Why Are U.S. Liberals So Eager To Be Fooled By VP Harris?

"Does AIPAC control Kamala?" ask Aaron Maté and Max Blumenthal in their recent video.

As we hurtle toward full scale war with Iran while Israel and the U.S. fan the flames, why are liberals here in the U.S. so eager to be fooled (again)? In the last week I've heard, "I hope you're as excited about Kamala as we are!" and, "She is going to be much better on Gaza than Biden" as well as the old trope, "orange man bad!!!!!" 

Of course most liberals are still bashing Russia and Putin for defending themselves from NATO aggression via Ukraine, so the orange man thing is on brand at least.

Years ago I wrote about how liberals considered their support for President Obama as a sort of get-out-of-racism-free card. They could only see race and feel their own self-congratulatory feelings for supporting a man of color in the White House. A man of color raised by white grandparents that had both worked in the predecessor to the CIA. A man of color sponsored by the white Crown family of Chicago who bankrolled his meteoric rise from "community organizer" (a claim for which not a shred of evidence has ever been offered). But his wife was actually a Black descendant of enslaved people! So he and she could do no wrong.

Never mind all the Black and brown children he killed in drone strikes, including American citizens like 16 year old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki (pictured above). Never mind that on his watch, by his own admission, "we tortured some folks." Never mind that Black people in the U.S. continued to experience huge disparities in terms of net worth, health, death at the hands of police, and incarceration rates -- race blotted out all other views of the two-term president.

But I'm just an old white lady who thinks Biden has been as bad a president as Trump was, worse in some respects if you care about international affairs as much as I do. As I wrote to someone who launched an ad hominem attack on me after I declined to financially support their advocacy for Harris' campaign, "Have BIPOC lives improved under the current Democratic administration? I would argue they have not in terms of wealth, safety, health, or pretty much any metric you care to name." They have yet to respond.

We are often admonished to listen to Black women. Harris has only the slightest claim to being Black as she was raised by her Indian mother in that culture and in the absence of her Irish-Jamaican father. But I get that as a woman of color she has faced a lot of vitriol and racist harassment just living her life and then even more while taking on public roles.

That does not change the fact that the biggest item on her resume -- arguably the only item on her resume -- is presiding over the incarceration of millions of BIPOC in California. And keeping them in prison beyond their sentences to profit from their labor. All well-documented. Unlike her policy positions, which are nowhere to be found on her campaign's website.

But we don't know how she'll be on Palestine and Gaza, say liberals. Yes, we do. Here's the White House confirming she conferred with Israeli PM Netanyahu before he went back home and green lighted the assassinations in Beirut and then Teheran.

President Biden spoke today with Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel. The President reaffirmed his commitment to Israel’s security against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. The President discussed efforts to support Israel’s defense against threats, including against ballistic missiles and drones, to include new defensive U.S. military deployments. Together with this commitment to Israel’s defense, the President stressed the importance of ongoing efforts to de-escalate broader tensions in the region. Vice President Harris also joined the call.[emphasis mine]

Who has Harris surrounded herself with in her own rise through distinctly undemocratic paths? Glenn Greenwald interviewed Lee Fang on that topic, and it's not encouraging.

A radical friend of mine suggested, ask liberals if they would support Condoleezza Rice for president because it amounts to the same thing. By which I think she meant, elevating faithful servants of the death-dealing empire based on their apparent race which makes them more desirable as leaders. (I would argue that Rice was both more intelligent and certainly more articulate than Harris has shown herself to be.)

If you'd rather hear Black voices speculating on the prospect of VP Harris ascending to the top job, I recommend subscribing to the Black Agenda Report  and following Margaret Kimberley,

 

https://x.com/freedomrideblog/status/1819438761828061278

following Ajamu Baraka, 

https://x.com/ajamubaraka/status/1820221745221255257

and following Ann Garrison, who shared this gem on Twitter:

Leftists, not liberals, have much to say about the "Black mis-leadership class" in general and VP Harris in particular.

And much to say about the thoroughly undemocratic process that has imposed Harris as the Democratic Party candidate.

There are race riots, real ones, going on in the UK right now. The cost of the war in Ukraine -- especially much higher energy prices -- has impoverished millions and they're lashing out after Axel Rudacubana, a Black teenager born in Britain to Rwandan immigrant parents, killed three little girls by stabbing them. (Several more people were injured at the time.) This provided the spark for people to attack anyone who doesn't appear white enough to them, and to attack mosques even though the murderer allegedly identifies as Christian. 

Because putting a few people of color in front facing positions does nothing to address either systemic racism or systemic poverty. 

As if the financiers and warmongers who preside over austerity to prep for another world war don't come in all the colors.

Top Cop To Be Face Of Fake Progressive Party As Civil Unrest Grows

I've felt for the past few years that the U.S. is showing signs of a civil war that could stave off the revolution we so sorely need. With that in mind, the elevation of genocide supporter and fake progressive Kamala Harris makes a lot of sense.

The Democratic Party and its media minions would have you believe that because someone is a person of color and identifies as female they must, by definition, be progressive. Identity politics has warped the minds of many who seem blinded to the fact the servants of our corporate overlords come in all colors, shapes, and sizes.

https://x.com/kamaufranklin/status/1815175964860596618

Yes, nominating a Black-Indian woman will trigger an avalanche of racist and misogynist invective from the white supremacy crowd who are terrified at inexorably losing their grip on privilege.

Again, useful from the standpoint of fanning the flames of civil unrest in the U.S.

But I think that is a secondary consideration for empire managers. Actually the inarticulate and uncharismatic Harris has a resume tailor-made for the increased repression that will be necessary in order to keep power in the hands of the wealthy few.

During Harris' campaign for president she earned exactly zero delegates but was inexplicably chosen as Biden's running mate anyway. Law professor Marjorie Cohn did a deep dive into Harris' track record at the time to provide us with the relevant facts. So relevant that I'm going to reshare Cohn's piece just without the 2019-specific intro:

Harris, who served as San Francisco district attorney from 2004 to 2011 and California attorney general from 2011 to 2017, describes herself as a “progressive prosecutor.” Harris’s prosecutorial record, however, is far from progressive.

Through her apologia for egregious prosecutorial misconduct, her refusal to allow DNA testing for a probably innocent death row inmate, her opposition to legislation requiring the attorney general’s office to independently investigate police shootings and more, she has made a significant contribution to the sordid history of injustice she decries.

Harris Tried to Whitewash Jail Informant Scandal

For years, perhaps decades, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, in cooperation with the Orange County District Attorney, or OCDA, planted teams of informants in jail to illegally elicit confessions.

Deputy sheriffs placed informants near defendants who were represented by counsel to obtain statements from them. Prosecutors were aware of this program and explicitly or implicitly promised benefits to informants. This violated the defendants’ Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

In People v. Dekraai (2016) [when Harris was California AG], an informant in this program illegally obtained statements from the defendant. After the prosecutor agreed not to use the statements, Dekraai pled guilty to murder and was preparing his defense for a trial on whether he would get the death penalty. He asked the judge to find that the OCDA had a conflict of interest because of its involvement in the jail informant program.

Over a six-month period, the judge held two hearings and heard from 39 witnesses.

The judge found that many witnesses, including prosecutors and law enforcement officers, were “credibility challenged” about the nature of the informant program and their role in it. Some couldn’t remember, the judge determined, but “others undoubtedly lied.”

Thus, the judge concluded that the OCDA had a conflict of interest and recused the entire OCDA office, removing it from any further involvement in Scott Evan Dekraai’s case.

Kamala Harris, who at that time was serving as state attorney general, would then take over the prosecution of the death penalty phase of Dekraai’s trial. But Harris appealed the judge’s ruling and opposed the recusal of the OCDA.

In 2016, the Court of Appeal rejected Harris’s argument and upheld the trial judge’s recusal of the OCDA. The appellate court wrote in its opinion:

“On the last page of the Attorney General’s reply brief it states, ‘The trial court’s order recusing the OCDA from prosecuting Dekraai’s penalty phase trial was a remedy in search of a conflict.’ Nonsense. The court recused the OCDA only after lengthy evidentiary hearings where it heard a steady stream of evidence regarding improper conduct by the prosecution team. To suggest the trial judge prejudged the case is reckless and grossly unfair. These proceedings were a search for the truth. The order is affirmed.”

Attorney Jerome Wallingford represented a man who, like Dekraai, was a victim of the illegal Orange County jail informant program.

“Harris should’ve done her job and investigated the informant program based on the findings of the Court of Appeal in the Dekraai case,” Wallingford told Truthout. “But instead, she tried to whitewash the scandal by protecting the DA and blaming the sheriff.”

The job of the attorney general is not to protect the DA. As chief law enforcement officer of the state, the attorney general’s duty is “to see that the laws of the State are uniformly and adequately enforced,” as mandated by Article V of the California Constitution. Harris violated her legal duty in this case.

Harris Minimized ‘Outrageous Misconduct’

Harris minimized “outrageous government misconduct” in People v. Velasco-Palacios (2015). The trial court found the prosecutor “deliberately altered an interrogation transcript to include a confession that could be used to justify charges carrying a life sentence, and he distributed it to defense counsel during a period of time when [the prosecutor] knew defense counsel was trying to persuade defendant to settle the case.”

After the prosecutor snuck the fabricated confession into the record, it caused the defense counsel to urge the defendant to plead guilty, which undermined the trust the client had in his lawyer.

The trial judge determined that the prosecutor’s action was “egregious, outrageous, and shocked the conscience,” and dismissed the case. Harris’s office appealed.

The Court of Appeal affirmed the dismissal, noting that “dismissal is an appropriate sanction for government misconduct that is egregious enough to prejudice a defendant’s constitutional rights.”

Significantly, the appellate court stated that “egregious violations of a defendant’s constitutional rights are sufficient to establish outrageous government misconduct.”

But the Court of Appeal rejected Harris’s argument that if the conduct wasn’t physically brutal, it would not satisfy the “shock the conscience” standard required for dismissal.

Once again, Harris was covering up prosecutorial misconduct and ignoring the Supreme Court’s admonition in Berger v. U.S. that the duty of a prosecutor “is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.”

Harris: Less-than-progressive record. (Office of the Attorney General of California via Wikimedia Commons)

Harris Opposed Investigations of Police Shootings

These cases are not isolated examples of Harris’s less-than-progressive record as a prosecutor.

“Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms as a district attorney and then the state’s attorney general, Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent,” University of San Francisco School of Law Professor Lara Bazelon wrote in a New York Times article titled, “Kamala Harris Was Not a ‘Progressive Prosecutor.’”

Bazelon added, “Most troubling, Ms. Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors.”

After a federal judge ruled in 2014 that California’s death penalty system had become so dysfunctional it “violate[d] the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment,” Harris appealed the decision. As a result, California’s death penalty was upheld and remains in place today.

Harris refused DNA testing that could exonerate Kevin Cooper, a likely innocent man on death row, and she opposed statewide body-worn police cameras. Harris favored criminalizing truancy, raising cash bail fees and keeping prisoners locked up for cheap labor.

She also supported reporting arrested undocumented juveniles to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, covering for corrupt police lab technicians and blocking gender confirmation surgery for a transgender prisoner. A U.S. District Court judge concluded that withholding the surgery constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

Many of Harris’s prosecutorial actions disproportionately hurt people of color.

Harris opposed legislation requiring the attorney general’s office to independently investigate police shootings resulting in death. In 2016, members of the California Legislative Black Caucus called on Harris to do more to strengthen accountability for police misconduct.

Assemblyman Kevin McCarthy (D-Sacramento), a member of the Black Caucus, told The Los Angeles Times, “The African American and civil rights community have been disappointed that [Harris] hasn’t come out stronger on this.

Harris Helped ‘Foreclosure King’

Although many of Harris’s prosecutorial actions harmed people of color, a notable one helped the white “foreclosure king” — Steve Mnuchin, [who became] Trump’s Treasury secretary.

Mnuchin was CEO of OneWest Bank from 2009-2015. A 2013 memo obtained by The Intercept alleges that “OneWest rushed delinquent homeowners out of their homes by violating notice and waiting period statutes, illegally backdated key documents, and effectively gamed foreclosure auctions.”

After a yearlong investigation, the California attorney general’s Consumer Law Section “uncovered evidence suggestive of widespread misconduct.” In 2013, they recommended that Harris prosecute a civil enforcement lawsuit against the bank.

Former headquarters of OneWest Bank, Pasadena, California. (Coolcaesar, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

“Without any explanation,” Harris’s office declined to initiate litigation in the case.

Mnuchin donated $2,000 to Harris’s Senate campaign in February 2016. It was his only donation to a Democratic candidate.

In January 2017, the Campaign for Accountability claimed that Mnuchin and OneWest Bank used “potentially illegal tactics to foreclose on as many as 80,000 California homes,” and called for a federal investigation.

Harris wrote in her memoir, The Truths We Hold, “America has a deep and dark history of people using the power of the prosecutor as an instrument of injustice.”

She added,

“I know this history well — of innocent men framed, of charges brought against people without sufficient evidence, of prosecutors hiding information that would exonerate defendants, of the disproportionate application of the law.”

Indeed, the public record indicates that as district attorney and later as attorney general of California, Harris has contributed to the injustice she claims to abhor.

And it get worse. Harris has a record of incarcerating the chronically ill parents of truant children, and the parents of chronically ill children. She also failed to release prisoners whose sentences had been served, arguing that that their labor in prison was profitable to the state of California. Her career actions resulted in negative impacts on, disproportionately, people of color and their families.

Top cop Harris seems eminently qualified oversee ramping up suppression of domestic dissent, does she not?