Skip to content Skip to footer

Many Progressives Respond With Disappointment as Biden Picks Harris for VP

Harris is the third woman in U.S. history to be named as a vice-presidential candidate for a major political party.

Sen. Kamala Harris delivers a campaign speech at the Des Moines Register Political Soapbox at the Iowa State Fair on August 10, 2019, in Des Moines, Iowa.

Presumptive Democratic nominee for president Joe Biden has selected Sen. Kamala Harris of California as his vice-presidential running mate.

Harris, who herself ran for president in the Democratic primary races against Biden earlier this year, is just the fourth woman to be named to the ticket of a major political party in presidential politics and the third woman to be named a vice-presidential candidate.

While many on social media described Harris as an inspiring choice, others noted that her progressive bona fides were lacking. Indeed, there have been many instances in Harris’s past that demonstrate she had a so-called “tough on crime” approach, including overlooking alarming and illegal procedural transgressions among prosecutors under her purview as Attorney General of the state of California.

In one specific instance, a prosecutor in California had “deliberately altered an interrogation transcript to include a confession that could be used to justify charges carrying a life sentence,” according to a trial court examining the details of the case. Rather than attempt to rectify the situation, Harris sought to defend the prosecutorial misconduct, arguing that the case in question should be upheld because the problematic actions weren’t “physically brutal” and thus didn’t fit the “shock the conscience” standard being sought by defendants for dismissal.

Back when Harris was a candidate for president, University of San Francisco School of Law Professor Lara Bazelon had some telling words to say about her past as well. Writing in the New York Times, Bazelon said that “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.”

Indeed, a number of progressives on social media spoke out against Harris being named Biden’s vice president choice immediately after it was announced. In her first race for office, noted The Intercept’s Lee Fang, “Kamala Harris campaigned as tough on crime — and unseated the country’s most progressive prosecutor” by doing so.

“The only democrats who are excited about Kamala Harris being Joe Biden’s pick are the ones on CNN, MSNBC and Twitter,” added author Tim Young.

Benjamin Schneider, writing on Tuesday for SF Weekly about Harris, also noted her past prosecutorial experience, including her aversion to supporting progressive overhauls to the justice system.

The vice presidential nominee often took stances that went against what she campaigned on. “Harris has always personally opposed capital punishment, calling her stance ‘non-negotiable,'” Schneider wrote. “But in 2014, when a District Court judge in Orange County ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional, Harris asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the ruling, arguing that her duty to uphold state law trumped her personal beliefs.”

That may seem a noble trait to some, being able to put aside personal beliefs to serve out the functions of her office, but it’s inconsistent with what she did on other issues. When California voters decided to end the ban on gay marriage through Prop 8, Harris suggested the voter initiative was unconstitutional, and “chose not to enforce” it, Schneider recounted.

The Guardian’s Derecka Purnell also offered her take on Harris being named to the Democratic Party’s presidential ticket, suggesting that the vice-presidential candidate may offer hope for some until they more closely examine her past record:

Women of color, particularly progressives, might feel torn. Perhaps even closeted excitement. Senator Harris is sharp, strategic, and witty, undoubtedly qualified to be vice president of the United States. She graduated from a historically Black college and belongs to a prestigious Black sorority. A biracial woman with Jamaican and Indian heritage, we have seen her break color barriers and shatter glass ceilings, even though poor, Black women have felt and swept the falling shards. Thousands celebrated her Senate seat win and even more were captivated when she picked apart presidential candidates at debates – especially Biden. Her one-liners were unforgettable. Until we remembered that she honed those argumentative skills in court as a prosecutor, including during fights to uphold wrongful convictions … Together, they will promise expensive “common sense” police reform to a movement against senseless police spending

In short, Harris is not the progressive candidate that many in the Democratic Party make her out to be, and that could be detrimental to the ticket for two reasons. First, it won’t appeal to an electorate that is clamoring for a progressive ticket from the Democratic Party. Second, because Harris is decidedly more to the left than President Donald Trump and his supporters, she will face a number of attacks from the right as being part of the so-called “radical left” — a moniker his campaign pushed to describe her just minutes after she was announced the vice-presidential candidate.

Having to defend against both sides — trying to play up her progressive credentials while also trying to downplay them to a broader electorate — may prove difficult for her to do in the general election campaign.

We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.

As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.

Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.

As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.

At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.

Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.

You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.