Shapiro has only been Governor since 2023. His track record as AG is troubling. I fear that the plan to announce the VP choice in Philadelphia on Tuesday, suggests it will be Shapiro. His outspoken pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian comments, his support for undermining public schools, and his overall lack of charisma make him a hard 'Nope' for me. Not a fan of Kelly's anti-labor votes. When we have options like Buttigieg, and Walz who are both such great public speakers and fantastic communicators, it is crazy to just settle for anything less. We have an opportunity to have a truly transformative, inspiring Democratic ticket. It will be hugely disappointing if Kamala settles for just another focus-grouped white guy.
Walz seems to have more about him than Kelly, despite not having as compelling a back story. Both of these have less baggage than Shapiro who is by far the most charismatic of the three. Choices!
"I’m not convinced any of this is fatal to Shapiro’s chances"
TBF Shapiro's chances aren't what I'm worried about. He's the one candidate in a deep bench that could drag Harris down. We have so many good Other non-controversial options There's really no excuse for not picking someone else. He's the only one that has this liability. Send as it stands, the Israel/Gaza issue is the biggest obstacle for Democrats. If you could fix one thing coming into November .. if you could do one thing differently coming into November. Avoiding this controversy by avoiding a controversial candidate would be it. Again, we have a record number of GREAT options.
Privatization of our public schools has been an issue since the 1990s when charter schools began taking away funding, and routing public dollars to institutions that have no public accountability. Vouchers are privatization on steroids. And some of the biggest supporters of both are Dems.
There is truth in saying that our public schools must do better in addressing the harms of white supremacy. There is truth in naming that BIPOC and immigrant communities deeply distrust our public schools, based on their lived experiences. And the answer to that must be fully funding public education AND making structural changes in our public systems to address and repair those harms in an honest way.
AND charter schools and vouchers also undermine the strength of public sector workers (and unions), the majority of which are women and BIPOC folks by funneling public money to institutions that actively oppose unions and workers rights. Charter schools and schools that receive voucher funds are NOT required to accept and accommodate all students. They are not required to follow state tenure laws - meaning the BIPOC and immigrant educators these schools love to tout have no protections.
The very first union to officially endorse VP Harris was AFT. And not by some Executive Board vote, but at their National Convention. So yes, choosing someone that is a voucher advocate *should* be seen as a concern.
I live in Minnesota. I am union staff for a small education local. I am NOT a Walz fan. He was decidedly unhelpful during the Minneapolis and Saint Paul strikes. And I get frustrated that he gets the credit for the amazing things that we got at the legislature last year. But he did those things because unions and families made it clear that we had the collective power to get it done. And he signed those bills, because he understood where the power was. He moved left, because WE moved him left. And for that reason, I will advocate for him.
Lol, the quest for sainthood for a Veep continues. At the WaPo, National Review hack Jim Geraghty resurrected the Shaklee MLM promotion stint Mark Kelly did in 2016 that HuffPo pushed in 2019 during Kelly's senate run. Chinese promotion! MLM company!!! OMG, Kelly can't be the choice now!!!
Of course, the part about Shaklee providing products to NASA from 1990 to the end of the shuttle program that they tested on astronauts never gets mentioned.
Normally I would agree. But we have a deeper bench of quality candidates than we have ever had. All of our options are good including Shapiro, but we also have the option to pick someone without that baggage. Again, Shapiro would be a fantastic VP pic if it wasn't for the fact that there were so many other fantastic choices as well. we have so many choices now that we can actually afford to think strategically. And his stance on Israel alone could be a real wrench in the works. This is one of those problems that is incredibly easy to avoid and it's kind of an insult to Pennsylvanians to suggest that they will sit out an election if the VP pick doesn't come from their state. People are engaged on a very different level than they usually are in elections. We are in Terra incognita now. I just think that the calculus that suggests that a VP has to come from a swing state is overthinking things a bit. Harris is the one bringing the enthusiasm and thrust to this campaign. A VP pick can only hurt her, not help her, or at least not by much
Meanwhile, because this program has blown a gargantuan hole an the AZ budget, exacerbated by the tax shenanigans they pulled, After wee-the-stinky-pipples passed a ballot measure adding a tax to high earners explicitly to pay for public schools, the lege (who were constitutionally barred from dicking with the results, simply blew up our tax structure and implemented a 'flat tax' so no one actually qualified to pay the taxes, This also dynamited our state tax revenues too.
Very disappointing to hear this about Shapiro, but I agree with many here. It won’t kill my support for Harris, but it could do damage in the long run. Better to go with Kelly or Beshear.
For the record, I went to public school as did my kids and we all got into great colleges.
I feel like a Hair Club for Men ad: I not only attended public schools, I taught in them! And I send my kid to one!
I went to public schools that were “good.” They were “good” because the kids who attended them were primarily upper middle class kids whose parents went to college or trade school. That kind of socio-economic position makes for good test scores and comfortable classroom environments and well-paid teachers.
I taught in a district with a high level of English Language Learners and a population that was working class with a smattering of middle class. Students’ parents were immigrants who’d been lucky to finish third grade. Test scores were good enough but never great, because tests mostly measure parents’ education levels and socioeconomic class, only now we had to prove our value to the schools via student test scores.
The public schools I send my kid to are somewhat inbetween. The decimation of the profession has gotten even to the middle/upper middle class public schools she attends. Scores are high, but some of the joy has gone from learning because of the testing fixation. There is little room for creativity.
The private and Catholic schools talk a big talk, and I guess that is convincing to many, particularly to those who attended them. They assert that private school education is better, because people who attend private school achieve more. Of course, tuition means the students are wealthier, so tests that measure economic class to reinforce this. And few private schools serve kids with special needs, which raises scores. But parents and students of those private schools firmly believe they have been taught more than I was, with a more supportive and structured environment. The promotional copy from the private schools is certain of it. I am less certain, because I talk to friends who attended private schools who didn’t have half the opportunities I had had, and as a public librarian I worked with plenty of private schools that were pitiful as far as academic facilities went.
Vouchers, like “school choice,” give an illusion of control to people who are reasonably concerned about their own child’s needs rather than the needs of the collective. They start with the assumption that there is a just right fit school for your child to reach the highest possible heights and not a series of compromises for your child and society and a baseline education to be provided to all. In practice, vouchers benefit only the private schools who would otherwise have had to work harder to prove themselves worth your money, and they harm public schools.
If Harris chose a voucher supporter, I would be concerned about Democrats recommitting to the “school reform” policies that made public schools more poorly funded and more fixated on expensive standardized testing and test prep that give a lot of money to private companies without improving actual education outside of scores. Vouchers, charters (oh the hopes they had), school report cards, No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top have done damage to a public school system that will take a while to reverse.
I went to a public high school. It was some wealthier white kids but a lot of Mexican American and some Black kids. I was a Mexican American kid who tested well at my Catholic junior high (got a scholarship). When I went to high school, it was like my last name and my zip code dictated the outcome. I still got to college though, got a degree, and a job I don’t hate and will retire from pretty comfortably.
All that being said, when we had kids, we sent them to catholic college prep type high schools (boys/girls schools) because I felt I had not been “seen” nor guided in my public high school.
The irony is that both kids also went to public university (one on a full ride, the other with a small scholarship). One kid loves her job and gets paid well, the other is still floundering around. Did their private school education make a difference? Beats me.
Absolutely. It’s all about suggesting that those who have privilege are already better and more deserving than others. The achievements that are eased by money are what they have insisted are proof of the quality of the school. That is, the test scores, educational achievement level, wealth, and power that the students attain prove that the schools the privileged attend are better than the schools the less privileged attend.
It’s tied to the vilification of public schools that started in the 1980s. _Why Johnny Can’t Read_ kicked it off. Conservatives resented integration and the War on Poverty, both of which improved student attainment and the quality of the schools themselves. Putting more money into the schools (after Sputnik shocked the establishment) benefitted me thoroughly. My schools had degreed librarians, arts programs, science education, highly qualified teachers (especially because a lot of bright women had limited professional choices) and that sort of thing, through the early ‘90s.
Attacking the schools, which were also resented for raising a generation of social activists the age of my parents, was much easier for conservatives than attacking the social programs that increased access to education (from child labor laws to higher minimum wages to welfare and food stamps.) They even got the liberals on board by insisting that students of color were struggling not because of policies that kept the poor impoverished, but because they weren’t being taught properly by lazy racist teachers who didn’t enforce discipline or teach them to read properly.
So - Charters, which initially were imagined as a way for good teachers to avoid bureaucracy to use better and more experimental methods to help students who didn’t thrive in the traditional classroom environment, get turned into a way to add privatization to the public schools that citizens almost all support. They have become ways to milk the public purse with limited oversight and to introduce military school style discipline to students whose classmates were struggling in the ways poverty makes kids struggle.
And Vouchers, which speak to the desire of every family to put their kid into the school that lets them realize their dreams, whether those are life lived as part of a religion or joining the good old boys club or going to college on equal footing with wealthier kids or growing up in a cult. But mostly they jab at parents’ fears that their kid will suffer because the public school is stuffed with Bad Kids and staffed with Those Who Couldn’t Do So They Taught.
I teach middle school, and the kids who are most likely to “succeed” are those who have parents with the time and energy to be involved in their kids’ education. Usually that means families with money, but I’ve seen rich people neglect their kids and parents with few resources put everything they have into parenting. If everyone had enough enough money and support, private schools wouldn’t give much advantage, imho. Vouchers are the wrong answer.
It’s all so hopelessly tangled up with the long history of education it gets hard to talk about to people who like the simplicity of “the government gives me money to pick the best school for my child.” Like, there really were terrible racist lazy teachers, there still are! But not so many, mostly just teachers ground down by the poverty of their students who weren’t able to be Jaime Escalante. And there really were people who argued in the 1950s that there should be less reading instruction, knowing or not knowing that voc-tech would be used by racists to limit students of color and poor students. And Charters and Teach for America were hopeful ideas that didn’t pan out as expected.
Me? I kinda like Kelly or Walz. Beshear would be okay. I kinda wonder if the choice will be a surprise. As in, none of the ones that are being discussed in the press. For example, Julián Castro. Former mayor of a large city (San Antonio). Former HUD secretary.
The more I hear about "The West Wing," the more glad I am that I never watched it. I probably would have loved it at the time, but this kind of story would have me yelling at the screen these days, so it's just as well.
“I think it’s very important that we fully fund public education, and I also think it’s really important that we empower parents to put their kids in the best place for them to be able to succeed.”
Ask Arizona citizens how that’s working out. Because it’s not. It is literally bankrupting the state.
It seems like Shapiro's Israel position will significantly reduce the support that Kamala has gotten from the young voters. Very disappointing, as it will even the race and create a lot of disaffection among young voters. Will we see a stronger third party vote, or just far fewer voters altogether? The decision is decided, so now we wait to see
I think Kelly should be the choice. Shapiro has a little skeleton in his closet with the vouchers and now this payment. The GQP will seize on that alone.
I guess Shapiro is a pick who would have feet of clay.
I happen to like Andy Beshear solely for the matchup against J.D. Vance. I personally am against poaching active or non-termed out Dems in states where Republicans are in position to cause fuckery with voting tabulation and certification. That is the ONLY reason I am not considering Kelly a favorite of mine, just for the Senate numbers. But it's also why I am skeptical of Shapiro. I find Beshear less of a risk because not only is he termed out but there is a Dem Lt. Governor, but the state is low risk for Dems as we likely won't win it.
And of course Secretary Mayor Pete loses us no seats or the like (as he's a Cabinet member) and is a wide swing for the fences (plus he's awesome on TV).
Still even with this, we have an embarrassment of riches.
Agree with your reasoning - I like Governor Beshear and Secretary Mayor Pete for those reasons, but Governor Walz as well. He's in a mostly blue state, so I'm not worried about the creeps ratfucking in MN. Governor Cooper took his name off of the list because he has a batshit Lt Governor, who would definitely indulge in ratfucking while Cooper would be campaigning.
Shapiro has only been Governor since 2023. His track record as AG is troubling. I fear that the plan to announce the VP choice in Philadelphia on Tuesday, suggests it will be Shapiro. His outspoken pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian comments, his support for undermining public schools, and his overall lack of charisma make him a hard 'Nope' for me. Not a fan of Kelly's anti-labor votes. When we have options like Buttigieg, and Walz who are both such great public speakers and fantastic communicators, it is crazy to just settle for anything less. We have an opportunity to have a truly transformative, inspiring Democratic ticket. It will be hugely disappointing if Kamala settles for just another focus-grouped white guy.
Walz seems to have more about him than Kelly, despite not having as compelling a back story. Both of these have less baggage than Shapiro who is by far the most charismatic of the three. Choices!
"I’m not convinced any of this is fatal to Shapiro’s chances"
TBF Shapiro's chances aren't what I'm worried about. He's the one candidate in a deep bench that could drag Harris down. We have so many good Other non-controversial options There's really no excuse for not picking someone else. He's the only one that has this liability. Send as it stands, the Israel/Gaza issue is the biggest obstacle for Democrats. If you could fix one thing coming into November .. if you could do one thing differently coming into November. Avoiding this controversy by avoiding a controversial candidate would be it. Again, we have a record number of GREAT options.
Privatization of our public schools has been an issue since the 1990s when charter schools began taking away funding, and routing public dollars to institutions that have no public accountability. Vouchers are privatization on steroids. And some of the biggest supporters of both are Dems.
There is truth in saying that our public schools must do better in addressing the harms of white supremacy. There is truth in naming that BIPOC and immigrant communities deeply distrust our public schools, based on their lived experiences. And the answer to that must be fully funding public education AND making structural changes in our public systems to address and repair those harms in an honest way.
AND charter schools and vouchers also undermine the strength of public sector workers (and unions), the majority of which are women and BIPOC folks by funneling public money to institutions that actively oppose unions and workers rights. Charter schools and schools that receive voucher funds are NOT required to accept and accommodate all students. They are not required to follow state tenure laws - meaning the BIPOC and immigrant educators these schools love to tout have no protections.
The very first union to officially endorse VP Harris was AFT. And not by some Executive Board vote, but at their National Convention. So yes, choosing someone that is a voucher advocate *should* be seen as a concern.
I live in Minnesota. I am union staff for a small education local. I am NOT a Walz fan. He was decidedly unhelpful during the Minneapolis and Saint Paul strikes. And I get frustrated that he gets the credit for the amazing things that we got at the legislature last year. But he did those things because unions and families made it clear that we had the collective power to get it done. And he signed those bills, because he understood where the power was. He moved left, because WE moved him left. And for that reason, I will advocate for him.
Lol, the quest for sainthood for a Veep continues. At the WaPo, National Review hack Jim Geraghty resurrected the Shaklee MLM promotion stint Mark Kelly did in 2016 that HuffPo pushed in 2019 during Kelly's senate run. Chinese promotion! MLM company!!! OMG, Kelly can't be the choice now!!!
Of course, the part about Shaklee providing products to NASA from 1990 to the end of the shuttle program that they tested on astronauts never gets mentioned.
Normally I would agree. But we have a deeper bench of quality candidates than we have ever had. All of our options are good including Shapiro, but we also have the option to pick someone without that baggage. Again, Shapiro would be a fantastic VP pic if it wasn't for the fact that there were so many other fantastic choices as well. we have so many choices now that we can actually afford to think strategically. And his stance on Israel alone could be a real wrench in the works. This is one of those problems that is incredibly easy to avoid and it's kind of an insult to Pennsylvanians to suggest that they will sit out an election if the VP pick doesn't come from their state. People are engaged on a very different level than they usually are in elections. We are in Terra incognita now. I just think that the calculus that suggests that a VP has to come from a swing state is overthinking things a bit. Harris is the one bringing the enthusiasm and thrust to this campaign. A VP pick can only hurt her, not help her, or at least not by much
Well The GOP shoved vouchers into Arizona's public school system and the white supremacist sate School Superintendent cannot be more pleased. The vast majority have gon to parents of kids already enrolled in private schools and have been used to pay for outrageous things: ski passes and 'ninja warrior training' https://www.propublica.org/article/arizona-school-vouchers-budget-meltdown#:~:text=Universal%20voucher%20efforts%2C%20beginning%20with,or%20on%20toys%20and%20home
Meanwhile, because this program has blown a gargantuan hole an the AZ budget, exacerbated by the tax shenanigans they pulled, After wee-the-stinky-pipples passed a ballot measure adding a tax to high earners explicitly to pay for public schools, the lege (who were constitutionally barred from dicking with the results, simply blew up our tax structure and implemented a 'flat tax' so no one actually qualified to pay the taxes, This also dynamited our state tax revenues too.
Very disappointing to hear this about Shapiro, but I agree with many here. It won’t kill my support for Harris, but it could do damage in the long run. Better to go with Kelly or Beshear.
For the record, I went to public school as did my kids and we all got into great colleges.
Or Walz. That guy has exactly the kind of 'swing voter' appeal We need.
I'll be surprised if it's not Kelly.
I feel like a Hair Club for Men ad: I not only attended public schools, I taught in them! And I send my kid to one!
I went to public schools that were “good.” They were “good” because the kids who attended them were primarily upper middle class kids whose parents went to college or trade school. That kind of socio-economic position makes for good test scores and comfortable classroom environments and well-paid teachers.
I taught in a district with a high level of English Language Learners and a population that was working class with a smattering of middle class. Students’ parents were immigrants who’d been lucky to finish third grade. Test scores were good enough but never great, because tests mostly measure parents’ education levels and socioeconomic class, only now we had to prove our value to the schools via student test scores.
The public schools I send my kid to are somewhat inbetween. The decimation of the profession has gotten even to the middle/upper middle class public schools she attends. Scores are high, but some of the joy has gone from learning because of the testing fixation. There is little room for creativity.
The private and Catholic schools talk a big talk, and I guess that is convincing to many, particularly to those who attended them. They assert that private school education is better, because people who attend private school achieve more. Of course, tuition means the students are wealthier, so tests that measure economic class to reinforce this. And few private schools serve kids with special needs, which raises scores. But parents and students of those private schools firmly believe they have been taught more than I was, with a more supportive and structured environment. The promotional copy from the private schools is certain of it. I am less certain, because I talk to friends who attended private schools who didn’t have half the opportunities I had had, and as a public librarian I worked with plenty of private schools that were pitiful as far as academic facilities went.
Vouchers, like “school choice,” give an illusion of control to people who are reasonably concerned about their own child’s needs rather than the needs of the collective. They start with the assumption that there is a just right fit school for your child to reach the highest possible heights and not a series of compromises for your child and society and a baseline education to be provided to all. In practice, vouchers benefit only the private schools who would otherwise have had to work harder to prove themselves worth your money, and they harm public schools.
If Harris chose a voucher supporter, I would be concerned about Democrats recommitting to the “school reform” policies that made public schools more poorly funded and more fixated on expensive standardized testing and test prep that give a lot of money to private companies without improving actual education outside of scores. Vouchers, charters (oh the hopes they had), school report cards, No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top have done damage to a public school system that will take a while to reverse.
I went to a public high school. It was some wealthier white kids but a lot of Mexican American and some Black kids. I was a Mexican American kid who tested well at my Catholic junior high (got a scholarship). When I went to high school, it was like my last name and my zip code dictated the outcome. I still got to college though, got a degree, and a job I don’t hate and will retire from pretty comfortably.
All that being said, when we had kids, we sent them to catholic college prep type high schools (boys/girls schools) because I felt I had not been “seen” nor guided in my public high school.
The irony is that both kids also went to public university (one on a full ride, the other with a small scholarship). One kid loves her job and gets paid well, the other is still floundering around. Did their private school education make a difference? Beats me.
"people who attend private school achieve more" doesn't that depend on your definition of "achieve" though?
Absolutely. It’s all about suggesting that those who have privilege are already better and more deserving than others. The achievements that are eased by money are what they have insisted are proof of the quality of the school. That is, the test scores, educational achievement level, wealth, and power that the students attain prove that the schools the privileged attend are better than the schools the less privileged attend.
It’s tied to the vilification of public schools that started in the 1980s. _Why Johnny Can’t Read_ kicked it off. Conservatives resented integration and the War on Poverty, both of which improved student attainment and the quality of the schools themselves. Putting more money into the schools (after Sputnik shocked the establishment) benefitted me thoroughly. My schools had degreed librarians, arts programs, science education, highly qualified teachers (especially because a lot of bright women had limited professional choices) and that sort of thing, through the early ‘90s.
Attacking the schools, which were also resented for raising a generation of social activists the age of my parents, was much easier for conservatives than attacking the social programs that increased access to education (from child labor laws to higher minimum wages to welfare and food stamps.) They even got the liberals on board by insisting that students of color were struggling not because of policies that kept the poor impoverished, but because they weren’t being taught properly by lazy racist teachers who didn’t enforce discipline or teach them to read properly.
So - Charters, which initially were imagined as a way for good teachers to avoid bureaucracy to use better and more experimental methods to help students who didn’t thrive in the traditional classroom environment, get turned into a way to add privatization to the public schools that citizens almost all support. They have become ways to milk the public purse with limited oversight and to introduce military school style discipline to students whose classmates were struggling in the ways poverty makes kids struggle.
And Vouchers, which speak to the desire of every family to put their kid into the school that lets them realize their dreams, whether those are life lived as part of a religion or joining the good old boys club or going to college on equal footing with wealthier kids or growing up in a cult. But mostly they jab at parents’ fears that their kid will suffer because the public school is stuffed with Bad Kids and staffed with Those Who Couldn’t Do So They Taught.
I teach middle school, and the kids who are most likely to “succeed” are those who have parents with the time and energy to be involved in their kids’ education. Usually that means families with money, but I’ve seen rich people neglect their kids and parents with few resources put everything they have into parenting. If everyone had enough enough money and support, private schools wouldn’t give much advantage, imho. Vouchers are the wrong answer.
Excellent comment. You have described the issues perfectly!
Thanks so much for this discussion!
I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it!
It’s all so hopelessly tangled up with the long history of education it gets hard to talk about to people who like the simplicity of “the government gives me money to pick the best school for my child.” Like, there really were terrible racist lazy teachers, there still are! But not so many, mostly just teachers ground down by the poverty of their students who weren’t able to be Jaime Escalante. And there really were people who argued in the 1950s that there should be less reading instruction, knowing or not knowing that voc-tech would be used by racists to limit students of color and poor students. And Charters and Teach for America were hopeful ideas that didn’t pan out as expected.
Me? I kinda like Kelly or Walz. Beshear would be okay. I kinda wonder if the choice will be a surprise. As in, none of the ones that are being discussed in the press. For example, Julián Castro. Former mayor of a large city (San Antonio). Former HUD secretary.
The more I hear about "The West Wing," the more glad I am that I never watched it. I probably would have loved it at the time, but this kind of story would have me yelling at the screen these days, so it's just as well.
It has not aged well.
“I think it’s very important that we fully fund public education, and I also think it’s really important that we empower parents to put their kids in the best place for them to be able to succeed.”
Ask Arizona citizens how that’s working out. Because it’s not. It is literally bankrupting the state.
It seems like Shapiro's Israel position will significantly reduce the support that Kamala has gotten from the young voters. Very disappointing, as it will even the race and create a lot of disaffection among young voters. Will we see a stronger third party vote, or just far fewer voters altogether? The decision is decided, so now we wait to see
I think Kelly should be the choice. Shapiro has a little skeleton in his closet with the vouchers and now this payment. The GQP will seize on that alone.
I guess Shapiro is a pick who would have feet of clay.
I happen to like Andy Beshear solely for the matchup against J.D. Vance. I personally am against poaching active or non-termed out Dems in states where Republicans are in position to cause fuckery with voting tabulation and certification. That is the ONLY reason I am not considering Kelly a favorite of mine, just for the Senate numbers. But it's also why I am skeptical of Shapiro. I find Beshear less of a risk because not only is he termed out but there is a Dem Lt. Governor, but the state is low risk for Dems as we likely won't win it.
And of course Secretary Mayor Pete loses us no seats or the like (as he's a Cabinet member) and is a wide swing for the fences (plus he's awesome on TV).
Still even with this, we have an embarrassment of riches.
Agree with your reasoning - I like Governor Beshear and Secretary Mayor Pete for those reasons, but Governor Walz as well. He's in a mostly blue state, so I'm not worried about the creeps ratfucking in MN. Governor Cooper took his name off of the list because he has a batshit Lt Governor, who would definitely indulge in ratfucking while Cooper would be campaigning.
I am liking Walz too for his energy. I am glad that we're in a position like this really where there's a lot of great choices.
I still prefer Kelly