“They don’t have a narrative that they’re comfortable with about how to take down Harris,” said Chuck Coughlin, an Arizona-based political strategist. “He’s grasping around. I think he’s desperately grasping around with his instincts. I don’t think his team has any way to put their handle on this, and so he’s instinctually grasping around for what to say.”
The Trump machine had in recent days begun a multi-million-dollar TV advertising blitz hammering Harris for her record on the border, an issue the former president’s campaign sees as a winner — and portraying her as ideologically out of the mainstream. One ad from a pro-Trump group labeled the vice president a “dangerous San Francisco liberal.”
Harris had even begun defending herself from the attacks, hitting back Tuesday night in Atlanta about her border record, and simultaneously releasing a nearly minute-long video framing her as pro-border security.
But Trump’s comments Wednesday on Harris’ racial background drew some of the biggest gasps from the audience, and provided Democrats with ammunition. During the appearance, Trump said Harris “happen[ed] to turn Black … She was Indian all the way and all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black woman.”
Just so you know, the AG doesn’t have the liberty to just not enforce the law. She really didn’t have a choice here, the law wasn’t justified, but her job was to uphold the law. If someone committed a nonviolent drug offense, and the DA in that jurisdiction wanted to prosecute, she didn’t have the power to stop it just because she disagrees with the law. That would be impeachable.
What decisions her job did allow her to make were more progressive than any of her predecessors or peers. For an AG, she was actually a damn good example. She wasn’t perfect, and she was part of a deeply flawed system, but she wasn’t a villain. She was fighting a war on drugs or demanding military-like powers for police forces like some AGs do…
She has been outspoken about drug decriminalization and legalization, and prison reform, and lighter sentencing, and rehabilitation, and harm reduction, and police reform, and pretty much everything that needs to happen to meaningfully improve the world the way you want it to improve.
As a senator, her voting record was closer to Bernie Sanders’ record than any other Senator. She endorses strong social safety nets, and universal healthcare.
But go ahead and sit out the vote because someone online told you “ACAB includes Kamala Harris because she called herself a cop while AG”. If Trump wins you don’t need need to worry about voting again anyway, he’ll have it all fixed.