POTUS/General Election Thread 2020 + Aftermath

[Hooahguy]

Forgive me, I periodically forget liberal is paradoxically synonymous with progressive in america.

My point is she's a nightmare for those who are less than enthused with the drug war,

She was far better than any of her white counterparts at the time.

During Harris tenure, people charged with petty drug crimes were given a chance at diversion as an alternative to prosecution. Harris’ diversion program was so successful it became a national model. That didn’t exist before she was in office — she championed that program specifically as a route to reduce the injustices that POC face against the system.

The agency’s data shows there were 1,883 admissions to state prison on marijuana offenses during the years Harris was attorney general. There were another 92 admissions for crimes related to hashish, a drug made from cannabis resin. Notably, the figures dropped dramatically during Harris’ tenure, from 817 marijuana-related admissions in her first year in office to 137 in her last.

SOURCE:


So let’s be clear: Kamala was sworn into office in 2011 and within the very first year used her prosecutorial discretion to reduce marijuana related prosecutions by 70% — despite that marijuana remained illegal and her role as AG requires she enforce the existing laws on the books regardless of her personal feelings.

70%! That’s a whole lot of discretion favoring would-be defendants. By the time she ended her tenure in 2016, she reduced marijuana related prosecutions by 83%. Again, marijuana was still illegal in California the entire time she was AG. Yes, she has discretion, but discretion doesn’t mean refusing to enforce the laws that are on the books ever again.

Dropping 83% of prosecutions for marijuana isn’t nothing.

for-profit prisons,

The state prison population went down under her watch.

wrongful death sentances

Do you mean the Kevin Cooper case? Because by the time she became AG he had already exhausted all appeals, and the only avenue left was clemency which is solely up to the governor. Other than that, shes pretty infamous in California for being anti-death penalty, refusing the death penalty for a cop killer which really angered the police unions and Senator Feinstein who famously held a grudge against her when Kamala was running for senate.

and pretty much every other thing people have been railing against the last two months in the american legal system.

Biden's got to keep Harris' AG record an obscurity for four months else people start realizing she has an even deeper authoritarian streak than he does.

If you want justice in criminal justice, you need diversity inside the system. To me, a portion of the people hating on her career seem to be saying that we should leave all policing matters to white people. That doesn’t sit right with me.

You can’t judge her record in a vacuum. She didn’t build the system and isn’t personally responsible for failing to singlehandedly rectify a century and a half of racial oppression from the CA Attorney General’s office. Was she perfect? Of course not. But she definitely deserves far more credit than a lot of people give her. Kamala intentionally entered public service as a prosecutor at a time criminal justice was often led by very anti-Black, anti-immigrant, anti-sex work white men. Kamala was the first Black person to be AG of California - a state of 40 million in the 2000s tough on crime era. Any attorney general’s record for a state and department that huge (the largest state DOJ in the US) can be cherry picked.

Anyways, apparently the campaign raised a record-breaking $30 million in a single 24-hour period after Harris was named VP. The enthusiasm is definitely there.