To trust in Kamala Harris, voters must be willing to suspend their disbelief. Forget reality, switch off critical faculties, put your faith in “Momala”. Invest in the cathartic idea that, somehow, the woman who just a few days ago was widely acknowledged to be the least popular vice president in history has just transformed into the most dynamic political force on the planet. She’s the “Trump slayer” now – and if enough people believe, it will become true. That’s the magic of democracy. It’s also the stuff of fairytales.
A crucial part of the Kamala myth is that she has a razor-sharp legal brain. Having graduated from Howard and the University of California Hastings College of Law, she was first hired in 1990 as a deputy district attorney in Oakland but her brilliance propelled her to San Francisco, all the way up the city’s legal chain until, in 2002, she was elected as District Attorney (DA). From there her “smart on crime” approach made her famous nationwide. Oprah Winfrey, no less, called her a “superstar” and boasted of her “90 per cent conviction rate.” In 2008, inspired by Obama’s presidential victory, she ran to be California’s Attorney General, did brilliantly, and then emerged as a serious candidate for the White House herself.
That’s the hagiography, at least, and is already forming a key part of her election campaign. The “K Hive” – her fans – whoop and cheer when she reads out this line from the teleprompter: “I took on perpetrators of all kinds: predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type”
But the truth about Harris’s prosecutorial career is rather more sordid and far less flattering. It is suggested that Harris got into San Francisco’s highly political legal system, at least in part, thanks to her romantic attachment with “Slick Willie” Brown, a married man and west-coast power broker. While they courted, if that’s the word, Harris happened to be appointed to two California state jobs which paid her about $400,000 over five years. She got to drive Brown’s BMW, too.
The Harris and Brown attachment did not last, though as Mayor of San Francisco Brown continued to support her. He backed her successful bid to be the city’s DA against his then rival, Terence Hallinan. Harris won that election by running to the Right of Hallinan, who was widely seen as soft on crime. And she’s now recalled – unflatteringly, by America’s progressives – as “Kamala the Cop,” the tough prosecutor who didn’t shrink from clamping down on drugs, even if that meant locking up large numbers of black men for minor offences. She also pursued an anti-truancy policy that targeted the often very poor parents of children who bunked off school.
But Harris’s real record was patchy, to put it mildly. She was blighted by her own flagrant double-standards. Her high conviction rate could be attributed to the number of plea deals she signed to let violent criminals go free. In fact, one of the reasons San Francisco and Los Angeles are so dangerous today is because of liberal measures she pushed through as California’s Attorney General. She was tough on some crime, yet soft on the causes of crime. She was in fact no great friend of the cops: in 2004, she decided not to pursue the death penalty against a gang member who had shot and killed the police officer Isaac Espinoza. A principled stand, perhaps, though she later voted against ballot measures that would have banned capital punishment.
Her tough-on-drugs position also “evolved”, as they say, too. She recently posted on social media that “Nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed.” Quite a statement from the woman who put so many young men and women in prison for smoking weed.
But then, consistency has never been her strong suit. She seems to have always tacked Left or Right depending on which way she felt the political winds were blowing. As a legal authority, for instance, she once opposed a Californian move to decriminalise prostitution. As a presidential candidate in 2019, however, she declared that she favoured the legalisation of sex workers.
Her reputation for prosecutorial competence was hardly beyond doubt, either. In her second term as DA, Harris faced accusations of covering up a scandal involving an unreliable and corrupt crime lab worker, though she claimed ignorance. She also had to admit to a “huge pimple on the face” of her “Back on Track” programme. The scheme was intended to help prisoners rejoin the workforce – but was found to have been sending illegal migrants into jobs they could not legally take. Others suggested that at the time Harris had been too busy eyeing up the bigger job of Attorney General. Certainly, her much-vaunted conviction rate in San Francisco slipped dramatically towards the end of her tenure.
But that didn’t stop her ascent. Pesky facts never have.
A crucial part of the Kamala myth is that she has a razor-sharp legal brain. Having graduated from Howard and the University of California Hastings College of Law, she was first hired in 1990 as a deputy district attorney in Oakland but her brilliance propelled her to San Francisco, all the way up the city’s legal chain until, in 2002, she was elected as District Attorney (DA). From there her “smart on crime” approach made her famous nationwide. Oprah Winfrey, no less, called her a “superstar” and boasted of her “90 per cent conviction rate.” In 2008, inspired by Obama’s presidential victory, she ran to be California’s Attorney General, did brilliantly, and then emerged as a serious candidate for the White House herself.
That’s the hagiography, at least, and is already forming a key part of her election campaign. The “K Hive” – her fans – whoop and cheer when she reads out this line from the teleprompter: “I took on perpetrators of all kinds: predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type”
But the truth about Harris’s prosecutorial career is rather more sordid and far less flattering. It is suggested that Harris got into San Francisco’s highly political legal system, at least in part, thanks to her romantic attachment with “Slick Willie” Brown, a married man and west-coast power broker. While they courted, if that’s the word, Harris happened to be appointed to two California state jobs which paid her about $400,000 over five years. She got to drive Brown’s BMW, too.
The Harris and Brown attachment did not last, though as Mayor of San Francisco Brown continued to support her. He backed her successful bid to be the city’s DA against his then rival, Terence Hallinan. Harris won that election by running to the Right of Hallinan, who was widely seen as soft on crime. And she’s now recalled – unflatteringly, by America’s progressives – as “Kamala the Cop,” the tough prosecutor who didn’t shrink from clamping down on drugs, even if that meant locking up large numbers of black men for minor offences. She also pursued an anti-truancy policy that targeted the often very poor parents of children who bunked off school.
But Harris’s real record was patchy, to put it mildly. She was blighted by her own flagrant double-standards. Her high conviction rate could be attributed to the number of plea deals she signed to let violent criminals go free. In fact, one of the reasons San Francisco and Los Angeles are so dangerous today is because of liberal measures she pushed through as California’s Attorney General. She was tough on some crime, yet soft on the causes of crime. She was in fact no great friend of the cops: in 2004, she decided not to pursue the death penalty against a gang member who had shot and killed the police officer Isaac Espinoza. A principled stand, perhaps, though she later voted against ballot measures that would have banned capital punishment.
Her tough-on-drugs position also “evolved”, as they say, too. She recently posted on social media that “Nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed.” Quite a statement from the woman who put so many young men and women in prison for smoking weed.
But then, consistency has never been her strong suit. She seems to have always tacked Left or Right depending on which way she felt the political winds were blowing. As a legal authority, for instance, she once opposed a Californian move to decriminalise prostitution. As a presidential candidate in 2019, however, she declared that she favoured the legalisation of sex workers.
Her reputation for prosecutorial competence was hardly beyond doubt, either. In her second term as DA, Harris faced accusations of covering up a scandal involving an unreliable and corrupt crime lab worker, though she claimed ignorance. She also had to admit to a “huge pimple on the face” of her “Back on Track” programme. The scheme was intended to help prisoners rejoin the workforce – but was found to have been sending illegal migrants into jobs they could not legally take. Others suggested that at the time Harris had been too busy eyeing up the bigger job of Attorney General. Certainly, her much-vaunted conviction rate in San Francisco slipped dramatically towards the end of her tenure.
But that didn’t stop her ascent. Pesky facts never have.