Everyone that the Times writes another puff-piece about faces their chorus of critics on the left. Can the Times just admit that it has a pro-corporatist/anti-progressive economic agenda?
I assume this comment will be blocked by the moderator, despite the fact that it reflects the same sentiments flooding your coverage of the 2016 primary by 10 to 1. Or probably because of that reflection.
What does the Times really seek in a candidate? A few weeks ago Bari Weiss went on Joe Rogan's show to desperately find talking points about which to trash Tulsi Gabbard. It was not pretty. Joe Rogan seemed to know what Tulsi was actually about despite Bari's spin. Sooner or later the people will wake up to what's really going on here. FDR faced concerted efforts to halt his as well, with cries of "class treason." Luckily they didn't prevail either and look at how that turned out for the country.
What is the Times' really up to? Are they going to be as embarrassed in 2020 as they were in 2016 (and perhaps the AOC upset)?
4
No, no, not Kamala Harris, nor Elizabeth Warren, Amy, Corey, Bernie nor Joe (Biden). The Democrats are proving Trump right -- they don't have anyone on the horizon to beat his racist, homophobic, undocumented-immigrant employer, unprincipled, anti-NATO, anti-American values, hater of the First Amendment and Fourth Estate self. Better get a grip, Dems, and find your middle America -- quickly. Kamala Harris and her ilk are all fighting over the same blue moon -- It only comes once in a political lifetime.
9
The Left for years has been labeled as being weak on crime.Now when we have someone in Harris that it is impossible for The Right to pin that label on we on The Left are going through contortions? How can Trump who prizes himself as the new sheriff in town stand toe to toe with Harris? I wish my party would stop using what I call The Goldilocks test in selection process for picking someone who can send Trump packing.Now Harris is being raked over the coals for being too tough on crime.Klobuchar is too tough on her staff, Warren is too left and Harris sent too many criminals to jail? Have we forgotten that Senator Gilllibrand has been pilloried for coming down too hard on Senator Franken? If we were to listen to the pundits,who were all wrong about Trump is 2016,we would clone a white guy from the middle of America who walks on water. We listened to the pundits in 2016 and woke up the day after election with TRUMP, To beat Trump regardless of your gender you are going to have to be tough with a thick skin.
11
Great article about a serious and worthy candidate. Can we hear more about her views on the economy, taxes, wages. What about foreign policy, trade policy, defense spending and strategic priorities?
15
Kamala Harris was a tough prosecutor who represented the people. She can take on Trump and offer Medicare for all as well. It is likely that single payer health insurance will not cover everything, but be a basic plan. Insurance companies will cover the rest. For example supplemental plans will be needed for medications, for co-payments, for medical equipment and various therapies. The insurance companies will not go broke, and the government won't either. Ask your self, how many people can be covered for the cost of Trump's wall. Then ask yourself, how much money does someone have to have above a $10 million dollar limit to live decently in the the US. It's about time the takers (billionaires) pay for what they have reaped thanks to the rest of us. I am not worried about Kamala Harris, I'm worried about us if we can't see the con we have been exposed to and do nothing about it.
5
Life is Too Short! Vote with your heart for a better tomorrow. Harris 2029.
4
Harris is the clear front-runner for me.
That can change of course, but it's hard for me to imagine her falling away to the likes of Booker, Warren, Gillebrand, Klobuchar, etc. Klobuchar's ridiculous "tardy slip" story troubles me more than anything I have yet heard about Harris.
I respect Sanders and Biden as elder statesmen, but whatever their best moment was for presidential politics, it isn't 2020.
5
Kamala, Ocasia, Booker,Omara now here’s a great new lineup that deserves a quick and painless political demise.
3
Why? Because they don't look like you.
8
Kamala Harris claims she is "African-American" -- yet she is not African-American at all. Her mother is from India, and her father is from Jamaica.
7
Her Fathers ancestors came from Africa and she was born in America. Your logic escapes me.
12
I stopped reading some of these comments. Really, the take away is the pendulum needs swing left and she is well poised to take up the mantle. Everyone right of center, just deal with it. This is happening and it’s long overdue.
6
The left seems to constantly seek ways to make itself more and more irrelevant. It is left to the mainstream to find ways to govern and restrict the right wing.
7
Even putting aside her questionable practices as a prosecutor, I see nothing about Kamala Harris that would compel me to support her, especially in a large field of candidates. I question why she's even running, having been a senator for only two years. Unlike Obama, who was similarly inexperienced, I don't see evidence that there is much of a groundswell within the party for her to run. I don't see her lasting long, but maybe she doesn't care about that. It's possible she's just hoping to make a name for herself.
10
Today's Democratic voters are becoming savvy to unauthentic candidates. Need I say anymore?
13
Criticism from the Left of Harris makes a lot of us pay more attention to her.
3
These left-wing Democrats are as bad as Trump. Instead of anti-Hispanic and anti-black, they're anti-Semitic. Instead of lies about immigration, they lie about "Socialism" (without knowing what Socialism even is.) Viva Kamala. Tough, honest, sensible lady. She's just "black enough" for me.
2
To accurately portray the left wing feeling about Harris, you all could show the video footage circulating that shows her laughing when describing prosecuting the parents of truant children, and mocking those who use the slogan, "schools not jails." It is not a very good look.
11
The more I read these comments, the more convinced I am of Sen. Harris having a great shot of winning the nomination. Most of the unduly critical comments are from the left, and appear to come from lot of males from the bernie bro contingent: they aren't going to vote for Harris anyways. She doesn't need 100% of the left's vote. She'll get enough of the left, plus a healthy mix of moderates, AAs, Hispanics, Asians, youth vote, etc. to amass a winning coalition in the primaries. The prosecutor role for which the left is now bashing her will serve her well in the general against Trump. There isn't one current / prospective democratic candidate that can appeal to a broad democratic constituency as she can. Once the buzz Harris will generate in IA and NH this month is evident, I expect more knives to come out.
6
The big question is, can a female win?
4
Put Kamala Harris up against the guy who has lied over 8,000 times, whose first instance in the spotlight was when the Justice Department was prosecuting him for refusing to rent apartments to people of color. He's also cheated on his taxes and consorted with Putin. Tell me what in this article has any weight compared to the despicable record of Cadet Bone Spurs.
9
When Harris was SF DA, she indicted the Chancellor of City College of San Francisco Dr. Day and an assistant vice-chancellor for fraud, a felony. These men had done nothing to line their pockets with illegal gains from City College funds, but had merely shifted funds from one account to another to cover some Capital Improvement costs. She said this was a felony and these men needed to be severely punished. In looking at the facts of the case I've always thought she pursued this indictment to raise her profile and to Showcase her tough-on-crime position, when the so-called crime was merely shifting funds around to where they they were most needed. People's memory about this may differ but I think it's important to note that the judge, when issuing his final ruling on this case, clearly indicated that she was over reaching in her indictment because he reduced all charges to misdemeanors. She ruined what had been been Stellar reputations of two excellent Community College public servants. I know myself and other faculty can never think of her without thinking of her unhinged attack on our College administrators.
13
@patricia thank you for sharing this. I will never vote for Harris.
1
Usually, a DA tries to threaten the worst charges against the “perp” to try and get them to plead, trying to save the city time and money. They didn’t plead. DA throws the book at them and the judge puts the prosecutors in their place. And then your co-workers were instead tried and convicted misdemeanors.
1
If Kamala can stick to bread and butter issues that directly affect the lives of the middle class voters who are growing sick of Trump's lies and his repeated disgusting personal attacks on people.
"400 Richest Americans Own More Than
150 MILLION of The Nation’s Poorest."
Trump's tax cuts for his filthy rich friends, while middle America struggles to make ends meet, will be a defining issue!
3
nope...nobody can...but that is not the reason...
As an anti-Trump Republican, and a New York Times reader(!?),
I'm already starting to enjoy the Times airing some of the 'dirty laundry' on these Democratic candidates.....even if it's from a liberal perspective.
And that's before they start tearing into one another.
The Republicans will be taking notes.
Or am I missing something here?
4
There is an issue of what Kamala Harris did or did not do as a prosecutor, first in SF and then California but the larger issues have to do with the character of Senator Harris. She is, was and will likely always remain an opportunist of the first order.
The article mentions that she dated Willie Brown. She didn't date Willie Brown, she was his girlfriend, that's the only reason anybody had ever heard of her. And Willie Brown was not only the Senator's boyfriend but her mentor, much as Brown had been mentored by legendary Jess Unruh, Speaker and lord of the California State House in the 60's and early 70's.
For Unruh, Brown, and now Harris, politics is the name of the game; everything else is secondary. However unlike Brown who started out as a conviction politician in the early 60's as head of the SF NAACP, Harris never went through that awkward stage.
She went right from being the Mayor's girlfriend, to a prosecutor under Terrence Hallinan, the radical San Francisco DA, to the establishment's choice to succeed Hallinan.
At every stage of Senator Harris' career, the fix has been in, and her positions on any given issue swing with the political wind.
Yeah, she's talking now about Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, but not so much about being a Charter School Advocate and an enemy of Public Education—which she is. We'll never know what Kamala Harris's real beliefs—if she has any—are about any issue, until its too late.
23
Her positions change to match what the public want. The horror!
5
This history reminds one of story of Obama who also avoided taking clear cut positions in controversies in order to guard against jeopardizing his political assent. His achievements were economic recovery and ill fated ACA. He increased our foreign military engagements, set new records in deportations, cow towed to tyrannical Saudis, increased aid to Israel and did absolutely nothing to address Middle East problems.Orchestration of Libya and Egypt revolts turned disastrous. So look out!
7
@amalik
Don’t care for Obama much?
Your friend Donald doesn’t either. Hope you enjoy the company.
1
She's not ready and is heavily under qualified for this position. Show your constituents your chops in the senate first. That's the least she can do for the voters who put her there.
12
Ms Harris is not a Progressive and that is neither a complaint or compliment. She would make a good Attorney General, Federal Judge or something in that area. I am not at all certain she is someone I would vote for for President.
I do not have a favorite yet but there are many interesting people running. I think many realize they will not win but are using the opportunity to raise their presence in the party as a generational changeover of power is underway among Democrats.
The debates should be very interesting.
4
Sorry, but she's had too many serious lapses in judgement over the years, and not so very long ago that she could claim 'youth' as an excuse.
And 'dating' a still-married man 31 years her senior? Who gave her political career a huge boost? However inured some of us have become to such shenanigans in the Trump era, for a lot of people that's just not going to fly.
23
In the comments from her supporters you see a lot of platitudes and nothing in the way of substance or specific accomplishments.
7
Kamala Harris is a charismatic, strong, smart, qualified candidate. She is at the top of my list so far.
5
She was elected as AG in the most important state in the union, an economy larger than France, as prosecutor, not college professor, nor judge. Read the job description. The Dems have a history of nominating unelectable candidates. They will gift wrap this to Trump if they're not careful, which is their history.
4
Go to the Guardian and do a search of Harris' comments about her "big stick" to use on poor black mothers, and come back and tell me that she is a progressive. She was smug, mocking, proud of how tough she was on these people. I pray she isn't our nominee cause I will have a very hard time voting for her. I may even stay home.
7
KH is an abusive, dishonest, procedural & rights violating, corrupt, hypocrite & kleptocrat that promotes & indulges fraud, injustice, injury, state-sponsored terrorism, & persecution. The evidence & exposure is suppressed by complicit media in California, especially San Diego. She is not a progressive with the requisite history or integrity. This truth is testimony by an honorable US Navy retiree. Maybe you will ignore or suppress me, I've already endured shills, hypocrites, & worse abuse since duplicity is prevalent as injustice & corruption in USA worse than anyplace on Earth.
13
Sexton, I see where your home address underlines the lack of value in your opinion.
2
This woman has virtually no chance of winning, she'll be one of the first to drop out, a child can see that
7
Kamala Harris brands herself as progressive. Yet her foreign policy position toward Israel and her full support of AIPAC should give progressives and supporters of human rights and international law a serious pause.
I for one stopped my support of her and her campaign.
9
Amy Klobuchar, , hands down, prosecutoral experience and someone who will beat 45.
8
@Marylee And she can always throw binders at him if he says mean things to her.
1
@Nancyleeny
No, she wouldn't do that. She only does that to underlings.
This article could have been written about Hillary Clinton ... no core priciples, only political calculations based on optimizing electability, and minimizing opposition .... yuk
18
Run Kamala, run.
Of all the contenders so far in the race for the highest Office, I find her the most suitable to show Donald his Limits. She can be tough and determined, she is a no nonsense woman (remember when Jeff Sessions almost wet his pants during the Hearing for his AG nomination). She surely has the education , ability and stamina to sail through to the Nomination and finally into the White House. Her Charisma will appeal to a wide range of voters.
Trump will find no flaws on Ms. Harris, besides I feel that his endless cheap personal attacks will no longer work - Maybe even go against him.
Klobuchar is too home-spun and Warrens Heritage talk is getting tiring (who cares).
I think that America is finally ready for a female Leader, and prefers a younger Candidate. Joe Biden would be my second choice, however two failed candidacies and his age speak against him.
4
From what I can see, this article does not cover concerns over Harris' support for Fosta/Sesta and the misgivings of sex workers who felt she made them more vulnerable to abuse by pimps and corrupt law enforcement officials:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/sex-workers-say-kamala-harris-wont-be-their-woman-in-2020
6
While it is good to to have high standards, these self-sabotaging attacks are political suicide.
Dems must stop with the purity tests--not black enough, not progressive enough, too shrill......
Is it because most are women that the "perfect" expectation has reared it's ugly head? We never demand perfection from male candidates.
We should be glad that we have so many strong candidates.
We are doing the Republican's job for them with this behavior.
11
Same suggestion to any Senator in the hunt...
Go be governor or mayor of a big city for a couple of terms – then come back and sweet-talk us...
Obama spoiled it for Senators...
Though – to be fair – Dubya largely spoiled it for Governors...
Who's left...
8
all D candidates have warts- none compared to don con, who must be defeated. kamela has the best chance. support her!
6
What more does the woman have to do? She is down on her knees praying to AOC, Sanders & Co.
Free college.
No borders
No Ice
Basic income
Free Healthcare
Free Childcare
Nationalize the banks
Nationalize Big Pharma
She already is working a long list of Free
4
Kamala Harris would be a superb candidate ... and one that Trump would find very hard to handle, in terms of gravitas, charisma, attractive policy choices, personal resilience, and strong debating skills ... and being a woman of color whose mother and father are immigants – in other words, everything that Trump has railed against.
She is brilliant, very quick on her feet, and an excellent speaker. Her experience as an attorney general should appeal to Middle America, and it has hard-forged her abilities in debate. Her policies re income inequality, the environment, defense, and foreign affairs should appeal to independents as well as progressive Democrats.
To my fellow progressives, I say: Do not quibble or carp, Kamala is the answer to our hopes for the White House.
5
I think not. I’m amazed Democrats are so out of touch they think Harris can carry but a few coastal states. Her palaver in California about immigration will not be overlooked nationally. Please, Democrats, get real.
10
@Thomas Givnish Kamala is NOT a progressive. She is a harsh cop, who is pretending to be a progressive for political expediency. She doesn't have my vote. I don't even know if I could vote for her in the General. She is the worst of the bunch.
7
You can start to see the divisions among Democrats of 2016 reappearing through the morning fog of 2019 as the battle for perfect leaves no survivors. These divisions will be exploited by over the next 15 months by forces both within the party, outside the party, and by foreign adversaries using even more refined social media techniques.
Throw in Howard Schultz as a more appealing, better funded version of Jill Stein, and welcome to four more nightmare years.
7
I wish that this article had mentioned Ms. Harris’ response to the case of George Gage, who is still serving a 70-year sentence for a supposed rape that more than just one judge who heard the case admitted that they had serious doubts about his being quilty of that crime. The prosecutor had withheld vital evidence during the trial, but Ms. Harris still chose to let the quilty verdict stand.
I was strongly considering voting for Ms. Harris until I found out about this case as well as some of the bad decisions she made that was also mentioned on this article. Now, my vote instead will go to Mr. Biden (if he runs) or to Elizabeth Warren.
6
Her qualifications? She's female, attractive, articulate, black and most importantly, as noted at the outset of the article, practical: i.e. like every successful politician, takes the positions that will further their careers, including in her case, horizontal position with the powerful Willie Brown, who enabled her career.
15
Dear Democrats,
The 2020 Democratic Presidential nominee will likely:
1) Not your first choice
2) Isn't 100% ideologically pure
3) Has made mistakes in their life
4) Might not excite you
5) Has ideas you're uncomfortable with
Begin the process of getting over all this now and vote for whoever the Democratic nominee is. No third party protest votes, no write in candidates. The worse nominee is guaranteed to be 1000% better than our current President. Nothing less than the health of our democracy is at risk.
7
She has a very good record. She weighs each situation, and looks for the best outcome that is possible, she holds to her ethics, even when it is unpopular, whether the left or right is angry at her. She's tough and smart.
And For the People is a great slogan.
2
@SusanStoHelit
"she holds to her ethics" - She was anti-death penalty when she ought to have been for it, and pro-death penalty when she should have been against it!
And again, sleeping with an older married man to advance one's political career is not what I'd call 'ethical'. Practical, maybe, but not ethical.
8
I don't know how things are outside of the East Coast, but one generalization I can make from here is that prosecutors who go on to elected office undergo a transition where their prosecutorial zeal, the quality which had made them so successful earlier, congeals into a toxic mix of spite, vindictiveness, and paranoia, picking fights, and finding enemies where none exist. As evidence, witness those four delights Chris Christie, Andrew Cuomo, Rudolf Giuliani, and Eliot Spitzer.
Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar were both prosecutors and from what I've read, they fit the above description quite well in addition to being corporatists. Do we really want another White House with a revolving door of disgruntled staffers, spinning off its axis?
4
The former law school Dean at UC Irvine describes her work in Orange County as “outrageous.” This is not the mistakes of a young adult, this is the pattern people observed with Harris. After the previous critical article on Harris in the NYT I was worried, but now I am convinced she cannot be a viable presidential candidate. There is WAY TOO MUCH baggage here. For those of you enamored with her, ask yourself why. Yes, she is telegenic and charismatic. But her decisions raise many red flags and she will not be able to side step them. As a progressive independent voter, I will not support someone who cannot stand up the the scrutiny that all the democratic candidates will need to endure. Why take the chance. I have been worried about Warren’s weaknesses for example, but Warren is light years ahead of Harris in terms of handling the scrutiny, despite her issues with the native background issue.
5
Honestly if a Nikki Haley or Sarah Palin started their careers being a mistress to a powerful politician the media would be asking her about it and commenting in panels on cable news 24/7. Yet almost nothing spoken when it is a progressive. Can you say double standard? Also this will be a big topic if she wins the Democratic nomination despite all the media ignoring it now.
10
The Democrats have co-opted the old KGB handbook - tell them (Democratic left-wing base) what they want to hear in order to get the nomination and do what you have to do later.
6
So she's not a strident ideologist and is willing to compromise, so that makes her a target.
3
Ms Harris will be a great leader with such a diverse background. If not president she will be a great vice-president
4
Kamala Harris on the radio Monday morning, same day this article is published - admits she is a pot smoker and wants to legalize marijuana. How does she square this with the years she spent as a district attorney and state attorney general locking up pot smokers and sentencing dealers under the three strikes law? Crickets.
6
An excellent companion piece to this article was published by the Intercept last week:
https://theintercept.com/2019/02/07/kamala-harris-san-francisco-district-attorney-crime/
2
Harris is perfect for California but not for the US. Although many in other parts of the US would object, California has no concerns about a woman who is a Democrat having an affair with a high level politician to advance her career.
6
All politicians have past records. And compared to others Harris' is pretty good. Especially with some of the latest mess in VA. Why do Democrats eat their young?
5
If we want Trump out the left has to come together and grab moderates too. We can't eat our own and expect to see Trump gone.
3
You have it backward ET. Conservatism/Libertarianism are unworkable. Today the most economically viable and richest States are blue. The Red states have the most people on government doles.
4
Principled and disciplined and, smart. A far cry from the current state of affairs in the White House. I am a moderate progressive and so is she. Progressivism is the support for or advocacy of improvement of society by reform. As a philosophy, it is based on the idea of progress, which asserts that advancements in science, technology, economic development and social organization are vital to the improvement of the human condition. This philosophy is the antithesis of Conservatism and the Tea Party’s libertarianism (which has never worked in a responsible government).
4
If Ms. Harris uses the "race" card to try to get elected I will not support her. She has plenty of qualifications and would only use it to get votes.
It's disingenuous, just as Richard Nixon's southern christian card and The Con Don's supposed faith card backing are.
Run on your past actions, core values and tell us - exactly - what actions you would take to help us preserve/restore democracy in OUR United States of America candidates.
No lies. No canned responses. No skirting the truth. No evasion. Tell us.
(Just to be clear, I will vote for the democratic nominee no matter who they are but will not support those up to the election who I do not consider honest, qualified candidates. I am sure whoever is nominated will be.)
3
Dems seem to shoot themselves in the foot every time. We finally have a candidate who might actually topple DJT. Kampala Harris may not be perfect but she’s better than other wannabe Dem. candidates. Support her or risk 4 more years of Crazy.
4
The question is, does she hold the same view or position not to seek the death penalty for BLACK criminals?
Has she changed her bigoted opinion and made a statement saying so? If not, she is in deep trouble.
1
Rue just entered the GOP lexicon.
It is disappointing that these NYT readers are reading this one article and coming to a false positive opinion. Look at Harris's entire record and especially as it relates to her believing that it is OK to lock up innocent African Americans to obtain a free labor work base. Is this what you want?
8
Just like the French Revolution; the politics of identity comes to eat its children
3
The Left has to go. Don't call them progressive - they are for all purposes narcissists and disruptive.
5
@E. T.
That's a good description, but last I checked Trump isn't on the left.
2
She is a good candidate. If the left throws her under the bus, it would just be the same reactionary stupidity that got us Trump. We just can not elect people based only on how we feel. We have to educate ourselves and think critically. Can Harris do the job? Does she respect democracy? The co-branches of government? Is she smart and engaged? Does she have a plan? Does she believe in science? Reasonable people educate themselves and act accordingly. Sometimes they even change their minds. That is a positive. I desperately want a leader who encompasses all of these qualities, and is not willfully ignorant, cruel, and morally bereft. Can we just have that please?
8
Sorry Ms. Harris, you do not get my vote.
Anyone who covers up sexual assaults/harassment or abuse their power should not be eligible to be the president of the greatest country in the world.
Bye bye Kamalah.
9
Democrats would be better served by concentrating on their candidates policies and pluses rather than running "against" them. Concentrate on finding the best candidate to oppose Trump and stop trying to find reasons they cannot beat Trump. He should be easy to beat: his base is small and shrinking as is his approval rating and he barely squeaked out a win in 2016 because of the electoral college, him taking almost everyone by surprise, and the media giving him tons of free publicity for ratings. STOP covering his rallies -- they are commercials, not news events.
3
The problem with identity politics is that there is always someone truer to the core group than the one running. This was evidenced by the condemnation of Elizabeth Warren, by the Cherokee tribe. Democrats are still waiting for a leader that represents all and is willing to promote what's good for the country as a whole.
2
Are we looking for someone hasn't antagonized anyone to run for president or do we want someone who can hold their own with Trump? We have a president who is in fear of doing anything that would upset his base. Are we looking for someone on The Left who will not at times go against their base? Being the chief law enforcement officer of a state or a city is a tough job and at times requires decisions that is not going to be popular.
6
I never trust the kind of people who always try to please the boss in the office (whoever this boss is). Those are people who don't care about principles... only about their personal ambitions and interests. I think Ms. Harris is one of them. Her speeches are usually empty of content. Not substance, just a brand.
21
Kamala Harris is an opportunist, not a leader. She proved that when she refused to cross a picket line to address UC Berkeley graduates at their commencement last May. She had a chance to address the very people who could fix the problem that led to the strike - the entire administration, the major donors, all the assembled graduates, and all the parents. She could have explained the problem and told them what they personally could do to fix it. Instead, she bowed out at the last minute. That is when she lost my support because he proved that she can't rise above factions to actually lead change.
18
Like Obama, she will now play to the center left (whenever she is speaking to the left),she will play the "person of color card (while pretending not to play it- it's a bluff), and like Obama turn out to be center right. In her case, further to the right. If she becomes president I wonder what her retirement Wall Street speaking fees and book deals will look like. She might be able to grab more than both of Obama's. I mean here both husband and wife, and not any physical properties of the former president.
7
Republicans hope for a right-wing democratic candidate like Biden, but I doubt they would get one.
Democrats support liberal agenda now. Kamala, Warren, and perhaps Bernie.
Either of these three would kick Trump out end the bigotry that has become stronger under Trump.
Warren and Bernie are at least authentic. Kamala Harris is all ambition and no conviction. Next please.
11
What comes to mind reading this is: opportunist, politician trying to avoid the big decisions, always with an eye on the future. How many times in this article does something major or controversial happen with her not even knowing about it (according to her)? Strikes me very hard as someone avoiding the hard decisions. Not a real good quality in a president!
18
I happen to see Harris’ pragmatism strength, not weakness, as this piece portrays it. Must all our our candidates be ideologically pure? That’s too easy; it requires no independent thought or consideration of other points of view. Voters don’t want that. We’re sick of it, in fact, not to mention that for progressives, it’s a losing political strategy. No, please don’t force Harris to jettison her thoughtful, diverse positions on the issues to gain the favor of progressives - Gillibrand did that and it’s painful to watch.
1
Harris has no ethical core. A woman whose major accomplishments are a love affair, laughing at the prospect of jailing the homeless poor to endear herself to the Commonwealth Club, and promoting Mnuchin to the Treasury by not prosecuting him for his financial offences is not someone I want to see as POTUS.
16
Embarrassing ? Little wonder that few can distinguish between the Republican and Democrat parties, they sing, bray would be a better term, from the same song sheet
After the Supreme Court upheld the judges’ overcrowding order, the state promised to “promptly” release a significant number of nonviolent prisoners, giving credit for time served. A delay in meeting that promise drew a judicial scolding in 2014. The state’s response proved embarrassing, and unsuccessful: Reducing the prison population, Ms. Harris’s office maintained, would hurt California’s ability to fight wildfires by shrinking the pool of forced labor.
5
We could do a whole lot worse than a brilliant US Senator with a commanding intellectual presence. The Hon. Kamala Harris will pursue progressive policies when feasible and push us in the right direction.
3
She’s from California and her communication style is too aggressive. People have moved beyond (who’s best at) Trump bashing and are looking for solutions to inequality, healthcare etc. We need a true progressive, inspiring candidate, ideally from the Midwest or South.
5
I thought she did a great job as AG in California and have supported her election into the Senate. She is a serious and good candidate for US President, but the season is early and there are many capable candidates running in the Democratic primary, and so far none showing up in the Republican Party.
1
No matter what Kamala Harris does. she will be criticized by someone for something. She should act the way she feels is right, not change according to what she believes will garner her more votes, because that strategy is a losing one.
8
I like Ms Harris. I watched her questioning Trump's toads and it gave me great pleasure to view her at work. She is sharp and coherent and personable. And intelligent.
I think Ms Harris will be able to differentiate herself in the coming Democratic debates though I am already wondering how 15 or twenty people on the stage will allow for a good conversation (thinking back to the last Republican fiascoes).
I would love to hear a series of small round table, town hall discussions with 4 or 5 candidates per discussion. The Democratic Party could take a few polls rating the candidates with the initial popularity figures. Then split up the top six most popular into three groups, two per group, and blind draw the rest of the pool into those three groups. This would allow us to see how they performed when questioned from the audience and to hear some of their ideas before the formal debates began.
I hope the Times does an even handed job this crowded primary season with all the candidates. More Democrats will be reading the Times in the coming months than any other newspaper...
Thanks for a good article.
5
@Bill Cullen, Author
Well,Bill, you've falling into trap of"Anyone is better than Trump" camp) vs cheering for something.
2
@Mark Shyres
No actually if you read what I said, I was hopeful that we could hear a conversation, many conversations, among the Democratic candidates and that a new forum would facilitate that. Then we can see who might offer the best alternative to Trump and Pence. I will cheer when I make up my mind. But I like what I see so far with Harris...
3
We need to hear all the democratic candidates on myriad issues and how
they propose to tackle them. Considering
one candidate while there are five others
doesn't make sense. The report clealry
portrays Ms Harris as controversial.
2
Kamala Harris won't play in Peoria. She's just not approachable. Kamala comes across as a person with a cool, steely resolve, always ready to fight and extremely self righteous. She's not perceived as approachable and difficult to get straight answers from.
The obstacles which Senator Harris will have difficulty overcoming is her relatively small base of supporters outside of the west coast, her refusal to seek the death penalty for slain San Francisco Police Officer Isaac Espinoza and embracing the GND. She's seen more as a decisive force than a unifying one.
11
I get a very strong Hillary vibe from Harris. That is, someone whose career was built on "tough" punitive policies in order to appease critics and, let's face it, misogynists, without much regard for the collateral damage of such policies. Hillary Clinton's "I never met a military intervention I didn't like" stance is very similar to Kamala Harris's zeal for "throw the book at 'em" prosecutorial career. This, combined with her centrist, corporate-friendly stances, render her as one of my least preferred candidates in this (very) early point of the 2020 race.
Having said that, I get the feeling that we're looking at the next president of the United States. She's dynamic and a good communicator, and is appropriating some of the re-invigorated left's positions in a mainstream-friendly manner.
And she looks like the emerging America that Barak Obama represented - and frankly, after four years of rule-by-troglodyte, I think America will be looking toward that once again.
7
Sounds like a canny politician and effective prosecutor. She would be a teriffic nominee - and on most issues I'm center-left. Obviously some disagree, but Democrats can't surrender the party to the SJW wing, no matter how much passion they bring. We don't need a "Tea Party" on the left to exacerbate differences, we need hard working, savvy politicians who know how to craft intelligent programs and get them passed.
Including universal health care and a "Green New Deal" that can get votes from both sides and be effective.
Oh, and a reversal of the Trump tax heist, combined with a version of Senator Warren's wealth tax, buttressed by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez's marginal rate hike. And a new, strong, Voting Rights Act. Breaking up the banks for dessert.
Tall order. Good luck, Senator Harris!
7
@manta666
If the Democrats are smarter than I think they are (and I doubt it), they will sideline Warren and Ocasio-Cortez. Then again, maybe it does not matter. We are already turning into a socialist country. It's just too bad we can't count on some sap capitalist country to pay for our defense like the EU (including the UK for the moment) does so they can pay for their socialist policies. AOC solution for paying for her programs was "print more money". I think that's what Germany did in the late 20's and 30's. How did that work out?
You dismiss the left wing of the Democratic party as delusional SJW warriors. But ALL of the policies you want to see enacted (I do too) are straight from the so-called SJW playbook. What on earth makes you think Harris will fight for a single one of them? You're certainly not basing such a belief on anything she's actually said. Please reconsider your support for the centrists and "realists" -- you are not one of them.
2
@NK
Yeah, I recognize the discrepancy! But I honestly don’t think an SJW candidate can win. Given that though, let’s see where we are after another two years (God help us) of Trump. Appreciate your courteous reply.
1
There's nothing of real substance here. The only real knock against Harris, a case she oversaw 20 years ago in which there was a Brady violation, isn't even mentioned. For those of us who actually understand how the justice system works, everything else is just noise.
Harris set herself the nearly impossible task of bridging the essentially unbridgeable divide between social progressivism and the work required of a prosecutor. The fact that she was at times successful is nothing short of remarkable. Prosecutors' offices too often draw in zealots, or their pressures routinely turn reasonable people into zealots. It's all too easy for a bunch doctrinaire leftist to ignore such pressures. It was a reason I decided I couldn't do the work. After working as a prosecutor for a short time I left to become a civil rights and criminal defense attorney.
Harris is supposed to embody two key Democratic constituencies, but is loved by only one. Among many on the far left, meaning a good number of die-hard Bernie Sanders supporters, she's an object of contempt, some sort of pretender with weak progressive credentials. That's simply untrue.
There isn't any contradiction in Harris's approach if you actually know the slightest thing about the substantial differences between many black Democrats and most white leftists on everything from society to religion. Harris is not interested any sort of crusade to bring down the system from the outside. She's about reforming the system from within.
2
Just run her.
It's not like she will win.
1
Although I have paid attention to Ms. Harris, I feel I still cannot get a good handle on her positions. In watching her question Judge Kavanaugh, I felt I didn't see what I wanted to see, i.e., a no nonsense, smart questioner, who knew he'd stonewall, and took preemptive measures to cut that nonsense off at the pass. Maybe those 5 minutes are not enough to make a judgment on her ability to beat the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee for 2020 but it seemed she played it cautiously, which is the point of this piece on her. I want to give her a chance for many reasons. However, so far she hasn't turned my head. I'll stay tuned.
5
I am unlikely to support any Democrat for president in 2020. But clearly Harris is an impressive candidate with an interesting resume, and attacks on her from the left just show how far the Democratically party has drifted in recent years. It is yet to be seen whether these kind of attacks become the norm in the primaries and if purity tests turn them in the modern version of the France Reign of Terror. They Democrats appear to have a tailwind going into 2020 but pieces like this suggest they may find a way to blow it.
2
“When you go into court tomorrow,” [Kamala Harris told Suzy Loftus], “you look the judge in the eye and say, ‘Suzy Loftus, for the people.’” (“For the people” is now the slogan for Ms. Harris’s presidential campaign.)
I like the sound of that, especially having had to endure a president whose slogan is "For the Trumps."
Here we have a well-educated, dedicated, articulate person with a moral center and a high ethical code who has dedicated her life to public service.
Sounds pretty good to this Democrat, and if Kamala Harris is able to rise to the top of the pack in two years she will have my vote.
4
Glad to have her using her questioning skills in the Senate. She has let human values go by the wayside in pursuit of her ambition though. At the expense of real people. NOT what we need in the White House. (Or in a campaign for the White House.)
3
Kamala Harris For The People. We are the people she is for. We matter. We need Kamala Harris to be Our President. She will save Our Democracy.
2
It is going to be difficult to endure the Neo-conservative/Russian hate-anger-fear-LiesLiesLies propaganda on all comment, social media and hate television and radio platforms for the next 22 months as the comments on this article show.
However, those of us who want to preserve/restore true democracy in OUR United States of America must be diligent in calling them out every single time. We must make time. OUR lives are at stake.
3
I just don't understand why she calls herself black, and think the right will seize on that, like the Pocohontas thing, and it will kill her candidacy..
Jamaican/Indian is not African american. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
19
@grace thorsen
Jamaica is considered part of the Americas. African slaves were brought to Jamaica way back when, hence African-American. It also has to do with how the world perceives her. It's one of the primary reasons plenty of white/black biracial individuals identify as black.
3
@grace thorsen It's commonly referred to as pandering because the people who accept it ,like with Obama are not considered intelligent enough to really understand the actual issues. and that it why the the streets of Chicago and Los Angeles and San Fran are in a catastrophe of crime drugs and homelessness.
2
My take-away is that Harris is a politician who doesn't want to be defined by her past actions but rather by her current statements. (Would that we all had that luxury! ) That stance won't fly on the campaign trail ( recall John Kerry's fumbling of "Yes, I voted for it before I voted against it''). Her challenge is further exacerbated when she will be called on not only to explain yesterday's actions but actually justify them. In a soundbite world, best wishes.
7
I have a feeling if any of the women running win the primary it will be near impossible to win the mens vote in the general election because of their joint efforts with the hollywood gang to imply that all men are guilty until proven innocent.
Of course they will get the votes of liberal men that have been demasculinized and conditioned by the liberal culture.
3
The purpose of our prison system is to protect society from harm, not to mete out revenge. Given that our criminal-justice system has a disparate impact on racial minorities, it's best to do nothing we can't undo. We find innocent people in jail every year.
Now... I love Kamala. I voted for her twice. I live in Oakland and she's a hometown girl. But...
Must we all be subjected to two long years of presidential campaigning, squandering billions of dollars, focusing on personalities and rendering us all insensitive to the issues?
One of the benefits of mandatory public campaign funding is that we can limit campaign spending to six months or so. What a relief!
6
Democrats are having an identity crisis. With all of their angst vis a vis identity politics, they can’t decide who they are....people of color, non-binary, intersectional socialists, progressives, pro-BDS antisemites, ‘open borders’ activists, ‘white privilege’ critics...
Considering these cynical options...and as a lifelong moderate liberal...I won’t have any trouble casting my vote for the other side come 2020.
6
If you will not have any trouble casting your vote for the other side you are not now and never have been a moderate liberal. After all that the right has done and are doing to the American people, the world and our planet no one who has even a speck of being liberal and being decent could vote for these people. You are just making excuses to vote for what you truly believe while trying to present it in a better light publicly.
2
In reading this and the recent Times piece by Laura Bazelon, I'm inclined to think of Harris as a tofu politician - a medium with little character of its own but adept at assuming the flavours of anything around it. Mind you, chameleonism is hardly unique in the world of politics - the present POTUS being a prime example.
The validity of descriptors attaching to Trump notwithstanding - sexist, misogynist, racist, narcissist, liar and bigot - it would be a mistake to believe that he himself believes half of what he spouts. It's merely that he is without compunction or self-respect in terms of the depths he will plunge to curry favour with his naive base.
In most respects Harris is the polar opposite of Trump. She is intelligent, articulate, rational and competent. And while I have little doubt as to her personal honesty and integrity, her political record questions whether she can be counted on to be the progressive, unifying, healing leader the Democratic Party and the nation sorely need in the wake of Trump's reign of terror.
A worrisome example is Harris' enthusiastic opposition to judicial rulings that would have quashed the death penalty in California. Zernike's penultimate paragraph quotes her asking rhetorically “One human being kills another .... are we really saying there should be no consequence..?". It is that willingness to frame an important public policy issue in such a cynical, disingenuous fashion that should give Democrats pause for thought.
9
Harris lost me at tax cuts. Wrong message!
Raise our taxes and Save us money! And that is besides soaking the filthy rich.
MAGA - like when we had progressive taxation. It built the Great American Middle Class. Remember that?
Enough of Reaganomics.
3
The NYT is doing the same thing it did before the 2016: Tear down Democratic candidates who come bearingideas & solutions. The scrutiny is a thing to behold.
Where was the magnifying glass for Donald Trump and every other Republican candidate? All that we now know about Trump's business *acumen*, financial woes, discriminatory practices was all there before the election; Why didn't we hear about them?
It appears that anything Democrats envision is either not doable; unrealistic or too costly, whereas, every fantasy tumbling out of Candidate Trump's mouth was viewed as- words to be taken with the proverbial grain of salt. Why is this NYT?
8
We could do worse.We have done worse.We are doing worse.
4
I started reading this being luke-warm on Harris, but I find myself getting warmer, for a surprising reason. Reading about her family and upbringing, I find myself wanting to trust her DNA – no not in a ethnic frame. Whatever it was in her parents that made them activists, and choose to give her a "strollers-eye view" of the movement would probably emerge in her grown-up perspective from the oval office.
3
The bottom line is that we must find someone who can win. The most important thing right now is finding someone who can stabilize the nation. That may be Harris; we shall have to wait and see. I may have my preferred candidate in mind at this moment but I will withhold judgment, kicking anyone to the ground, or actually making a choice until the primaries begin and debates are held. It is crucial that the debates be of real substance and not media spectacle and fluff. And it is critical that, with such a large group of Democrats declaring their intentions to run, the debates be designed and executed in a successful fashion.
Recall the chaos and superficial theatrics of the 2016 Republican primary debates. It made for entertaining television, print and social media but was a joke in terms of substance. Democrats and the DNC will now also have a large stage to manage but must avoid the chaos that this can create and resist the pressure of the media to fashion political entertainment and drama-for-drama's sake out of such a crucial affair at this fraught time in our nation. The DP also needs to focus on potential Presidential and Vice Presidential pairings that would work to knit the party and voters together rather than alienate as happened in the last presidential election. Nothing less than a united front will take Trump down.
3
As a Californian, it makes me sick that this state still allows (much less has popular support) for the death penalty. Kudos to Kamala for going around it. She certainly has other flaws but being civilized about punishment isn't one of them.
1
Read further. She blocked the removal of the death penalty. She isn't consistent on things. I understand people grow and change but she seems to sometimes be carefully navigating at times when she should be standing her ground on issues she staked herself to. As a voter, it means I have no idea what she will do or stand for
2
Sounds like she'd make a solid US Attorney General, but that she doesn't have the breadth of governing experience or imagination or systemic reform that my dream candidate should have.
There's no shame in hiring first rate people for our cabinets--and putting them where their expertise lies. I'd love to see Elizabeth Warren heading the Consumer's Protection agency she first proposed, for instance.
A candidate who could draw all the the best of these wanabe's into her/his government and set them free to reform their particular specialties--ie a very bright generalist and superb administrator--that's who I'm hoping for.
And if this person could reassure the Midwest, all the better.
1
As a 40-something female voter, professional, with a graduate degree from New York, Harris is a non-starter for me. I cannot support a woman who advanced so quickly in her career due to her relationship with Mr. Brown. It’s regressive and violates several workplace policies. Just can’t take her seriously.
21
@Dax I am also a 40-something female voter, professional, with a graduate degree. A non-starter for me is when people assume that a woman advanced in her career due to her relationship with a man, as opposed to due to her own merits.
2
@Dax. If not for the totally phony claim that she slept her way to the top, made by people who don't live in California, you'd find some other reason to complain.
2
Kamala Harris shows us what "doing the job" means. She didn't write the laws - OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS DID. She enforced the law that OUR elected officials enacted. Do we really want to hire people to not enforce the law? She would be a great President/Vice President because she understands what "law" means! Unlike Republicans in every office, she doesn't take her directions from Fox News nor is she willing to throw the Bill of Rights and Constitution under the bus for political gain.
3
I was dawn to the observation "At the heart, she is a prosecutor. She wants to hold people accountable.” If anything these days especially after the Republican congress and trump t would be refreshing to see someone as president who believes in accountability.
4
Only a centrist is going to beat Trump (Pence if Trump is impeached). Despite Trump/Pence's lousy reputation with just about everyone, some of their supporters and independents need to cross over and are needed to seal the deal. Most of the announced progressive candidates will excite the Democratic base and very likely lose the general election because they will not pull in enough of the people that they need to cross over when questions arise about how can a country carrying our kind of deficits pay for it all and the subsequent potential displeasure of tacking in another direction and turning everything on its head again. Currently the only one I can see that will pull voters from all areas is Biden (a centrist with frequently the highest polling numbers), and the only Progressive that is likely going to be able to go toe to toe with Trump/Pence is Bernie Sanders. Sanders comes across to Republicans I know as the anti-politician. He doesn't have the appearance of being a political opportunist or hold positions that move with potential voter's opinions. A lot of those same Republicans had such distaste for the Clinton's ethics that they held their nose and voted for someone who they suspected could be a lot worse. More than a few mentioned that despite his positions they could have voted for Sanders in the general election if he had won the nomination and hoped that his wildest policies could be limited with winning and holding power in the other legislative bodies.
2
Not a good candidate. She has the same problem as Hillary Clinton, too political. She comes across as entirely ego driven.
8
Harris is not a progressive; hoping otherwise does not make it so. Her persecution of the poor on grounds of child truancy was a scheme cooked up by the "super-predator" think tank, Center for American Progress. Recent reversals on cannabis, innocence project and the progressive agenda are rank opportunism, nothing more. A prosecutor is acceptable if they have a Kerner Commission bias. Harris' views and history are the mid-evil opposite; viewing every human contact as with a victim or a perpetrator. No, thank you.
7
This is a nice, deep article getting into some of the complexities of Harris's candidacy, but it doesn't mention one of her most troubling choices: not to prosecute Steve Mnuchin for illegally foreclosing on thousands of homes. She later accepted a campaign donation from him, and now he is Trump's Treasury secretary.
The next Democratic President is going to have to stand up to the financial services industry, and that includes prosecuting banks when they break the law. Harris needs to show that she's capable of doing that, and explain why she hasn't done it in the past.
14
I waited and waited to read anything at all about George Gage and why he’s still in prison. I know Ms. Harris was dealing with the complex and heavy machinery of the justice system in her state. I know she saw her best chance to effect change was to hover at the nexus of law, politics and policy, keeping her steely eye on the big picture. But I believe her equivocation when it comes at the expense of this individual man, and others, displays that in valuing change above one life she has put means before ends. Justice is not an abstraction in practice; it is applied between human beings.....or not.
4
Democrats have to stop eating their own. Senator Harris is an impressive, intelligent, charismatic woman who would likely make an excellent President.
The self-righteous far left needs to be mature enough to understand no candidate is going to be perfect, and what plays in NY and CA is not necessarily what is going to play in the middle of the country.
There is nothing noble in losing another election because only far left, unelectable candidates like Warren and Sanders are worthy of consideration.
A robust primary is in all our interests. I'm delighted Senator Harris is in the mix.
4
@Sparky
Thus far, Senator Harris has proven herself to be eminently electable in deep blue California where she's never faced an opponent from any other political party — Republican or Green or Independent.
Wouldn’t someone, anyone who’s actually won a two-party election be more qualified?
2
Kamala Harris is a great candidate. Democrats have a lot of really good candidates running for President.
I don't know who I'll vote for yet, but Kamala is certainly in my Top Tier.
3
One of the challenges facing the Democratic nominee in 2020 is whether to depend on the Democratic base to win the election or to try to attract Republicans disenchanted with Donald Trump. Hilary Clinton tried the latter and ended up losing enough potentially Democratic moderates engaged by Trump's pro American worker message to narrowly lose the election. Harris being criticized by "the left" might actually work against the perception that any candidate who is a person of color is automatically to the far left. As a former prosecutor Harris might be able to offer an informed and suitable nuanced message on guns to appeal to a wide range of moderates dissatisfied with NRA absolutism. I'm waiting to see how Harris, or any of the other Democrats running, does in the primaries. That's where Trump moved from being a joke candidate to becoming the GOP nominee. Kamala Harris needs to build similar momentum in next year's Democratic primaries. For example, how will she do in Iowa, or Indiana?
2
I scan a variety of news sources every day. I haven't counted, but it seems to me that press coverage of Harris is considerably greater than for other candidates, even those with more governing experience. Please don't crown her yet as The Candidate. We have a long way to go before we choose and need to meet each candidate with equal coverage. I don't like having the press shape the news.
19
It seems that Mr.Trump has made the Presidency look very easy to get.Look how many democrats have come to the field.They all think they can do the job based on what is happening in the country. Let some senior people with a lot of political,defense,economical and foreign relation experience come forward to screen all the new comers trying for the job. People of US are confused.They need help to decide how and to whom vote for.
2
Because the Democrats are so much into genetic lineage, I have a question. Her mother was 100% Indian. Her father was Jamaican. How does that make her African-American?
10
@Rajkamal Rao
I think black Jamaicans originally emigrated to Jamaica from Africa.
3
@Barbara T Spain had slave ships and African slaves were distributed throughout the Carribean.
2
I wouldn’t vote for a prosecutor who covered for other dirty prosecutors. Sleazy LEOs stick together. I’ll abstain from voting before voting a crooked LEO into the White House.
1
Already the hit pieces are incoming.
Makes you wonder why any democrats would find fault with ANYbody for reasons against Harris here.
Did she grab men by their privates, insult and demean anybody, lie a dozen times a day, make you worry that she's nuts and dumb and could start a war or shut down the government permanently? Make you wonder if she's really a Russian mole or rat as the case may be.
Or that maybe she wore white face as a prank?
What do democrats want when they have a perfectly fine candidate in Harris, accomplished, smart, and, if it matters, attractive.
Democrats should go after that thing in the White House and give some slack to their own.
8
@George Dietz If she has ,no men have complained...yet. and most half and half politicians use lightening makeup.
So the 2020 race begins at The Times. Kamala is damned with faint praise and references to her origins in liberal San Francisco. (Wonder what these writers think of the lady Speaker.) Liz is unacceptable because she has mentioned that her family thought they were descended from American Indians.
Meanwhile, Amy and Sherrod are praised because they don't want everyone to have health insurance. Wonderful.
Trump should love the "MSM".
2
Anyone who plays the race card, gender politics is a non-starter. Next.
14
Ms. Harris has made the classic mistake of thinking her constituents are stupid. She, like Kirsten Gillibrand and Hillary Clinton believe they can talk out of both sides of their mouth and get away with it. Not today, when every utterance is on the record. Ms Harris's campaign is already dead, she just doesn't know it.
20
Sorry Democrats (and the ultra feminist NY Times won't like this either) but you need an old white man to win this election. That is what the people want. Deny it if you want, but if you don't want to see a Trump re-election, get an old white guy in there. Biden, where are you? Jerry Brown might even work.
2
There is not nor will there ever be a " progressive prosecutor" in America. That is an oxymoron.
With 5% of humanity America has 25% of the planets prisoners. And 40% of the 2.3 million Americans in prison are black like Ben Carson. Because the 13.3% of Americans who are black are persecuted for acting like white people do without any criminal justice consequences
Every seeing American will notice Kamala Harris natural born brown color aka race aka ethnicity along with her procreative gender aka female.
Every thinking American will know about Kamala Harris Jamaican brown father and her brown Asian Indian mother.
Kamala Harris is no Barack Obama. Kamala Harris is no Hillary Clinton. Kamala Harris is no Shirley Chisholm.Kamala Harris is Kamala Harris. And that is all that she will ever be.
4
I really like Miss Harris as Biden's running mate because she checks so many key boxes: Black - check; Woman- check; age- young, only 54, which should be a consideration with a person at the top of the ticket who would be 78 when taking office. My only regret about her is that it's too bad she's not from a really important swing-state like FLA or Ohio because we all know anybody on the Dems ticket will carry California vs Trump.
So if you Dems really want the White House back well then Biden-Harris is the combo to make that happen but I won't be the least bit surprised if you folks screw it up again with somebody like Warren or Sanders as your candidate.
2
“Ms. Harris’s office maintained, would hurt California’s ability to fight wildfires by shrinking the pool of forced labor.”
Black Woman Defends Slavery would be an apt headline
4
I think this is an article in a series, is that correct? I was wondering because this is the second big feature on Harris, with glowing photogenic representations, featured on the front page.
Hope the NYT hasn't already decided whom to "push" for and instead gives all of the possible candidates comparable coverage.
3
@cmk
The fix was in a long time ago, before Harris was even elected Senator. All the money people said so. And California moved their primaries up, remember? The NYT is just taking its place on the bandwagon.
1
As usual, if you want to get the full story on something in America, read the foreign press. No matter how many times the American press puts the word "progressive" in front of Harris' name to court the burgeoning socialist movement, the fact is Harris is no progressive, and by many standards, she is a hawk who contributed greatly to the mass incarceration of black people.
I truly hope that the Democrats don't make the same mistake twice by putting all of their eggs in the basket of an elite careerist like Harris (or Gillibrand or Booker). Having these "corporate" Democrats on the DNC ticket pretty much ensures another four years of Trump. The Left is fed up with the DNC (and the Times) backing the most "viable" candidate (read: the candidate best able to raise money). We want a candidate that isn't bought and paid for. It would also be nice to have a press that wasn't invested in selling us another rich elite as a "progressive".
9
No more lawyers in the White House.
3
I hope it occurs to those who criticize Ms. Harris for being a prosecutor that some people really do need to be in prison. If any minority who enters the criminal justice system is denounced as some sort of race traitor, then the only people in the system will be white.
5
Kamala Harris is no body’s fool. She has convictions and just because she is a democrat or is non white she is not going to fall for standard positions that most leftist Dems like to take or pretend to take. In fact she is likely to get a huge support from the White community because she does not show bias for Whites or non Whites.
In addition she is probably the only one who can scare and take on Trump. He will have hard time labeling her. If he does he will have to deal with no non sense candidate
3
Kamala’s most useful contribution to a possible Democratic (or Green New Party Deal) was and is her unique opening campaign ‘strategic narrative’, “The wealthy seek to ‘divide’ America”.
Just as AOC’s seminal contribution to the combined efforts of these multiple candidates was and is her unique strategic point raising and educating Americans about the looting scheme of this corrupt capitalism scam of “negative externality cost dumping” to produce faux-profits for only the UHNWIs and the corporations they own.
Hopefully, each of these serious, and more importantly ‘truthful’, candidates will also raise the visibility and educate ‘we the American people’ of more important ‘exposure’ and education about this Disguised Global Capitalist Empire, which is only nominally HQed in, and merely ‘posing’ as our formerly promising and sometimes progressive country (PKA) America — which was birthed in our first American “Revolution Against Empire” [Justin du Rivage].
1
The Democrats have a great hunger for eating their own...down to the bones. And the make soup out of what is left.
3
I Iike her. But I don't want her name to join this list.... Dukakis, Mondale, Gore, Kerry, Hillary. To be honest I don't think there is a single dem with more than a 50% chance of beating Trump. And we HAVE to beat him. I'm thinking we start fighting fire with fire. Martin Sheen anyone? Handsome, charismatic, articulate, played a liberal President on TV.... give him Obama's staff and stand back.
As a lifelong Democrat, how about a Biden/Harris ticket?
He runs only once and she has the inside track in 2004.
Not to mention that she could get some foreign policy experience
Which she almost none now.
Where are NYT articles criticizing the male candidates? Stop gender bashing women candidates. The misogyny is clear and it’s dangerous to our democracy. Just stop.
3
Smart and mean, a bad combination.
1
Way past time for the NYT to start features on Pete Buttigieg. He has announced that he's running, & it takes very little investigation to realize that he is the best candidate we have to be POTUS. Without any doubt the most intelligent, best educated, principled, innovative & honest candidate we have. There he is, living & working in Indiana.
3
@Mme. Flaneuse
I like young Mayor Pete very much. Maybe for 8 years down the road. But you're absolutely right, that doesn't mean that his candidacy should be ignored. Give us the info and let the people decide.
Used to think it was too soon for Ms. Harris. No longer. She is brilliant and tactical; exactly what this country needs. Criticism from the left isn't necessarily a bad thing in this political climate. It will be hard for the right to race-bait her, since her mother was Indian, and forty five chose Nikki Haley for the UN post. It will be hard for tough-on-crime folks to target her since she was a prosecutor. They'll all try their best, but she is tough and savvy. Go Kamala!!
4
Her background as a prosecutor will only help Kamala, despite the media narrative. Quit beating a dead horse.
3
Kamala Harris was not "reduced to a demographic archetype,”.
Within twenty-four hours of being elected Senator, the Democratic Party was touting her "demographic allure" as a catapult to the Presidency.
Demographic allure and ambition is her essence, there are few core principles.
As CA Attorney General, Harris’s office declined to prosecute Steven Mnuchin’s OneWest Bank for foreclosure violations in 2013 after finding over a thousand violations of foreclosure laws by his bank, and expecting to find thousands more. In return, she was the only Democrat who ran on the national level to receive money from him that cycle.
Having no convictions that would impede her ambition, she voted yes on her first defense appropriation bill, though it was a huge increase and included $285 billion more than the Pentagon requested. She voted no on the latest defense appropriation bill, realizing that a no vote was appropriate to appear progressive.
11
"Ms. Harris had made political and social connections, dating Willie Brown, the powerful speaker of the California House..."
I think the last time a male democratic presidential candidate's dating life was the subject of media attention, it was John Edwards, and it was because there was actually something there that was revealing about the character of the candidate.
There's no evidence that Ms. Harris dating Mr. Brown was a career move.
Knock it off.
4
Nothing in the article about letting Steve Mnuchin, our current Treasury Secretary, off the hook, after staff found over 1000 cases of illegal foreclosures done by the bank that he ran. Oh, and that he donated to her campaign fund. Of course, that is all coincidental, which, I suppose, why it was left out.
15
@Chris Darling
Mnuchin donating to her campaign after getting let off the hook is a red herring. The big fish is the big Dem donor who was a major investor in One West. She has been very well rewarded, i'd reckon.
6
I don't see the harm in examining a candidate's less than ideal spots on their resume. The Democratic Party is not going to choose civil war over healthy debate. We are light years away from the joyless Clinton campaign.
1
Suggest the "left" get a grip on itself and stop alienating Democrats. A quick look at San Francisco proves what the left, even with near 100% local government control can and can not do. Can't - Manage an economy that is "fair" by any definition. Can't - Manage drug addiction programs. Can't - Manage housing programs. Can't - Manage job and education programs. Our tax base is massive. Our courts are over burdened. So why would any Democrat not living in our city trust any of our political leaders?
3
The person you want as president would kick and scream to stay out of the office versus someone who kicks and screams their way into office.
If you're dying to get the job and will do and say anything to achieve this goal sadly you're not fit.
3
Democrats: Even if you don't like the party's nominee (i.e., you wanted Bernie, or you don't like Harris, etc.), you have to vote for them or Trump will win again in 2020.
2
This election comes down to Florida and Ohio. Do any of the recently converted socialists have a plan?
The weakness she will face is the crime rate for illegal immigrants, which are extremely high. The numbers are faked (fact checking ?) by adding legal immigrants (I am one) who have extremely low crime rates (in 10 years in Chicago - i thought a parking ticket would get me kicked out), as we queued up to enter the country.
3
As much as I thought I was going to be a big fan of Ms. Harris, her record speaks for itself, and she turns out to be just another political opportunist with a big ego.
Every time Ms. Harris's office has been called out by the press for misconduct, obstruction, or corruption she claimed she didn't know about the issue until she read about it in the news. Really? Is that the kind of leader we want to take over from Trump? If she can't run an office of a few thousand smart attorneys how can she run the federal government?
For more details about how Ms. Harris conducted herself as a attorney general in California, see Lara Bazelon's informative op-ed in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/opinion/kamala-harris-criminal-justice.html
I'm tired of Dems putting up cynical opportunists, such as the Clintons, for president. We can do better - much better - and I hope Ms. Harris will drop out sooner rather than later so we can get onto more deserving and honorable candidates. We need a fresh start after four years of Trump, not another pretender!
5
There are 750 people on Death Row in California. Senator Harris, Prosecutor par Excellence, even allowing for her merits, is just another one of that motley crew of underachievers/overreachers, double-talkers, one-hit-wonders, and has-beens that comprise the Democratic wannabee crew. Actually, it makes Bernie look better every day, even though I think he's past his prime, and I can't imagine which of these he could possibly pick as a running mate. I dread the next election.
2
Bernie is crusty and if you ever had a friend killed you would wish you had someone with the prosecutorial chops of one Kamala Harris.
In reading through the section on the banks, my takeaway is that Harris was bad, Obama was far worse. We desperately need a true people’s champion. Here are all pretenders.
5
Trying to "be all things to all people" is not the recipe for a leader, it is one for a facade of shifting positions, poll compliance, and untruthfulness. Whether Democrat or Republican, how can you really know where a candidate stands on key, critical issues they would face in the White House, if their positions flit about like a scarp of paper in the wind? Yes, people change positions over the years, but that evolutionary process is different from flitting from one "popular" position to another in order to appeal to this or that demographic.
You can support a candidate with whom you are not 100% in agreement (a shocking concept to some, I grant) so long as you have some confidence in their relatively steadfast adherence to certain principles. Sadly, many seem content with the chameleon politicians, so long as "their" side gets favored. And the disunity continues to grow.
2
I don't know the details of Harris' death penalty "contradictions", but I have no problem in a general understanding of how it could come about.
You might not like a law, but as someone sworn to defend it, and who is paid to have a legal opinion about it (such as an attorney general), you might come to the conclusion that a judge had made an incorrect decision on constitutionality. You might wholeheartedly support legislators changing the law, constitutionally, but until then you would be forced to defend what you think is currently valid according to the constitution. If the particular law in question gave no room for discretion to waive a death penalty for something lesser, that would be too bad. An AG who didn't like it would only be able to say, that's the law, and I think it's constitutional. If we don't like it, we need to change the law.
That's called integrity. Too many people take the easy way out in situations like that, allowing a travesty of legality to take place because it works in favor of an ideological belief, not realizing that it sets a precedent for the next time, when the decision might go the "wrong" way. (Citizens United, anyone?)
In fact, a prosecutor or AG may have seen so many instances in which the law needed to be better that they felt compelled to run for office as a public legislator or executive administrator. You'd want more leverage to be able to change laws, and not be constrained to only enforce them.
2
Ms Harris has held some highly visible offices for a long period of time dealing with "hot-button" issues. It would be very surprising if her activities did not provide ammunition for opponents at many points on the political spectrum. It is much easier to run as a senator, for example, who can usually take the high road and calculate the public impact of their positions.
In these times of unprecedented censoriousness and relentless retribution, one would hope that it is still realistic for candidates such as Ms Harris who have a detailed public record to make a run for higher office.
I would be happier, however, if she herself had not so quickly called for the dismissal of two other office holders, Franken and Northam, for isolated transgressions.
2
@Jeremy: You said it exactly right: This country needs someone to take down trump and that person needs to be authentic and at the very least pretend that they know that there's a population that exists between the Appalachians and the Rockies. Speaking from the "heart" of the Left Coast but originally from the Midwest (albeit the blue Chicago area), I keep telling my California friends who are informed by their shrink-wrapped bubble perspective that Harris is unelectable on the national level, even though we all voted for her in her Senate run (but no choice there really). She is too calculated -- as the article pointed out -- to have that authenticity that you reference. Right now, I, too, am looking hard at Sherrod Brown and Amy Klobuchar, people with a history of public service who are not trying to refashion themselves into some form of candidate who will tack too far to the left to appease the squeaky wheel pronouncements of the likes of Ocasio-Cortez (and what's up with those owlish glasses she recently appeared wearing?). As Speaker Pelosi recently said in reference to the "Green New Deal": "When asked about the resolution, she was dismissive. "The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is but they're for it, right?" (quoted in a recent Jonah Goldberg column: Green New Deal backers embrace their fantasies.)
3
Let her run something bigger than a prosecutor's office and I would consider her. We need an executive with significant experience running difficult organizations like cities or states.
2
It sounds like she doesn't really believe in anything--except that she should be in charge. That's not what I'm looking for in a Democratic presidential candidate.
6
The progressives who want every candidate to be as pure as heart as they themselves pretend to be will have themselves to blame when Trump wins easily in 2020.
There's not a prosecutor in the world they would find worthy of their vote. The Left needs to be able to identify the strongest candidate in terms of winning a general, and someone like Harris (not necessarily her) would be far less alienating to the centrists. Someone like her in office, even if they are not 100% ideologically aligned with the left, would still be objectively better than 4 more years of Trump and the primitive appointments he would continue to make.
1
There's no point reading about her and what she has or hasn't done for the table is already set. I'm a Democrat and she is a woman of color, based on that I know exactly where I'm supposed to sit. A lot of place cards on the table are a mere formality. I've been to these dinner parties before.
1
If democrats hope to beat Trump in 2020 they will need to pick a pragmatic centrist candidate from the Midwest; not the left or right coast. California and New York are the exceptions to the electoral college, not the rule as Trump beat Hillary in middle-America not on the coasts. A lesson democrats should learn quickly or suffer the same fate in 2020.
3
Senator Harris' prosecutorial record is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is whether she is prepared to make the choices and sacrifices as POTUS necessary to stave off the worst effects of climate change. No other issue should even be discussed. And right now, on that issue, none of the Democratic field seem particularly promising.
1
I'm putting down my marker for the Democratic ticket now: Sherrod Brown for President and Kamala Harris for Vice President. As painful as it is to acknowledge I don't think the USA is ready yet for a female President, though given the number of women running it seems there has to be at least one on the ticket. Of the 5 currently running, I think Gabbard and Gillibrand will fall pretty quickly, which leaves Warren, Klobuchar and Harris.
I just can't take to Warren - and I positively liked Hillary Clinton. I think a lot of the rest of the country will find her a scold, though I accept that may just be wishful thinking. I mean I'd vote for her if she were the nominee but would hold my nose to do it.
Klobuchar is possibly the most "electable" of the bunch (assuming she isn't brought down by stories about being difficult to work for - has she found a campaign manager yet?), but if Brown is the nominee, as a Midwestern pragmatic Democrat he cancels her out.
That leaves Harris, who would provide geographical, ideological, gender and racial "balance" to a Brown-led ticket. I'd be very excited for the Democrats if it happened.
1
The world is ready. No need to parse it too finely as the last election just told us who is subject to influence.
Missing from this article is any acknowledgement of the disproportionate toll that violent crime takes on the poor and minorities, or the toll that violence against women takes on all women. While there are valid criticisms in this article, it would benefit from deeper investigation of Harris's motivation to secure justice for thousands of nameless victims of violent crime. I believe that Democrats in law enforcement are assuming difficult jobs that are rife with ambiguity and likely to make enemies, but seeking accountability should be compatible with being a progressive, not a disqualification. Does that mean that only Republicans should take these jobs?
When in doubt, follow the money. Kamala Harris gets 62% of her donations from large (over $200) contributors and PACs. She is another Wall Street Democrat posturing as a progressive for the primaries. Harris's politics are essentially Hillary Clinton's. She has come out for Medicare for All, but given her history and her donor base I think there is little reason to believe that once elected she wouldn't end out making all sorts of concessions to the insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
In contrast with Harris, Sanders gets 75% of his donations from small donors and except for a few affiliated with labor unions takes no PAC money.
Harris voted for Trump's bloated military budget. Sanders didn't.
While Harris's record is full of zigs and zags, Sanders has been consistently progressive over decades.
It would be awesome to see a Black woman in the White House. I think most Sanders supporters feel this way too. (If Rep. Barbara Lee were to run, I would encourage Sanders to consider not running.) But we also know that Black woman make up a massively disproportionate share of workers making under $15, of people without insurance, and of those who can't afford to go to college and are far more confident that Sanders will actually prioritize addressing those issues as he has done over his entire career.
Harris can likely beat Trump. Bernie certainly can. But we also need a candidate who will reverse the neoliberal policies that made Trumpism possible. Harris fails that test.
5
Kamala Harris is worthy of consideration. Trump will be running on a immigration=crime platform and few understand the criminal justice system better than Harris. I oppose the death penalty as an archaic and immoral and believe our country should not be revenge killing in 2020. She is dedicated, thorough and tough. I believe in universal healthcare based on a model such as those in more developed countries such as Japan or the Netherlands but I think her blanket statements about the subject were not well-advised. Let's all take a close look at Kamala Harris.
1
I like Kamala Harris but I do recall she was somewhat complicit in the Indymac foreclosure mess. Siding more with banks then those who were harmed by them.
I’m hoping she isn’t just more talk, but a genuine progressive.
2
She has always seemed overly-polished and not real to me. She strikes me as someone who will speak the party line even if it conflicts with her true beliefs. Most of the California Democrats are that way, in my opinion. Elizabeth Warren is the opposite. I’m growing to like Elizabeth.
2
I am confident that most in the United States, as well as expatriates like myself, view the radicalization of American society and politics with concern. Nevertheless, many continue to participate in the same processes that foment such radicalism. Faced with the uncompromising opinions of our political opponents, we seek ever less to participate in compromise. In the tug of war between us, we save our energy to pull with more might, afraid that we may waste our breath with attempts at diplomacy.
That is dangerous. It will end with ourselves or our neighbors in the mud.
Despite her faults, Kamala Harris displays the courage to hear and speak with those on the other side. It is a rare quality in our zeitgeist. It is the only way to ease the tension in the rope, without damaging sisters and brothers. Therefore, while we may not need Harris as president, we certainly need her spirit.
72
@Christopher P
It is refreshing to see a politician with nuanced positions on issues. But at one point soon Harris will need to sound credible in defending them. She has to be careful not to trip over herself. Contradictions are hard to walk away from.
1
@Rick Morris
That is true.
I assume that the pressure will remain heavy, which insists that she select a side. And indeed, to win the modern office one surely must choose a position on nearly every issue.
Nevertheless, the nation needs those who engage in politics not merely to win (which paradox rarely will), but in order to model what sensitive leadership looks like to others. I believe such persons will normally be found uncomfortably straddling political nuance. They are the best leaders, who lead by losing well. It is my hope that we will return to a form of politics, which heed the conscience more than victory.
1
@Christopher P. Only what is available to you, since much is suppressed from exposure. KH is an abusive, dishonest, procedural & rights violating, corrupt, hypocrite & kleptocrat that promotes & indulges fraud, injustice, injury, state-sponsored terrorism, & persecution. The evidence & exposure is suppressed by complicit media in California, especially San Diego. She is not a progressive with the requisite history or integrity. This truth is testimony by an honorable US Navy retiree. Maybe you will ignore or suppress me, I've already endured shills, hypocrites, & worse abuse since duplicity is prevalent as injustice & corruption in USA worse than anyplace on Earth. Maybe those among the reasons compelling you to expatriate? Stay safe & sane.
1
Harris speaks well. The fact that she changed her position on various issues as her experiences changed seems reasonable. There are a lot of people who are disappointed by people who do so, however, because they are certain about what they feel are truths about the world. Elected representatives must serve all their constituents, it’s a matter of fulfilling their responsibilities, so sometimes they must act other than what they’d act on their own. They will disappoint people who have no skepticism about the infallibility of their own beliefs.
Our republic is on the verge of flying apart due to the four decades long anti-liberal propaganda from the right, starting with the election of Reagan. He brought the anti-liberal democratic message in the appearance of liberal values but he learned his message from reactionary archconservative business executives. He was an intellectual lightweight.
Government is our democratic form of government and the message against government interference is an old reactionary attitude that advocates for the rule by the most powerful instead of by the law. Like it or not government policies are the will of the majority of the people not some alien conspiracy.
We must focus on restoring mutual trust so that demagogues like Trump can not achieve high office anymore. The Democrats must offer a candidate who will unify the electorate before all else.
50
@Casual Observer
". Elected representatives must serve all their constituents,,,"
In exactly what universe do you see this happening?
2
Representative government means that office holders represent all of those who are eligible vote by law. That is the obligation which they swear to fulfill. The majority of the voters choose who will do this. Serving the interests of some contrary to interests of the rest is a violation of trust, it’s corrupt practice.
2
@Casual Observer Harris is no liberal. Not even close. She should stop trying to pretend.
1
There is no more certain path to losing a presidential bid than trying to be all things to all people. I already see troubling signs that Harris is running away from parts of her record, when she has absolutely nothing to be ashamed of and no real reason to distance herself from taking a tough stance on difficult issues. We can change, evolve, without waffling or hedging. Trump will run all over her if she doesn't stand firm now.
49
I will vote for Harris if she’s the nominee but I’m pretty sure a lot of other people won’t. There are a lot of voters for whom simply being better than Trump won’t be good enough, and I can’t say I entirely blame them. Harris’s record violates many of my core values and those purported to be held by most Democrats. She has supported civil forfeiture, tried to block police body cameras, kept innocent citizens locked up on technicalities and didn’t go after Mnuchin when she had the chance, all to score political points.
For those who defend her actions because she’s a woman of color and has to make these calculations to get ahead in a white man’s world, you’re insulting the many men and women of color who have attained positions of power while bravely sticking to their principles. Obama could have decided that speaking out against the Iraq war was going to hurt his political chances, but he did it anyway. You didn’t see Thurgood Marshall worry about taking unpopular positions and you don’t see Maxine Waters doing it now. If a white male prosecutor did the exact same things Harris did while in office he’d be rejected by both parties as a hypocritical opportunist. Trampling over the 4th and 14th amendments is not the same thing as being “tough on crime.”
In order to win the Electoral College, we have to win the states Hillary lost due to voters who saw her as a two-faced “coastal elite”. There is no reason to believe they won’t see Harris the same way. We have better choices.
80
@James Jacobs To your opine about rejection of Harris if she were white, I give you Jeff Sessions. As a prosecutor, senator, and US AG, he never changed the character of his legal efforts, as racist and quasi-Constitutional as they were. Whereas, Harris seems to do the job that she takes on, regardless of personal beliefs, if those beliefs would force her to ignore the strictures of the job. I don't know the details surrounding your characterization of "Trampling over the 4th and 14th amendments...," but she served in big blue California so it couldn't be as obviously bad as you imply.
Obama was never a prosecutor. Neither was Thurgood Marshall. Maxine Waters is actually taking on very popular positions, with her constituency; she's not running for President.
Bottom line, it's pretty early to write Harris off before she's had much time to address your concerns as she campaigns. Unlike Clinton, she's much more of an unknown quantity, and Hillary got more than her share of unfair criticisms. For decades.
Frankly, if any Democratic hopeful so far announced can't get more than the 35% Trump would get, at best, in the popular vote, and cover the less than 80,000 vote margin total he won by in the states that carried him in the Electoral College, then there is something terribly wrong with this country.
6
@James Jacobs
Good points, all.
4
@Barry Williams It’s one thing to attempt to do one’s job in a non-ideological way, as one should, but it’s another entirely to abandon one’s core principles for the sake of political expedience and with a clear eye toward runnning for higher office instead of serving the specific constituency she was elected to serve. California being a “big blue state” doesn’t mean what you think it means; there are many shades of blue and some of purple, and there are hundreds of thousands of Californians on both the left and right who detest Harris.
As for your Constitutional question, please go back to the last sentence of the first paragraph of my original post. It astounds me that people can dismiss civil forfeiture and wrongful imprisonment as pesky lefty complaints instead of the serious abuses of power they are.
And as far as there being “something terribly wrong with this country” - that ship has sailed. We are there now. Which is why it’s so important that we don’t repeat our mistakes from 2016 and find the right candidate who can beat Trump. That’s all I’m trying to do here. This is not about litmus tests or even left vs. right. I just want to beat Trump - while also asserting that the Democratic Party does in fact have values that are not just anti-Trump but pro-civil liberties.
3
Ms. Harris is an extraordinary woman and can stand on her own merits. However, apparently her "sellers" are trying to play the woman of color card.
Ms. Harris is a woman of color but she is East Indian and Jamaican. According to Wikipedia, "Kamala Harris was born on October 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, to a Tamil Indian mother and a Jamaican father. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, was a breast cancer scientist who immigrated to the United States from Madras (now Chennai) in 1960.[5][6] Her father, Donald Harris, is a Stanford University economics professor who emigrated from Jamaica in 1961 for graduate study in economics at University of California, Berkeley.[7][8][9].
Ms. Harris is certainly an American but she is not African American as "woman of color' usually designates.
Please, media and candidate sellers, be truthful in your remarks and propaganda. This is a crucial time in OUR United States of America and disinformation has run it's course. Dig deeper. Every candidate has background and core beliefs. WE THE PEOPLE expect OUR media outlets to give us the truth. Leave the lies to fox so-called news, hate radio and unregulated social media where we are learning to separate fact from fiction and call the latter out immediately.
8
Its idiotic to say that the phrase "a woman of color" means African-American or black. It's obviously intended to reference any non-Caucasian woman. Nobody is trying to hide Harris's cultural or racial heritage.
2
Always helpful to identify weak spots in a candidate's resume as primary season heats up, so voters can make an informed choice on who to help nominate. I'm happy to hear any arguments from Harris, on why I should override my concerns on this issue.
5
It's quite likely that a lot of this is a left-over version on Clinton vs. Sanders. Trump supporters jump in to enjoy the fun. Ideally, neither Biden nor Sanders will run and we can have a new contest that will lead to the best woman or man winning the nomination.
Actually, the records of candidates mean much more than their stated positions do.
This is the kind of journalism we need in order to understand whether candidates are simply mouthing platitudes, or whether they have a history of doing what they are saying.
2
The article suggests Senator Harris likes to suggest that she can be "both," rather than having to choose "either/or." The trouble with this is how and when it is applied. I think Senator Harris is more of a both/and, and, or, either/or variety of politician( certainly not uncommon). On this concept, whatever her position is on any issue, it can be justified, by simply saying, "well it's complicated."
5
Why do Democrats try to destroy their best people? I don’t know if Senator Harris is the best yet but she’s certainly impressive and I’m willing to give her a chance. Prosecutors work to put people charged with crimes in jail. They are not social workers.
I’ll tell you one thing - I like Kamala Harris a whole lot more than AOC. And I bet lots more ‘over-50’s’ feel the same. We could easily lose to Trump - he and his nasty bunch will lie and cheat to win. We have to be vigilant and not put our good candidates through impossible ‘purity tests’.
224
@Maxie It's not about destroying them. It's about understanding where they come from and knowing their weaknesses.
There aren't purity tests. These are basic questions we should be asking of all the candidates.
19
@Maxie
Kamala Harris is "demographic allure" and ambition.
Harris declined to prosecute Steven Mnuchin’s OneWest Bank for foreclosure violations in 2013 after finding over a thousand violations of foreclosure laws by his bank, and then accepted a campaign donation from him.
She voted for the hugely increased defense budget her first year as Senator. Then she realized it was politically expedient to appear progressive and voted against next defense budget.
AOC's integrity and awareness of the need for change NOW is so refreshing. She is a wonderful addition to Congress.
Kamala Harris is the usual best that money can buy...
30
@Maxie True. Remember Howard Dean? He was on track to be President and let out a whoop at the Iowa caucus and it ended his career. The dems did not fight for him at all even though it was ludicrous in the extreme. And you can see how serious the repubs actually are about "presidential" now that we have donnie trump! Yes, the inability to accept nothing less than total PC from our candidates will, and have, cost us dearly. (and with poor Dean it didn't even rise to a pc level. good grief.)
14
Kamala Harris is a job hopper. Kamala Harris admits she hopped into Willie Brown's political love nest. There ought to be a law against job hoppers who want what DONALD J TRUMP has. Kamala Harris adopted the Russian Negotiation Strategy: "What's ours is ours. What's yours is negotiable". America does not need communists in Congress.
5
She seems to be a self-consciously cautious status-quo party operative—
Now trying to appear progressive, because it’s in vogue.
Does she really have the vision and the heart?
24
This phrase is not justified in any objective report: “appearing to try to be.” The reporters are not in position to divine Senator Harris’ motives, and yet that’s their underlying mission here. They appear to be trying to present themselves as capable mind readers.
10
In Canada our Progressive Conservatives have provided outstanding governments since the time of Confederation, so you Americans can get used to a 'progressive prosecutor'; Ms. Harris might help you emerge from your political quagmire.
5
@Paul Brown
You mean like Trudoe's son, Trudoe. He's a sissy and belongs in Canada.
1
She has no chance. I predict she will be one of the first candidates to drop out in an already very crowded Democratic field. As reported by the NYT two days ago Sanders and O’Rourke are way ahead in race for small-dollar donors. Sanders would begin a 2020 presidential bid with 2.1 million online donors, a huge lead among low-dollar contributors. Beto O’Rourke has twice as many online donors as anyone in the race besides Mr. Sanders. Fund rasing aside if by some miracle she became the Democratic nominee she would have to confront this tough question. Is America ready to elect a very progressive African American woman from California? A woman maybe... HRC proved that. African American yes ...President Obama broke down that door. A "progressive prosecutor" from San Ftancisco, California? Absolutely not. Never gomg to happen. This country isn't ready to go that far to the left yet. She would have big problems with Midwest and Southern voters...especially in critical swing states like Florida and Ohio. Out of the 15 people running for the Democratic nomination she would be by far the easiest to beat. She has too much baggage. Gop leaders would be popping champagne corks in the unilkely even she ever receive the nomination. Harris...Warren...Gillibrand...Castro...Booker (maybe).. All of them push the likelihood of a Schultz independent run, which will either re-elect Trump or just might, if the voters are truly angry with both parties, get Schultz into the White House.
6
Sooner than anyone expected, her five minutes of fame will be over, same as the others, without Joe Biden running, Trump will cruise easily to the White House...
7
@Amir Girgis
Joe Biden who represented the credit card industry for decades? Or the Joe Biden who slyly undermined Professor Anita Hill by silencing witnesses who corroborated her testimony?
https://www.propublica.org/article/bidens-cozy-relations-with-bank-industry-825
https://www.npr.org/2018/09/23/650956623/anita-hill-testimony-the-witness-not-called
1
"Reducing the prison population, Ms. Harris’s office maintained, would hurt California’s ability to fight wildfires by shrinking the pool of forced labor."
"And most of the $410 million California got to help at-risk homeowners never made it to them; a judge found that Governor Brown diverted $331 million to plug budget holes."
Dear NYTimes, we need more reporting like this. More prominent and less partisan. The blackface scandal right now in VA shows how utterly incompetent, corrupt, and hateful even our own party can be, and we need to demand more, and now. I don't care if there's not one person left standing. There are millions of brilliant, caring, self-sacrificing people ready to take their place.
16
@Robert”there millions of brilliant, caring, self sacrificing people ready to take their place”..... An army of morally pristine candidates ready to ascend to political office is not reality. Everyone who aspires to power has made some eye opening “compromises” which will at some point be used against them.
3
@Chuffy, Excuse me, but not to wear blackface you have to be morally pristine? Not to view prison inmates as slave labor to fight forest fires, you have to be morally pristine? Not to raid financial settlements made in favor of homeowners, you have to be morally pristine? Stop being an apologist for morally reprehensible behavior. I'm the CEO of an international non-profit organization and I'd go to jail if I misallocated $331 million!!
2
I don't trust over zealous prosecutors like Ms Harris to guard my civil rights.
We have a problem in this country where 'successfully' prosecuted cases equal justice. This is not always the case in reality. And to further their careers they often are only concerned about racking up wins. Kills really.
Ask Aaron Swartz's family about that.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/walterpavlo/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-hacker-case-ends-with-suicide/#183311f757cd
11
I MIGHT have considered Kamala Harris as a viable opponent against Trump, save for (1) her enthusiastic embrace of unaffordable MediocreCare for all, (2) her proposal to eliminate ALL private health care insurance, and (3) her endorsement of the preposterous Green New Deal, which may be the greatest film-flam ever put before the American people. These positions will doom her in any run against Trump. In sad truth, it's difficult to see ANY Democratic candidate amongst the current herd who could actually defeat Trump in 2020, owing to their extreme positions and/or past gaffes.
41
@Zee I'll bet many, many people support her Medicare proposal, and that many, many others would love to see HMOs go out of business. Speaking as someone on Medicare, the ability to go to the hospital and not fear bankruptcy outweighs any suggestion that it is socialized medicine, or that it fosters long waits and shoddy treatment. It has been lifesaving.
29
@Zee if you love private insurance so much there’s plenty of Republicans for you to vote for. In 2019 to not understand how the private insurance system has failed the vast majority of people, and that a capitalist profit motive behind health care destroys lives well I don’t know what else to tell you...
17
@Zee Let's try a little math. Say there are 10 people and 9 have health insurance. On average the 9 pay $100 a year. or $900. But they all change to Universal and now the 9 pay $55 a year, $50 for themselves and $5 to cover the 10th person who is uninsured. So the total cost paid now is $495 vs. the $900 they paid before. $495 isn't lust less than $900 it's close to half. Meanwhile everyone has coverage, the hospitals are happier, the people are happier. The only ones that lose out are the lawyers, the corporations with lower profits, and the health insurance corps who signed their own death warrant when they created health insurance programs that dumped the people who got sick.
14
There is no inconsistency between her, as a prosecutor, declining to seek the death penalty, which is well within a prosecutor's discretion, and her, as the Attorney General, defending the constitutionality of a state law that she may disagree with as a matter of policy but that is legally defensible. This is a matter of separation of powers: it is for the legislature to enact laws as a matter of policy and for the courts, not the attorney general, to decide whether a duly enacted and defensible statute is constitutional.
4
The former federal prosecutor who should really be running for president is former Connecticut, Dan Malloy. Under his leadership, Connecticut implemented the strictest gun laws in the nation, reducing violent crime in the subsequent five years by the greatest extent of any state; crime hit a 50-year low, recidivism dropped, while the prison population came close to decreasing by half. He decriminalized marijuana, reducing arrests by 8,000 per year, and also sharply increased inner-city high school graduation rates, in no small part because of the decline in drug arrests. He led the effort to eliminate capital punishment, and nominated the first openly gay man to be chief justice of the supreme court. And he won the Profile in Courage award from the Kennedy Foundation for taking in a family of Syrian refugees when then-Indiana governor Mike Pence refused to let them in.
That's courage, fiscal success, and enlightened progressive government. Malloy deserves to be president.
5
@Sean That's great! I wish we many more like him, but the gun debate isn't really about crime any more than the wall is about crime or immigration. It's about republican politics and ideology. they want their guns, period. they want the wall, period. it doesn't matter if it's good or bad, or even if it's meaningless but will cost them billions! we aren't dealing with geniuses here.
1
@Sean,
Governor Dan Malloy did all those things but he also led Connecticut to near bankruptcy. He extended state employee contracts out to 2027 that alone will bankrupt the state. The state is dying and many are heading for the exits as you can't tax yourselves to prosperity.
2
@Jack Actually, his 10-year agreement follows a 20-year agreement by Republican Governor Rowland. The new labor agreement saves the state $21 billion over 20 years, and requires state employees to virtually self-fund their pensions.
Connecticut ranks as the 2nd lowest in the nation in terms of total government spending at all levels as a percentage of state GDP. He left more than $2 billion in cash balances, and eight straight balanced budgets.
2
It's hard for me at this point to differentiate her from any other politician who talks out of both sides of their mouth. My opinion of both Booker and Harris is that they seek the presidency because they seek power and want the pulpit to further careers in political grandstanding. This country needs someone to take down trump and that person needs to be authentic and at the very least pretend that they know that there's a population that exists between the Appalachians and the Rockies
106
@Jeremy It's strange to me that a person can no longer be conceived of as a complex, contradictory entity capable of seeing all sides, without being labeled as talking out of both sides of their mouth. we certainly have become very simple-minded. no wonder we wound up with donnie trump.
3
@Jeremy
OK with you for Harris. Not for Booker.
His name is Pete Buttigieg, & he is running for President in 2020.
5
One of the biggest unasked questions for Kamala Harris is why she did not investigate and prosecute Herbalife, the California-based multi-level marketing firm. After a two year investigation the Federal Trade Commission found that the overwhelming majority of Herbalife distributors earned little or no money, that Herbalife's compensation plan rewarded recruitment of new distributors rather than retailing its products, and that close to half of all Herbalife distributors quit within their first year. The FTC required Herbalife to pay $200 million in consumer redress, to revamp its compensation plan, and to pay for an independent compliance monitor for seven years. The State of Illinois joined in the investigation and imposed a $3 million fine. The State of California should have been at the forefront of this investigation given that Herbalife is based in California and was in flagrant violation of an order imposed by a prior California Attorney General in 1986 which was still in effect. Many of Herbalife's victims were poor Hispanics who believed they were on the road to the American Dream with Herbalife but had their hopes cruelly dashed and lost their hard-earned savings.
26
I will vote for Kamala Harris if she is the last one standing, and she may well be.
But until then I'm sticking with Elizabeth Warren, who is both a tough lawyer and a powerhouse on economic issues. There is not much evidence that Harris is deeply knowledgeable or passionate about the economy.
I read Kamala Harris' recent campaign book, and I came away uninspired.
24
@Cousy
So you lean towards loosers. Why?
1
@Cousy I took a Continuing Legal Ed course on bankruptcy taught by Elizabeth Warren back in '04 or '05 when she was still at Harvard. Her message was exactly the same back then as it is now. She doesn't sound any different at all. She is entirely authentic on the income inequality issues and I admire her for that. I would vote for her over any of the other Democratic candidates.
7
If Kamala Harris is the nominee, I will vote for her. But I would rather vote for any of the other Democratic candidates than someone who was a career prosecutor. The criminal justice system in the US is 'the new Jim Crow', locking up millions of people of color. Mass incarceration in the US is an atrocity and I don't want to do anything to support it. Prosecutors in real life are different from those on TV. Read Lara Bazelon's expose on Harris's time working in San Francisco. I really hope I don't have to vote for her.
14
Pragmatic sensible centrist protectors of the status quo don’t fight with every fiber of their being in office to bring about change desperately needed. They accommodate. They compromise. They ending up serving the oligarch and corporate donor classes, and then get out with their book deals and new billionaire friends like the Obamas did, leaving the bedrock economic issues stalled or in worse shape for the next generation and an even angrier and more impoverished electorate, sufficient desperate to support a non establishment wildcard.
16
Kamala Harris could be elected President in a landslide , if California was a separate country. The articles suggestion that she would have a difficult time receiving the Democratic nomination because of her prosecutorial zeal is overblown if not contrived. She checks all of the lefts identity politics boxes, she is black, female, pro open borders, and pro sanctuary cities. She also supported and favors a new CA law that penalizes employers in that state from cooperating in ICE inspections. To top it off she favors the abolition of ICE and AOC's "green new deal. Harris's stand on immigration and the environment so extreme that IMO she would make a very poor general election candidate for the Democratic Party.
7
In choosing a candidate, the last thing that Democrats need to be, given the enormity of the threat posed by another Trump term, is 100% purist. What some Democrats regard as a bug - her experience as a disciplined prosecutor - will in fact be a significant asset in the 2020 general election. It would make for a most welcome contrast with Trump, given the raft of investigations confronting him. Harris did not always make decisions that would please progressives, but amidst her generally successful record as a prosecutor, she did undertake progressive initiatives.
9
Reaching across the aisle, finding common ground, knowing when to fight and when to let something slide: these are all things we want from our elected officials, and it seemed that Senator Harris excelled with such pragmatism.
But when it comes to everything that she did to protect unethical prosecutors, to try to uphold convictions despite evidence that the judicial process was tainted (or full out corrupt), and to prioritize her "tough on crime" image over genuine justice - THAT speaks to the depths of her character. And it's why I simply cannot support her.
Even today, with so many stories flooding the airways which destroy this "progressive prosecutor" narrative, Harris is feigning ignorance, passing the blame, and denying responsibility. She could acknowledge some career mistakes and personal shortcomings - we all have them - but instead doubles down on her pride.
With the world burning at the hands of Trump and his minions, I know we shouldn't be devouring every Democratic candidate at this stage. But fortunately we have a large and diverse pool, and I will gladly support one who has shown far more focus on doing what is genuinely right and not what helps get him or her to the next step of their career.
14
Not a single thing in this article will matter
What will matter is that Kamala Harris is a once every 15 year political talent - by far the most likeable, charming and charismatic candidate - and it's not even close.
That's what gets you elected president in 21st century America
7
@Luciano we are not voting for a royal family here in the colonies ,they need to be able to do something besides likeable
2
Anyone who is in the political arena for more than a decade is bound to make enemies. Nevertheless of all the Democratic candidates who have thus far declared their candidacy for POTUS in 2020 Kamala Harris is the one most likely to win the national election against Trump or any other Republican candidate .
1
Ms. Harris was not a progressive prosecutor, except when it benefitted her career. That said, Earl Warren was not a progressive prosecutor but turned out to be a transformative Chief Justice. Dems could do worse than nominate a careful politician who is also a woman of color. She may not square the circle, but she checks a lot of boxes.
13
It’s good to see the The NY Times focusing more on the policy and actions of a candidate and much less on which racial groups will vote for which person, based on skin tone.
Senator Harris is a politician, her decisions are always made with the next election in mind. We designed the system that way.
8
Nirtpicking? Harris is a strong candidate that will attract support from many parts of the moderate to more liberal voters. No one is perfect.
9
This article alone provides President Trump enough ammo to demolish her in the debates she would have to face against him. Having said that, just think how she would do against those in he own party. She doesn't have a chance!
11
Harris couldn't find it within herself to co-sponsor the S.720 - Israel Anti-Boycott Act, which she still has the ability to do. Cory Booker got behind it. While I typically am not a single issue voter the fact that Harris cannot do the right thing and support this very necessary bill excludes her from my vote. That goes for Gillibrand and Warren too.
1
she cannot be trusted. Anyone who has a history of attempting to appeal to all constituencies, without any clear moral imperative will never do what progressives need to get done. She has clearly wanted to be president for awhile, not to change anything in particular; rather, she just wants to be queen.
She may put her name by proposals she thinks are popular in an attempt to try to win votes, but she won't fight for any of those proposals. In electing her, we will have 4-8 yrs where nothing gets done, and by the end of her term, the stage will be set for a counter-revolution from the populist right. People who are sick of being taken advantage of and promised things, will be sick of people calling themselves progressives and doing nothing.
She is a great candidate for the elites, because she will guarantee that the constant cycle we do from populist left to populist right continues, and that will ensure that the billionaire class will stay in power for at least another 12 years (until we have a chance to vote the populist right person who succeeds her out of power). This is far too much risk for our planet to endure. Her candidacy could quite literally destroy our species. We need to break the wheel in order to save our species, and she is the ultimate wheel candidate--who will guarantee an equal and opposite resentful backlash from the right, and will not do enough to ameliorate the left. How can we elect someone with her history? The stakes are too high.
10
Harris strikes me as opportunistic, self-interested, and not particularly interested in ideology. In other words, probably a strong candidate.
8
There is a weak, sneering undertone to Ms. Harris; it is kryptonite to her nascent charisma. When she looks into the camera, her tone and posture scream: "I know better."
That is what likely made her a good - if controversial - prosecutor. But it will unite the right in ways that Obama did not. Obama was not threatening, Ms. Harris is.
She had her moment on national stage during the Kavanaugh hearing. She acted as if she was on the winning side, and silently smirked. When called to speak, she was oddly ineffectual.
Now compare that to the first time anyone outside Chicago saw Obama. He was enthralling; he became the tribal leader withing seconds.
Policy and record are fine; but three of the most recent presidential elections have rubbished any theory about link between issues and person. Each time, less qualified and less experienced candidates have won because of charismatic, tribal appeal.
I am not betting money on Ms. Harris's tribal appeal. My fingers are crossed.
13
"By the time we get to 2020, Donald Trump may not even be President,..."In fact, he may not even be a free person."
-Elizabeth Warren Feb, 2019 Cedar Rapids
I'm voting for Elizabeth. Doesn't mince her words and is always in attack mode. And places the citizens first, all else follows that.
13
Ms Harris has the character and charisma to be a national leader. She entered politics in a non-traditional, controversial avenue and effected positive change while in the trenches. I'm eternally annoyed by the holier than thou contingent that criticizes from their armchairs or academic towers but never get theirs hands dirty doing the actual work of fixing the broken system or getting elected to anything. We need a lot of change in this bigoted country of ours and exciting candidates like Ms Harris give me hope and optimism after the darkness and humiliation of the current administration.
7
Trying to sort through the Democrat candidates while Trump is in office is like trying to sort out the differences between the parts of an intricate Swiss watch while a rogue bulldozer demolishes the town.
I’ll vote for whatever performing monkey the Democrats give me in 2020. That’s not glib, it’s a realistic assessment of my level of control.
8
I wrote her off when she charged the proprietors of Backpage with pimping while she was running for Senate in 2016. It was a silly charge, designed to do nothing more than garner publicity and promote her political prospects, and a judge tossed the charges, not once, but twice.
You can say what you will about Backpage--now that the law post-Harris has been changed, I think this will, ultimately, go down as a landmark First Amendment case along the lines of Falwell vs. Flynt. That aside, prosecutors aren't supposed to bring charges if they don't think they can win and if the law doesn't support it. In this case, Harris pulled the trigger even though neither prong was there--but she thought that votes might be.
She's nothing more than a political opportunist who has carefully crafted a career based on nothing but her own self ambition. A California-ized version of Hillary, if you will. Yuck. Pure and simple, yuck.
20
No, Kamala Harris shouldn’t try to please progressives; she should be herself. I’m a Clinton/Obama and I detest Trump, but if it comes down to a choice between President Chaos and a far left Democrat who will cause even more chaos, my choice will not be an easy one.
2
Harris is just another another Incremental Change, Identity Issue politician, nurtured and put forward by the corporate centrist democrat establishment.
Her office opposed every effort to enact and apply propositions 36 and 47, enacted by "the People" to release low level drug offenders from serving 25 to life sentences (at a cost of $40,000.00 a year per inmate).
She also, opposed her own prosecutors, when she decided not to prosecute Steve Mnuchin for fraudulent bank foreclosures on 35,000 homeowners
Her biggest progressive splash as senator (much touted in the press) was to insure that 12,000 women in federal prisons were issued free sanitary napkins. While that is a laudable achievement it says and does nothing for the millions of students and seniors who are struggling in poverty.
Yes... she "does not like to be boxed in." What you will hear from her, as from every other centrist corporate democrat masquerading as a progressive is " I support Medicare for All, but....."
19
Apparently, many people aren’t able to wrap their brain around the idea that conviction and incarceration are two different things.
There’s no contradiction in bringing criminals to justice and in determining what their punishment should be. Increased rates of incarceration don’t equal greater justice. Harris understands this.
Obama’s incarceration rate on bankers and mortgage company executives who caused the 2008 disaster: Zero. And, yeah, I voted for him twice, and I’m a progressive Democrat.
If, somehow, Obama were running a third term, imagine the criticism and savaging he’d be recieving from the self-defeating purists in the Democratic Party.
Progressives ought to hold off on gutting “moderates” like Harris, and Gillibrand and Biden over issues of ideological purity. Let each of them make his or her case on what they are offering to do when they become President.
82
@John C
Obama would deserve the criticism.
In retrospect he seemed more an elegant wordsmith and image, than someone who could lead the country in real change.
And after The Great Recession, real change was desperately needed.
I don't know why he failed us.
4
@John C I always assumed that Obama had a finite amount of political capital in his first term. He had a choice. Save the economy or prosecute Wall St. He choose to save the global economy. It wasn't perfect, but it was the correct choice.
5
@John C
"Let each of them make his or her case on what they are offering to do when they become President."
Is anyone stopping them from doing so? The way they respond to these criticisms is PART OF how they make their case.
2
When asked about private health insurance, she said "oh, that will all be eliminated". The it was pointed out that 100 million people have such insurance through their employers, and that they like it, and she had to backtrack.
That is a pretty stark lack of genuine thought and preparedness which makes her seem insincere. She seems to have thrown out the "medicare for all" talking point simply to be popular, not because she truly even understands it.
The NYTimes should have a moderate Republican economist and a moderate Democratic economist analyze the economic platforms of all the candidates and each week discuss that analysis on Op-Ed pages all across the country.
The let's pick someone who knows what they are talking about, who is experienced yet not old news, who will not ignore the rust belt or insult working people (unlike the 2016 Limousine Liberal gang who lost).
How about Sherrod Brown and/or Amy Klobuchar?
They could win (which is almost the only thing that matters in 2020). They would govern wisely.
98
@Jojojo Not sure that Harris wasn't merely being too glib with her answer. If those 100 million getting employer-supplied insurance got essentially the same coverage from whatever form of universal healthcare eventually won out, what would they care whether it was private or public? The wealthy who can afford elite coverage would still be able to get it; universal healthcare should say merely that if you can't afford a minimum level of care, those who can pay into the system (according to their ability to spare the contribution) will help supply that level of care for you.
Possibly, what Harris didn't take the time to say, is that private insurance would be eliminated as the major element in healthcare. Just as the wealthy can afford bodyguards and other extra protection services, despite the fact that all localities have a police force, universal law enforcement services can coexist with private protection services. Basic healthcare should be provided just as are basic police services and fire fighting services.
After all, everyone pays for the uninsured anyway, one way or another. When folks end up going to an ER for expensive medical care, many times for something that could have been avoided by a couple of yearly, relatively cheap visits to a doctor for routine checkups, you directly pay for those who can't pay for it via state and local taxes, and indirectly via federal taxes used to subsidize states. When they're charging $1500 for a box of Kleenex e.g., that adds up.
13
@Jojojo
Sherrod Brown and/or Amy Klobuchar are so white as Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine.
How did that work out?
Among the 63 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump was 58% of the white voting majority. McCain won 57% of the white vote in 2008. Mitt Romney won 59% of the white vote in 2012. Black turnout and voting was the meaningful difference in all three elections.
Economics is not a science. There are too many variables and unknowns to craft the double-blind experimental controlled tests that provide predictable and repeatable results.
Economics is gender, color aka race, ethnicity, national origin, sociology, education, history and arithmetic
1
@Jojojo Lots of people liked their pre ACA insurance before it covered being sick. People like their 1950's cars without seatbelts or AC or antilock brakes... Progress means change. And change is not always perfect. But we can see from the 65 countries that run Universal that they live longer, are healthier, pay 60% less and never go bankrupt from an accident or illnesses medical costs.
7
The problem Ms Harris has is a direct consequence of the position she held.
To do your job properly and create justice as a prosecutor, you need to ignore the mobs of onlookers who either cry out for the blood of those they deem "obviously guilty" or the mercy of those they deem "obviously innocent", and instead go with what the available evidence says they did or did not do and what kinds of consequences those actions had for others.
To win votes, though, a prosecutor needs to satisfy those same mobs of onlookers, even if that means being unjust in their decisions. It creates an inherent incentive to punish the innocent and give a walk to the guilty. And that means that a prosecutor's political prospects depend on creating injustice and leaving behind a trail of broken lives of innocent people and victims whose cry for justice is ignored. You cannot do that and be a moral person.
Elected judges also face the same problems.
And that's why I firmly believe that prosecutors and judges should be appointed rather than elected, and why I have serious moral qualms about electing any former prosecutor or judge to high political office.
6
I'm actually more concerned with who she didn't prosecute (and why) than who she did.
https://theintercept.com/2017/01/03/treasury-nominee-steve-mnuchins-bank-accused-of-widespread-misconduct-in-leaked-memo/
17
Sanders/Harris
Avenatti Att General
Michael McFaul Sec of State
Warren Dep Treasurer
3
Cosmetically a shoe in.... politically ... a disaster
28
It’s funny how many “Democrats” are contorting themselves to find fault with these perfectly good presidential candidates. Between this sniping and cannibalization (and we’re still months from the debates which seem likely to have to include a “kids table” like the 2016 Republican farce) and idiot billionaires like Schultz, were looking right down the barrel of four more years of president cable news.
Democrats needs to quickly unite behind a small group of strong candidates. Harris would be one such figure.
112
@Jeff
Than-you Jeff. I said a similar thing. You said it better.
3
@Jeff
Democrats have 18 months to select a candidate. That candidate should be able to stand up to the harshest scrutiny if we want them to rally the broadest coalition against Trump and win. In 2016 the Democratic establishment attempted to impose a choice on the rank and file and the end result was the election of Donald Trump.
There will be a lot of candidates for the Democratic nomination. They should all be given a chance and they should all be thoroughly and critically examined. That is what the primary process is for. The field will eventually be winnowed. Some will drop out before the primaries begin, others after the first several primaries. By Super Tuesday there will probably be around five plausibly viable candidates, most likely Harris, Biden, Sanders and a couple others, with one or two leading the pack and of whom any will have a very good chance of beating Trump.
What we don't need is the Democratic Party establishment or their friends in the corporate media telling us which candidates to take seriously. We also don't need to have our discussions of the candidates records, financing and other respective strengths and weaknesses policed by fear that any criticism will somehow benefit Trump.
Some people will say stupid/offensive things online about your favorite candidate. Deal with it. Keep your cool. Its not the end of the world. We will in fact rally around the nominee in November, whoever they are. The debate we are having now is healthy and necessary.
6
@Jeff What's wrong with criticizing candidates for the nomination. Democrats are trying to find the best candidate, and part of that is criticizing and finding flaws with those who are running for the candidacy. Most of the people criticizing her will likely still vote for over Trump if it comes to that, but is it wrong to demand better candidates?
3
She’s always been a politician. All of her previous jobs were just stepping-stones to 2020.
A large percentage of Americans still believe in the death penalty, especially if an AK-47 and/or a murdered police officer are involved. She’ll never win their votes.
What are the Top 5 issues in 2020?
- Stagnant wages.
- China dumping products below cost; killing jobs; circumventing tariffs.
- Immigration “amnesty” every 10-20 years without any core fix.
- 10-12 years with no one from Wall Street prosecuted for the mortgage fiasco.
- Russia & China surpassing the U.S. in leading the world since 2016 - as we’ve been distracted with internal fights.
- And the news media chasing every “oh look: a pony!” story, and not real issues.
Kamala has no answers or experience for ANY of these. She couldn’t even stop a Supreme Court nominee from obtaining a life appointment. 100% politician.
61
@jdoubleu
She running for a POLITICAL JOB! We need a political person to run and win it. Go Kamala!
2
I had absorbed some of these rants- likely from many of those she prosecuted. Then, I was persuaded to watch her Sunday speech. Most compelling performance in my 90 years on earth. She can- and will- win the nomination and take out
trump. She is most likely to beat him- the most important
event on the horizon. Do you want to take out don con?
Then,. Senator Harris is the most likely chance to do so.
There are many good D candidates; but the most effective
team would be Biden and Harris. We MUST take trump out!
127
@Aunty W Bush
I agree about Harris' speaking.
Favs so far:
Kamala Harris
Sherrod Brown
Elizabeth Warren
I like them for different reasons. While I was initially dismissive of Warren, I've grown to appreciate that she has integrity in her voice, that she believes and embraces her own message.
26
@Aunty W Bush
90 years on earth and you find her performance more compelling than JFK’s inaugural address? Ted Kennedy’s speech at the DNC? Chomp? Obama? Wow- you don’t seem to have much perspective for all those years.
46
Aunty, with all due respect, this person will NEVER become President, for many reasons...and Joe Biden...Oh please
27
Kamala Harris is a pragmatic politician whose constituents' interests are uppermost when making critical decisions. I find the tone of this article interesting. She is implicitly condemned for having done a difficult and important job, and compromising to make sure she serves people of diverse opinions and interests. That it was in law enforcement, makes it all the more challenging because emotions run high and in such compromises, someone always loses. She has proven herself tough, dignified, principled, and intelligent, and possessing vital life experience. By contrast, the Times article on Beto O'Rourke last week was a love letter to a ex-Punk rocker wannabe with little life experience beyond dreamy aspirations and a couple terms in Congress. But I ask you, which of the two candidates would be more terrifying to Trump and more likely to win? The answer is clear. The prosecutor who has made a career of staring down con men.
246
@Mary
Can you, please, use fewer adjectives and be a teensy more critical in your analysis?
Neither Harris nor O'Rourke has a candle's chance. Both come off as narcissistic politicians. even worse than Trump, who spout whatever things they think will build their base and garner votes. There's a balance to things, and these folks have no center. Harris crows about Medicare for all--a good thing worth fighting for--then she backs off in the face of criticism instead of saying, "Hey, here's the math, here's what we gain, here's what we give up and here's why it's a good idea." She has no facts at hand, even though facts are at hand.
What a hollowed-out excuse of a person. She stands for nothing but herself, a Richard Nixon in Democratic clothing. If this is the best that Democrats can do, it's four more years for the Republicans. At least you know what you're getting when you vote GOP.
9
Yes, Mary, Ms. Harris is an extraordinary woman and can stand on her own merits. However, apparently her "sellers" are trying to play the woman of color card.
Ms. Harris is a woman of color but she is East Indian and Jamaican. According to Wikipedia, "Kamala Harris was born on October 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, to a Tamil Indian mother and a Jamaican father. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, was a breast cancer scientist who immigrated to the United States from Madras (now Chennai) in 1960.[5][6] Her father, Donald Harris, is a Stanford University economics professor who emigrated from Jamaica in 1961 for graduate study in economics at University of California, Berkeley.[7][8][9].
Ms. Harris is certainly an American but she is not African American as "woman of color' usually designates. Please, media and candidate sellers, be truthful in your remarks and propaganda.
This is a crucial time in OUR United States of America and disinformation has run it's course. Dig deeper. Every candidate has background and core beliefs. WE THE PEOPLE expect OUR media outlets to give us the truth. Leave the lies to fox so-called news, hate radio and unregulated social media where we are learning to separate fact from fiction and call the latter out immediately.
8
@Mary
The definition of a " pragmatic poltician" is a selective prostitute for special client customer interests.
Barack Obama once remarked about Kamala Harris being so physically fine. I suspect that my Forever First Lady South Side Chicago homegirl aka Michelle Levaughn Robinson Obama was not amused.
6
just from a perspective of diversity,,, we need her to represent the democrats,, and perhaps win.. and that diverse representation/face is incredibly important.. it is a gigantic necessary shift in the evolution of this country (and it's effects on other countries)-
2
The Left's litmus tests for the 2020 Democratic nominee, will ensure that that candidate loses (badly) in the general election. Remember that Hillary won the popular vote by over 3 million votes, as a rightward-leaning centrist. Biden with Amy K as his VP is the only winning ticket.
10
@Richard Litmus tests are precisely what primaries are for! As an example, lots of Democrats, myself included, would refuse to vote for any candidate who is opposed to abortion rights in a primary. Why? Because if you don't do that, you'll end up with 2 anti-choice candidates on the ballot in November, and Roe vs Wade will be gone within a decade.
The litmus test that Harris fails with me: By all appearances, she considered it acceptable to fight for the execution of someone she had reason to believe was innocent. Sure, she suddenly changed her mind upon becoming a senator, which means she understood that her stance looked bad, but to place ones' career ambitions over the life of an innocent fellow citizen is to make a fundamentally immoral choice.
Overall, the portrait that emerges is that of a preternatural political being, not unlike a young Obama, who developed a calculating and cautions centrist instinct that allowed her to continue to win higher office, but at the end, one can legitimately ask, as of the older Obama: What have you done for black folks?
Besides ambiguously moralizing from the center? “Are we really saying that you’re either that, or you believe that there should be serious consequences for people who commit serious crimes? I am both.”
Obama regretted his error too late, when he was already a lame duck, that the right was always already acting in the vacuum he left open.
Does Harris demonstrate she has learned anything to justify her becoming president?
32
@LdV What did Obama do for white folks, other than upper middle class liberals and the uber wealthy?
It's not a racial issue. It's class, class, class.
4
She's a climber. She wants to be the first black woman president. She said so. Just like Oakland hired the first black woman fire chief, and you all know how that turned out even if you repeatedly refuse to acknowledge it.
26
So you’re saying the Oakland fire was because the fire chief was black?
Wow.
10
@Larry
No, I think he's saying that "I am the first black/Hispanic/Pacific Islander/woman/whatever" should take a backseat to one's qualifications and integrity. Had the person in charge of the Oakland Fire Department, regardless of race or gender, done their job and enforced fire codes in a building a half-block from a fire station, a lot of people who are now dead might still be alive.
I think that's what he's saying.
11
Yeah, that Chief was a complete disgrace to the public and other fire professionals before and after the Ghostship fire. Inform yourself and be disgusted at the way she was a complete failure. And then changed records to cover up for why the Ghostship hadn’t been inspected as per law prior to the fire. She snoozed and many young people died.
3
If this is the worst Harris' opponents on the far left of the Democratic party can dredge up against her and feed to the NYT they must be really desperate and frightened about her prospects.
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@John While I was impressed with Kamala Harris during the Kavanaugh hearings, that was a very different circumstance compared to the far more complex and demanding job of AG in California. As the head of law enforcement in CA she appears to have struggled with issues that needed her to be resolute. I believe Ms Harris will prove herself to be a fine senator. However, in the White House we need someone with unwavering commitment to do what is best for the American people. Someone who knows her "true north" and will reject the impulse to second guess herself. Or himself.
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@WalterZ
Actually I would have said one of the essential requirements of a president is to be able to second guess yourself, examine all the angles, etc. When the opposite is the case as with the current incumbent who surrenders to first impulses you see the chaos that ensues. Governing a vast democracy in the 21st century is an enormously complex process as you point out, and is not well served by simplistic mantras of the sort beloved of the far left and far right. Defining what is best for the American people is a far more complex equation than your comment implies.
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@John Second guessing oneself, as I meant it, is to lose focus of one's purpose. "Examining all the angles" of course is essential and needs to be part of the process (being open minded probably says it best). However, a leader knows her purpose to her core. I do not advocate first impulses.
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I'm a lifelong progressive Democrat and Sen. Harris clearly is not. Her record as a prosecutor was brutal and cruel. She will be a divisive force in the party at a time when they absolutely need a person who will unite them and has the enthusiastic backing of the progressive wing. Sen. Harris is not that person.
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@Paul Wortman The only divisiveness comes from so-called "progressives" who demand someone who adheres to their strictures. Didn't we learn anything four years ago?
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@Paul Wortman I don't like Harris, but aren't murderers "brutal and cruel" to their victims? Please answer that question. And maybe explain why liberals care so much more about vicious killers than about their victims or law abiding people.
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@Matthew progressives are not demanding "strictures." This attempt to portray progressive as "ideologues" is poor beer.
We are demanding *practical* and *immediate* solutions to *urgent* problems, soon to become disasters.
What *is* an ideological stricture is the fetish of free market liberalism which sacrifices the health, well-being, security and happiness of children, students, working people and seniors to some Holy Graph produced by the Von Mies Institute
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