Some Background on Kamela Harris
We are not going to get much time to know VP Kamela Harris. I took the liberty of copying word for word what The Copper Courier (independent news) had to offer about her background just today. It covers quite a bit. Hopefully, this will give you some background to base any feelings negative or positive about her.
Of course, I knew more about Joe Biden. He was relentless on not offering any type of relief for student loans as a Senator. Many of you may know, I was backing Alan Collinge of Student Loan Justice. I cornered Stabenow while at a garden party in Michigan as I was a donner to her campaign. Students there were clapping. At Show Down in Chicago, I managed to get a question/statement in with Durbin. Mostly about when are the Dems going to begin to act in conjunction with each other as the Democratic party. Stabenow was anti Student Loan relief.
I am hoping Democrats will end this charade of being concerned of who runs for the presidency. We just threw away a good candidate whose performance was similar to what Roosevelt did while he had extreme heart issues. The Democratic really needs to pay attention to us as well as minorities, women, children the elderly regardless of nationality rather than the few moneyed Enough of this BS!
Reading Tom Nichols and Franklin Foer of The Atlantic. They could not allow Joe Biden to retreat with a thread of dignity. Instead they resorted to poring on more age discrimination and meanness. A sad commentary by what was an excellent magazine. A pox on you sirs.
Via Arizona News The Copper Courier and Isabel Soisson
Before Kamala Harris was elected to be the first Black, South Asian, and female vice president of the United States, she spent nearly two decades racking up a long list of firsts and accomplishments.
She was the first Black woman to be elected as a local district attorney in California, the first woman to serve as California’s attorney general, and the first South Asian American senator.
But it’s what she did in those offices that stand out even more. And with President Joe Biden’s announcement that he’s dropping out of this year’s presidential race and endorsing Harris to replace him atop the Democratic ticket, it’s worth taking a look back at Harris’ journey as a public servant.
Kamala Harris the prosecutor and attorney general
Harris’ first experience as a public servant was as a local prosecutor, a profession she says she pursued because one of her best friends was sexually abused in high school—a horrific reality that she said pushed her to dedicate her life to protecting women and children from violence.
After passing the bar exam in 1990, Harris joined the Alameda County, California prosecutor’s office as an assistant district attorney focusing on sex crimes. During her time as a prosecutor, she pursued domestic violence perpetrators, child abusers, and sex traffickers. Harris also spent some time at the San Francisco District Attorney’s office, before deciding to run for district attorney in the city in 2003.
In 2010, she successfully ran for California Attorney General (AG), and served in the position from from 2011 to 2017. During her time as AG, Harris gained praise for her work on a range of issues.
On reproductive rights, she joined attorneys general from 13 other states in calling on the US Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that significantly restricted abortion access in Texas.
“Every woman has the right to make informed choices about her health and well-being,” Harris said in 2016. “I strongly urge the Supreme Court to overturn the Fifth Circuit ruling, which undermines both public health and a woman’s right to choose.”
She secured a massive financial settlement with some of the nation’s biggest banks which were accused of illegally foreclosing on homeowners.
She also took on for-profit colleges, accusing them of saddling borrowers with an unmanageable amount of debt. She specifically sued Corinthian Colleges in 2013, accusing them of preying on low-income students. The chain ultimately shuttered all of its California schools.
She also sued multiple fossil fuel companies—such Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Phillips 66—during her time as attorney general. Harris’ actions led to nearly $50 million in settlements from lawsuits against these companies.
As AG, she also went after Mexican drug cartels, seizing tens of millions of dollars worth of meth and taking down dozens of individuals affiliated with Mexico’s Sinaloa Federation drug cartel. Harris also oversaw the seizure of more than 50 kilos of cocaine worth $5.1 million as part of a Department of Justice-led undercover operation targeting the Guadalajara Cartel.
Notably, Harris was also a strong supporter of gay marriage in 2010, before it was a consensus political position among Democrats. After becoming the state’s AG, she refused to defend Proposition 8, the state constitutional amendment approved by California voters in 2008 that took marriage rights away from California’s same-sex couples.
A lawsuit over Prop 8 ultimately made its way to the US Supreme Court which in 2013 overturned the measure, restoring gay marriage as the law of California. After the ruling, Harris immediately ordered local county clerks to begin performing marriages to comply with state law.
Harris is also well-known for her work addressing crime and gun violence as attorney general, and her office worked closely with the California Bureau of Firearms to investigate and seize firearms from those who unlawfully possess them during her time in office.
After serving as California AG, Harris was elected to the US Senate in 2016 and took office in 2017.
Harris the senator
Harris was only the second ever Black woman to serve as a US Senator, and focused on a range of issues during her time as a senator.
She sponsored bills to address housing issues and homelessness, pushed legislation to hold bad corporate actors accountable, and introduced bills to provide more benefits and protections for domestic workers and farm workers.
Harris also championed efforts to address extreme heat and the consequences of climate change, introduced legislation to advance women’s health research, worked to improve Black maternal health, and was a strong supporter of pandemic-era assistance programs for families and businesses.
Kamala Harris the vice president
As vice president, Harris has taken a leadership role on many key issues.
In the aftermath of the US Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, she served as the Biden administration’s strongest defender of reproductive rights.
“Millions of women in America will go to bed tonight without access to the healthcare and reproductive care that they had this morning; without access to the same healthcare or reproductive healthcare that their mothers and grandmothers had for 50 years,” Harris said during an Illinois appearance the same day Roe was overturned.
In December, Harris announced her “Fight For Reproductive Freedoms” tour, which kicked off on January 22 of this year—the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade—and has seen the vice president address reproductive freedom and Republican-backed abortion bans across battleground states, including Arizona, Florida, and Nevada.
During her appearances, Harris has also taken a more direct approach in highlighting the stakes of a potential second Trump term.
“Donald Trump handpicked three members of the United States Supreme Court because he intended for them to overturn Roe. And as he intended, they did,” she told a crowd during an appearance in Florida in May. “Here’s what a second Trump term looks like: more bans, more suffering, less freedom.”
Harris even made history earlier this year when she became the first vice president to visit an abortion clinic–she toured a Planned Parenthood facility in Minnesota.
“Right now, in our country, we are facing a very serious health crisis,” Harris said at the event. “And the crisis is affecting many, many people in our country, most of whom are, frankly, silently suffering.”
Harris has also continued her work on gun violence as vice president, taking on a leadership role in addressing the issue on the federal level.
Last year, the White House announced the creation of the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention to help address the systemic issue of gun violence in America; the office is overseen by Harris and aims to coordinate efforts across federal agencies to advance and implement gun safety measures.
Harris also worked closely with President Biden in 2022 to pass the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the most significant gun violence prevention legislation in nearly 30 years.
Harris the likely 2024 Democratic nominee for president
Democrats will still need to nominate Harris at the upcoming convention, and it’s possible delegates could look to other candidates, but most experts think it’s unlikely that others would seek the nomination and try to bypass Harris.
As for how she’ll campaign against Trump, it’s likely Harris will continue to hit the campaign trail as aggressively as she has in recent months, championing reproductive rights, efforts to lower costs, and protecting democracy, while also speaking out against right-wing extremism and painting a stark contrast between herself and Trump.
Harris may have previewed how she might approach her campaign against Trump during a speech in North Carolina last week, following the attempt on Trump’s life earlier this month. In the aftermath of the shooting, many Republicans issued vague calls for unity, while simultaneously continuing their push to restrict abortion access, deport up to 15 million Americans, and target LGBTQ Americans.
“You cannot claim you stand for unity if you are pushing an agenda that deprives whole groups of Americans of basic freedoms, opportunities, and dignity,” she said at the event, speaking of the Republican Party. Adding . . .
“You cannot claim to be for unity, if you try to overturn a free and fair election.”
Not mentioned so much is her larger progressivism on health care. She was on the right side of Medicare for all, and made efforts to curtail consolidation (though there seems to be only so much that can be legally done and actually stopping it seems impossible).
It was a good thing that Kamala Harris refused to up hold a Constitutional Amendment duly passed by the voters of California? What gives us any comfort she will respect the US constitution? Not a word about her gleeful imprisonment of low level drug offenders as AG? Nor about her failure to curb current US immigration as VP? The post is about pitching Kamala, nothing approaching an informative or balanced piece.
@bob,
The VPOTUS does not set US immigration policy, so her “failure” to curb current US immigration is the same as yours. Why haven’t *you* curbed current US immigration? Oh, yeah, because you aren’t President, either.
Your comment is about trashing Kamala, nothing approaching informative or balanced.
bob:
You do not believe Biden had inherited border issues? I wrote about some of them. What gives us confidence in Kamela Harris is that we know she will not, not set off an attack om the Capitol if she loses the election. I can say such about her and also Biden for that matter. I can not say such about trump.
The law is managed by those who believe they have a solution to the issues. The law also makes it very mechanical too. No judge has to agree with a prosecutor’s findings. They could always assign a different or lesser penalty.
Finally, the borders . . . Weeks or months before Biden took office, Republicans tossed the door wide open for immigration and illegal immigration. Various Republican Senators and politicians announced the borders were wide open. Twice, I wrote about it. Apparently, may beleive what they want to believe and disregard the rest which includes their actions and the truth.
In Cuba where I was stationed for nine months, we had the world’s largest mine field. I guess we can do such on the Texas/Mexico border too. There is a deeper point to be made here also. We need the immigrants as the nation is not replacing itself with birth rate. We should welcome the, educate them , trained them, and cause them to be productive. Many of them will do the work Americans do not want to do too.
It is Christian to take in immigrant! Therefore, I am for it.
She has very little chance of winning. The democrats know this. They’ve resigned to Trump becoming President again and the best they can hope for is to run Kamala, keep some money pouring in and save their seats in the House and Senate. In order for a Democrat to win an election in this country they must run as a moderate and THEN stealthily govern as a progressive. This is something Obama instinctively knew. Although, after the democrat elites have clearly become the masters that their voters must listen to as THEY are the ones that pick the candidates, which we clearly saw first with Bernie Sanders and now Biden, it’s likely they’ll lose everything in November.
I think she has a very good chance of winning. The Democrats haven’t even started running against Trump, thanks to the Biden distraction. When they do, things will change. An ex-prosecutor running against a felon who is facing three other trials? Abortion rights? Trump’s evident mental decline? Not looking good for Trump…
@Ithaqua,
And on Truth Social, Trump hasn’t even stopped running against Biden. Now, Trump’s dementia will be the media discussion.
The “Biden distraction” is not over!
If Biden stays in the oval office, the accusation of neglect of the 25 Amendment become operative. From the perspective of “commander in chief” of the world’s largest and most “alert” nuclear weapons cache it may have some appeal.
Matt Taibbi is wondering where Biden is at the moment????
Without knowing a lot about Harris, I’ve long considered her family background to be a positive. Her mother was a scientist and her father was a professor of economics, which at least implies a strong grounding in mathematics. So she presumably grew up in an environment where science, logic, and objective reality were respected. That’s reassuring at a time when religious fanaticism and delusion has pretty much overtaken the right wing and ideological delusion is running rampant everywhere.
I generally don’t care at all about the race or ethnicity of politicians, but in the coming years there may be some value in having a president with family and cultural ties to the world’s largest democracy, a rapidly-rising major power.
As a minor point of interest, it’s quite possible that a future presidential election could be Harris vs Nikki Haley — two candidates of Indian descent.
I hope Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky gets serious consideration for the VP position. He is only 46, so would be 54 if Harris wins two terms as President.
Like Harris, he has served as the Attorney General of his state.
@Jim,
Indeed. And Beshear has been elected twice as governor in a red state while being in favor of reproductive choice.