Kamala's 47 Problems
Will Harris’ Ties to California Crime Explosion Go National?
Proposition 47 devastated California when it was passed by voters ten years ago. The shift was subtle at first but then snowballed as fewer criminals were being held behind bars, the number of homeless exploded, and the general sense of lawlessness that was created by progressive prosecutors around the state.
“Crime? What crime? They’re just victims of a racist patriarchal capitalist society trying to make ends meet.”
Or some other explanation to that effect was bandied about to shame/guilt/shut up the law abiding people in the state.
The rest of the country now thinks of California as a crime-ridden hellhole with nice beaches, as opposed to the not-so-distant past when the state shone as a beacon of hope and prosperity and a place a person could start again
But it is doubtful the rest of the country knows that now-presumptive Democratic President candidate Kamala Harris played a serious role in making Prop 47 happen.
Harris, then state Attorney General, wrote the ballot title for the Proposition, designating Prop 47 as the “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.”
She may just as well have titled it the “Everyone Gets a Cute Puppy Act” for all the relation to reality her title had to the actual contents of Prop 47.
For example, Prop 47 did the following - it made shoplifting under $950 worth of stuff a misdemeanor, meaning you could go from store to store on the same day and as long as you kept each act under $950 (many shoplifters literally brought calculators) you would skate as many cities gave up handing out misdemeanor citations, just as many stores stopped bothering to call the cops. The same went for drug use – and in many cases drug sales - though the threshold was set by weight.
Prop 36 rolls back much of Prop 47. If passed, shoplifters arrested a third time – no matter the value of the goods stolen – will face a felony charge and a year in jail. Also as to shoplifting, the total value stolen in each instance can be aggregated to reach the $950 felony threshold. As to the “smash and grab” phenomena, the proposition tacks on an additional year to any sentence if significant property damage accompanied the theft.
The proposition also re-instates the concept of “drug treatment or jail?” which allows judges to offer a person facing certain felony drug charges that option. It also re-classifies fentanyl as a hard drug and makes even possession of it a felony. Drug traffickers and dealers will also face tougher sentences and, at the judge’s discretion, receive a warning that if in the future a drug (fake pills laced with fentanyl, for example) they sold killed a person they could face murder charges.
And, no matter the crime, use of a weapon and/or gun during its commission will trigger a longer sentence.
While Prop 47 passed pretty easily, there is no question that’s Harris’ title smoothed the way. If she had done her job properly and ethically as a neutral arbiter and written a different title based in reality, it may have still passed but it would have been far closer.
And if she wrote an honest ballot title, the “A Lot of Crime Won’t Really be Crime Anymore Act,” it would have lost – handily.
So now, as Harris attempts the become the 47th President of the United States and the first Black president and the first Asian-American president, will Prop 47 and the chaos it has wrought make that more difficult?
First, let’s look at Harris’ standing in the state. Yes she won two statewide races – Attorney General and Senator – but considering California’s voting pattern, anyone with a “D” next to their name could have done that.
And during her 2020 presidential campaign – a campaign she had to stop even before the vote was taken – polls showed her trailing in her home state. While those two factors do not bode well for Harris, her losing California in November is a near impossibility.
Or is it? Because Prop 47 will be on the ballot as well, reminding the public how it was, in part, her baby.
Technically, it is the Prop 47 reform measure, Prop 36, that will be on the ballot and that will be a drag on Harris’ campaign.
As was shown by the flailing and wailing and gnashing of teeth and epic incompetence at the end of this year’s legislative session - with Gov. Newsom throwing everything at the wall to try to kneecap Prop 36 – the Democrats know that 36 will drive more conservatives and moderates and people just fed up with crime to the polls.
The Democrats failed to poison Prop 36 and they know that Prop 36 will win - handily
In other words, it may occur to people that voting for Prop 36 and Harris at the same time is rather cognitively dissonant – why vote for the person that helped destroy the state? Or something as bad a la Homer Simpson’s approach to voting:
And then there is the national impact. Noting the state’s current reputation, there is no question that the Trump campaign will tie Prop 47 to Harris, putting in a very awkward place.
Woke progressives who would automatically support Kamala have always been leery of her prosecutorial background. Apparently, being part of the system that enforces laws is evil and racist and ableist and whatever so to keep her base happy she cannot run too too far away from Prop 47.
But to even have a prayer of converting independents and moderates, she cannot proudly point to Prop 47 and say “I helped do that.” The public – nationwide – is very tried of feeling unsafe and her association with Prop 47 will not help her to convince those voters that she’s “tough on crime.”
That, of course, is what the Trump campaign will say, that Harris is a large part of the reason the state has taken such a nosedive in the past few years.
It’s such an obvious campaign point, you can practically see the TV commercials in your head.
There has been recent mention of Harris tapping Gavin Newsom as her veep pick, constitution be damned (all she has to do is “move” to DC in the next few weeks and it’s okay.)
That will not happen – one Californian on the ballot is – at best – the most the rest of the country will tolerate. And Gavin says “phew…”
While she will most likely still hold on to win California, the specter of Prop 47 and the politically fortuitously timed appearance of Prop 36 on the ballot will force her to twist herself into verbal knots to lessen the impact on her campaign.
Well, at least we know she can do that.