Kamala Harris Did What She Had To

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The racial-justice movement sparked by the murder of George Floyd has had two quite different effects on Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. It has intensified the pressure on Biden to choose a Black woman as his running mate. And it has also intensified the pressure on him to choose a running mate with a history of challenging police brutality. Those two political imperatives are now colliding in the debate over whether Biden should pick Senator Kamala Harris—a former prosecutor whom some progressives in California have characterized as too deferential to police.

Biden had previously vowed to choose a female running mate, and the typical vice-presidential pick is a senator or governor. Harris is the sole Black woman in either category. In one sense, therefore, she clearly benefits from the new political reality that the Black Lives Matter movement has created. But that new political reality has also amplified criticism from progressives. In yesterday’s New York Times, the reporters Danny Hakim, Stephanie Saul, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. quoted David Campos, a former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, who argues that when Harris “had the opportunity to do something about police accountability” as the city’s district attorney, “she was either not visible, or when she was, she was on the wrong side.” Criticisms like these, the Times notes, have led progressives to ask: “Is Ms. Harris essentially a political pragmatist, or has she in fact changed?”

That’s a false dichotomy. The implication is that if politics has influenced Harris’s views on criminal justice, progressives shouldn’t support her for vice president. But that’s naive. Because if politics hadn’t influenced Harris’s views, she probably wouldn’t be in a position to join the Democratic ticket in the first place. Commentators can ignore the way American politics actually works. Black women who want a career in national politics cannot.

A close reading of Harris’s record suggests that she likely has shifted her views on police misconduct for political reasons. An opponent of the death penalty, she refused as San Francisco’s district attorney to seek the execution of a man who killed a police officer in 2004. Police officials savaged her. Senator Dianne Feinstein, her fellow Democrat, undercut her. When Harris ran for California attorney general six years later, the decision still haunted her. Every other California Democrat in a statewide race that year won by double digits. Harris, competing against a Republican strongly backed by the police, won by less than a single point.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/give-kamala-harris-a-break/ar-BB17N8qg?li=BBnbfcQ&ocid=DELLDHP

[LakeArenal]

1. I'm waiting to hear her view on the removal of Al Franken

Has she evolved?

[marble falls]

2. Gotta say, I still support her, but that's a question I'd like to hear answered. Even if ...

her answer is "he resigned without overt pressure or legal threat. I just wanted him to act on his conscience."

Al Franken is a kind and gentle man. And at least back as a comedian, then kind of a child. The proof that there was nothing very much there is the fact that no-one has tried to sue him.

If he'd have had just a few more years of experience in Washington DC, he would have known political haymaking when some others made hay out of his situation.

I remember what a third rail this stuff was on DU.

At some point either way, we need him get into some level of state or Federal office. He is cabinet level material. There has to be some way to get him into a position on the Federal level where he doesn't have to subject himself to two-faced GOP Senate. Of course we could just turn out the vote and give Joe Biden the Senate he needs to fix Donnie Two Scoopses fuckups.

[LakeArenal]

3. Thanks.

[Sloumeau]

4. District attorney's have to work hand in hand with the police.

Most district attorneys are overwhelmed by their caseload and they all have one job: to get their prosecutions correct. They have to make sure that the guilty are convicted as much as possible.

When exactly did it become the job of district attorneys to reform the police, and how exactly does anyone expect them to reform the police and still have a decent relationship with the police with whom they depend on for so much? True reform would never come unless a police chief was hired with reform in mind. A new police chief would have the power to reform a police department.

Exactly how often has a police department changed because of the actions of a single district attorney? Exactly what did they expect Kamala Harris to do?