What A Day - "Smart On Crime": How VP Harris's Record As Prosecutor Could Impact The 2024 Race

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

Almost as soon as Vice President Kamala Harris jumped into the 2024 presidential race, she found a message to set her apart from former President Donald Trump: her record as a prosecutor. It’s a compelling narrative, especially given Trump’s status as a convicted felon. But when she ran for president in 2020, then-candidate Harris aligned herself with the recent wave of “progressive prosecutors” moving away from the tough-on-crime policies that helped create mass incarceration. And it’s a label Republicans are trying to use against her and other Democrats in this election. Jamiles Lartey, staff writer for the Marshall Project, talks about the backlash to the progressive prosecutor movement and how it’s shaping the 2024 election.And in headlines: Former President Donald Trump told a group of supporters that if they elect him in November they “won’t have to vote anymore,” Israel launched counterstrikes deep into Lebanon, and millions of West Coast residents are under air quality warnings as firefighters battle California’s biggest wildfire of the year.Show Notes:Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/3kk4nyz8What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcastFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

it's monday july 29th i'm trey val anderson and i'm josie duffy race and this is what a day the podcast that doesn't want another avengers movie listen with less than a hundred days to go before the election ain't nobody got time for robert downey jr okay tony stark rest in peace spoiler alert if you haven't seen that movie, he does die. On today's show, former President Trump urges conservative Christians to get out and vote and promises if he wins that they won't have to do it again. Plus, Canada's women's soccer coach gets suspended at the Paris Olympics for an alleged cheating scandal. But first, almost as soon as Vice President Kamala Harris jumped into the 2024 presidential race, she found a message to set her apart from former President Donald Trump, her record as a prosecutor.

Here she is at a campaign rally last Tuesday talking about serving as California Attorney General and San Francisco District Attorney. In those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds. Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump's type. The audience in that clip is just incredible. You know, it's a whole bunch of black aunties, okay? It's easy to see this rhetoric connecting with voters, obviously, but it's also interesting to see this in this moment because prosecutors are generally getting a lot more scrutiny than they did 10 years ago or even five years ago.

Right. Which is why her past as a prosecutor has sometimes been viewed as a potential liability. Yeah, exactly. And in 2020, then-candidate Harris aligned herself with the more recent wave of progressive prosecutors. And that means elected DAs who are moving away from the tough-on that took place in some places during the pandemic. Despite the fact that, as we've talked about before, crime went up pretty much everywhere, regardless of whether the local prosecutor was progressive or not. And as you know, I spend a lot of time thinking about how we talk about prosecutors, how we think about them. And so I was really interested in how this is impacting the 2024 election. So I spoke with Jamal Zlarte, staff writer for the Marshall Project, and he began by explaining some of the recent backlash to progressive prosecutors. The pushback, you know, in some cases has come from, you know, the center left, but has mostly come from the right wing looking at that approach as something that is detrimental to public safety, of trying to tie that approach to

the increases in violent crime that we saw in some cities around the pandemic, rates that have sort of since regressed to the mean, regressed to the trajectory they were on before the pandemic. I think it has been a kind of useful political football in some sense for folks on the right, for the Republican Party generally to go after these prosecutors, because there's just kind of like a time sink thing happening here where it's very hard to pull apart whatever changes happened in our country because of the pandemic and whatever changes in our country happened because things just change and all kinds of rates of things go up and down. And what had anything in particular to do with the decisions of these new prosecutors coming into office?

But now in the Harris campaign, right, we're seeing a lot of messaging about the prosecutor versus the felon, this frame of, you know, the good versus the bad, the law versus the lawbreaker. And that's also really resonating. I'm interested in what you think about that messaging being used in kind of this moment. Yeah, I think there's this question out there, like, does Vice President Harris as a prosecutor have an advantage in particular in this election and an advantage that was actually an anchor on her in the 2019 Democratic primary. And I think that question has often been posed in the context of the Democratic primary. And I think it's important to recognize that primaries are different from general

elections, right? So the conventional wisdom is that being a prosecutor in the zeitgeist of 2019 and 2020 was something that pulled Kamala Harris's campaign down. I think that's true of the primary, but it's not actually clear to me that that would have been a particular challenge for her if she had made it to the general election any more than Joe Biden being one of the chief architects of the 94 crime bill held him back in the general election.

It was a primary problem of building enthusiasm in the base. I want to pull two things apart because there's been this question like, is she going to run as tough on crime or is she going to run on tough on Donald Trump? And I think those are different. She could run as tough on crime as I'm a prosecutor. I prosecuted violent people in kind of the public safety space. Right. Like this should be our approach to street crime, to community violence. And that's a different question from whether or not Vice President Harris is going to run as tough on Trump's crime. It's also a different question of like, she can run against Trump by using stigmatizing language, like, you

know, the felon versus the prosecutor, and try to tie Trump to the bad people that we know as criminals and felons. But it could just as easily be framed around just objectively look that this person has tried to put themselves above the law. Vice President Harris could use the skills of a prosecutor being able to ask incisive questions without necessarily leaning into the label of being a prosecutor. So I think all of that kind of remains to be seen. The sense I get is that they had to pull this campaign together very quickly. And they are throwing things at the wall a little bit and trying to see what messages are resonating, what's connecting. That makes total sense. And that's a really good differentiation that I hadn't thought about. Vice President Harris has occasionally said that she was a progressive prosecutor during her time as California attorney general and as San Francisco DA.

How would you respond to that? What does her record actually indicate? Because she's also been criticized for being the opposite. And the truth, I think, is a little more complicated on both sides. I think that's exactly right. I think it's really difficult to look at a prosecutor's career and point to this or that case and have the measure of things. The complexity of prosecution is just really hard to capture. I will pull out a couple of themes that have jumped out to me. I guess I would say one thing from her career that I noticed is a sense of duty to the office and a sense of pragmatism around the law. Kamala Harris was a ardent opponent of the death penalty in California. And anti-death penalty advocates were really a bit taken aback by that at the time. And Vice President Harris's argument was just that, you know, despite her personally held convictions about that punishment, that the ruling was legally flawed. And by the way, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed

with her. So she's also basically said that she, as attorney general, is bound to advocate on behalf of her client, which is the state of California. Just like lawyers may have to defend people whose conduct they don't necessarily agree with. That was how she framed some of her decisions. So that was her explanation for arguing to release fewer prisons than the courts had ordered after the Supreme Court found that overcrowding in California prisons was leading to cruel and unusual punishment. I guess a third thing that has jumped out to me about Kamala Harris's career is a sense of, I'm almost going to call it like old school progressivism. So not progressivism in the 21st century meaning where it's come to kind of just mean on the left, but progressive in the sense that I think she's a big believer that it is the

state's obligation to shape people's lives for the better. As an economics major, I think she often sees that through the lens of incentives like carrots and sticks. And I believe she thinks the state should have a lot of carrots and a lot of sticks, like this idea of a progressive prosecutor has really shifted the Overton window. And trying to fit the kind of perception of what that means now to a career 20 years ago, it doesn't work. It was a totally different time. What was progressive then is not the same as what it would be. You know, all of these things just have shifted so drastically in that time. A hundred percent. I mean, I reread her book, Smart on Crime, that was written in 2009. And I'm sure if it were rewritten today, the language would be different. And I'm sure there's things that would be approached differently just because the way we talk about the criminal justice system is so different today. But you just, I mean, you have to read that in the context of that was before Ferguson. That was before George Floyd. That was before Michelle Alexander's new Jim Crow. That was before most people, even ostensibly liberal or left-leaning people, like many just really

hadn't thought about these questions at that time. So I think when you read it in that light, I just think that's important. That context is important and the time that it came from. I've been recommending that as people dig through this record, just being cognizant of the fact that because this is an executive role, the buck stops with Kamala Harris. You have to make decisions. You have to either prosecute this case or not prosecute this case. And the law is going to dictate a certain thing and tradition is going to dictate a certain thing. And that is very different from people who run, say, out of a legislative background. Because if you've been like a state legislator, there's bills you support and there's bills you don't support and we have your voting record. But these bills are long and they're confusing and you can always point to something to sort of say, well, here's why, even though I

liked it, I didn't support it or vice versa. Like there's always a way to kind of wiggle out of a legislative decision. I think that's just much less true with a executive function where you have to make these decisions one way or the other. That was my conversation with Jamal Slarte, staff writer for The Marshall Project. Thank you for that, Josie. That's the latest for now. We'll get to some headlines in a moment, but if you like our show, make sure to subscribe and share it with your friends. We'll be back after some ads. Now let's wrap up with some headlines.

Headlines. Fears of a widening war are growing in the Middle East again after Israel launched airstrikes deep into neighboring Lebanon Sunday. The Israeli strikes were a retaliation for a strike launched from Lebanon Saturday that killed 12 people at a soccer field in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. Most of the victims were children and teenagers. Israel and the United States blamed the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah for the attack, though

the group denied responsibility. Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging regular rocket fire ever since Israel launched its war in Gaza in retaliation for the October 7th attack by Hamas. Hezbollah's leaders have said the group would stop attacking Israel if it were to reach a ceasefire deal with Hamas in Gaza. Former President Donald Trump seemed to say the quiet part out loud on Friday when he told a group of supporters that if they elect him in November, they quote, won't have to vote anymore. You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years. You know what? It'll be fixed. It'll be fine. You won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you, Christians. I'm a

Christian. I love you. Get out. You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote. What? Interesting. What are you saying? What are you saying? Remember, this is the same guy who said he'll only be a dictator on his first day of office. It sounds like he has other plans. Trump was speaking at the Believer Summit, hosted by the conservative advocacy group Turning Point Action. And in a later statement, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign tried to clarify Trump's remarks, writing that the former president, quote, was talking about uniting this

country and bringing prosperity to every American. Now, Trayvon. Is that what he was talking about? Was he talking about that? I didn't get that at all from what he said. Yikes. Didn't sound like uniting this country at all. Not at all. For his part, Trump seems over the whole uniting the country thing that he promised two weeks ago in the wake of an assassination attempt against him. Here's Trump at a rally in Minnesota on Saturday. They all say, I think he's changed. I think he's changed since two weeks ago. Something affected him. No, I haven't changed.

Maybe I've gotten worse, actually. Okay. In a statement, the Harris campaign responded to Trump's latest anti-democratic comments saying, quote, when Vice President Harris says this election is about freedom, she means it. Millions of West Coast residents are under air quality warnings as firefighters battle California's biggest wildfire of the year. The blaze, named the Park Fire, spanned over 350,000 acres on Sunday as thousands of firefighters worked to contain the flames. According to authorities, the Park Fire broke out last Wednesday after a man pushed a burning car into a ditch in Butte County, and the hot temperatures and high winds allowed the blaze to spread rapidly throughout Northern California. The park fire has destroyed at least 134 structures so far.

As of Sunday evening, only 12% of the fire was contained. Canadian women's soccer coach Bev Priestman promised to cooperate with the investigation into the team's alleged use of drones to spy on their competitors at the Paris Olympics. In case you missed it, amid all the excitement for this year's games, Priestman's assistants were caught using drones to spy on their competitors from New Zealand while they trained on Wednesday. FIFA suspended and removed Priestman from her country's team on Friday. Canada, the reigning gold medal champions, can still play, but its team faces an uphill battle after the International Olympic Committee penalized them in a way that will make it harder to advance to the next round.

In other news, USA women's soccer dominated over Germany and Team USA gymnastics scored big over the weekend. Simone Biles pulled off an incredible balance beam routine on Sunday, landing her in first place despite her calf injury. And her teammate Suni Lee did not lag far behind, and the two will represent the U.S. in the individual all-around final on Thursday. And the USA men's basketball team also won their highly anticipated game versus Serbia. Now how you cheating at the Olympics, Chelsea?

We all know about drones now. You could have maybe pulled off a drone thing in 2016, but it's too late. It's too late to try drones. Yeah, y'all gonna have to figure out how to cheat a different way. But you're the gold medal winners from the last go around. What you need the drone for? I wonder if they used the drone the last go around. Uh-oh.

I'm not accusing Canada of anything. I'm just asking questions. Well, that investigation gonna figure something out. Figure something out. And those are the headlines. That is all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, get an air purifier for fire season and

tell your friends to listen and if you're into reading and not just about how desperate canada soccer team was to medal at the olympics like me what a day is also a nightly newsletter so check it out and subscribe at cricket.com subscribe i'm josie duffy rice i'm trey val anderson and don't cheat at the olympics well don't cheat anywhere don't cheat but like especially don't cheat at the Olympics. Well, don't cheat anywhere. Don't cheat. But, like, especially don't cheat dumb, you know. Cheat smart. Just kidding. Don't cheat. Don't cheat.

I mean, don't cheat at all, ever. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Bill Lance. Our associate producer is Raven Yamamoto. We had production help today from Leo Duran, Michelle Aloy, Ethan Olbermann, Greg Walters, and Julia Clare. Our showrunner is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adrian Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gillyard and Kashaka.