Whatever Harris did as a prosecutor seems reasonable given both the context of the time she during which was a prosecutor, and her overall political alignment. I would rather have a progressive presidential candidate like Bernie (too late), or AOC (maybe 2028 or later). But choosing Harris means that the overall “liberal” agenda stays on the table
Some highlights from the article
Harris, as part of her previous presidential campaign, also released a criminal justice reform plan that seeks to scale back incarceration, end the death penalty and solitary confinement, ban private prisons, and get rid of cash bail. Biden also backs a fairly aggressive criminal justice reform plan, despite his own mixed record on criminal justice issues.
A close examination of Harris’s record shows it’s filled with contradictions. She pushed for programs that helped people find jobs instead of putting them in prison, but also fought to keep people in prison even after they were proved innocent. She refused to pursue the death penalty against a man who killed a police officer, but also defended California’s death penalty system in court. She implemented training programs to address police officers’ racial biases, but also resisted calls to get her office to investigate certain police shootings.
But what seem like contradictions may reflect a balancing act. Harris’s parents worked on civil rights causes, and she came from a background well aware of the excesses of the criminal justice system — but in office, she played the role of a prosecutor and California’s lawyer. She started in an era when “tough on crime” politics were popular across party lines — but she rose to national prominence as criminal justice reform started to take off nationally. She had an eye on higher political office as support for criminal justice reform became de rigueur for Democrats — but she still had to work as California’s top law enforcement official.
Harris also pushed for more systemic reforms. Her most successful program as district attorney, “Back on Track,” allowed first-time drug offenders, including drug dealers, to get a high school diploma and a job instead of prison time. Adams, Harris’s previous spokesperson, noted that the program started in 2005, “when most prosecutors were using a ‘tough on crime’ approach.”
Yeah bruh, idgaf. Harris 2024. Fuck the republican traitor filth.
Also: appreciate Biden’s true patriotism. That’s a goddamn patriot, not that fucking orange shitcunt traitor.
I am not saying she’s a bad candidate, and definitely not versus Trump
CAN WE GET FIVE F**KING MINUTES
Wait, what’s the complaint? I read a lot of comments complaining about her prosecutorial record, so I was like what’s her record exactly? Then I shared the article. Are…are you complaining about how the internet works?
Edit: I also think she’s a reasonable prosecutor given she had to work during the “tough on crime” era. I can’t judge for what she did when everyone was doing the same wrong thing. In fact, I think she tried to be better? The question is what would she do differently now.
Ha. It’s not you, it’s just the instant spin-up of the “why not to vote for the Democrat” machine is gonna make people touchy about even a perfectly reasonable article that starts to cast about through the years for reasons to evaluate Harris poorly, with its implied pretense that we need to evaluate her for any length of time before deciding that voting for her is better than the alternative who is very literally worse than letting rabid dogs loose in a children’s hospital.
Honestly, if the choice was trump or let rabid dogs loose in one children’s hospital, I’d feel bad for the kids when I voted, but that’s still a better option. Now, if it’s All children’s hospitals, I may have to think a bit.
Yes, mozz said it better - That.
FWIW, I don’t think the article portrays her in a bad light.
The complaint is that there is no time to do anything different. She’s not a bad candidate just because she’s not checking all your boxes. She’s a great candidate for this situation.
If you want to complain about your lack of options, time travel back about 60 years. Ther rest of us are living here right now.
I agree, I think the article puts her work in context. For whatever reason people think this article is against her. It’s just telling things how it is. I think she’s a reasonable presidential nominee, and is definitely far better than the alternative
Complaining how the campaign media works yes. Biden literally just announced he was withdrawing hours ago.
We’re going to get into the nasty ugly shit and contention about Harris and whoever gets the VP nod shortly. Can we wait JUST A LITTLE WHILE PLEASE. Is that too much to ask?
Is a reluctance to go from a handful of months-long scraps about Biden immediately to articles about Harris-as-prosecutor some kind of outlier? These articles are going to flood in, the corporate news just did two huge rails of coke and will be up all night cranking out all the innuendo, inference, and suppositions anyone has any right to expect and it isn’t going to stop for months.
Let’s wait a minute. A brief pause.
Well, as mentioned that’s just the internet doing its thing. Perhaps touch some grass?
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So what we she doing while she was prosecutor?
“Prosecuting crimes”
What the fuck, that’s outrageous. She should have been legislating for better laws and refusing to enforce the ones that I personally don’t agree with, now, in the modern day. Well. Anyway. What was the other guy doing during this time?
“Raping children”
Well I can’t see how putting him in charge of the most powerful country in the world, with an army of followers already organized to disable its democratic safeguards, could go wrong. Did anything go wrong with it last time? The more I think about it the more I feel like this election might be the perfect time to do some pointless grandstanding.
From what I can make out, she’s got some hits and some misses in her history, but overall a pretty progressive record.
Edit: By “pretty progressive”, I mean relative to the arternatives and what’s to be expected from any Democrat. Which is to say of course not nearly progressive enough and tainted with bad choices. But certainly good enough to vote for instead of Trump.
She covered up that a state crime lab employee was falsifying evidence leading to hundreds of false convictions. She opposed police reform including opposing body cameras. Her office, she claims without her knowledge, argued that prisoners eligible for parole shouldn’t be released from prisons so overcrowded that a judge ruled them cruel and unusual because it would reduce the availability of prison labor. She argued on two separate occasions that prisoners who had had their convictions overturned on the basis of actual innocence shouldn’t be released from prison because they hadn’t filed the motion for release quickly enough.
Her record is staunchly pro establishment and she has participated in acts of overt corruption to maintain the status quo.
The other guy rapes children and wants to shoot protestors with live ammunition
Yep, bad choice and worse choice. She hasn’t been nominated yet though so there is a slim hope for the Dems choice to improve. Hopefully there will be people vocal about finding someone who’s record is more progressive before the convention.
Good to know raping children isn’t a red line for you, or at least that stopping the end of democracy in the US and mass deportations and etc is… well… idk, I need to know a little more about the alternative before I come out against that stuff.
Wanting a progressive Dem nominee is pro Trump?
Oh, I thought you were shitting on the presumptive nominee in a fashion that’s suddenly started coming out of the woodwork in a small but notable grouping of posts and comments, which I’m sure will grow to a torrent by a few days from now and not let up until the election, now that it’s no longer relevant to shit on Biden relentlessly.
Were you supporting a progressive candidate or alternate strategy for the Democrats and I overlooked it? That actually (very seriously) does sound like a good thing, yes; IDK whose messages I was reading instead that gave me the idea you were doing that other thing.
I’ve been shitting on her the same way since Biden picked her for VP. I was hoping for Stacy Abrams then. I don’t have a specific candidate I like right now because I think Bernie and Elizabeth Warren both have the same age issue, a younger candidate probably has a better chance. I wouldn’t hate Hakeem Jefferies as the nominee, I think Mark Kelly has a good chance of beating Trump. I like Cory Booker and think Tammy Duckworth would be an interesting candidate.
Thanks to both of you.
This is what I wanted: more information (actual, not FauxNews) about this person.
How bad she’s been, how she’s played the political ropes, her origins. Things she’s stood up for.
All of it!
I know if she wins candidacy, I’ll vote for her. Because fuck another 4 years of the self aggrandizing Putin puppet.
I’d like to know what I can about the lesser evil I’ll be supporting.
How bad she’s been
The article shows her performance as a PA is actually really good all things considered. Very compassionate where she can affect change and does her job well otherwise (during a tough on crime period in society)
Keeping people in jail that have had their case thrown out is bad, in my book.
She’s done some good. She’s also done some detestable things.
Hope she’ll listen to Bernie, though the voting record shows she votes closer to him than anyone else does. Hope!
She isn’t remotely progressive. There’s a long list of very problematic stuff she did while AG which the other commentator covered in part but there’s also:
-She’s a blatant supporter of Israel’s Genocide
The other guys wants to “deport” every single illegal immigrant.
Apparatus like that, once set up, usually finds applications which weren’t in the planning documents when they were presented for public consumption.
Honestly? Harris is not my favorite pick. But pretending that voting against Trump needs some kind of evaluation against the other alternative is pure poppycock.
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Who is your alternative?
I think an alternative at all is unlikely, although if one that were realistic came along, I’d be fuckin thrilled
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So… Ralph Nader actually went into this a little bit. He was disgusted with the left for agreeing to vote ahead of time for Biden without even trying to form any kind of a pressure bloc to demand concessions in terms of better humanity in Gaza. I feel you.
I can’t possibly see what you can demand from Harris though, materially. She’s not in charge. Her priorities, until January 6th, are Biden’s priorities. And anything you do to try to pressure her for announcing better policies on Israel is flirting with fucking it up and Trump getting in and just giving Israel approval to go in and kill the other 90% of the Palestinians and open beachfront property and no “ceasefire” or “weapons pause” or any of Biden’s milquetoast resistance on the table at all.
Idk. It’s not even certain that she can win. Weakening her even more in service of the Palestinians I think has an excellent chance of killing a whole bunch more Palestinians.
counterpunch has extreme left bias according to media bias fact check site
Though professing to support a two-state solution, Harris has repeatedly refused to make any distinction between criticisms of the Israeli occupation and colonization in the West Bank and attacks on Israel itself.
That doesn’t prove in ANY WAY that she is a blatant supporter of genocide, jesus fucking christ.
Harris has repeatedly refused to make any distinction between criticisms of the Israeli occupation
an easily proven lie
that article even quotes the intercept
Unlike some of her counterparts in the Senate, she has not publicly made any demands of Israel or Netanyahu regarding the human rights of Palestinians.
** U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris bluntly called out Israel on Sunday for not doing enough to ease a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza as the Biden administration faces increasing pressure to rein in its close ally while it wages war with Hamas militants.**
Harris, speaking in front of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where state troopers beat U.S. civil rights marchers nearly six decades ago, called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and urged Hamas to accept a deal to release hostages in return for a 6-week cessation of hostilities. But she directed the bulk of her comments at Israel in what appeared to be the sharpest rebuke yet by a senior leader in the U.S. government over the conditions in the coastal enclave.
“People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane and our common humanity compels us to act,” Harris said at an event to commemorate the 59th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” in Alabama. “The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid. No excuses,” Harris said. Her comments reflected intense frustration, if not desperation, within the U.S. government about the war, which has hurt President Joe Biden with left-leaning voters as he seeks re-election this year.
oh but she totally is blatantly supporting the genocide!!!
edit: yes, downvote me for bringing you inconvenient truths that don’t fall within your little narrative.
She’s a part of the administration that hasn’t stopped weapon shipments to the country committing the genocide. It doesn’t matter if she has given some meaningless lines on the tragedy going on if there’s been next to nothing done to stop it.
She with Biden came out and said the US will not impose conditions on support for Israel. The country committing the genocide. How is that not blatant support?
Between that, her ties to AIPAC I don’t see how anyone can say she’ll be a meaningful improvement. Sorry to tell you “inconvenient truths that don’t fall within your little narrative”
…A month after the Hamas massacre. Might want to find more recent evidence to argue with.
Unless you have recent examples that hard counter any of the below any reasonable person should see isn’t going to suddenly change. When the uncommitted movement had over 100k votes in a Michigan (a swing state) that’s just shooting yourself in the foot if you’re trying to beat trump.
She has clear a history of pushing against any international organization trying to hold Israel accountable on any level. Unless she comes out and clearly distances herself from Biden’s actions why should we think she’ll be any different?
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Harris set a tone for her posture on Israel as a senator when she co-sponsored legislation in 2017 condemning former President Barack Obama’s decision to abstain from vetoing a UN Security Council Resolution critical of Israel. The resolution, which was adopted in December 2016, stated that “the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace.”
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During the 2020 presidential race, the New York Times asked Harris if she thought Israel meets international standards of human rights. “Overall, yes,” she replied.
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In Harris’s first call with Netanyahu after becoming vice president, on March 3, 2021, she told the Israeli leader that the U.S. was opposed to the International Criminal Court investigating alleged Israeli war crimes against the Palestinians. Harris and Netanyahu “noted their respective governments’ opposition to the International Criminal Court’s attempts to exercise its jurisdiction over Israeli personnel,” according to a White House readout of the call.
Again, all you’re doing is saying ‘she supported an ally way back in the past before it started doing warcrimes’ and not supporting your argument that she would continue supplying aid to Israel despite warcrimes.
Also one of her jobs as VP is to support the President’s decisions.
Again, all you’re doing is saying ‘she supported an ally way back in the past before it started doing warcrimes’
Israel has been doing it for decades, the illegal occupation has been happening since 1967. They’ve been “mowing the lawn” every couple years and arbitrarily detaining Palestinians the entire time. The only thing that’s recent is the speed at which they’re killing the Palestinians.
My issue is that they’re considered an ally of the US at all, that policy stance was terrible the entire time, just because some people only started paying attention recently doesn’t mean it’s a recent development.
Edit:
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MBFC also rates the Jerusalem Post as credible, which anyone who’s read the Post for any significant amount of time knows is a lie.
I’ve already seen people try to attack her for putting pot smokers in jail, you know, like how the law requires??
Then, when they are shown the fact that she was part of the effort to reschedule marijuana and they call her a hypocrite… Why didn’t she then go and reverse all those cases… THAT’S NOT HOW IT WORKS.
Biden pardoned every prisoner in federal prison for possession (which wasn’t many; most are in prison at the state level, but if you’re one of them, it’s significant.) And, the Democrats introduced multiple bills to legalize marijuana.
Because voting’s not important and the Democrats aren’t good enough, though, there were enough Republicans in place that a couple of tepidly oppositional Democrats were enough to defeat the legalization bills.
People change ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Guess what? You’re wrong.
Who’s wrong? About what?
I am hopeful she has changed since her days as a prosecutor.
I am sad that I have no other choice.
So, she was literally reflecting the will of the voters with some of her decisions. Given that, I think her choices make sense.
In one instance — her handling of California’s “three strikes” law — Harris was arguably ahead of the time. Under the law, someone who committed a third felony could go to prison for 25 years to life, even if the third felony was a nonviolent crime. But Harris required that the San Francisco district attorney’s office only charge for a third strike if the felony was a serious or violent crime.
California voters in 2004, the year that Harris took office, rejected a ballot initiative to implement a similar reform statewide — though the ballot proposal had some pushback on the details, leading to Harris’s own opposition. It wasn’t until 2012 that voters approved the change.
“There’s been incredibly rapid change in public opinion, in attention to criminal justice,” Silard said, citing his decades-long experience in the criminal justice system and current experience as president of the reform-minded Rosenberg Foundation. “Bringing a reverse lens to that is not fair, and also doesn’t recognize folks who were courageous at that time.”
Emphasis mine
Yeah that’s not really what I’m worried about.
Admittedly this is from her time as an Attorney General, not a prosecutor, but that was more recent and therefore more worrying to me:
”Harris’s office launched into a campaign of all-out obstruction, refusing to answer why they could not simply release low-risk, nonviolent inmates to conform to the Supreme Court’s request."
From: https://prospect.org/justice/how-kamala-harris-fought-to-keep-nonviolent-prisoners-locked-up/
Bias rating: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-american-prospect/
All that to say, I want her as my president. This is just a pretty big stain on her record, and I hope she has continued to grow and change so that the Harris we see today isn’t the Harris that would fight to keep people in prison at any cost.
