Tell the DoJ they’re wrong then:

In foreign relations, at the will and as the representative of the President, the Vice President may engage in activities ranging into the highest levels of diplomacy and negotiation and may do so anywhere in the world.

It is worth noting that’s only one survey by the Arab American Institute. I’m not saying they’re biased, per se, but if I’m going to make a tectonic shift in my platform I’m going to do it based on multiple corroborating lines of evidence. Most of the times I saw that claim being made on Lemmy, all linked sources inevitably pointed back to that single survey, which makes drawing a firm conclusion more challenging. I’m more inclined to believe she was wedged between diametrically opposed constituencies and Netanyahu knowingly put her and Biden in checkmate because he knew they’d have to pick a side, and then lose to Trump.

In any case, hindsight is 20/20 and we’ll never really get to test their theory. The AAI survey very well may have been correct, and the campaign misstep might go down as one of America’s historic blunders.

Aside from that, I just wanted to say that I remember you and I had a brief conversation in the Political Discussion community a few weeks back and you mentioned how much Trump and MAGA had affected your personal life. I just wanted to say I’m sorry you’re going through this again and wish you the best, for whatever it’s worth. Neither of us wanted another Trump presidency (and I’m not even American), and I hope the next 4 years are good to you.

Thank you. I have already started applying for remote jobs and making household preparations. Here’s hoping I’m just being irrational and everything will be fine.

I saw that data as well. I’m skeptical because the people clamoring for the pivot only ever wanted to talk about the votes she’d gain, but not the ones she’d lose by changing positions. Given the way a significant portion of the country shifted rapidly into defense mode after the pro-Palestine protests, and given how they recoiled en masse at the mere hint of antisemitism on University campuses, and given that Jewish swing state voters were already reeling about sanctions waivers for Iran, that pivot would most certainly have turned “reluctant Trump voters” into enthusiastic Trump voters, and likely pulled a few more undecideds across the fence. So in that case I find the “lobbying money” angle less salient than the voting bloc trade-offs that were probably flashing red lights for the campaign.

You’ll get no argument from me there. She tried to thread the needle and wound up pissing off both sides she was trying to court, albeit for very different reasons. Given the dynamic, I’m not sure there’s a message she could have put out that would have satisfied everyone, but I firmly believe she said as much as she could possibly say, and as delicately as she could possibly say it, to telegraph that she’d take a different approach once she was sworn in. It wasn’t convincing to a huge swath of voters who’ve made clear they prefer Trump, but coming from someone whose job requires a lot of delicate public diplomacy even when I’m talking about something I disagree with to people I don’t support, I saw the subtext very clearly. I’m sure she sees it the same way, but until we read her memoirs many years from now, I guess we’ll never know.

No, the position of a sitting Congressperson is irrelevant to negotiations that are ongoing between the President and another country. The VP is literally the President’s surrogate, acting on his behalf and as a member of the National Security Council. That cannot be said about literally anyone else, at least as it pertains to foreign diplomacy. I’d even go so far as to state that the Secretary of State would have the same troubles articulating a vision distinct from the President under which (s)he’s actively serving.

That might be illegal

Which is what I said.

even if it did effect negotiations

Which is also what I said.

So…I guess…glad we agree?

Edit: In foreign relations, at the will and as the representative of the President, the Vice President may engage in activities ranging into the highest levels of diplomacy and negotiation and may do so anywhere in the world.

I love the world you guys have concocted in your heads where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter, so the VP can go rogue. This is a fascinating view into the civic literacy of the average American.

Horseshit. The VP is chosen by the Presidential candidate to serve on his ticket, and does not run independently and so is not directly elected. They are indirectly elected. They can’t be fired, but they also can’t just go their own way, consequences be damned, because they are an official “representative of the President” of the United States.

The duties of the Vice President, outside of those enumerated in the Constitution, are at the discretion of the current President.

By that logic any presidential candidat

Any Presidential candidate in the current administration. Why do y’all keep skipping over that part?

You state things unequivocally that you cannot possibly know and have no evidence to support, so it would be futile to try to evidence you out of that opinion. If you know everything about what’s happening in secret, then your powers are truly impressive.

I read this as almost exactly the same thing:

“And as president, I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza, to bring home the hostages, end the suffering in Gaza, ensure Israel is secure, and ensure the Palestinian people can realise their right to dignity, freedom, security and self-determination,”

Something as simple as that obviously didn’t work. I’m skeptical that your version would have moved the needle, and I’m sure she’s under strict orders not to call it a “genocide”, which is still and order from her boss, even if it’s wrong.

The State Department could step in with Biden and order her to stop as a member of the administration and one of the President’s official foreign policy representatives.

I seriously wonder where y’all come up with the notion that the Vice President can simply tell the President of the United States to go fuck himself. Obviously none of you served in the military.

Edit: More knee-jerk insta-downvotes from givesomefucks. I’m constantly reminded not to even try.

In a way that could jeopardize ongoing negotiations? Very well might be. Or at a minimum could actively undermine arguments being made by the State Department so that they lose their leverage.

Nobody in the administration who’s actively engaged in diplomatic negotiations during wartime, no.

I didnt say she couldn’t discuss foreign policy. She just can’t publicly condemn her boss while his surrogates are negotiating to end a conflict.

Not as a representative of the US government receiving classified information, no. That’s absolutely not how this works.

nothing to lose by changing her Gaza stance

Except publicly undermining foreign diplomacy and presenting a national security risk by contradicting the President while secret negotiations are taking place. Which isn’t nothing.

Yes. It’s a bit like interviewing for your boss’s job while your boss still signs your checks. Your boss can still fire you or make your life miserable if you openly trash the job (s)he’s doing.

People don’t seem to understand that when you sign on to be someone’s VP you sign on to support everything they do in public, even if you offer different advice in private. She’s simply not in a position to call the shots, even if she thinks her boss is stupid. I have total confidence that in-office Harris would have made different decisions than on-campaign Harris.

Alaska.

Edit: Not to mention the fact that public statements by the VP that directly contradict the President could present very real national security risks and seriously undermine foreign policy and diplomacy.

I appreciate your response and understand your conundrum. It’s hard to make sense of this because his movement seems so abhorrent sometimes.

Consider for just a moment, though, that the downvotes are proving to you exactly the argument I’m trying to make. I’m squarely on the left and despise Trump, but for years the left has cared more about being “right” and punishing people who disagree in life and online, than about being open to diverse people and opinions.

I really hate to have to echo tired right-wing talking points, but the terminally online left is our single most toxic bloc, and they exert huge amounts of control over what topics and opinions are “allowable” online. You get hammered with downvotes and shouted out of the room any time you even try to consider another perspective, even if you do it politely. I can see how someone looking in from the outside would start to doubt our sincerity in arguing for diversity and tolerance. We’re an awfully intolerant lot, all things considered.

If you want to write off half of the Latino population as irredeemable, then be my guest. Bernie wouldn’t, and I hope an acolyte will emerge and follow his example. I’ll be right there with them.

He got almost half of the Latino vote, and we are bleeding Latino support. That’s not racism. It means there’s something else happening.

Further, you’ll get no argument from me that they believe lies. But we are seeing record numbers of asylum seekers, many of which are legitimately abusing the system. When we ignore that problem and pretend it’s not happening and that it doesn’t have acute financial impacts on border communities, we abandon our chance to provide a counterpoint to the lies.

“They’re not voting” rings hollow when these folks see reports of arrests for non-citizen voting, and then see this happening. When we pretend these things aren’t happening or downplay them, it not only feeds Trump’s narratives, it also strips us of our ability to be fact checkers.

The people at the bottom of the economic ladder believe and support him. They are not all irredeemable racists. We need to stop disparaging them as such or we will never get them back.

The statements I’ve heard from Trump himself are “illegal immigrants are going to steal your job, the election, and your cat”, and “trans people want to fuck your kid”, which are about groups of people with very little political power.

No, that’s very clearly how you heard what he was saying. If we’re talking about messaging and its effectiveness then you strawmanning his words into inane caricatures won’t help us figure out why his messages work.

Every single message he has put out about illegal immigrants boils down to “they’re bringing drugs and crime, they’re illegally voting, and open border liberals keep letting them in.” Liberals have obsessed for so long about perceiving this as an attack on poor brown people that they forgot it’s also ironically a defense of poor brown people.