In Support of Harris and Walz

Delegates of the Democratic National Convention in a virtual roll call vote (completed on August 6) officially certified Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as the Party’s nominees for President and Vice President in the upcoming November election. 

How greatly the political landscape changed in just four weeks! On July 13,  ex-President Trump was wounded by a young man who apparently sought to assassinate him.

Then on the 21^st, just eight days later, Pres. Biden announced that he would not accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for POTUS.

Beginning the very afternoon of Biden’s announcement and his endorsement of his Vice President to be the Democratic nominee, there was an outpouring of verbal and financial support for VP Kamala Harris.

In light of the overwhelming early support received by Harris, virtual voting by the DNC delegates began on August 1, and by the next day, Kamala already had enough votes for the nomination. Now, she and her pick as a running mate are the  Democratic candidates for the election to be held in just 88 days.

The nation’s short-term, and perhaps long-term, future depends greatly on the November 5 voting outcome. This is the fateful decision facing the country: will voters elect Kamala Harris rather than “the worst presidential nominee in U.S. history,” as I dubbed Donald Trump in my July 20 blog post?

There is also this worrying question in the minds of many: if Harris is elected, will Trump accept the election results? Or once again will he claim that the election was stolen and seek to use unlawful means to attain election?

Kamala Harris has my full support. When in 2019 there began to be talk of who the Democratic candidate might be in 2020, Harris was my first choice. I already thought Joe Biden was too old to be President. (Now, though, I think he has done a very commendable job—and was wise to “pass the torch.”)

Kamala has a diverse religious background, but she has long been a member of Third Baptist Church in San Francisco. She is quite complimentary of her pastor, Rev. Dr. Amos C. Brown, as is he of her.*¹

On July 22, Thinking Friend Brian Kaylor posted “The Next Baptist President of the United States?” on his blog (here). It was largely about the interview he had with Brown in 2020. The elderly pastor told Brian that Kamala “is a role model for womanhood, and just human decency and dignity at its best.”

MAGA Christians, though, are highly critical of candidate Harris in many ways, including denigration of her Christian faith. At the Turning Point USA Believers’ Summit in West Palm Beach on July 26, TP president Charlie Kirk declared that Harris “stands against everything that we as Christians believe.”*²

Christian nationalist Lance Wallnau, says that Harris represents “the spirit of Jezebel in a way that will be even more ominous than Hillary (Clinton) because she’ll bring a racial component, and she’s younger.”

What about Harris’s pick for Vice President? Gov. Walz (b. 1964) has not been widely known nationally, but I think he was a good choice. In some ways, he reminds me of Harry Truman, another plainspoken Midwesterner, who 80 years ago in 1944 was elected VPOTUS.

Like Truman, Walz is more of a “commoner” than many high-profile politicians. JD Vance, the GOP VP candidate, graduated from Ohio State University (BA) and Yale (JD); Walz graduated from small Chadron State College (BS) in Nebraska, his home state, and Minnesota State University, Mankato, (MS).

Before becoming a politician, Vance practiced law for slightly under two years and then moved to San Francisco to work in the technology industry as a venture capitalist; Walz was a high school teacher and football coach for about ten years before entering politics.*³

Tim Walz and his wife, Gwen, were married in 1994, and they have two children, Hope (b. 2001) and Gus (b. 2006). They are affiliated with an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregation in St. Paul.

Please join me in support of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. I am confident that they will not only preserve our national democracy but will also work to enhance liberty and justice for all U.S. citizens—and will have compassion for the needy people residing in our country who are not citizens.  

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*¹ Brown (b. 1941) has been pastor of 3BC since 1976. That church is duly aligned with the American Baptist Churches USA and the National Baptist Convention USA. He is also currently the president of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP. Brian refers to him as “a civil rights icon.” You may also like to read this pertinent article about Brown posted by Sojourners on July 25.

*² Donald Trump also spoke at that TP meeting, and among other things, he said, “Get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what: it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians…. Get out, you’ve got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.” (From Heather Cox Richardson’s July 26 newsletter.)

*³ Jess Piper had this to say (here) after hearing that Walz was to be the Dem. VP nominee: “Walz is so perfect for the job of VP. He’s a rural progressive. He’s my people. A dirt road Democrat. He’s a liberal guy who lives among conservative folks.” (Some of you may remember that I introduced Ms. Piper in my March 14 blog post.)

  

 

Tarnishing the Name of Jesus

It was a week ago tonight that Pres. Biden delivered the annual State of the Union (SOTU) message. His address was widely applauded by Democrats and by the mainstream media—and, not surprisingly, panned by Republicans and by right-wing news outlets who castigate the “lamestream” media.

This post, though, is about the Republican rebuttal speech given by Alabama Senator Katie Britt. 

Katie Boyd Britt (b. 1982) was elected the junior Senator from Alabama in 2022, defeating Democrat Will Boyd, a Black Baptist pastor. She received nearly 67% of the vote.

I didn’t remember hearing the name of Sen. Britt before I saw that she would give the rebuttal after the SOTU address, so I looked her up on Wikipedia and elsewhere.

In a July 2021 interview, Britt stated, “Jesus Christ is the most important thing in life, and that should be the foundation that everything else comes around.” I certainly would not disagree with that, but surely such a statement should include telling the truth and not bearing false witness.

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times candidly stated that “the woman sitting in the kitchen with the cross glittering on her neck lied.” After listening (on Friday) to her Thursday night rebuttal speech, that clearly seems to be the case.

And given what she has said about Jesus Christ and the sparkling (diamond-studded?) cross around her neck as she gave her speech, it seemed to me that she was tarnishing the name of Jesus.

No wonder more and more people in the U.S. are leaving the Christian faith and joining the “nones.”

Sen. Boyd’s rebuttal speech was criticized and critiqued by a wide variety of voices. For example, here is part of what historian Heather Cox Richardson (HCR) wrote about Katie’s talk in her March 8 newsletter:

Sitting in a kitchen rather than in a setting that reflected her position in one of the nation’s highest elected offices, Britt conspicuously wore a necklace with a cross and spoke in a breathy, childlike voice as she wavered between smiles and the suggestion she was on the verge of tears. 

At the close of HRC’s letter, I first learned about Jess Piper and her Substack posts under the name “The View from Rural Missouri.” Her March 8 “view” was titled “The Fundie Baby Voice.”*

But it wasn’t the voice that most disturbed me. It was the lies that Sen. Britt told in that problematic voice.

In his remarks at the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday evening, Jimmy Kimmel made these remarks about Emma Stone, who had just been awarded the Best Actress Oscar: “Emma, you are so unbelievably great in Poor Things. Emma played an adult woman with the brain of a child, like the lady who gave the rebuttal to the State of the Union on Thursday night.”**

Sen. Boyd did her best to harm Pres. Biden and to lessen his chances of winning a second term as POTUS. She may have done the Republicans more harm than good, however.

I was saddened by the touching story she told of talking last year with the girl who had been a victim of sex trafficking—and then off-put by her blaming the President for that tragic event. And then I was incensed when it turned out the incident in question took place when George W. Bush was President!

On Monday, Washington Post associate editor and columnist Karen Tumulty wrote that the “horrific story” Katie told, “at least by implication, turned out to be a big fat lie.”

Tumulty went on to note that the “Post’s fact-checker Glenn Kessler awarded Britt four Pinocchios for the way she twisted this tragic story to make a cravenly partisan point.”

Despite her later efforts to walk back what she had said, there was no way her listeners could have known she was talking about an incident that took place more than a decade ago. Even if it wasn’t a blatant lie, it was highly deceitful and told with the intent of harming the President.

It is quite clear, though, that in spite of her prominent display of a cross on a necklace and pious talk, she tarnished the name of Jesus and did the cause of Christ far more harm than good.

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  * Jess Piper lives in (or near) Maryville, Missouri, which is about 35 miles from my hometown. In 2022 she ran as a progressive Democrat to become a Representative in the Missouri legislature, but she was soundly defeated in the district that twice voted for Trump by 80% or so. I am now receiving her Substack posts and have had email exchanges with her this week.

** This was a powerful putdown of Sen. Britt’s rebuttal speech to those who had seen Emma Stone's Oscar-winning performance in Poor Things, but I do not recommend that movie except to insightful, mature adults.