The Case Against Josh Shapiro
The Pennsylvania Governor could scuttle Harris' momentum and reopen fresh wounds in the Democratic coalition.
Kamala Harris has been handed a political gift. Following her predecessor dropping out of the 2024 Presidential race, she finds herself in an advantageous position. As the current Vice President, she can claim incumbency experience while simultaneously distancing herself from the administration’s most prominent sin — its Gaza policy.
Meanwhile, Harris’ Republican opponents are in disarray. They clearly expected to coast to victory against Biden’s dotage and never considered he might retire, forcing them to run an actual campaign. In their mad dash to find a suitable attack line against Harris, they’ve landed on “she’s not black” and “her adopted kids aren’t really hers,” showcasing the depths of conservative weirdness to the American electorate. Apparently, House Speaker Mike Johnson’s plea for his caucus to not be overtly racist fell on deaf ears. (Shocking!)
As things stand, Kamala Harris has an unprecedented lack of obstacles between her and the White House. But there’s is one thing that could derail her momentum and let Trump back into the race: tapping Josh Shapiro as her running mate.
None of the names floated in the veep-stakes have been as controversial as Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. The current favorite in prediction markets, Shapiro would give Harris the added bonus of a favorable rating in a crucial swing state (49% approval to 31% disapproval). But this positive would be outweighed by Shapiro’s baggage, which reopens fresh wounds in the Democratic coalition.
Kamala Harris seized the Democratic nomination by riding an online wave of young people and minorities who were happy they could vote against Donald Trump without rubber stamping Joe Biden’s Gazan genocide. The Harris campaign leaned into this online enthusiasm, adopting the branding for her website and claiming “Kamala is brat.” (I don’t know what that means. Don’t you dare tell me.)
This digital energy didn’t come from excitement for Kamala Harris but relief from the past constraints. The young, progressive portions of the base were elated. They now had an option that wasn’t either an outright fascist or a sundowning genocidaire. Harris needs this cheeky support if she’s going to win in November. What the liberal Zionists calling Shapiro critics anti-semites (such as Pod Save America, below) fail to recognize is that Josh Shapiro has genuine flaws that would weaken the coalition to defeat Trump.
Being Racist is Bad, Actually
While none of the potential VP candidates have a suitable Palestine policy, Josh Shapiro’s rabid Zionism makes him a uniquely poor choice. He recently likened pro-Palestine protestors to the Ku Klux Klan, which will surely turn away many of the young voters Biden lost and Harris will need to regain. To make matters worse, in a recently unearthed op-ed entitled “Peace Is Not Possible,” Shapiro claimed Palestinians were an inferior race, calling them “unable” to live in peace.
“[Palestinians] do not have the capabilities to establish their own homeland and make it successful even with the aid of Israel and the United States. They are too battle-minded to be able to establish a peaceful homeland of their own.” - Josh Shapiro, 1993
Such racism is unacceptable and would be immediately disqualifying if it were directed at Jews, African Americans, or any other racial minority. The Governor’s defenders have waved this away by pointing out he was in college at the time, and “who hasn’t said dumb things when they were twenty?” Like most college kids, I too said dumb things when I was twenty. But my absurd comments were limited to overconfidence in my ability to consume alcohol, not writing Mein Kampf fan fiction.
Also in the infamous op-ed, Shapiro claimed he served in the Israel Defense Force, which is currently implementing the genocidal policy Harris needs to distance herself from. Winning back Arab voters in Michigan is key to get 270 electoral college votes. Shapiro’s comments, those past and previous, is needlessly going to frustrate that effort.
Charter Schools & Murder
While Palestine is among Shapiro’s greatest candidate flaws, it’s not his only one. He is a proponent of charter schools, even supporting Republicans’ 2023 plan to use $100 million in taxpayer funding to help wealthy families cover private tuition bills. If Harris is going to draw a contrast between her and Donald Trump, it will be on the former president’s willingness to use the powers of the presidency to enrich his affluent friends. Shapiro’s support for tax-payer funded elite institutions for wealthy Americans will scuttle that message.
Oh yea. Then, there’s the possibility Josh Shapiro covered up a murder.
In 2011, Ellen Greenberg was found dead in her Philadelphia apartment. She’d been stabbed twenty times in the neck and back of her head. Then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro ruled the death a suicide, even after it was determined many of the stabs came after Greenberg was deceased. At best, this is gross incompetence from Shapiro. At worse, it’s a coverup. Independent journalist Gavin Fish has been following the case for years and uncovered links between Shapiro’s family and that of Greenberg’s fiancé, the prime suspect in the murder. This case is not a skeleton in Shapiro’s closet, but an ongoing development. It is currently being heard by the Philadelphia Supreme Court. Whether or not Shapiro did put his thumb on the scale is besides the point. The media and Donald Trump will have a field day with this, throwing the Harris campaign into an inescapable scandal when it’s trying to return the focus to Donald Trump.
Shapiro’s racism alone should be enough to disqualify him from any office, much less the Vice Presidency. But we live in the United States, where, as the Republican nominee shows us, you can be a racist, as long as you’re the right kind of racist. But if Kamala Harris wants to win the Presidency, she should pick one of the other candidates who is not going to lose her crucial youth enthusiasm and blur the lines between her and her oligarch opponent.
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His “locker room talk” (oops, I mean youthful comments from college) about Palestinian’s battle-mindedness is the kind of thing you’d expect from the most racist and conservative thinkers in the early 20th century when aimed at any other group besides people from the Middle East.
It’s a tragedy that the extent of America’s reckoning with colonial racism is half-heartedly renaming Columbus Day. As for the bigotry, the violence, and the dehumanization that underpinned Columbus‘s exploits we have yet to even begin to grapple with, let alone acknowledge, their existence both past and present.
There was a great quote about the UK riots from a Muslim community leader along the lines of, “the government is willing to condemn the violence in the streets, but not the Islamophobia that is responsible for promoting the violence.” Our society can tolerate condemnation of specific, past acts of colonialism, but start explaining why those actions occurred and that’s a faucet they don’t want opened for fear they may not be able to close it again when needed.
josh shapiro is a zionazi into supporting genocide