2020 Democratic candidate Kamala Harris (D-CA) defended her criminal justice record in a CNN interview that aired on Sunday morning.
During a taped interview for “The State of the Union,” Jake Tapper asked Harris about her tough criminal policies as a prosecutor, which have been widely criticized by the left wing of the Democratic party.
Tapper started with Harris threatening a homeless single woman with jail time under Harris’ anti-truancy initiative as district attorney.
“It was more about getting her the services she needed that didn’t know was available,” Harris responded. “It was more about putting pressure on the school district to do its job.”
Harris claimed that “no one parent” was sent to jail when it was a district law, but Tapper pointed out her support for a statewide truancy law that did land parents in jail.
“That was an unintended consequence,” Harris said. “That was never the intention, and it was never anything I did.”
When asked about her perception by the left as a “cop,” Harris said that she would “never apologize” for cracking down on violent crimes but: “I am also acutely aware that we have a criminal justice system in America that is deeply flawed, has often by informed by bias and is in need of severe reform.”
“Which is why my entire career I have worked to do both,” she said.
Watch below:
Kamala Harris defends her criminal justice record: I am "acutely aware" that the U.S. criminal justice system is "deeply flawed," so I'm working to reform it pic.twitter.com/Mw2UHxmk5m
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) May 12, 2019
This is incoherent – and I doubt it’s Ms. Cabrera’s fault.
If Harris is going to explain this part of her record, she’s going to have to do better.
Good luck to her.
She is, and I don’t think that she will be able to do so. The original decision appears to have been deeply flawed from the beginning, and perhaps seemed like a politically astute move, but only if one did not consider the consequences. Many parents may be responsible, at least in part, for the truancy of their children, but many parents really have very limited control over children who simply will not do not want to go to class and in some cases may be as big or bigger than a single parent.
The best she will be able to do is to admit that it was a terribly poor choice, but historically few candidates seem willing or able to do this. (Again, I don’t so much want a public justification or apology, merely an admission of the error, and an explanation of what was learned from it.)
Whether or not it is a deal breaker depends on what voters decide. (Every candidate will have something that supporters will have to accept or ignore, although they may or may not be equivalent things across all of the candidates.)
Of course Tapper goes ALL IN aggressively vetting every decision made by a Democrat! If ONLY even a single reporter had decided that vetting Trump to this degree during his fifteen month circus of a campaign had been so noteworthy!
Tough on poor people easy on white collar criminals.
Did the “left wing” criticize Harris during her time as state AG? Have these people been consistent with their progressive views? If not, they should be more generous with Harris and give her a chance to learn from the past. Look at her more recent record. It’s fine to question her past positions but it’s more important to see what she’s proposing NOW and what she’ll do in the FUTURE.