Thread by @PushBidenLeft

Who really is Joe Biden's hand-picked successor, Kamala Harris?

She didn't just fall out of a coconut tree! 🥥🌴

Here's the most comprehensive thread on the context that came before. 1/

Before Senator Harris became Vice President, she launched her career as a tough on crime "Top Cop," rising from District Attorney of San Francisco to Attorney General of California. 2/

In solid blue California, Kamala campaigned on the right-wing position of repeatedly laughing at the idea of legalizing marijuana, despite the fact that even her Republican opponents supported it. 3/

Kamala could've joined other states' efforts to take marijuana off the DEA's list of most dangerous substances, or she could've refused to defend the law.

Instead, she chose to send thousands of disproportionately black Californians to jail. 4/

While she was DA, San Francisco was responsible for 40% of all California's felony drug arrests of black women, with 50x the rate of other counties. 1 in 10 of her black constituents were arrested in 1 year alone.

Kamala increased the percentage of them that got convicted. 5/

Kamala locked up so many people, the Supreme Court ruled her prisons were unconstitutionally overcrowded.

She not only refused to release folks, she argued that her prison labor (legal slavery, by definition), was too profitable to give up. 6/

When supporting legal weed became politically expedient, Kamala shifted to laughing about how she herself smoked while locking others up for the same thing.

Even her own father called her out, saying "we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty." 7/

As part of her tough on crime approach, Kamala assigned senior prosecutors to misdemeanors like graffiti and vandalism, tripling the number of cases brought to trial. 8/

Kamala laughed about putting parents in jail if their kids missed school, disproportionately harming single parent households, the poor, and families of color, including homeless mothers. 9/

Kamala even pushed a law forcing schools to turn undocumented students over to ICE, separating them from their parents and violating their human rights. 10/

Kamala opposed reforming California’s three-strikes law (the only one in the country to impose life sentences for minor felonies, which incarcerates black people at 12x the rate as white people) three different times. Even her GOP opponent was to the left of her on this. 11/

When this three-strikes law sent a wrongfully-convicted man to prison, Kamala tried to keep him there on a technicality.

When civil rights groups and ~100,000 petition signatures got him released after 14 years, she took him back to court again for a crime he didn’t commit. 12/

Such a proponent of mass incarceration, Kamala went as far as mocking the popular call to "build more schools, less jails." 13/

Kamala also defended the discriminatory practice of cash bail in court, even fighting to raise cash bail costs. 14/

Kamala opposed a bill that would reform civil asset forfeiture, too, going as far as to sponsor a bill allowing cops to steal money from people before charges are even filed. 15/

Kamala even lied about her state’s solitary confinement to block a suit by inmates, claiming there was none in California, when there were about 6,400 victims of the practice, which is considered torture. 16/

Kamala also ignored pleas from the black caucus and civil rights orgs, choosing to oppose bills to require independent investigations of police shootings and statewide use of bodycams. 17/

In 2012, cops shot an unarmed Latino man in the back and handcuffed him as he died.

Then they used "less lethal" guns & dogs to attack concerned women & children, before fatally shooting *another* unarmed Latino man in the back the next day.

Kamala refused to investigate. 18/

When her cops shot a mentally ill woman, Kamala responded by prosecuting the victim. 19/

When multiple cops raped an underage girl, Kamala refused to investigate. 20/

When a police misconduct case revealed racist and homophobic texts being sent by cops, the San Francisco Public Defender begged Kamala to investigate.

Again, she refused to investigate. 21/

Kamala even went as far as to hide the names of 135 cops with misconduct histories and put one of her campaign donors in charge of the review. 22/

Kamala's continued protection of killer cops resulted in liberal California having the 4th highest rate of black folks shot by police. 23/

Kamala's solution to police violence?

"Nothing stops a bullet like a job!"

According to her, if you want to avoid being murdered by cops, you should simply get back to work. 24/

As if the extrajudicial executions weren't enough, Kamala used a technicality to kill a ruling that the death penalty was unconstitutional, so she could continue sentencing (disproportionately black) people to die.

Even her GOP opponents opposed the death penalty. 25/

When evidence pointed towards a black defendant being framed by police, Kamala blocked DNA testing so she could keep him on death row. 26/

Kamala oversaw a state prosecutor falsifying a confession to get a life sentence and then destroyed the evidence, upheld a conviction secured by a prosecutor lying under oath, and oversaw the framing of another man. 27/

Kamala “systematically violated defendants’ civil and constitutional rights” in a crime lab scandal, and even kept the Orange County DA office from being charged for running an unconstitutional jailhouse informant program. 28/

Kamala regularly refused to prosecute her powerful friends.

Her associate even got away with operating a fake police force - somehow all charges were dismissed. 29/

After Steven Mnuchin's bank’s predatory lending and foreclosure fraud broke the law “over a thousand” times and ruined the lives of thousands of homeowners, Kamala refused to prosecute, kept him free to donate to her campaign and become Trump’s Treasury Secretary. 30/

Kamala refused to prosecute PG&E for its massive gas pipeline explosion, leaving them free to exploit hurricane-wracked Puerto Rico and kill at least one person in CA with preventable blackouts, before its consultants went on to run her 2020 campaign. 31/

Kamala did not properly investigate the San Onofre scandal to protect her political allies, and refused to investigate Herbalife’s exploitation and fraud, receiving donations from people connected to the corporation. 32/

Kamala refused to review a case in which there was reasonable suspicion that police officers were involved in the death of a woman until it lined up with her next election campaign, after the statute of limitations had ended. 33/

Kamala also refused to review a case in which a wealthy BIG Pharma CEO killed his wife and made it look like a suicide, after their son also died under mysterious circumstances. 34/

Kamala even protected pedophiles who raped children by actively aiding their coverups.

She even took money from Jeffrey Epstein's law firm, and defended an unconstitutional sex offender law that actually increased sex offenses. 35/

Kamala also fought to block payments to wrongfully convicted people, and tried to force those wrongfully convicted of sex crimes to re-register as sex offenders even after being formally ruled innocent. 36/

Kamala opposed legalization of sex work, endangered sex workers, and oversaw people being charged for prostitution without even agreeing to sex. 37/

Kamala tried to deny a transgender inmate healthcare and endangered trans women by forcing them into mens prisons, leading to the rape and torture of at least one trans inmate. 38/

Kamala defended a prison’s religious discrimination in hiring policy. 39/

Kamala delayed the confiscation of illegal firearms from dangerous people, then posed a “continued risk to public safety” by failing to implement changes state auditors recommended to fix this despite receiving $24 million specifically for this purpose. 40/

Kamala fought to limit amount of land indigenous tribes could place in trust, and even tried to take reservation land away from a tribe just to keep them from evicting a non-indigenous man who had lived there without paying rent for 24 years. 41/

Kamala's signature achievement, “Back on Track,” which sought to decrease recidivism, was actually largely a failure that simply shifted focus away from the real problem of over-criminalization.

42/jacobin.com/2019/09/kamala…

Throughout all of this, Kamala claimed to be unaware of rampant sexual harassment and retaliation by her top aide over a 6 year span. 43/

Her record in California prosecution is so damaging, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation quietly removed public access to her arrest and incarceration reports when she first ran for president. 44/

As a senator, Kamala regularly voted to give Trump what he wanted.

Notably, Kamala joined Biden in helping Trump ban public funding for abortion access multiple times. 45/

Kamala also defended Trump's border wall, and joined him in fighting back against Democrats' call to tear it down. 46/

Kamala even voted to give Trump increased military spending multiple times, pushed him to escalate war in Syria, and co-sponsored the bill that let him violate the nuclear deal with sanctions, further escalating tensions. 47/

Kamala's AIPAC-funded support for the genocidal Israeli regime was so strong, she even challenged Obama's very meager efforts to slow the colonization of occupied Palestine. 48/

Bizarrely, Kamala tried to erase American racism and push conspiracy theories blaming Russia for our racial tensions, including the Kaepernick kneeling controversy.

49/

When running for president in 2020, Kamala claimed to support Medicare for All to grow her email list, before flip-flopping on the issue shortly after.

Her rival plan was heavily consulted on by a board member of a private insurer who would profit off it. 50/

Kamala supports fracking and Big Oil expansion, but bizarrely lied about suing ExxonMobil to appear progressive. 51/

Before dropping out, Kamala was the #1 recipient of lobbyist money amongst all 2020 presidential candidates from all parties, accepting over 4x more than Trump.

She'd previously even taken thousands of dollars from Donald and Ivanka Trump themselves multiple times. 52/

Kamala even hosted fundraisers with corrupt bankers who oversaw opening over 3.5 million fake accounts and charging around 200,000 customers with fraudulent fees. 53/

Kamala earned even fewer Democratic primary votes than Trump did, after her poorly run campaign collapsed with her polling 4th in her own state with only 1% black support nationwide. 54/

Despite calling out Biden for being a racist sexual predator, she still gladly chose to work for him after her own campaign flamed out. 55/

Kamala's Trumpian lies began before she even took office, as she plagiarized MLK himself, to the outrage of his family. 56/

One of Kamala's first acts as VP was to immediately give up the fight for the $15/hr minimum wage increase she promised, refusing to override her own parliamentarian's non-binding advisory ruling. 57/

Biden put Kamala in charge of the southern border, where they immediately reopened the migrant concentration camp she called a "human rights abuse" under Trump. 58/

While leading border policy, Kamala's overseen brutal anti-immigration actions including,

- Increased kids in cages
- Continued family separations
- Record deportations
- Continued border wall construction
- New asylum ban
- Record migrant deaths
- and more...
59/

After being embarrassed by a student challenging her on her Israel policy, Kamala replaced the students with child actors in her next video. 60/

When many were unable to find or afford covid tests during the raging pandemic that Biden/Kamala failed to handle, they turned to the White House for help.

"Google it," she responded. 61/

Countless Kamala staffers have resigned because, like Trump, she's an infamously abusive boss who refuses to prepare for her job. 62/

Kamala has been completely unwilling to fight for abortion rights, opposing both the filibuster and putting clinics on federal lands. 63/

In a moment of comic relief, Kamala accidentally clapped along with Puerto Rican protestors singing a song critical of her in Spanish. 64/

After Biden was finally pressured out of running again, Kamala quickly announced her candidacy despite never winning a single primary contest.

She reportedly wants disgraced, homophobic conservative, Jim Messina, to lead her campaign. 65/

Kamala's quickly signaled that she will continued the Biden-Netanyahu genocide in occupied Palestine, while her friends in mainstream media admit her nicer words are just a veneer over the same murderous policy. 66/

Kamala's first two high profile actions after announcing her candidacy were to take the incredibly unpopular decisions of yet again meeting with war criminal Netanyahu and yet again coming out against banning fracking. 67/

Kamala is currently losing to Trump in both polling and net favorability.

The candidate with the higher net favorability has won every single general election in recorded history. 68/

Even if party elites nominate Kamala at the convention without voter input, she'll still have to listen to voters and adopt more popular policy positions to earn the votes needed to beat Trump.

Will she change course before it's too late, or remain burdened by what has been? 69/