Mega-Thread: 2020 United States General Election

[cubby]

Dude, you've been protecting neo-liberalism and capitalist democrat decisions whenever it suits you. Fuck do I know why you're all of a sudden waving your flag in support of a conservative prosecutor and friend of police brutality.

@Endus isn't supporting those racist laws, what he's doing is pointing out the difference - Harris worked within the system when she had to, as a prosecutor, and was so successful that now she is in a position to change those laws, which she has been working towards in her elected position.

Working within a system doesn't mean you agree with it. In fact, ideally it's the perfect way to make change - from within.

- - - Updated - - -

So, what are you going to do about how prosecutors function in the US?

You know what we should do, elect a hard-charging black woman with decades of experience in the system, who knows the problems that need to be fixed, and would be in a position to make those changes.

[GreenGoldSharpie]

You know what we should do, elect a hard-charging black woman with decades of experience in the system, who knows the problems that need to be fixed, and would be in a position to make those changes.

Well, a VP coming down on aggressive and bigoted prosecution would be good, but working to change how we choose prosecutors and reform the system at the most basic of levels would be even better. Local work works way better than a top down approach.

[Endus]

This is some serious bullshit and flawed reasoning.

And yet, no argument as to how it's flawed.

Suddenly it's okay when prosecutors do that, but not the police? Why does Kamala get a pass ?

Police are flatly not a part of the adversarial court system, in the first place.

In the court system, prosecutors sit on one side, defense attorneys on the other, and a judge and jury adjudicate their debate and provision of evidence to support their case.

There is no such process in policing. The police are the sole agents in play, at that point. Any review of their actions will only occur well after the incident. If every cop had a non-cop partner whose sole purpose was to interefere with and prevent the officer's arrests, and other agents whose purpose was to determine which of the two had the right of it, you might have had a comparison, but that's obviously not how anything works.

Uh, no. That is just completely wrong. Prosecutors also hold a lot of power and sway when it comes to determining the punishment that people should get for their crimes. Harris having a record of being harsh on criminals and being buddy buddies with the police (you know those guys being protested against for police brutality) is not good for her at all. She has been in every objective measure a conservative prosecutor and someone that has gone out of her way to defend and help the police.

And please, this is not about the skin of her color. It is about -everything but- the skin of her color, it is about how she has a past of being harsh on black criminals.

The rest of us don't cherry-pick facts, and also consider her career as a lawmaker since being a prosecutor.

Dude, you've been protecting neo-liberalism and capitalist democrat decisions whenever it suits you. Fuck do I know why you're all of a sudden waving your flag in support of a conservative prosecutor and friend of police brutality.

Horseshit. I don't defend neo-liberalism, and I'm fully of the opinion that capitalism is the root of most of modern society's ills. You're making that shit up, wholesale.

Or, perhaps, confusing practical recommendations with regards to voting options with what I would present as the idealized utopic outcome. I may be an idealist, but I'm also a realist. I'm able to separate "what I think is ultimately best" from "what I think can effect practical change in this moment, in that direction".

- - - Updated - - -

Okay, I understand that on some level, but I still feel like Harris has been very harsh in her role. Harsher than she should have been and also made too close friends with the police. The image of police brutality doesn't do her any good.

In practical terms, this is what you want in a reformer. Someone who's historically been a friend to police won't be automatically seen as an enemy, but as someone attempting to cure an ill.

If you brought in someone with no such background, police groups around the nation would be far, far more likely to see them as a villain and oppose their recommendations on principle. With someone like Harris, there's at least a chance they'll take it to heart and admit she's got a point.

Not all departments, obviously. But some. Others will be too racist or ideologically shitheaded to do anything but resist no matter who's pushing for change.

[cubby]

Okay, I understand that on some level, but I still feel like Harris has been very harsh in her role. Harsher than she should have been and also made too close friends with the police. The image of police brutality doesn't do her any good.

Every single BLM grouping or protests I've seen has been majorly negative about Kamala. That is why I'm surprised people are suddenly thinking she would be a good VP pick. She is disliked deeply by BLM as far as I understand.

I appreciate you saying that - and the American legal system is a complicated beast, and more specifically regarding prosecutors primary performance goals being conviction percentages.

And I think that is a major issue - black voters were NOT fans of hers, hence her lackluster performance in the Primary. She is leading the polls, however, as a VP candidate, but that doesn't address the chasm that apparently exists.

[Muzjhath]

Okay, I understand that on some level, but I still feel like Harris has been very harsh in her role. Harsher than she should have been and also made too close friends with the police. The image of police brutality doesn't do her any good.

Every single BLM grouping or protests I've seen has been majorly negative about Kamala. That is why I'm surprised people are suddenly thinking she would be a good VP pick. She is disliked deeply by BLM as far as I understand.

She was a woman.
She was black.

She had to be as harsh as she could to be taken seriously.

[Endus]

She was a woman.
She was black.

She had to be as harsh as she could to be taken seriously.

Also, given her stances since becoming a legislator, there's a lot of hope she'll be just as harsh in taking solid action against police criminality and brutality.

A strong, harsh stance isn't necessary a bad thing.

[cubby]

Well, a VP coming down on aggressive and bigoted prosecution would be good, but working to change how we choose prosecutors and reform the system at the most basic of levels would be even better. Local work works way better than a top down approach.

I could not agree more. Seriously, that's exactly how it has to happen.

That being said, it couldn't hurt to have someone at the top who wants to help with that process.

[Endus]

Well, let's have a look at her history:


... It doesn't take much effort to find a whole washlist of examples like those. I'm sure there are people more familiar with her that could easily point out why she is a horrible candidate to consider in the era of BLM protests.

Get back to me when you read the rest of that 4000-word article, rather than just the 300 you cherry-picked out. This is exactly the problem; some of us are looking at her entire history, and then there's folks like yourself, who want to focus exclusively on certain negatives.

[GreenGoldSharpie]

I could not agree more. Seriously, that's exactly how it has to happen.

That being said, it couldn't hurt to have someone at the top who wants to help with that process.

Agreed, but you'll note I didn't actually get a response. This is something I'm considering lately. There's a lot of lefties who want to rage at the system, but not a lot of them can actually be bothered to do anything about it.

What this tells me is most are just looking for excuses to act in a partisan fashion. They're not actually interested in dealing with real issues. Or, more generously, they assume these issues can be fixed if they capture power in the federal government, and that is hopelessly naive and dangerous.

[eschatological]

Well, let's have a look at her history:

Harris’s critics also charge that she has failed to take on prosecutorial misconduct — a responsibility that is “core to the attorney general’s job,” Simon says. In 2015, judges called out her office for defending convictions obtained by local prosecutors who inserted a false confession into the transcript of a police interrogation, lied under oath and withheld crucial evidence from the defense. “Talk to the attorney general and make sure she understands the gravity of the situation,” federal appellate Judge Alex Kozinski instructed one of Harris’s deputies in court last year. Harris says that as a career prosecutor, she takes allegations of misconduct very seriously. “My office evaluates each case based on the facts and the evidence,” she told me.

Harris has also been criticized for her response to accusations of misconduct by prosecutors and sheriff’s deputies in Orange County. Two years ago, Scott Sanders, an assistant public defender in Orange County, discovered hidden records showing that sheriff’s deputies in the local jails were placing coveted informants in cells next to inmates who were awaiting trial — and for decades maintaining a secret database about them. The district attorney’s office also appears to have repeatedly failed to disclose evidence from its own files on some informants. Defendants were convicted based on the testimony of informants whose credibility, the secret records showed, prosecutors and the police questioned, unknown to the judge and jury. One informant labeled “unreliable” helped convict a man who was executed in 1998 for a murder he insisted he did not commit. Last March, following the revelations about the database, a judge described the performance of the Orange County district attorney’s office, in the murder case before him, as “sadly deficient”


So, let's summarize:
- Helped defend police brutality
- Helped defend the police breaking the law
- Helped the police prosecute innocents (taking in false evidence and confessions etc).

... It doesn't take much effort to find a whole washlist of examples like those. I'm sure there are people more familiar with her that could easily point out why she is a horrible candidate to consider in the era of BLM protests.

1) Your first paragraph is about a Reagan appointed judge who hated Kamala, much like he hated most women, seeing as he had to resign in 2017 after multiple women came out against him for sexual harassment. You can defend a conviction as fair if there was other evidence to convict on.....even if all the confessional stuff had to be tossed because it was fake.

2) Your second paragraph doesn't indicate that Orange County (a notorious conservative California county) did anything in conjunction with Harris or with Harris's knowledge. It criticizes her response, but doesn't say what that response was.

[Endus]

You hand waving away her involvement in encouraging and defending police brutality and misconduct is concerning.
As is the disregard for the fact that she is not popular at all with black voters or with BLM activists and supporters.

Why would I care about popularity? That's fallacious.

And I didn't hand-wave anything. I said, of those who are potential picks, I see more benefits than drawbacks.

Also, I know your posting style well enough to know that when you hand wave away something, that this is you admitting being at fault and unable to defend your position any further.

Oh, stuff it. I'm not hand-waving anything.

Should she be excused for protecting the police from consequences for their misconduct?
Should she be excused for helping the police in seeing innocents convicted, false evidence etc?
She was literally called out by judges and superiors for her grave misconduct as a prosecutor.

Literally no one is excusing anything.

You seem to be projecting, rather than listening.

Though in general, if you're referring to her actions as a prosecutor, then her actions in seeking convictions is literally what her job was about. So there's not really much to blame her for there, to begin with.

[Edge-]

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/m...ovember-ballot

The November ballot is starting to get crowded with candidates tied to QAnon.

On Tuesday evening, a GOP challenger in Arizona secured a place on the ballot — becoming the 16th person with links to the sprawling pro-Trump conspiracy theory to have a shot at getting into public office.

The Republican party is officially now the conspiracy theory party. It legitimately blows my mind that these fucking mind bogglingly stupid nutters can manage to drum up enough support to win a primary, but I guess the party as a whole is descending into rank conspiracy theories that are getting more wild as Trump's chances of re-election seem to fade.

[Felya]

IMO it has little to do with liberal and more to do with "my team rocks" mentality. If only GOP and DEM held their own elected officials to account the same way they do the opposite party we'd be a lot better off. :P

When you are responding to someone generalizing liberals, instead of responding to individuals, your point is moot.

[Edge-]

Okay now this is just embarrassing for Biden. Bernie hasn't been campaigning for months now, and Biden won by less than 2% in Washington with no actual challenger.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/202...ington-results

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...-election.html

Because the presidential primary was done in March, a month before Sanders ended his campaign. NBC seems to be centralizing the state level primary and presidential primary results in one place.

And if memory serves, Sanders folks were expecting him to win WA given that it's a more progressive state, especially since he absolutely cleaned how again Clinton in 2016. So his loss there was a pretty big blow.

[Benggaul]

IMO it has little to do with liberal and more to do with "my team rocks" mentality. If only GOP and DEM held their own elected officials to account the same way they do the opposite party we'd be a lot better off. :P

I'm neither, but I've seen the Dems hold their own accountable far more often than not. Al Franken, among many, say "hi".

[Felya]

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/1...rs-2020-075651

No, the black community made their feelings on Harris pretty clear during the primary.

While this is the sentiment in this article, that I’m talking about:

“It’s a story we as black women see all our lives,” she said. “We all suffer when we create that scenario.”

Aimee Allison, founder and executive director of She The People, also lamented Harris’ absence.

“Kamala’s presence in the race helped blaze a trail for the next generation of women of color,” Allison said in a statement. “She ran a competitive campaign that has forced us to re-think what it means to be electable.”

It seems like the article was focusing on the electability of, not just someone black, but a black woman. That’s the ceiling I keep mentioning... you can only get this far...

[unfilteredJW]

Agreed, but you'll note I didn't actually get a response. This is something I'm considering lately. There's a lot of lefties who want to rage at the system, but not a lot of them can actually be bothered to do anything about it.

What this tells me is most are just looking for excuses to act in a partisan fashion. They're not actually interested in dealing with real issues. Or, more generously, they assume these issues can be fixed if they capture power in the federal government, and that is hopelessly naive and dangerous.

Discordians the lot.

[Benggaul]

When you are responding to someone generalizing liberals, instead of responding to individuals, your point is moot.

And this.

I've had those two aforementioned cosplayers muted for ages now but of course people quote their bullshit often enough in here for me to get the gist.

[Edge-]

My understanding was the caucus was back in March. Washington now has a hybrid primary you can vote mail-in-ballot in or the caucus which is held earlier.

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/20...f-presidentia/

Yesterday was the later.

https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/cal...st.aspx?y=2020

No, per the governments website the primary was held March 10, as I said, and results were certified by March 27. Which is why the results you see on the NBC page with recent results are identical to the results you see on the NYT page posted in March.

This ain't some out of nowhere win for Sanders dude, his loss in WA was a pretty big body blow and a huge retreat from his massive win there against Clinton in 2016.

[Felya]

And if memory serves, Sanders folks were expecting him to win WA given that it's a more progressive state, especially since he absolutely cleaned how again Clinton in 2016. So his loss there was a pretty big blow.

Yeah, he cleaned up so much, they changed the rules, so that the party caucus doesn’t choose the winner, before the vote. Bernie beat Hillary, but his delegate count was greater than the actual vote difference, because the vote in the primary didn’t mater. WA establishment democrats gave the state to Bernie, a month before the vote.

- - - Updated - - -

My understanding was the caucus was back in March. Washington now has a hybrid primary you can vote mail-in-ballot or with the caucus which is held earlier.

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/20...f-presidentia/

Yesterday was the mail-in-ballot.

No... yesterday was mostly local elections, governor and house... this was not the Democratic primary.

Edit: Both in March and yesterday were mailed (Am still alive) in and the caucus is for delegates to vote, not the people. They changed the rules after it disproportionately favored Bernie, compared to the actual vote.