Kamala Harris
September 8, 2019 — John Hinderaker
One of the knocks on Kamala Harris is that she has no principles other than an overweening ambition. That Kamala Harris should exercise power over the rest of us is her one consistent belief. Conventional wisdom is often wrong, but not this time. The current flap over whether the Trump administration is “mentally retarded” is a good example. Harris appeared at what looks like a rather small rally, and was
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August 20, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
A new poll from CNN finds that Kamala Harris is supported by only 5 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. That’s down 12 points from less than two months ago. I knew Kamala Harris would lose ground after the last debate, but I didn’t expect anything nearly this dramatic. Biden is well on top according CNN’s poll. He comes in at 29 percent. I’m sure he’d like to be 10
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August 18, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Glenn Kessler writes a “fact check” column for the Washington Post. I find the column helpful because Kessler usually does a good job of stating what’s correct and what’s incorrect about the statements he’s checking. On the other hand, I think Kessler’s liberal bias comes into play when he applies his “Pinocchio Test.” It seems to me that he’s more inclined to award lots of Pinocchios to conservatives who have
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July 25, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
In the second round of Democratic presidential debates, Joe Biden will share the stage with Kamala Harris and Cory Booker. This means double-trouble for the former vice president. Biden’s biggest vulnerability isn’t his opposition, nearly 50 years ago, to busing school children for reasons of race. His biggest vulnerability in terms of policy is his support in the early 1990s for the stiff sentencing of criminals. The legislation that Biden
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July 7, 2019 — John Hinderaker
The Democrats’ race to the left continues, as Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren introduce “racial equity” plans. Ms. Warren and Senator Kamala Harris of California both used the occasion — the annual culture and music festival sponsored by Essence magazine, which caters to black women — to introduce major new proposals intended to address racial disparities, including in wealth and homeownership. *** Ms. Harris announced a plan aimed at reducing
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July 3, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Joe Biden, in responding during last week’s debate to Kamala Harris’s hard-hitting attack over his expression of pride in working with racist Senators to curb the busing of school children, said: I was a public defender. I didn’t become a prosecutor. Many viewers may have wondered what this biographical fact had to do with the debate over race. Was Biden saying that defending criminals, rather than prosecuting them, is evidence
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July 3, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
We have noted how Democratic presidential candidates, nearly all of them, are trying to convince Americans that our economy is in woeful condition. Absent an economic downturn, the effort seems destined to fail. As debate moderator Savannah Guthrie informed the field during the first night of debating, most Americans, and even most Democrats, believe the economy is doing well. The numbers support this belief. To take one example, the unemployment
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July 1, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
A new poll by CNN finds that, in the aftermath of the two Democratic debates, Kamala Harris has gained more support, and Joe Biden has lost more, than was indicated by the Rasmussen/HarrisX poll I discussed earlier today. According to CNN, Biden now has the backing of 22 percent of Democrats, down from 32 percent a month ago at this time. Harris, meanwhile, is at 17 percent. A month ago,
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July 1, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
A few days ago, I wrote: “I hope [Kamala Harris] will be asked to state her position on the busing of young school children for racial purposes in today’s America.” Now, she has been. Here is her answer: I support busing. Listen, the schools of America are as segregated, if not more segregated, today than when I was in elementary school. Where states fail to do their duty to ensure
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June 30, 2019 — John Hinderaker
Kamala Harris has interjected her elementary school experiences into the 2020 presidential campaign as a means of attacking Joe Biden. As I wrote here, I don’t think this is a place where Democrats should want to go: bring back forced busing! Michael Ramirez links to Paul’s latest post on the issue and adds this cartoon. Click to enlarge: That sums up Harris’s candidacy rather neatly. Wherever she may have gone
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June 29, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
The East Bay Times reports on the busing of Kamala Harris in Berkeley, California circa 1970, about which I have been speculating. If the report is accurate, Harris’s claim that she was “part of the second class to integrate her public schools” is not quite true. Berkeley’s public schools were integrated long before Harris was bused. However, the busing program that more fully integrated her elementary school was instituted the
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June 28, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Last night, Kamala Harris said: [T]here was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day — and that little girl was me. Harris’ statement that she was “part of the second class to integrate her public schools” appears to be false, as I discussed here and here. But note what Harris did not
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June 28, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Last night, Kamala Harris repeated her story about how, thanks to busing, she was able to be part of only the second class to integrate in the Berkeley public school system. She used this story to thrash Joe Biden, who offered anti-busing legislation as a U.S. Senator in the 1970s. Last year, I questioned Harris’ story: [I]s it. . .true that Harris was in only the second class to integrate
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June 10, 2019 — John Hinderaker
I have thought that Kamala Harris was likely to be one of the last Democratic presidential candidates left standing when the primaries get under way, and I believe she has been favored by Democratic outlets like the New York Times. But her campaign has stumbled, to put it mildly, and for now, at least, she doesn’t appear to be among the front-runners. This may be partly due to the fact
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May 4, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Advocates of abolishing the death penalty claim that innocent defendants have often been executed. I’m not sure whether these advocates have been able to show that this has ever happened in modern times, but a New York Times piece by Nicholas Kristof makes a pretty good case that Kevin Cooper, a death row inmate, is innocent of the murders he was convicted of committing. Cooper, an African-American, was convicted of
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March 21, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Being a prosecutor has long been a steppingstone for lawyers who aspire to higher office. But this might not be true anymore for Democrats. The problem is that Democrats have become ambivalent about law enforcement, and hostile towards the police. This puts Democratic prosecutors in a bind. They risk the early derailment of their career if they are ambivalent about law enforcement and hostile towards the police. Just ask Baltimore’s
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March 19, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Yahoo News reports that when she was the attorney general of California, Kamala Harris declined to investigate Herbalife, the nutritional supplement company that has been accused of fraudulent marketing practices. In 2015, prosecutors in the San Diego office of the California attorney general sent Harris a lengthy, detailed memorandum urging such an investigation. However, Harris did not initiate one. Other states did. So did the Federal Trade Commission. It obtained
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