Her smoking pot herself is irrelevant, it’s bad that people were prosecuted for using drugs.
The hypocrisy doesn’t matter, all politicians are lying hypocrites, I’m voting for the one that ain’t supported by Nazis trying to drag America backwards a hundred years.
So you won’t vote for someone supported by Nazis but will vote for someone supporting Nazis.
I guess hypocricy really doesn’t matter.
So, how’s the weather in Moscow?
They’re not a Russian operative, they’re using Nazi as shorthand for Zionist in an attempt to point out that Israel’s actions in Palestine are utterly abhorrent and the genocide happening there should be regarded with similar disdain as the genocides of Nazi Germany and Harris has taken a hardline stance of continuing US military support to Israel.
But it’s a clumsy shorthand, it’s ineffective in communicating to American voters, as it lumps two different groups of white supremacists together when there’s material distinctions that affect people living in America.
It’s meant to be glib against Israelis who would shudder at being compared to the genociders of their ancestors, but it isn’t Israelis voting in this election, so it mostly comes off as overly bitter.
It’s an easy trap to fall into as a leftist in America, as there’s so much abhorrently wrong with our political system, but that kind of vitriol isn’t often pragmatic and using disdainful shorthand isn’t useful in radicalizing the plurality of Americans necessary to revolutionize politics in this country.
P.S., For what it’s worth, treefrog, I largely agree with you, but you gotta meet people where they are, not where you want em to be. I think you’ll find that many people here are not folks who “just want to get back to brunch”, this was a far more applicable concept in previous elections, but rather they’re terrified of what harm could come from a second Trump term at home with regards to climate, economic (workers rights, etc.) and social policies targeting Muslims, POC, and LGBTQ people. What’s happening in Palestine is so utterly vile and it’s a gut wretchingly sad truth that no candidate that can win will make a significant difference on US policy towards Israel and the Palestinians. Harris should be called out on that. Lumping people who are going to begrudgingly vote against Trump for her as Nazi sympathizers just isn’t useful rhetoric.
I’d love to engage you in your point but that would make both of us sound like complete idiots.
Prosecutors don’t write the law, and prosecutorial discretion is only actually meaningful when circumstances are unusual.
She didn’t have an option to just not do drug charges.
I think she is undeniably a better choice for the presidency than Donald Trump, that’s for sure
Much has changed since then. She sponsored a comprehensive federal legalization bill in the Senate, and she’s called for ending prohibition altogether as recently as this March, at a roundtable event with pardon recipients where she also called on the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to quickly reschedule cannabis, as the Justice Department has since formally proposed.
If elected, Harris would become the first president who openly supports marijuana legalization. And the list of potential running mates that she’s reportedly considering also includes a majority who share that position, as well as some who have signed legalization into law in their state.
While Harris has a complicated history with cannabis policy, she has come out in full support of legalization in recent years, sharing that “the War on Drugs was an abject failure. It’s time to legalize marijuana and bring justice to people of color harmed by failed drug policies.”
I think that, in a country that is becoming more and more fascist by the day, it’s more alarming than people would be willing to admit that Harris built her prosecutorial career around targeting truants and non-violent drug users.
Her prosecutorial career is a microcosm of the fundamental problems in the US criminal justice system, which observably and disproportionately oppresses the poor and makes vast concessions for the wealthy. Her presidency, should it happen, will not change that.
I’ve been reading her book, the truancy thing is interesting. She had data that showed that kids that weren’t showing up at school, particularly young ones, didn’t learn how to read sufficiently well, and then fell behind in school and struggled to catch up, they then ended up struggling later in life, and often ending up either as victims or perpetrators of crime.
So, she used the California DA’s office to enforce truancy laws across California, encouraged reaching out to fix the problems at home if at all possible, and also encouraged reaching out to folks that had been written off as “not caring” (she cites an example of a father that hadn’t been paying child support but upon learning that his daughter wasn’t going to school, started taking his daughter to school every morning, and volunteering in her classroom).
Of course this is all by her account, but that sounds overall quite positive to me.
Like you, I’d expect Kamala to paint herself in a positive light in her own book.
Personally, though, the notions that incarcerating someone for a victimless crime is positive or that our prison system is a proper answer or reformatory for victimless crimes is either exceedingly naive or euphemistically fascist. (And both of those, to me, disqualify someone for the presidency.)
I mean there’s quite clearly a victim here, the child.
Agreed.
I hate the idea of handing her the reigns of government and the power to create untold victims with her authoritarian and selfish approach to the law.
(Problem is, that’s our choice either way you vote.)
It’s hypocritical, and I don’t like it. With that said, most politicians are hypocrites, which is why I generally dislike politicians.
I wish she just banned public smoking, smokers are disgusting
I’m guessing all that pot found in that bag in the white house that one time was hers then.
In all seriousness, I’m not surprised but still not thrilled. This is becoming a dilemma in of itself and I feel like I disagree with the majority (not that it changes anything). People will say they’re choosing the lesser of two evils “to vote the other person out”, but that just grossly perpetuates a dictatorial system that we deserve better from and it becomes your fault we don’t have it, according to the same democratic logic championed in politics. I’m not voting for this hypocrite.
Most of the liberals on here just want to be back at brunch. So those are the feelings you’re getting.
Personally, her hypocrisy over weed means little to me compared to the children she’s planning to help murder.
And, I’ll still vote for her because more children will die from climate change under Trump.
