while they were in the country, and that some Americans had become sources for the Cubans.
In 1983, L.A. police chief Daryl Gates tried to link Bass to a gun-running operation, using police reports that said Bass had “returned from Cuba bringing back propaganda literature.” She told police that she had not received any military training while in Cuba, and told me that the police had fixated on her learning to use a gun for target practice during a Brigade camping trip outside L.A. “I’m angry and I’m shocked that they would use [this allegation] to try to attempt to smear me personally and the brigade,” she told the Associated Press at the time.
It’s rather pathetic that Biden’s VP stakes have come down to such politically terrible choices. But that says something about the Democrats.
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