Harris claimed that “no one parent” was sent to jail when it was a district law, but Tapper pointed out her support for a statewide truancy law that did land parents in jail.
“That was an unintended consequence,” Harris said. “That was never the intention, and it was never anything I did.”
This is incoherent – and I doubt it’s Ms. Cabrera’s fault.
If Harris is going to explain this part of her record, she’s going to have to do better.
Good luck to her.
She is, and I don’t think that she will be able to do so. The original decision appears to have been deeply flawed from the beginning, and perhaps seemed like a politically astute move, but only if one did not consider the consequences. Many parents may be responsible, at least in part, for the truancy of their children, but many parents really have very limited control over children who simply will not do not want to go to class and in some cases may be as big or bigger than a single parent.
The best she will be able to do is to admit that it was a terribly poor choice, but historically few candidates seem willing or able to do this. (Again, I don’t so much want a public justification or apology, merely an admission of the error, and an explanation of what was learned from it.)
Whether or not it is a deal breaker depends on what voters decide. (Every candidate will have something that supporters will have to accept or ignore, although they may or may not be equivalent things across all of the candidates.)
Of course Tapper goes ALL IN aggressively vetting every decision made by a Democrat! If ONLY even a single reporter had decided that vetting Trump to this degree during his fifteen month circus of a campaign had been so noteworthy!
Tough on poor people easy on white collar criminals.
Did the “left wing” criticize Harris during her time as state AG? Have these people been consistent with their progressive views? If not, they should be more generous with Harris and give her a chance to learn from the past. Look at her more recent record. It’s fine to question her past positions but it’s more important to see what she’s proposing NOW and what she’ll do in the FUTURE.
I think that this is true, but it is also important to see how she answers for her past. There will be no prohibition for bringing up such questions in the general election, and thus should be none in a primary.
I’ve always thought one of her more egregious acts as CA AG were her attempts to protect Tony Rackauckas and his on-going criminal enterprise known as the Orange County (CA) District Attorney’s Office.
https://voiceofoc.org/2019/02/sen-kamala-harris-left-it-to-oc-to-handle-jailhouse-snitch-scandal/
But my problem is: What’ll be a satisfying answer? What happened can’t be changed and the best Harris can do is to admit her error and say that she’s improved. But even if she does that, there’ll still be no end of such questioning, which in my opinion will only reinforce a bad impression of her on many voters.
Yeah if only even a single reporter had done that. Probably would have gotten a Pulitzer.
A late-2016 study I’m familiar with …
… found that, on topics relating to the candidates’ fitness for office, Clinton and Trump’s coverage was virtually identical in terms of its negative tone. “Were the allegations surrounding Clinton of the same order of magnitude as those surrounding Trump?” asks [the author]. “It’s a question that political reporters made no serious effort to answer during the 2016 campaign.”
Underlying data (question was about “fitness for office”):
Additional data:
and:
This will be an interesting test case for minority and especially Black voters. Does her minority identity offset any negatives from her law enforcement background?
She’s still one of my top picks so far, as a candidate that can beat Trump. If she can make it through the primary, I think she would destroy him in the debates. Not that debates determine election results, but it would be fun to watch. I think her background would also be much more appealing in the general election than it is in the primary.
Yes. And her mealy-mouthed “answers” make it clear why. She defended death sentences in cases where prosecutorial misconduct had tainted the proceedings. Let her stay in the legge, where she has no individual authority to abuse.
Which is why my suggestion is to simply admit that it was the error that we now see it as having been. Again, not to apologize so much as to explain why it was a mistake and ensure us that the right lesson was learned so that it doesn’t occur again. Unfortunately, we as voters tend not to reward such honesty, which leaves her in an untenable position. Hillary Clinton had a similar problem with her Iraq War vote. (It was an understandable choice at the time, even if it was a mistake, especially in hindsight. But she could not simply admit that it was an error in judgement made because it was the politically expedient thing to do. That would have played into one of the criticisms about her, and she could never resolve that internal struggle.)
Every candidate is going to have some flaw or error (since no perfect person has ever run for political office), and, at least among the Democrats, some of these are likely to see the light of day. When they do, they will have to be dealt with, and how they are dealt with needs to be our measure of the candidate.
Putting people to death without [even] a fair trial is about as low as it gets.
It was a bad vote at the time, never mind in hindsight – and hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed, obviously for no good reason – so I doubt you mean “understandable” in any positive sense.
I mean that I understand why many people made that choice, in the pressure of the moment and in a very public situation and in a context that generally puts a finger in the wind to sample public opinion when making a decision. I do not support that decision, which is one of many reasons that I would never survive as a politician.
Yes, this I agree with.
And then there’s the Shorenstein Center Study:
An irony of the press’s critical tendency is that it helps the right wing. Although conservatives claim that the press has a liberal bias, the media’s persistent criticism of government reinforces the right wing’s anti-government message. For years on end, journalists have told news audiences that political leaders are not to be trusted and that government is inept. And when journalists turn their eye to society, they highlight the problems and not the success stories. The news creates a seedbed of public anger, misperception, and anxiety— sitting there waiting to be tapped by those who have a stake in directing the public’s wrath at government.
It’s ironic, too, that negative news erodes trust in the press, which is now at its lowest level in the history of polling. Watchdog reporting can build confidence in the press, but when journalists condemn most everything they see, they set themselves up to be as credible as the boy who repeatedly cried “wolf.” In the closing days of the 2016 campaign, the nation’s editorial rooms rang the alarm bell, warning voters not to make the choice that many of them seemed ready to make. It went for naught. The watchdog had lost its bite, as well as the respect of the public it claims to serve. In a Pew Research Center survey taken shortly after the November 2016 balloting, only one in five respondents gave the press a grade of “B” or higher for its performance. Four of five graded its performance as a “C” or lower, with half of them giving it an “F.”
News Coverage of the 2016 General Election: How the Press Failed the Voters
Same one I mentioned, but thanks.
If only he had lowered himself to anchor a show on cable news and driven the news with his findings…imagine the influence he would have had on the election.
That’s snark btw.