Sen. Rashida Tlaib is one of many Democrats publicly hailing Kamala Harris after the former vice president, Joe Biden, chose her as his VP pick.
“I’ve fought alongside Senator @KamalaHarris for direct cash payments during the pandemic and for clean water as a human right. Now let’s defeat Trump and make those policies a reality,” Tlaib wrote on Twitter shortly after the news broke.
Last week, Tlaib defeated Brenda Jones, the president of the Detroit City Council, with 90 percent of votes counted. Tlaib had 66 percent of the vote to Jones’s 34 percent.
She is a member of the group of progressives nicknamed “The Squad,” and has been hesitant about endorsing Biden ahead of Harris’ nomination.
“Residents come up to me and say, ‘Rashida, I don’t know. I hear Joe Biden this, Joe Biden that.’ I say, ‘Listen, do we need another four years of Trump? No. Then what I need you to do is go out there and focus on that.’ If the ultimate goal is to get rid of Donald Trump, that doesn’t have to involve me actually endorsing Biden. My constituents don’t need to be bogged down in, ‘Is he the best candidate?’ That’s not what you have to convince my residents. They need to come out in droves and be inspired by something. And that is going to be a vote against Donald Trump,” she said.
But Tlaib is not letting her gripes about Biden blind her from the bigger picture and still vowed to deliver Michigan to his campaign.
Biden’s career has been littered with controversial moments. One, in particular, was raised by Harris during the primary debates when she pressed him about his past campaign to oppose busing.
“You also worked … to oppose busing. And, you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me,” she said at a Miami Democratic presidential candidate debate in June 2019.
“I did not oppose busing in America. What I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education. That’s what I opposed,” he responded.
The pair have been able to put their issues aside for the greater good. Trump needs to go. Something all Democrats can agree.
