Apparently Stacey or Stacy is still the favorite, but we did spend time today discussing some other valid candidates for VP, all women, all women of color.
Val Demings has been making the rounds on the cable news programs. Positives: She’s black. And, from a state we need to win. Negatives: former police chief. Responsible for a police precinct reported to have twice as many arrests using force compared to others of similar size.
Major question was not about her ability to be the VP or the President – it was, of course, about the optics and the political side of the equation. Is this the time I can stand on stage with a police officer? We are supposed to only be discussing the brutality and excessive force USED by police officers on people of color. I’m never to mention that there were over 100 police officers that lost their lives in the line of duty last year, senselessly.
So, Val Demings, the former police. She has a distinguished background as the daughter of janitor and first in her family to graduate college, she has a masters, she has amazingly broken the glass ceiling in her field — and she has spent years protecting foster children, took unorthodox measures to help in the most dangerous and impoverished areas, established mentor programs, found out of the box solutions to helping those in housing complexes and get GEDs and jobs to those who needed them….
But, a police chief? The first woman police chief in Orlando. That’s just a black mark on her record.
Come on, man.