Everyone has heard: former Presidential Candidate and now Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) has joined Joe Biden on the Democrat Party ticket as the vice-presidential candidate. Most had Biden’s VP-choice narrowed to Harris and former UN Ambassador and Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice. Months ago, TruthNewsNetwork predicted that Sen. Kamala Harris would win the Democrat Party presidential nomination. We missed it — by one spot!
What does Harris mean for the Democrat Party? What does her joining Joe Biden on the ticket mean for Democrat voters? Does Harris bring anything to the table to help Biden win the election?
All of these and other matters will be discussed extensively and consistently over the next few days. But by next Monday, Harris will be little more in the public eye than Biden’s VP pick. So let’s get to know Kamala Harris.
We are not going to dive into the minutia of her history. Instead, we will detail elements of her public service, conversations, interactions with others in the public sphere, and where her specific political stances on various issues related to the American electorate stand on multiple issues. After all, even though she’s been in public service, most Americans know little about her politics.
We’ll begin with some bullet-points that include multiple situations in which the Senator has made several personal political perspectives known. There are far more points than just these listed below. But this a point for all to understand where and on what issues Sen. Harris stands. After all, she, as all other Vice Presidents would, if the Biden ticket is chosen in the election, will be at all times just one heartbeat away from holding the highest office in the U.S. Let’s get started.
Let’s Bullet-Point ten things you may or may not know about the Senator
1. As both a district attorney and state attorney general, Harris pushed for a new statewide law that lets prosecutors charge parents with misdemeanors if their children are chronically truant. “We are putting parents on notice,” she declared. “If you fail in your responsibility to your kids, we are going to work to make sure you face the full force and consequences of the law.”
3. Harris also has been a strong advocate of civil asset forfeiture. She supported a bill in California that would have allowed prosecutors to seize assets before initiating criminal proceedings — a power now available only at the federal level — if there were a “substantial probability” they would eventually initiate such actions. Besides cases involving violent crimes, the legislation allowed seizures in cases involving such crimes as bribery, gambling, and trafficking endangered species. Harris endorsed the bill after then-attorney general Eric Holder sharply limited civil asset forfeiture among federal prosecutors. She argued that the practice gave local and state law-enforcement officials “more tools to target the illicit profits [of transnational criminal groups] and dismantle these dangerous organizations.”
4. As San Francisco district attorney, Harris created “Back on Track,” an anti-recidivism program that she expanded as state attorney general. The program received $750,000 in federal funding and quite a bit of praise from crime-policy experts. But it faced criticism early in its history, when illegal immigrant Alexander Izaguirre, who had pleaded guilty to selling drugs, was selected and graduated, only to grab a woman’s purse later and run her down in an SUV, severely injuring her.
As the Los Angeles Times put it, “Harris’ office had been allowing Izaguirre and other illegal immigrants to stay out of prison by training them for jobs they cannot legally hold.” Harris said she had been unaware that Back on Track had been training illegal immigrants and that they would no longer be eligible for the program.
5. In 2012, Harris submitted a brief supporting an illegal immigrant’s application for a law license. In 2014, the California Supreme Court ruled in the immigrant’s favor, even though the California State Bar’s rules state that it is disqualifying professional misconduct to commit a criminal act.
6. In her first speech on the Senate floor, Harris declared, “An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.” She later avowed the belief that illegal immigration is “a civil violation, not a crime.”
This classification applies to only a portion of those in the country without permission. First, entering the country illegally has criminal penalties. Overstaying a visa is considered a civil violation, not a criminal one, with deportation as the appropriate penalty. But reentry without permission after deportation is a crime, as is, in most cases, working in the United States without legal residency, since it almost always involves some falsification of documents or lying on work forms under penalty of perjury.
7. Harris’s reputation as a tough prosecutor has played a key part in her political rise, and she continues to tout the high rate of felony convictions on her watch. But in 2010, SF Weekly reviewed the work of her office and concluded that “felony convictions for cases that go to trial and reach a jury verdict — a comparatively small group that nevertheless includes some of a district attorney’s most violent and emotionally charged cases — have declined significantly over the past two years.” The review found that in 2009, San Francisco prosecutors “won a lower percentage of their felony jury trials than their counterparts at district attorneys’ offices covering the 10 largest cities in California,” and San Francisco’s rate dropped further in the first quarter of 2010. Harris’s 71 percent conviction rate on felony cases had been boosted by a significant increase in pre-trial plea agreements.
8. In October 2017, Harris declared that she would rather shut down the government than vote for a spending bill that did not address the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and ensure those covered by the program would not be deported. “I will not vote for an end-of-year spending bill until we are clear about what we are going to do to protect and take care of our DACA young people in this country,” she said. And she has kept her word, at least so far.
9. In April 2018, Harris urged the Senate Appropriations Committee to “reduce funding for beds in the federal immigration system,” reject calls to hire more Border Patrol personnel, and “reduce funding for the administration’s reckless immigration enforcement operations.”
10. In 2010, a California Superior Court judge declared that as San Francisco district attorney, Harris had violated defendants’ rights by hiding damaging information about a police drug-lab technician and was indifferent to demands that the lab account for its failings. The crime-lab technician had been convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence in 2008; district attorneys are obligated to hand over to the defense information about prosecution witnesses that could be used to challenge their credibility. Prosecutors’ failure to disclose the information about the technician led to the dismissal of more than 600 drug cases.
11. Before she was serving the people of California as a senator, Harris served as the state’s attorney general. As attorney general, Harris had to enforce California’s laws as written, but she also used her position to advocate for policies she felt would keep her constituents safe.
12. Formerly as California’s Attorney General she supported immigration laws that though controversial had to be enforced — even that which required the reporting of illegal juveniles to ICE, which flies in the face of sanctuary cities. As a presidential candidate, her story changed. She encouraged all federal, state, and law enforcement members to NOT cooperate with ICE on anything that goes against the concept of sanctuary cities and supports deportation of illegals — a “Switch-A-Rooskie.”
Then during a radio interview with “The Breakfast Club,” Harris claimed that she smoked pot when she was younger and that any claim that she opposes full marijuana legalization is “not true.” But, in her 2014 campaign, her Republican opponent for attorney general, Ron Gold, was very public about his support for full legalization of pot. Harris was not on the same page. When she was asked about legalization by KCRA in 2014, she laughed at Gold’s stance and said he was entitled to his opinion. Her presidential campaign may have been pro-pot, but her time as attorney general certainly wasn’t.
13. During an interview with CNN shortly after her presidential announcement, Harris told host Jake Tapper that America should “eliminate” the private healthcare system. “Let’s eliminate all of that,” Harris said of the private health insurance industry. “Let’s move on.” BUT, according to CNN, “as the furor grew” toward her plan to ban private healthcare, her team announced that she is open to keeping a market system.
Harris has also done the old “Switch-A-Rooskie” on a required investigation of cops involved in killings and on mass incarceration.
14. As U.S.Senator for California, in a confirmation hearing of one federal judge, Harris delved into religious matters. Harris, in her questions to the nominee, called the Knights of Columbus “an all-male society” and asked the Nebraska lawyer if he was aware that the group was anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage when he joined. The California senator also referenced Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson’s statement that abortion amounted to “the killing of the innocent on a massive scale” and asked Buescher if he agreed with the statement. Buescher responded that his involvement in the group consisted mostly of charitable work and community events at his local Catholic parish. He indicated he would abide by judicial precedent regarding abortion.
Summary
Today, Sen. Harris needs NO ONE to answer questions for her about anything in her public record. Facts speak for themselves. And in the weeks to come, Americans will see and hear her on a number of issues important to each of us. And each American who votes will decide if she and her running mate are the match that can and will be best to lead the nation.
What shocked me when this decision was announced is my realization of just how far Left the Biden/Harris ticket will be for the Democrat Party. Think about it: less than a year ago, Joe Biden was considered among all of those 24 Democrat Party presidential candidates as the lone representative of the moderate center of the Party. Now, with Biden’s embrace of the Green New Deal, Medicare-for-all, free college tuition along with the cancellation of student debt and a strong move back into international agreements with Iran and the Paris Accords, the selection of Harris to reinforce the ticket proves Joe Biden is no longer a moderate in any way. He has joined the ranks of Leftists with Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
It’s going to be interesting (and I think it’ll be fun) for the next 80 days or so to watch Democrats with faux glee try to get everyone excited about “their” ticket. It probably will be hilarious to hear the things they allege about the good Biden and Harris will do for the nation after the pair is inaugurated.
The Democrats only hope now is to get their party members out to vote. In this pandemic, that’s going to be hard to do. So they’ll resort to the worst possible political tactics: they’ll everyday present the vilest and nastiest campaign attacks possible directly at President Trump. And specifically for that purpose, their VP pick is a perfect choice. If you don’t think so, just go to YouTube and watch some of her viciousness in Senate Judiciary hearings as she grills Attorney General Barr, Jeff Sessions, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh in his Supreme Court confirmation hearing.
I think two things are certain: the anti-Trump attacks, which have never gone away, will only amplify from the Media talking-heads and intensify daily. Harris and Biden will just add their two-cents to the media rhetoric on cue. President Trump must tamp-down his rage and furor and refuse to fight back.
Of those two things, I doubt the second is even possible!
But one thing of which I’m pretty certain: Kamala will do her best to irritate the President daily by making continual outlandish allegations. The Biden media lapdogs will follow her around and give her 24/7 camera time. For that reason, she was the correct VP pick over Susan Rice. Rice isn’t a fighter. Harris is not just a fighter, she’s a fighter who cannot stand to lose and seldom does lose.
My pick about the fight result? She won’t be the fight loser: Trump will be the winner ,and Biden will go back to the basement.
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