Just under half, 49%, of registered voters have a negative view of the vice president.
She has some criticisms for her past as an attorney, but I’m not sure why she’s so disliked now. What has she done to engender such distaste from the public?
I assume nearly half of the country hates her for being black and/or a woman, while some other large chunk of the country hates her for being “a cop.” I think she’s fine. She’s done the job a hell of a lot better than a whole list of other VPs I could name. And since I’ll be voting against Republicans no matter what, if a Biden-Harris ticket is the opposition I’ll be checking that box. No problem.
I don’t even get that from Biden. He just seems so fake from the get-go.
(Next part is irrelevant and only opinion.)
But I’d rather go into the ground by someone sneaky and quiet than by an arm-flailing maniac screaming and yelling as I get beaten down into the hole lol.
She’s painful to listen to. Can’t string a clear sentence together and laughs constantly. Not inspiring or particularly incisive. Which is a particularly disappointing combo when Biden is the same.
While this is certainly part of it (and all of it for a large number of people), I think it is overly simplistic view and disregards her past as a DA in which she enforced a draconian truancy program.
Here’s a list of objectionable stuff Hillary was involved with prior to running for president:
Hillary Clinton’s hawkish stance on war, being more hawkish than Barack Obama and Joe Biden. She is specifically noted for advocating an escalation in Afghanistan.
Clinton’s involvement in the 2009 military coup in Honduras. Rather than condemning the coup, Clinton pressured other countries to recognize the new right-wing government, leading to increased violence and instability in the country.
The firing of seven employees from the travel office during the Clinton administration in 1993, an act that some critics attribute to Hillary Clinton’s influence. The fired employees were later reinstated due to public pressure.
Controversies surrounding her commodity trades from 1978 and 1979, in which she turned an initial investment of $1,000 into nearly $100,000. No official investigations were carried out, but the incident raised eyebrows and led to criticism.
Involvement in her husband’s controversial pardons during his presidency, including those for the owners of a carnival company convicted of bank fraud.
A controversy regarding gifts taken from the White House upon the Clintons’ departure in 2001. Some items, worth $28,000, were meant for the White House estate and not as personal gifts for the Clintons. These items were returned after complaints from the donors.
Gallup used to poll her favorability pretty regularly, and until she ran for president in 2015 (from which she’s never recovered) she seldom had an underwater approval rating. i’d say the characterization of wide respect is reasonably accurate given this data, although i don’t agree with the poster’s proposed causation
The single biggest problem standing between the left and sustained and meaningful control of the federal government is the complete lack of ability of voters to circle around a consensus candidate. There are several valid reasons to be critical of Harris just as there are pretty much every single Democratic Presidential decade basically of my lifetime. But Republicans vote consistently for candidates they dislike or even hate just to beat Democrats. Every single candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2016, 2020, and undoubtedly in 2028 will have some vocal subset of registered Democrat voters telling you exactly why they will never in a million years vote for them. I saw it constantly on Reddit and I don’t see any reason why it won’t continue.
Until somebody drops the magic “consensus candidate” name that somehow pleases everyone, Democratic voters are always going to be a major hurdle to their own success. And frankly I don’t think that “consensus candidate” name exists. Such is the curse of being the big tent party opposite the GOP. Republicans know they can continue winning elections for at least a little longer thanks to Democratic infighting alone.
sustained and meaningful control of the federal government
You want a one party system? I’m not a big fan of the Republican party but there are some issues they are championing at the moment like free speech. Back in the day that was the Democrats, and I have no doubts it will flip flop again at some point but that just goes to show how we need at least two parties to act as a check on each other.
Silencing your ideological opponents is great and all until it’s you being silenced.
Republicans are not championing free speech. Entirely the opposite with how they’re treating LGBT folks currently.
And on that note, the Republicans are so beyond bad that yes, a one party state is actually better. To be clear, a one party state is utterly awful. That’s how terrible the Republican party is. They cannot be even remotely viable when their entire platform is hating other people.
If the options are one liberal party and one fascist party, or just one liberal party, I would pick the one-party state every time. Anyhow, the Democrats are such an umbrella party that if they were the only party they would almost certainly break into two or more smaller parties, all of which would be far more tolerable than the Republican party.
It’s reductive, but look at the Christian Right and Trump. Trump is nowhere close to the picture of a Christian. It’s astounding he can safely cross the threshold of a church. But he promises to make sure abortion is illegal and men can’t pretend to be women to steal kids, so they vote for him. Replace the abortion issue with guns and you get another set of voters who will vote Republican regardless of what they might personally feel.
Meanwhile and to your point on the left, each candidate’s worst flaws are held as some kind of uncrossable line by people who are terminally online (which isn’t helpful) and the Democratic Party does what they can to feed this and make sure they don’t have to enact meaningful change. They just want to maintain the status quo but they get to do it with a pride flag waving behind them. If the Party establishment would just stop putting a thumb on the scale (not just against Bernie but ANYONE remotely progressive/left of the neoliberal center) and let the primary process shake out the most popular candidate, they might actually find themselves winning elections.
If this country had compulsory voting with sane voting days, and better protections against taking away voting rights to blacks and poors, Democrats would have a supermajority in Congress, and a Democratic president for decades.
I don’t really think compulsory voting would be that beneficial for democrats. Yes, it may boost them a few points across the board, but my general intuition about the general public is they lean towards democrats but are more socially conservative than you see in online spaces. 2020 is probably the best example: super high turnout yet Dems still clipping by with only a +4 advantage instead of the +10 predicted by looking at far more politically engaged voters.
It’s not social stuff. A lot of Americans are socially conservative, but social progressives and social libertarians (live and let live types) together make a clear supermajority. The problem isn’t that Americans are socially conservative, it’s that a large number of people have the notion that Republicans are good for the economy and Democrats are bad for the economy, and that therefore when things are economically rough they should vote in the Republicans. This group of people play a large role in why Congress flips so often.
This is mostly right but there’s also a harder element to the social behaviours of the two voting groups. Republicans are happy to play dirty and Democrats always take the high road. Dems don’t seem to mind screwing each other over by meddling with public will in the primaries, why don’t they for once take the gloves off and play at least a little bit of the Repubs game? I can see how this could make it a totally populist nightmare, but that’s what we’re already facing.
The DNC doesn’t put their thumb on the scale as much as people like to pretend. The real problem is the under 40 crowd simply not showing up to vote in primaries. There is nothing stopping the same turnout in general elections happening in primaries except people refusing to get off their couches.
That’s not the only option. People can start participating in primaries to get the candidates they actually want. But when the general election rolls around and the other option is christofascism, yes, you need need to vote against that. Or you won’t be voting for anything ever again pretty soon.
We really need a different election system (ranked choice for one option) for the primaries to have any impact. As they stand it’s just an illusion of choice while the DNC decides who they want for their candidate and the shitty voters go along with it.
I don’t think I agree with that. I haven’t seen a single Democratic nominee who wasn’t also the lead vote getter in my lifetime. Pretty sure there hasn’t been one since the modern primary process was introduced in the 70s. Sure you can argue that the DNC throws it’s weight behind certain candidates in terms of money and exposure, sure the order of the primaries influences how the later ones tend to lead. And superdelegates will always be controversial. But you can’t argue in good faith that the DNC is choosing the candidates for us until you show me one who didn’t win the primary popular vote somehow getting the nomination.
Ironically the closest we’ve gotten to that in recent years was 2016 when Bernie won very few primary elections but won many of the caucuses. The caucuses are inarguably less small-d democratic than primaries but the same people arguing that the DNC rigged those primaries against Bernie conveniently ignore that actual voters didn’t want him.
At the end of the day it’s still the voters who pick the nominee. And voters can easily pick more progressive candidates if they want to, but the numbers don’t lie. Turnout in the primary in 2016 for Dems was 14.4 percent of eligible voters. In the general it was over 40%. In 2020 primary and general participation among Democrats both went up which is good, but the relative gap between primary and general participation more or less stayed the same. Biden won the Presidency with over 80 million votes. He won the primary cleanly, more than doubling second place Sanders’ total… with 19 million votes. That’s a massive, massive discrepancy.
Saying the DNC hand picks their candidates when younger and more progressive voters can’t be bothered to participate is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or moderates simply still outnumber progressives. Those are really the only two possible conclusions you can draw. I don’t really think the latter is true personally so what it comes down to is primary turnout. All the money and exposure and power brokering within the DNC doesn’t change the fact that nobody is going into these voters’ houses in primary season and physically restraining them to keep them from voting. They are simply choosing not to. And you can’t really expect to be taken seriously if you’re going to complain about the outcome of a process that you willingly abstain from. That’s like going into a restaurant, telling the waiter to surprise you, then being angry that you get served a burger when you wanted chicken. Next time order the goddamn chicken.
Sure you can argue that the DNC throws it’s weight behind certain candidates in terms of money and exposure, sure the order of the primaries influences how the later ones tend to lead. And superdelegates will always be controversial. But you can’t argue in good faith…
This is exactly what I’m arguing. In good faith. To dismiss the impact of those concerns is just putting your head in the sand to hide from reality. Sure there are exceptions to the rule. AOC taking out Crowley for example. But as we’ve seen, that made waves, and the boys at the top, they did not like waves.
But Republicans vote consistently for candidates they dislike or even hate just to beat Democrats.
Now, that’s just not true. The Republicans lose elections because of in-fighting too. For example, they lost the most recent election for House in Alaska to a Democrat because Begich voters didn’t want to consolidate behind Palin.
The exception that proves the rule, maybe? That election was the first to use Ranked Choice for congressional offices in Alaska. FPPT voting is a powerful thing, which is why Republicans try to stop it.
The party needs to figure out what they actually stand for and focus on that. The Republicans have distinct factions but the conflicts between those factions are somewhat in the details. The factions in the Democratic party are wildly different and in direct opposition sometimes. The Democratic party has Socialists, Pacifists, and Environmentalist in the same tent as Corporatists and war hawks. Some of these factions just have zero common ground.
I don’t like her because of situations like her truancy laws. If you think she’s not liked just because of her race and/or gender, then you’ll never understand why people don’t agree with her.
She has a great track record, both personally and professionally, if you had any interest in investigating it. Yes, even on cop stuff and leftist stuff — the details of which (including a lot of great social justice stuff, like trying to pass Federal laws against lynching and banning choke holds, racial profiling, and no-knock warrants) might surprise you.
But people like you have no interest investigating. Because why bother? She’s an accomplished Black woman. May as well just call her a neoliberal and a cop and be done with it.
You’ve demonstrated knowledge of literally nothing during this conversation. I’m the only one that’s referenced actual policies here. All you’ve done is hurl insults at me and Black women politicians. It’s not a good look, but keep doing it, it’s really making my point for me.
This is a pretty typical wild mischaracterization of what actually happened — assuming you’re referring to her truancy programs. (Do you even know what you’re referring to, or are you simply repeating smears about Black women that you’ve heard?) As is usual for women, especially Black women, hyperbole and toxicity are the political norms. It is disappointing to see it, but unsurprising.
Having just looked up a bit of detail on the truancy law (and living outside the US, so I’m coming at this not having heard much of anything about it), that sounds horrific. The rationale Harris gave, that it was designed to connect parents to resources, doesn’t mesh with the fact that threatening people with jail time isn’t how you help them.
I also ran into the fact that she argued in favour of the death penalty. Again, not exactly something that’s going to make her appealing to anyone even remotely progressive.
as you can probably pick up from the responses so far: she gets all of the racism and bigotry you’d expect from being a visible minority public figure and all of the flack you’d expect from her fairly cringeworthy, not great track record as a politician. her core demographic is basically a slice of liberals who don’t care that much about politics and enjoys the facade she puts on–and that’s a small audience, politically. anyone who examines her track record more deeply will probably find a bone to pick with her, or is likely going to hate her because of her identity.
She’s not really a good public speaker for one. Not a lot of charm or charisma. She’s not good at schmoozing like Bill Clinton or Obama. A good presidential candidate needs that, and I think it’s a big part of why Al Gore and Hillary Clinton lost. She can speak well in public sometimes, but at others she sounds flat, boring, and artificial.
Charisma is a big deal. Think about Reagan Democrats and how people to this day love Reagan even though facts and hindsight analysis show that he was a terrible president who was arguably the start of America’s modern decline into horrendous oligarchy.
Partly because of discrimination, partly because she lacks charisma. There are a substantial number of people that dislike her because she’s a black woman and they have biases against both, sometimes without even knowing it. There are also some people on the left that dislike her because she’s a moderate liberal that used to be a prosecutor. Honestly she’s about standard as vice presidents come, so though I’m farther to the left than her I don’t have any strong feelings on her.
On the conservative side of the fence, she’s black and Indian and most unforgivable of all, a DEMOCRAT!
On the liberal side, she’s taken a hard stance on crime, including minor drug offenses that probably shouldn’t be crimes.
She’s got something for everybody! To hate!
With a record like that, she’d fit right in with the other party. I don’t know what Biden was smoking when he decided to tap her of all people, but it must be so good it’s still illegal in Oregon.
This is probably the best breakdown of public perceptions of her record:
A close examination of Harris’s record shows it’s filled with contradictions. She pushed for programs that helped people find jobs instead of putting them in prison, but also fought to keep people in prison even after they were proved innocent. She refused to pursue the death penalty against a man who killed a police officer, but also defended California’s death penalty system in court. She implemented training programs to address police officers’ racial biases, but also resisted calls to get her office to investigate certain police shootings.
But what seem like contradictions may reflect a balancing act. Harris’s parents worked on civil rights causes, and she came from a background well aware of the excesses of the criminal justice system — but in office, she played the role of a prosecutor and California’s lawyer. She started in an era when “tough on crime” politics were popular across party lines — but she rose to national prominence as criminal justice reform started to take off nationally. She had an eye on higher political office as support for criminal justice reform became de rigueur for Democrats — but she still had to work as California’s top law enforcement official.
Her race and gender likely made this balancing act even tougher. In the US, studies have found that more than 90 percent of elected prosecutors are white and more than 80 percent are male. As a Black and Indian American woman, Harris stood out — inviting scrutiny and skepticism, especially by people who may hold racist stereotypes about how Black people view law enforcement or sexist views about whether women are “tough” enough for the job.
Still, the result is the same: As she became more nationally visible, Harris was less known as a progressive prosecutor, as she’d been earlier in her career, and more a reform-lite or even anti-reform attorney general. Now critics have labeled her a “cop” — a sellout for a broken criminal justice system.
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I assume nearly half of the country hates her for being black and/or a woman, while some other large chunk of the country hates her for being “a cop.” I think she’s fine. She’s done the job a hell of a lot better than a whole list of other VPs I could name. And since I’ll be voting against Republicans no matter what, if a Biden-Harris ticket is the opposition I’ll be checking that box. No problem.
Her last name literally means “horrible” in Finnish and from what I’ve heard that’s somewhat accurate
Just what I’ve picked up from other people, I have no feelings about her whatsoever.
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I don’t even get that from Biden. He just seems so fake from the get-go.
(Next part is irrelevant and only opinion.) But I’d rather go into the ground by someone sneaky and quiet than by an arm-flailing maniac screaming and yelling as I get beaten down into the hole lol.
I’m not going to argue that some of the dislike she receives isn’t due to racism or misogyny. There has to be an element of that.
But yes, phony is the perfect word.
I don’t hate her by any means, but it just feels like she really hasn’t done much of anything during her tenure in office tbh
I’m mean the VP’s #1 job is to have a pulse, so she has full marks on that front.
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She’s painful to listen to. Can’t string a clear sentence together and laughs constantly. Not inspiring or particularly incisive. Which is a particularly disappointing combo when Biden is the same.
Because she’s black and she’s a woman.
Same reason why Hillary Clinton was widely respected every year except when she ran against a man.
While this is certainly part of it (and all of it for a large number of people), I think it is overly simplistic view and disregards her past as a DA in which she enforced a draconian truancy program.
(source needed)
Here’s a list of objectionable stuff Hillary was involved with prior to running for president:
Gallup used to poll her favorability pretty regularly, and until she ran for president in 2015 (from which she’s never recovered) she seldom had an underwater approval rating. i’d say the characterization of wide respect is reasonably accurate given this data, although i don’t agree with the poster’s proposed causation
The single biggest problem standing between the left and sustained and meaningful control of the federal government is the complete lack of ability of voters to circle around a consensus candidate. There are several valid reasons to be critical of Harris just as there are pretty much every single Democratic Presidential decade basically of my lifetime. But Republicans vote consistently for candidates they dislike or even hate just to beat Democrats. Every single candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2016, 2020, and undoubtedly in 2028 will have some vocal subset of registered Democrat voters telling you exactly why they will never in a million years vote for them. I saw it constantly on Reddit and I don’t see any reason why it won’t continue.
Until somebody drops the magic “consensus candidate” name that somehow pleases everyone, Democratic voters are always going to be a major hurdle to their own success. And frankly I don’t think that “consensus candidate” name exists. Such is the curse of being the big tent party opposite the GOP. Republicans know they can continue winning elections for at least a little longer thanks to Democratic infighting alone.
You want a one party system? I’m not a big fan of the Republican party but there are some issues they are championing at the moment like free speech. Back in the day that was the Democrats, and I have no doubts it will flip flop again at some point but that just goes to show how we need at least two parties to act as a check on each other.
Silencing your ideological opponents is great and all until it’s you being silenced.
Republicans are not championing free speech. Entirely the opposite with how they’re treating LGBT folks currently.
And on that note, the Republicans are so beyond bad that yes, a one party state is actually better. To be clear, a one party state is utterly awful. That’s how terrible the Republican party is. They cannot be even remotely viable when their entire platform is hating other people.
To be fair, dictatorships and communism is amazing if you have the right leader. It’s just never happened before. It probably never will.
Yes I’m a Python developer.
Dictatorships are (by definition) never amazing. The state exists to serve the public, not to subjugate it
Ah, if only all dictators would be benevolent dictators for life like Guido.
If the options are one liberal party and one fascist party, or just one liberal party, I would pick the one-party state every time. Anyhow, the Democrats are such an umbrella party that if they were the only party they would almost certainly break into two or more smaller parties, all of which would be far more tolerable than the Republican party.
Free speech like this?
Legislation in Tennessee could potentially criminalize speech that causes ‘emotional distress’ to or ‘frightens’ another person, which could be seen as a suppression of free speech (www.alternet.org/gop-revolts-against-free-speech-republicans-push-anti-protest-bills-across-the-country/).
In Washington state, Republican Senator Doug Ericksen introduced a bill that would allow state authorities to charge protesters with “economic terrorism” if they participated in illegal demonstrations or coerced private citizens into doing so (www.alternet.org/gop-revolts-against-free-speech-republicans-push-anti-protest-bills-across-the-country/).
In Kentucky, a bill was passed criminalizing the act of insulting a police officer (www.alternet.org/gop-revolts-against-free-speech-republicans-push-anti-protest-bills-across-the-country/).
Democrats fall in love. Republicans fall in line.
It’s reductive, but look at the Christian Right and Trump. Trump is nowhere close to the picture of a Christian. It’s astounding he can safely cross the threshold of a church. But he promises to make sure abortion is illegal and men can’t pretend to be women to steal kids, so they vote for him. Replace the abortion issue with guns and you get another set of voters who will vote Republican regardless of what they might personally feel.
Meanwhile and to your point on the left, each candidate’s worst flaws are held as some kind of uncrossable line by people who are terminally online (which isn’t helpful) and the Democratic Party does what they can to feed this and make sure they don’t have to enact meaningful change. They just want to maintain the status quo but they get to do it with a pride flag waving behind them. If the Party establishment would just stop putting a thumb on the scale (not just against Bernie but ANYONE remotely progressive/left of the neoliberal center) and let the primary process shake out the most popular candidate, they might actually find themselves winning elections.
More accurate is: Republicans vote, Democrats don’t.
If this country had compulsory voting with sane voting days, and better protections against taking away voting rights to blacks and poors, Democrats would have a supermajority in Congress, and a Democratic president for decades.
I don’t really think compulsory voting would be that beneficial for democrats. Yes, it may boost them a few points across the board, but my general intuition about the general public is they lean towards democrats but are more socially conservative than you see in online spaces. 2020 is probably the best example: super high turnout yet Dems still clipping by with only a +4 advantage instead of the +10 predicted by looking at far more politically engaged voters.
It’s not social stuff. A lot of Americans are socially conservative, but social progressives and social libertarians (live and let live types) together make a clear supermajority. The problem isn’t that Americans are socially conservative, it’s that a large number of people have the notion that Republicans are good for the economy and Democrats are bad for the economy, and that therefore when things are economically rough they should vote in the Republicans. This group of people play a large role in why Congress flips so often.
The funny part is, Trump suggested to take away guns first, and do due process second - and these 2nd Amendment goobers still voted for him.
This is mostly right but there’s also a harder element to the social behaviours of the two voting groups. Republicans are happy to play dirty and Democrats always take the high road. Dems don’t seem to mind screwing each other over by meddling with public will in the primaries, why don’t they for once take the gloves off and play at least a little bit of the Repubs game? I can see how this could make it a totally populist nightmare, but that’s what we’re already facing.
Keir starmer tried that in the UK and the press just lambasted him for dirty tricks. It is whoever controls the press that wins regardless
The DNC doesn’t put their thumb on the scale as much as people like to pretend. The real problem is the under 40 crowd simply not showing up to vote in primaries. There is nothing stopping the same turnout in general elections happening in primaries except people refusing to get off their couches.
I agree. Dems just need to be OK with the person the DNC picks for them and vote like good little peons.
That’s not the only option. People can start participating in primaries to get the candidates they actually want. But when the general election rolls around and the other option is christofascism, yes, you need need to vote against that. Or you won’t be voting for anything ever again pretty soon.
We really need a different election system (ranked choice for one option) for the primaries to have any impact. As they stand it’s just an illusion of choice while the DNC decides who they want for their candidate and the shitty voters go along with it.
I don’t think I agree with that. I haven’t seen a single Democratic nominee who wasn’t also the lead vote getter in my lifetime. Pretty sure there hasn’t been one since the modern primary process was introduced in the 70s. Sure you can argue that the DNC throws it’s weight behind certain candidates in terms of money and exposure, sure the order of the primaries influences how the later ones tend to lead. And superdelegates will always be controversial. But you can’t argue in good faith that the DNC is choosing the candidates for us until you show me one who didn’t win the primary popular vote somehow getting the nomination.
Ironically the closest we’ve gotten to that in recent years was 2016 when Bernie won very few primary elections but won many of the caucuses. The caucuses are inarguably less small-d democratic than primaries but the same people arguing that the DNC rigged those primaries against Bernie conveniently ignore that actual voters didn’t want him.
At the end of the day it’s still the voters who pick the nominee. And voters can easily pick more progressive candidates if they want to, but the numbers don’t lie. Turnout in the primary in 2016 for Dems was 14.4 percent of eligible voters. In the general it was over 40%. In 2020 primary and general participation among Democrats both went up which is good, but the relative gap between primary and general participation more or less stayed the same. Biden won the Presidency with over 80 million votes. He won the primary cleanly, more than doubling second place Sanders’ total… with 19 million votes. That’s a massive, massive discrepancy.
Saying the DNC hand picks their candidates when younger and more progressive voters can’t be bothered to participate is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or moderates simply still outnumber progressives. Those are really the only two possible conclusions you can draw. I don’t really think the latter is true personally so what it comes down to is primary turnout. All the money and exposure and power brokering within the DNC doesn’t change the fact that nobody is going into these voters’ houses in primary season and physically restraining them to keep them from voting. They are simply choosing not to. And you can’t really expect to be taken seriously if you’re going to complain about the outcome of a process that you willingly abstain from. That’s like going into a restaurant, telling the waiter to surprise you, then being angry that you get served a burger when you wanted chicken. Next time order the goddamn chicken.
This is exactly what I’m arguing. In good faith. To dismiss the impact of those concerns is just putting your head in the sand to hide from reality. Sure there are exceptions to the rule. AOC taking out Crowley for example. But as we’ve seen, that made waves, and the boys at the top, they did not like waves.
Now, that’s just not true. The Republicans lose elections because of in-fighting too. For example, they lost the most recent election for House in Alaska to a Democrat because Begich voters didn’t want to consolidate behind Palin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Alaska's_at-large_congressional_district_special_election
The exception that proves the rule, maybe? That election was the first to use Ranked Choice for congressional offices in Alaska. FPPT voting is a powerful thing, which is why Republicans try to stop it.
The party needs to figure out what they actually stand for and focus on that. The Republicans have distinct factions but the conflicts between those factions are somewhat in the details. The factions in the Democratic party are wildly different and in direct opposition sometimes. The Democratic party has Socialists, Pacifists, and Environmentalist in the same tent as Corporatists and war hawks. Some of these factions just have zero common ground.
She’s an accomplished Black woman. That’s literally it.
I don’t like her because of situations like her truancy laws. If you think she’s not liked just because of her race and/or gender, then you’ll never understand why people don’t agree with her.
Yeah. Right. Has nothing to do with her being some neoliberal cop who has a shit record from the left. It’s because she’s black. And a woman. Got it.
She has a great track record, both personally and professionally, if you had any interest in investigating it. Yes, even on cop stuff and leftist stuff — the details of which (including a lot of great social justice stuff, like trying to pass Federal laws against lynching and banning choke holds, racial profiling, and no-knock warrants) might surprise you.
But people like you have no interest investigating. Because why bother? She’s an accomplished Black woman. May as well just call her a neoliberal and a cop and be done with it.
Nice assumptions you felt the need to make about what I know or don’t know. No need debating with boot licking assholes.
You’ve demonstrated knowledge of literally nothing during this conversation. I’m the only one that’s referenced actual policies here. All you’ve done is hurl insults at me and Black women politicians. It’s not a good look, but keep doing it, it’s really making my point for me.
She has a track record of imprisoning poor people for being poor. In California, no less, where it’s basically impossible to not be poor.
This is a pretty typical wild mischaracterization of what actually happened — assuming you’re referring to her truancy programs. (Do you even know what you’re referring to, or are you simply repeating smears about Black women that you’ve heard?) As is usual for women, especially Black women, hyperbole and toxicity are the political norms. It is disappointing to see it, but unsurprising.
Having just looked up a bit of detail on the truancy law (and living outside the US, so I’m coming at this not having heard much of anything about it), that sounds horrific. The rationale Harris gave, that it was designed to connect parents to resources, doesn’t mesh with the fact that threatening people with jail time isn’t how you help them.
I also ran into the fact that she argued in favour of the death penalty. Again, not exactly something that’s going to make her appealing to anyone even remotely progressive.
as you can probably pick up from the responses so far: she gets all of the racism and bigotry you’d expect from being a visible minority public figure and all of the flack you’d expect from her fairly cringeworthy, not great track record as a politician. her core demographic is basically a slice of liberals who don’t care that much about politics and enjoys the facade she puts on–and that’s a small audience, politically. anyone who examines her track record more deeply will probably find a bone to pick with her, or is likely going to hate her because of her identity.
Fine with me. Her favorabity is higher then Trump or Biden. So I think your asking a loaded question.
She’s not really a good public speaker for one. Not a lot of charm or charisma. She’s not good at schmoozing like Bill Clinton or Obama. A good presidential candidate needs that, and I think it’s a big part of why Al Gore and Hillary Clinton lost. She can speak well in public sometimes, but at others she sounds flat, boring, and artificial.
Charisma is a big deal. Think about Reagan Democrats and how people to this day love Reagan even though facts and hindsight analysis show that he was a terrible president who was arguably the start of America’s modern decline into horrendous oligarchy.
Partly because of discrimination, partly because she lacks charisma. There are a substantial number of people that dislike her because she’s a black woman and they have biases against both, sometimes without even knowing it. There are also some people on the left that dislike her because she’s a moderate liberal that used to be a prosecutor. Honestly she’s about standard as vice presidents come, so though I’m farther to the left than her I don’t have any strong feelings on her.
On the conservative side of the fence, she’s black and Indian and most unforgivable of all, a DEMOCRAT!
On the liberal side, she’s taken a hard stance on crime, including minor drug offenses that probably shouldn’t be crimes.
She’s got something for everybody! To hate!
Kept an innocent man on death row
Supported civil asset forfeiture
Arrested the mother of a disabled girl
And more I’m sure but she was off my list of potential candidates based on any of these alone
With a record like that, she’d fit right in with the other party. I don’t know what Biden was smoking when he decided to tap her of all people, but it must be so good it’s still illegal in Oregon.
This is probably the best breakdown of public perceptions of her record:
Sauce is Vox
Thank you for sharing that there is nuance beyond just “she’s black.”