Setting the Record Straight on Kamala's Record

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:45 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1054. I'm your host Thomas Smith. That over there is real-life attorney and perpetual vacation Matt. No, that's not true. Matt Cameron, how are you doing?

0:00:56 Matt: This is one of my two weeks of vacation, and I am happy to be coming to you from the smallest town in the smallest state in the small library. I want to thank the Block Island Library for hosting me today and let me have a quiet place to record.

0:01:02 Thomas: Whoa. Nice. Yeah. Is this an official sponsorship? Are the

0:01:12 Matt: Will get behind the Block Island Library any day. It's a wonderful place. It pro tip, one of the only places on Block Island where you can get free Wi -Fi. Wi

0:01:19 Thomas: We finally hit the big time. We are sponsored by the Block Island Public Library, everybody. I'm going to tell my mom.

0:01:25 Matt: That's right. That's great. Thank you very much. Yeah, having a great time and doing some thinking and writing, and then I'll be back to work for the rest of the year. But how about you? How's your week? What's going on?

0:01:29 Thomas: No, that's awesome. Well, just, a news week.

0:01:37 Matt: How about it?

0:01:38 Thomas: I mean it's just, I think, again, to today's episode in which we're going to take a look at Kamala Harris's record and, you know, it's re -examining stuff. It's probably examining some stuff for the first time. A lot of fear about move. Think I expressed a solid opinion either way because I genuinely didn't know what was the best outcome, you know, like what wasthe best chance to beat Trump. So you far it's going about as well as I possibly could have imagined it going replacing Biden.

0:02:03 Matt: Yeah.

0:02:03 Thomas: And that's good.

0:02:04 Matt: No.

0:02:04 Thomas: I mean, that's awesome. It's it's nice to have a good thing. I still, I worry long-term, but you know, we can talk about that another time, but especially after hearing a bit of Biden's speech last night where he sounded worse than ever. I mean, it really, I mean sometimes it goes, I means it's COVID, yeah, COVID, but also you know sometimes things progress really quickly when you're that old, it can happen, so I don't know. Either way, feeling positive about this change and looking to, you know, rally behind the nominee, whoever she might be.

0:02:16 Matt: Yeah. Poor guy. Feel for him. Sure. Yeah.

0:02:34 Matt: And if it's Harris, I'm more excited than I thought I was going to be after spending some time with her record. And so I'm happy to talk about that.

0:02:39 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, I did I want to note that we have a Gavel Gavel recorded for Michael Cohen's first day at testimony featuring Eli Bosnick. There's so much there. We recorded, gosh, I think two and a half hours, I want to say. And that willbe edited and released before the end of the month.

0:02:52 Matt: At long last. So much fun.

0:02:56 Thomas: A lot of fun over there on Gavel Gavel. Well, that said, hop on to patreon.com/law. Avoid this break and we'll see you after this. Right. Where do you want to begin, Matt?

0:03:09 Matt: Let's just frame this conversation real quick before we get going. You know, we're not objective journalists. I think everyone listening to this show understands that. I hope that maybe it's one of the reasons you listen to this show is that you want to hear what we have to say about it coming from a specifically liberal left perspective on these things. So I think it's safe to say it's the official position of this show that the movement behind Donald Trump is dangerous and that we're headed in a pretty bad direction. If Trump was elected, it's not just Trump himself, but the whole thing.

0:03:33 Thomas: I'm not going to derail you, but I want to come out firm on the side of objectivity is stupid, not real, and I do think we are objective in the most meaningful sense, which is that my only allegiance is actually to the truth and facts. That's all I care about. Doesn't mean I always get them right. That's what I care about. If your goal is objectivity, that means you care about something other than just the facts. Actually, you care about being perceived in the middle, and that causes you to get things wrong in my opinion, but I'm not going to go on a whole thing. Point is

0:03:46 Matt: That's right. Right. That's fine. No, no, no. I totally agree. And this is everything we've been talking about in the New York Times. That's what it comes down to, is the need to be seen as completely objective. But I just want to remind people that we are fully behind whoever the Democratic nominee is going to be, inevitably. That's just going to happen. We were behind Biden, even though we both had serious concerns about maybe where things were going with Joe Biden. I do want to say that, you know, I've had my issues with him. I know we both have. And certainly it wasn't my candidate, but he did put in 54 years of public service. And he deserves a respect for that.

0:03:59 Thomas: Yeah yes yeah And this move is pretty big. I don't know if we got a chance to, I mean, we didn't dwell on it much, but like, that is a pretty amazing thing. Like, I give give the man credit. Hard thing to do. I know it was kind of, in a way, it was forced on him, but still, like that's a tough thing, and it, it really does, it's it's a perfect time to bring in the stark contrast of him and Trump. I mean, with Trump, Trump would never in a bajillion years do anything even close to this. And it's it is a nice little contrast.

0:04:25 Matt: It's huge, historic. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So true. It is. And I hope that's how he's remembered, even after all this. And again, all kinds of other issues, and I'm sure maybe someday we'll do a review of the Biden presidency and talk in some more criticism about it. But today is the day to talk about getting Kamala Harris elected. So want to point that out. And obviously, I think it's expected that we're behind the Democratic nominee. But I'm excited, actually, for this new energy and for some of these policies we can talk about.

And what we're going to do today is we're gonna look back at the entire career of Kamala Harris. And we're Going to talk about her time as vice president, which I wasn't able to do before when I when you talked about this four years ago. Not going to get into things like Israel, Palestine or Ukraine or what she might be doing on international matters, because we don't know officially what her policies are yet as president, we'll wait.

I think maybe it's worth doing another episode when she actually releases a platform. We can compare it to Biden's. We can prepare it to her past presidential platforms and her past record. But for now, I think it's worthwhile. It's worth reminding people who this candidate is and why she's worth supporting and maybe how she's gotten a pretty bad rap, I Think, for a number of different reasons over the last few years. And some of it, I will say, she did to herself by not having the best presidential campaign she could have had in 2020, for

0:05:50 Matt: Sure.

0:05:50 Thomas: Yeah, One thing that is frustrating to people maybe is the idea that allegiance to Democrats or recognizing that we need to vote for Democrats over Republicans means we have to somehow be blind to their faults, which is just absolutely not true.

0:06:02 Matt: Of course.

0:06:03 Thomas: I mean, you could tell me so many things about Kamala that would be horrifying and that would suck and it would bum me out. But it just doesn't in factual terms does not amount to anything compared to what it would mean to elect Trump. And so in that spirit, I only bring it up because it's like, you know, I'm not here and I don't think you're here to paper over anything.

I kind of want to have just like a nice, honest, objective kind of view to the extent possible, you know, what she did, because there are a lot of attacks over her record as a prosecutor. And I'll be honest, I paid almost no attention to her as VP. And I think it's interesting. It's one thing I realized partway wait a minute, I almost never see or hear from her. And yet Fox News probably shows her all the time. And I think it's interesting that like, possibly the right knows more about, well, I don't, I don't know if you can say it's knowledge, but the right has heard more things about Kamala Harris than I probably have easily for the last four years.

0:06:44 Matt: Sure. Yeah. Say more. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Sure. And one of those things that they're saying is that she's a far left Marxist. Of course, they said that about Joe Biden too. So yeah, yeah, right. Well, her father, to be fair, her father Donald Harris is a Stanford-trained Marxist economist. So I mean, you can see how there's, yeah.

0:07:03 Thomas: Nice. Awesome. Sweet.

0:07:12 Matt: There's some criticism to be had there if you don't like that. She is not herself a Marxist, certainly. Is, inarguably, she is to the left of most Democrats, I think, from what we're going to hear today. But that doesn't always say a lot in this country, since we don't have a real left. As Democrats go, I think she's pretty good. But one thing I wanted to start with was her ideology. And that's, of course, something very important to this show as we talk about law and policy, and as we try to consider her what her policies might be in the future. And I actually am very sympathetic to her lack of ideology, as strange as that might sound.

0:07:25 Thomas: Mm -hmm.

0:07:43 Thomas: Interesting.

0:07:44 Matt: So I want to play a clip from our favorite podcast, The New York Times, The Daily. Big fans.

0:07:49 Thomas: It's not. I just hope that people know that's a joke.

0:07:51 Matt: That is a joke. We do not like The Daily, but The Daily did interview Kamala Harris in 2019, and they got an answer that I really liked, so I wanted to play that for you.

0:07:52 Thomas: Yeah. All right.

0:08:00 Clip: I mean, I'm not really into labels. For

0:08:03 Thomas: For listeners in here, but right before that answer, I had asked her if we're going steady or not. And so that's just to give the context.

0:08:11 Matt: Yeah, goodness.

0:08:11 Clip: For me, I come at issues through the lens of how it actually impacts people, as opposed to, does this issue fit in a certain category of perspective, right? What she thinks about policy in terms of a series of practical tests, but not necessarily trying to fit it into a particular ideological umbrella or even necessarily some big sweeping integrated vision. You know, if anything, what they would have told you probably is that, you know, I have often asked, I always ask questions about policy that are based on how it was actually impacting person, to the point that sometimes it just drives them bananas because I literally get into that level of detail, like, you know,

0:08:52 Matt: Listeners may have heard me say almost exactly the same thing, that my approach to the law is pragmatism, is how it's actually going to affect real people and what the best outcome that we can get for the most people is going to be from any given law or policy. And of course, I am to the left. My general ideology is to the lift, but I don't subscribe to anyone organized Marxist or socialist way of thinking about things. I'm still working out a lot of these things for myself. I consider myself to be an abolitionist in progress, which she, she certainly isn't. I do really like that answer. I don't know, what do you think about that answer?

0:09:24 Thomas: I think it's a fine answer. And again, that's, that is pretty dated. And I think that I would wanna see what that means. I think what's most important is how does she make those judgments. I also think that, similarly, identities that we take on serve different roles. You know, I think that I would identify as a Democrat because I think it's important. I think the most effective force against fascism right now is supporting the Democratic Party. It doesn't mean I agree with everything they say, but similarly, undermining when it comes to these far left identities, while I probably identify with a lot of the policies and issues and maybe even some labels, I do find a lot of that to be a kind of a purity competition among people to sort of come across, you know, best and the most left and all that. And I find that useless. Like I'm not interested in, like, views are to try to solve problems or to try and make things happen policy-wise. They're not to impress somebody.

0:09:29 Matt: Sure.

0:09:58 Matt: For sure. For Sure.

0:10:12 Matt: Exactly. I think I most closely identify as a democratic socialist. I really like what Bernie Sanders has to say. But Bernie Sanders at the end of the day would tell you that his policies are through the lens of what's best for working people, right? For actual working class people that don't get to make decisions for the country. That's not too far off from what she's saying here. And her record does more or less support that she supports working people. So I don't, I'm not saying she's Bernie Sanders. I'm not saying she is a democratic socialist, but a democratic socialist is not going to win our nomination. It's just not going to happen right now, especially in July of 2024. So let's say, you know, and,

0:10:17 Thomas: And Yeah. Yeah, nice.

0:10:41 Thomas: I do know that her, I know you're going to get to it, but her Senate voting record was extremely left.

0:10:45 Matt: Progressive for sure. No doubt. No, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, she just doesn't identify as any one particular political ideology. And I think that's important to remember because you're going to hear a lot from your Fox News watching relatives and MAGA of people about how she's a hard left Marxist socialist. As much as I'd like to have something like that in the conversation, not there. She's not looking to tear anything down here. She is looking for progressive incremental change that will make things better for individual people. I do actually believe that, that she has after sort of looking at the way she approaches things.

I think that's a good place to start, just looking at her ideology. I think we should just run through her career very quickly. And we might even have listeners who are young enough that they weren't really checked in. I hope maybe we have listeners that are young enough they weren't checked in in 2020 when she was running. And certainly people weren't paying attention back then anyway. So just very quickly, she graduated from UC Hastings. She's very much a California person. In 1989, she went on to be the deputy DA, county DA in Alameda County, California. 1990 and then went on to be the DA for San Francisco, which is obviously a big position in 2004. And then on to be the Attorney General of California in 2011. Actually, that vote was so close that it took three weeks to count.

That was a really tough election for her. I want to start with her as a prosecutor. And really, when we're talking about that, we're talking about her work in San Francisco, because she was a county prosecutor before that. I don't think there's really anything notable from that. I'm sure she was fine. I do want to say, just generally, as a lefty defense attorney, I have trouble supporting prosecutors for any office.

I don't have, you know, again, I, I have a complicated, a literal complicated relationship with prosecutors, since I do share a mortgage with one of them. And I think

0:10:50 Thomas: Yeah exactly. Jeez. Jeez.

0:12:09 Matt: She's one of the best.

0:12:10 Thomas: It's complicated on Facebook. Jeez. All right. You heard it here, everybody.

0:12:13 Matt: Well, you know, it Is. And I think that, but, you know, she's one of the best people ever in the world. And I think that she has an incredible approach to the work that she does. And I know that progressive prosecutors can exist because I know her and I know the people that she works with and has worked with. Different a little different in Massachusetts, obviously, but I am conflicted at the end of the day because I don't think that job should exist in its current form, no matter how good it's going to be for My retirement. Another show. And we're certainly going to talk about progressive prosecutors and sort of my thoughts about where I'm at with a lot of these things. But the fact is that at the end of the day, you take anybody who was a prosecutor and really anybody who is an attorney general in a state as large as California, you're going to find things you don't like in their record. That is just going to happen.

Because at the day when you're the DA for San Francisco, when you are the Attorney General of California, you're running a very large law firm and people are signing your name onto things constantly. That's not always an excuse. You should have some idea what's being filed in your name. But you know, the

0:12:35 Thomas: Ooh. Yeah.

0:13:05 Matt: AG's office, for example, I looked at 5600 attorneys, right? That's a huge law firm. Going on there. But I just want to address up front the standard lefty talking point on this. I'm talking to people who I consider to be friends of mine and people who I trust and respect in many other matters. But please stop saying that Kamala Harris is a cop. I'd like it if you stopped saying that. Say that every prosecutor is a cop. I don't know that I'd go that far. It's a different job. Certainly, they enforce things that cops do, but they also prosecute cops, as she did. They often don't do things cops want.

0:13:24 Thomas: Yeah.

0:13:35 Thomas: And I don't know how many prosecutors go and just, you know, for example, murder a woman in her home just cold bloodedly. So they may defend those people and that would suck.

0:13:41 Matt: Yeah. They may.

0:13:44 Thomas: Or they may rhetorically defend them. I don't know. But yeah, better than cops for that. Just that alone is all I'm saying.

0:13:46 Matt: Yeah, no. And I've already said some things that have made some people I know very angry, and I'm sorry for that. But I don't think that prosecutors should exist in their current form, and I'll just leave it at that. Not necessarily saying that she was a progressive prosecutor in 2004. That wasn't the thing that it is now. Certainly, she took some good positions. She took some bad positions.

But she didn't do anything that I could find that was strictly objectionable in the way that you could easily find in a red state DA's record, for example. So, this point, I was going back and trying to figure out where it came from. And this was discussed in the previous OA episode, you went through this, but there was a very influential piece in January 2019 written by Laura Bazelon, who's a journalist and law professor, I believe.

And she has since kind of backed off from some of the things that she said here, she put together kind of the best case against Harris as progressive and tried to draw from her record to show some things that she didn't like. And again, I wanted to set that up to say that you can easily find these things in any prosecutor's record. Not too unusual in any of these things.

Things as DA that were pointed out, that have been pointed out, and I'm just going to sort of draw from not just from that Bazelon piece, but other things I've heard that are kind of floating around here. At some point we need to do an episode about Annie Dookhan here in Massachusetts. It was the biggest drug lab scandal in U.S. history. It's an incredible story.

It's actually the only drug lab scandal in which the person involved was not an addict, was not actually taking the drugs for their own use or selling them. In this case, this was one of the more sort of classic drug scandals. Deborah Madden in California was a drug analyst who was addicted and was taking the drugs. And apparently at least one prosecutor knew this. Kamala Harris never knew this, she was never aware of this, this would have come up if she had known.

But the judge held that this was a Brady violation, that her office was aware that there was an issue with this drug analyst. This was used against her in several different directions. And again, it should be in the sense that she was at the top of the office in San Francisco. At the end of the day, can't say that she is directly responsible for the drug lab or that this was something that was brought to her attention and covered up. That just didn't happen.

Also, cases were dismissed in that, and that's small potatoes compared to Annie Dookhan, which again, we really need to talk about. And I'm bringing that up because obviously Annie Dookhan's in my backyard, but also because that was one of the biggest law enforcement scandals in American history. And it resulted in the dismissal of thousands of cases. Of course, in one of most progressive states with some of the most progressive prosecutors. So this stuff can happen anywhere.

And it's, you know, you just can't be everywhere at once. Feel like I'm going to be making more excuses for prosecutors than you're ever going to hear me make in any other show. But, you know, there we go. Other thing as DA that she was criticized for was her truancy policy, which was a little weird. I think we remember hearing something about that.

0:16:16 Thomas: Yeah.

0:16:17 Matt: There was a serious truancy issue in San Francisco. She developed a program to kind of start to work with that. It did not go straight to, as was reported, you know, jailing parents. That just didn't actually happen on her watch. Nobody was actually jailed.

0:16:17 Thomas: Oh, Yeah. I remember that bullshit talking point.

0:16:31 Matt: Yeah, There was threatening. Certainly they could, after a very long process involving social services and review boards and letters and meetings, they could get to the point where they said, look, we could put you in for a year. We could fine you. We don't want to do that. Again, this was sort of out of desperation trying to get kids to go to school and trying to hold parents responsible. I don't support jailing parents, who probably, there's some good reasons. I would guess that maybe your kids aren't going to school or that something's gone wrong at home. Maybe sending the parent to jail isn't going to help anything. That policy did become state law in 2011. And she said that she regrets sort of pushing it the way she did because she didn't ever want people to be jailed.

0:17:07 Matt: She didn't pass the law, but the law is there, she has to do something with that, with truancy, is Yeah, of

0:17:10 Thomas: Importantly, discretion is a big thing, right? I mean, so so the decision she makes about what she's going to pursue, definitely she has a lot of room to put her kind of touch on the job, right.

0:17:22 Matt: Course. If truancy is something that voters are worried about, there's law to help address that. And she has said she thought it went a little too far in the end, the way that it was developed, other states have actually passed similar models. Truancy courts and everything else. But again, I saw it sort of portrayed as something like she was some kind of hardliner or that she was going out of her way to lock up poor parents. It's just none of that is true. So it's just not what happened. There was a case of someone named Sherry Peoples who ended up going to jail in 2013. Again, Harris was long past being a DA at that point. Again, there's some merit to it, but not that much. And I'm just working again directly from the Laura Bazelon piece. Those are the only two things she identifies for her as DA. And I think the DA stuff is really probably the most relevant because that's a local office where she has the most direct effect on things.

Attorney General is a huge office, especially as you know, in a state as large as yours. And, uh, I can't hold her personally responsible for everything that the state does as Attorney General. I think it's totally fair to look at everything that happened in her administration, but let's talk about the death penalty was we get to the Attorney General's office and it's something you wanted to get into.

0:17:45 Thomas: Yeah.

0:18:28 Thomas: This is something I came across, uh, as well when I was just doing a little research, Matt, and I had forgotten about this if I ever knew it, but I'm actually quite impressed by how this went down, this death penalty incident. So this is about someone killed a police officer and it was like 2004 or something. It's a long time ago. You know, people were calling for this person's head. The police union was, obviously. And I just want to pause right there. And if you could tell me, like, what role does she have? I assume it's, so is it up to her to, like, to go for the death penalty or not at that point?

0:19:02 Matt: Prosecutors always have the discretion to pursue life or death and death penalty jurisdictions. And she had promised that she would never recommend the death penalty for any defendant, which I really respect. That's the right position when you have that choice.

0:19:14 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Here comes like, you've made that campaign promise. Now, let's give you the test for it, because this is a cop killer and this, you know, police union and other politicians, like, this is one of those that was a tough case, to she stuck to her guns, said she was not pursuing the death penalty. And then at the funeral for the police officer, Diane Feinstein gets up and at the funeral says that Kamala is making the wrong decision. And this should be a death penalty case, which is insane to me. And in the face of all that, she stuck to her guns. And I find that to be really impressive, actually.

0:19:37 Matt: That's right.

0:19:47 Matt: It's because one of the criticisms that I keep hearing is that she doesn't really have any principles and that she'll just say or do whatever. I don't think that's true after taking a look at her record. And I think she really, especially believes capital punishment should never be used. I think this is really the test of it. This wasn't too far into her term that she had to face this challenge. Was incredibly controversial. Widow of the officer shot was very angry, very publicly angry with her. As you said, police unions, and I always respect a prosecutor who gets on the wrong side of police unions. I think you're probably doing your job if you're doing that. So that's a point in her favor.

0:20:15 Thomas: Yeah, I think everyone should be on the other side of police unions. I think they're one of the worst groups of thing ever in the country. And neither here nor there, but it is always, you know, like when you look at the details, yeah, this guy did shoot the police officer, uh, killed him, but you look at the details and they were undercover and this person was going to buy marijuana in an area that had a lot of gang violence. And this person brought a weapon for self -defense in that context. And an undercover police officer tried to pursue him because of the gun, I think it was. And so this person thinks that it's a rival gang or something. And it's like, it's, I'm not saying that means he was fine to shoot somebody. But what happens is inevitably the police union side makes this into a cold -blooded cop killer, calculated, he went out there to serial kill police officers, and you look at it's like, well, yeah, it's, like, a little bit more complicated than that.

0:20:19 Matt: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, sure.

0:21:04 Matt: Shot him in the back in uniform. Yeah of course.

0:21:09 Thomas: And, point is, I really respect her for resisting all those calls in that very intense moment when even the, you know, senator from the blue state is at a funeral calling you out for doing the wrong thing. That's pretty crazy.

0:21:22 Matt: Yeah. And I think some of the cops did by name as well too, and that is tough. And I will point out that just another sort of personal thing of mine, I guess, but when you you have punishments that are imposed wildly different because the victim is a police officer. I always have problems with that too. And that's the issue with the California law here is that in 1973, California made it a special circumstance to murder a police officer under any circumstances, even something like this, where you didn't even know it was. And I think that that's right. No matter how you feel about the death penalty to resist applying it in every circumstance in which something categorically applies. So I just wanted to point that out too.

0:21:26 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, it is pretty crazy to be like, "Oh, found out the person you had no idea was a cop is a cop. Stop even more punishment now because you should have known that they had a sacred aura of being a guy." It's stupid, I

0:21:57 Matt: Yeah, Right. No, no, it's one thing if you have a law that punishes people disproportionately for demonstrated hate crimes or beating a pregnant woman or an elderly person, right? You understand that as different categories of victims. But anyway, I don't know how many people agree with me on that, but that's how I feel about that.

0:22:14 Thomas: Agree Yeah.

0:22:23 Matt: All right, good. Yeah, that's a good one. I think that's something to really point out. I'm glad we talked about that."

0:22:29 Thomas: And I did want to add, so in the election to try to become AG of California, um, death penalty was a big issue because the Republican tried to run on this death penalty issue and

0:22:35 Matt: It An incredibly close three-week counting period there. It came out to... I don't have the numbers in front of me, but it was very close for her. And I think that may well have shaped her feelings too about what her job was as attorney general. I don't know. I wouldn't personally change anything, but I can see how maybe if you feel like you're right down the middle on these things, that's what happens.

I do think that part of this has been clouded as well because she made the mistake when the New York Times called her the previous top cop, and they ran a whole story and she sort of adopted the moniker of top cop, which is really unfortunate, especially because this was the summer before George Floyd when that was not something she really wanted to be by that point. She wasn't the top cop. She was an attorney general. It's a little different. She's representing the state in any number of proceedings in the state's interest, which is why this other thing with the death penalty that came up when she was AG is a lot more complicated than presented, as it always is.

0:23:25 Thomas: So What's this thing? I'm not sure I remember.

0:23:28 Matt: As Attorney General, you have the discretion to appeal or not appeal things. There was a finding in California by a district court judge that the death penalty wasn't constitutional in California. And that, I think, is probably her personal belief. She had never pushed for it. She never supported it. But she wanted to push back against the findings that were made in that case specifically.

And this is one of those things where appellate lawyers can be a little harder to explain than trial lawyers and where appellate proceedings can be able to more complicated than the rest of what we think of as lawyers doing. Because one of the issues that the court had found when reviewing the death penalty in California was the amount of time that people were sitting on death row. And she did not She did not want that finding to stand, that it was unconstitutional because it was taking too long to kill people.

Anybody who supports a proper process and justice in these things has to understand that we cannot rush death penalty cases. We shouldn't have them, but if we're going to have them they should have the maximum amount of due process. That's my understanding of sort of the way that she was thinking about that. It is still a little strange that she appealed something saying the death penalty was unconstitutional. I'm not going to say it's not. You're making decisions as an attorney general at the top of a state like California that are not as immediately obvious sort of as policy matters all the time, more legal decisions and tactical decisions.

0:24:06 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:24:40 Matt: That's part of the problem.

0:24:41 Thomas: And especially because I feel like if there's one issue that like she is very consistent on, I feel like it would be pretty hard to say like, no, she was doing this because secretly she does want the death penalty. It's like, I don't know, she staked a lot on not supporting that, so I will go ahead and give her the benefit of the doubt that this was some sort of tactical legal thing. Makes sense to me, I

0:24:51 Matt: No, absolutely. Yeah, I think so. And again, I'm not saying she was necessarily a progressive prosecutor, progressive AG for her whole term, that everything she did was. Think that she twisted herself a little bit when that was becoming more favorable as a thing you could be to try to look like she maybe was a little bit more.

0:25:15 Matt: I don't know. But I do think that she does have a basic set of core principles that she's working from.

0:25:22 Thomas: Matt, I have bad news, we, we are no longer sponsored by the, what is it, Block Island, what is it, I already forget because Our sponsor, Matt, was kicked out, I know, maybe they're, maybe they are right wing, I don't know, or, or is it just that we didn't early start enough? It could be that, too. We don't know. Look, we don't knows whose fault it was.

0:25:29 Matt: Diamond Library, yes.

0:25:43 Matt: Been kicked out of a lot of libraries in my life, uh, Thomas, you know, it's just they

0:25:46 Thomas: First time for podcasting, I bet.

0:25:48 Matt: First time for podcasting, yeah, usually it's just urination or whatever, but yeah, no, no, I I've just I've closed down a lot libraries That's right, yeah, we were just talking about the attorney general record for Kamala Harris. And, you know, I just want to reiterate again that what the attorney general does in California is lead an army of lawyers. There's a lot of people involved in a lot of decisions that have to be made, a lot of things that even though maybe her name is being signed to them, she's not responsible for every single thing they do. I hate to say something like that because it sounds like such a dodge, but it does explain some of this. You know, we're just talking about that death penalty issue. I still don't really know, honestly, I'd need to look more into it, I guess, because, you know, it did end up with that decision being reversed because they appealed it.

0:25:53 Thomas: Reading too many books. Yeah.

0:26:17 Thomas: Yeah. Huh.

0:26:28 Matt: And that left the death penalty in place in California. So that is not a great outcome. I will say that.

0:26:32 Thomas: Wow. No kidding.

0:26:34 Matt: Yeah. And I do want to say, again, I want to reiterate that I don't necessarily support prosecutors running for public office, given the choice. Know, I do have issues. And as I said, you will find issues with any prosecutor, especially any prosecutor in any major city who has had a long career in that position. She did also run on not prosecuting anyone under California's terrible three strikes law, which, as I hope listeners know, is that after three felonies, you can end up with a life sentence mandatorily in California. And she promised that she would not apply a three strikes policy for anybody with the third strike being a nonviolent felony. And she kept that promise. There was one controversial appeal where she was appealing something done by a predecessor. Again, that is attorney general type stuff, you know, it's a little harder to pick apart than just to say that she supported or didn't support it. Policy as attorney general on marijuana was about the same as it was for in all states where marijuana was not legal at time, um,

0:26:48 Thomas: Yeah.

0:27:27 Thomas: Okay. This is something that I see a lot. We should definitely spend a minute on this one, because the big attack is she jailed people for marijuana, and then she laughed about it, or

0:27:38 Matt: You know, she, it certainly has evolved, as anybody who's been in government, I think, in the last 15 years, it's all evolved. But, uh, obviously as a prosecutor, she was prosecuting marijuana-related offenses, and that almost always, at least in blue cities, does not mean marijuana possession. It almost always means possession with intent, distribution, trafficking. Few, from what I saw of her marijuana prosecution cases, were necessarily for simple possession. I obviously would not want to see any of it prosecuted, especially now.

It is a little more complicated than just saying she was locking people up for weed, as it always is. And I think there's something like 1,900 cases or something under her office at that time. Was on the record, though, in 2014 as saying that she, she was open to marijuana legalization. And the thing with the laughing that you mentioned was when she was asked on, I think it was a Breakfast Club show about her position on it. And she just kind of made a joke about how half my family is Jamaican, what do you think. And her father did not like that at all. Her father, who of course is Jamaican, almost disowned her, it sounds like, and

0:27:40 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm.

0:28:37 Matt: Actually wrote sort of a nasty letter about it.

0:28:37 Thomas: The Marxist, though, the guy that

0:28:40 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. He really doesn't like the reputation. I know. I know, be cool, man. But no, no, he really didn't. And I can totally, I mean, and again, I'm not Jamaican.

0:28:40 Thomas: Come on.

0:28:50 Matt: I'm going to say I understand.

0:28:49 Thomas: Yeah, sounds like a bad joke. Sounds like a gaffe is what it sounds like.

0:28:51 Matt: But yeah, yeah, it does. And I think that he's just a little sensitive about the stereotype.

0:28:56 Thomas: My policy is once a politician has made even a single gaffe, I'm no longer going to vote for them. That's just how I roll. And so I've never voted in my life, actually, ever. Someday.

0:29:03 Matt: Out. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And certainly, I mean, if you're, yeah. And if you support not having prosecutors in public office ever, which that's a goal, that's, that's a time I'd like to get to at some point. But, you know, you got the best Supreme Court justice in U.S. history. Earl Warren was a prosecutor. You got all kinds of other people who

0:29:24 Thomas: That's a little broad for me. I don't know. I think the details matter. I mean, I don't know. What have they done for us lately? And what do they intend to do? I could see someone having even gone into being a prosecutor, trying to be progressive, maybe not doing a good job, and now they're going into a different line of work and might be able to be more progressive there. I don't know.

0:29:31 Matt: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. No. And that's absolutely, that happens all the time. And it is a great way to get started in your legal career no matter what. But yeah, there are very different ways to be prosecutors. And, you know, I do have to push back no matter what I think about the job or whether it should or shouldn't exist. And I've already said this, That, you know, it's not necessarily fair to just brand somebody forever as having been a prosecutor, and that means you can't support them, or they can't be progressive in the future. Because throughout her career, as you've seen a lot of politicians of her age and political inclinations, she has gone further left on a lot of these things, become more progressive, and become more understanding of a lot of these issues. But she has never opposed legalizing marijuana, to my knowledge, and her presidential platform in 2020 was all for it. And obviously, I'm sure that she supports the Biden reform that we've already talked about that I don't necessarily support wholeheartedly.

0:30:15 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. One more quick point on the prosecutor thing, I get that there are a lot of people who think there can't be a progressive prosecutor or there's no way to reform the system from the inside or that's not a valid thing to try to do. I understand that position. But the only thing I would ask is that people understand that not everyone shares that position. And so someone may go into the role of prosecutor trying to be a progressive prosecutor, thinking they can do that and wanting to do that. And we should judge them on their merits, and can't rewrite their motivation to be bad just because they might have disagreed with you on even the possibility of a progressive prosecutor, if that makes sense. Sure.

0:30:31 Matt: But Oh yeah.

0:31:08 Matt: Absolutely. And the fact that no matter how, and you can certainly find this in the most progressive prosecutor's offices and in Massachusetts, which, you know, is trying to lead in some of these places, you're still going to find cases that you're not going to like. You're going to find DAs down the line in different courtrooms doing things you don't like, making arguments, getting reprimanded by judges, charges, having sanctions, you know, you cannot have an office doing perfect things all the time. And I'm sure that listeners, and they're right to do it, it's fine, I don't mind, but people are going to come back and give me examples of times when her office, either as DA or AG, did terrible things that we could agree were bad or that were reprimanded or any of those other things. And I'm just going to tell you, there is no prosecutor you're going to find anywhere in the country ever that's going to escape that. It's just impossible.

The nature of the job, given the things you actually have to do, the number of people under your command, and the law and the policies that you're responsible for carrying out. So in better news, as Attorney General, very good on LGBTQ rights, all pretty much across the board. And in 2008, which you'd know more about, I guess, than I would, I guess, as a California resident, but Proposition 8 in 2008 tried to eliminate the rights of same-sex couples to marry. It was passed, unfortunately, in California,

0:31:34 Thomas: Yep Yeah.

0:32:13 Matt: And it was eventually found unconstitutional in 2010, in a decision that didn't go into effect until 2013. And to her credit, at a time when Democrats, unfortunately were not unified on this issue, it's strange to think now in 2010, 2013, that you still had Obama himself as president was not necessarily on board. And she was taking a hard line that she was not going to challenge this, because, of course, as attorney general, she has the right to appeal. And generally, the state does appeal these kinds of things when a state law is found unconstitutional, especially about a voter initiative. She said, no, I'm sitting this out. We're not going to appeal this. And so she said no. And that's what she said. She let some nuts take over the appeal for them, for the state.

0:32:26 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, OK. So you're saying she didn't appeal the decision that it was unconstitutional at first. Just want to make sure I have all these negatives straight. I wasn't

0:32:58 Matt: Yeah, I know, it's a little confusing. Yeah.

0:32:59 Thomas: Sure. Okay. That's good. But you're saying some other group did do the appeal and they won.

0:33:06 Matt: A very long series of appeals on Proposition 8. It was pretty tortuous, but it was ultimately ruled unconstitutional in the end by a federal court on different grounds. I don't want to get into it. I'd have to do a whole episode on Proposition 8 probably. It might be worth it sometime. But the actual decision didn't go into effect until 2013. They had the chance to appeal it. And at that point, Harris's office, Harris herself, decided not to do that, on the right side of history on that one. There's a fun video here I've just sent you with the clerks were instructed to begin recognizing the marriages again. Yeah.

0:33:32 Clip: In Los Angeles? This is Kamala Harris. You must start marriages immediately. You, you must start the marriages immediately?

0:33:41 Thomas: Wow. Turn on the marriages.

0:33:48 Clip: Okay, that's wonderful. Thank you. Have a good day and enjoy it. It's gonna be fun.

0:33:53 Matt: Throw

0:33:55 Thomas: I Love it.

0:33:57 Matt: The marriage lever, that's right.

0:33:59 Thomas: Turn Is The AG commence the marriages there.

0:34:00 Matt: A great Video, open The spigot. I

0:34:05 Thomas: Must have been like, "What? You must do the marriages. What is this, a radio show prank call?" Is that like, I would, yeah, I'd love that. That though, important.

0:34:13 Matt: Thought It was heartwarming, yeah.

0:34:15 Thomas: Part is that was the correct, yeah, correct, uh, good moral decision there, but Very funny nonetheless.

0:34:19 Matt: And There's Proof right there that she was excited about it from 2010, like initially, you know, when she had the first Opportunity, yeah, so You know, that's, that's all good for

0:34:20 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, and that is, yeah, pre a lot of other people in the party, that's for sure.

0:34:30 Matt: Sure, for sure, uh, did get some flack for not necessarily supporting, um, affirmation, uh, surgery, for prisoners. That's another issue. I think there's some fair criticism there from queer rights organizations. But generally, she's had the support of LGBTQ organizations and voter causes. I will mention also, and to her very much to her credit, she held a special conference for state lawmakers in 2006 to get people together around the country to talk about gay panic and trans panic defenses. So these things where people freak out and say, you know, I killed him because I found out he was trans or whatever.

0:34:56 Thomas: Boy. The thing that should have never existed, wow, would

0:35:02 Matt: Pretty bad. Uh, she was always on the right side of that one and

0:35:04 Thomas: Be acceptable if it was like a race-based thing? Oh, I'm sorry, I was just so horrified to find out the person's race tha murdered them. Why in the world would, now I'm sure it was in the deep south back in the day, now that I say that, but that's just a further indication of how horrible that is. And I can't believe that ever happened. Wow.

0:35:11 Matt: Yeah, right. No. And it's, it's still taken a long time for some states to catch up with that, but California was first, in 2014, to make that law.

0:35:26 Thomas: Nice. Good for us.

0:35:27 Matt: Great, Michigan just got around to it like 12 hours ago. So, uh, mean, good on you, Michigan, again, I guess, but you know, uh,

0:35:34 Thomas: While they're at it, Michigan, start the marriages. Oh, no, they already did. Okay. Turn on the marriage hose.

0:35:37 Matt: Right, yeah, uh, You know, I, I do like to see people like this taking positions before they feel like they have to take them, right, when it's just the right thing to Do, uh, So much unfortunately on sex work, that she has the pretty standard up and down Democrat liberal position on sex work, where she opposes decriminalization, along with, I think, most other Democrats. Unfortunately, she supported SESTA-FOSTA, which was extremely harmful to sex workers and hurt a lot of people. And she also, and there's some questions in California about the way that she was prosecuting and enforcing that. But again, those are pretty standard Democrat positions. I can't really say that she's doing too much that's different.

I'm not supporting it, I'm just saying that, you know, if you're going to look at a record that is pretty comparable to those things. So she's not ahead of the game on everything, for the most part, and we're working forward here, and I think that there's a lot better stuff even to talk about as we go forward. Criminal justice has been one of her most difficult issues to navigate because I do think that she is on, at this point, as far as prosecutors go, I think she's on the right side of it for the most part. And certainly her presidential platform, which we'll talk about, was good, but she's

0:35:47 Thomas: Yeah, yeah,

0:36:37 Matt: Had to navigate that. And I think she has done it pretty well. Let's talk about her election to Senate. She was a senator, obviously, for four years before she became VP, um, she was U.S. senator for California from 2017 to 2021, and no senator is going to get a lot done in four years, that's pretty normal, but in terms of the four years she had, I think she did pretty well. She was the second black woman elected to the Senate ever. Know, I know, I think I'm almost completely sure, the first black female AG of California. I can't say that wouldn't be true. True. She, in her four years, distinguished herself, I think, with her committee work, especially. And I think that's something that a legislator should get more credit for. Sometimes it's grandstanding, sometimes it's meaningless. But I think she really showed her chops as a lawyer. In some of these hearings, she was on the Intelligence Committee, the Homeland Security Committee, and the Judiciary, most importantly, for our purposes, committee. And, I just want to play a couple of clips, just so we've got some best of here. I sent you

0:36:56 Thomas: Well, and Jesus Christ all right

0:37:28 Matt: A clip of Her interrogating Attorney General Bill Barr, which is kind of enjoyable. Other

0:37:28 Thomas: Oh

0:37:31 Clip: You, Mr. Chairman. Attorney General Barr, has the President or anyone at the White House ever asked or suggested that you open an investigation event anyone? I wouldn't. Yes or no? Could you repeat that question?

0:37:32 Thomas: I love it oh

0:37:48 Clip: I will repeat it.

0:37:46 Thomas: An extremely easy yes or no no question. I remember this.

0:37:49 Clip: Has the President or anyone at the White House ever asked or suggested that you open an investigation of anyone? Yes or No, please, sir. The President or anybody else?

0:37:57 Thomas: I forgot about this. Ooh, tough question.

0:38:02 Clip: It seems you'd remember something like that and be able to tell us. Yeah, but I'm trying to grapple with the word suggest. I mean, There have been discussions of matters out there that they've not asked me to open an investigation. Perhaps they've suggested. I don't know. I wouldn't say suggested. Hinted. I don't know. Inferred. You don't have. I can. Here's

0:38:03 Matt: People It's Great, that's great. She's such a... I mean, you can tell she's a cross examiner, like she's got that, um, she can really go in a

0:38:32 Thomas: Yeah, it really is like, hey, have you ever stolen a car? Yeah, stolen it. I mean, maybe, but it's like, nah, that should be a pretty quick one, man. That should be a pretty, ask me, have I ever stolen a car? No. Done.

0:38:38 Matt: Car, car, um, yeah, yeah, No, yeah.

0:38:52 Thomas: Should be pretty easy.

0:38:54 Matt: Yeah, does a Land River count as a car? Yeah.

0:38:55 Thomas: Or maybe a quick yes, by the way. Maybe it's a quick yes. Yeah, I did, actually. He did try to get me to investigate somebody. Either way, it should be pretty quick, is all I'm saying.

0:38:57 Matt: Definitely, did. It's just, it's, it's really fun to watch, especially you, Attorney General, just grilling the top lawyer in the United States, and he's just fumbling, like, he's... That's not a good showing for Bill Barr. Speaking of bad showings, she also did very similar to Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation. She went pretty tough on him. Favorite question, I just sent you.

0:39:09 Thomas: Yeah.

0:39:22 Clip: Can you think of any laws that give government the power to make decisions about the male body? I'm happy to answer a more specific question. Male versus female.

0:39:31 Matt: Stumped. Yeah.

0:39:39 Clip: There are medical procedures. That the government has the power to make a decision about a man's body? I thought you were asking about medical procedures that are unique to men. I'll repeat the question. Can you thing of any law that gives the government the power to make decisions about the male body. I'm not thinking of any right now, Senator.

0:39:37 Thomas: Pretty specific is

0:40:06 Matt: A good question. It's just such a perfectly formulated question, I think. It's not really a gotcha. It's true. Just aren't in the same way. And the dumb, hangdog, golden shepherd look on his face while he's trying to answer that question is very amusing.

0:40:23 Thomas: I Occurs to, to me, like, this is the last time that we ever get to see any of these assholes in a position where they have to like answer anything. And then once they're confirmed, they're just gods. They have no, absolutely no, we have no authority over them. They can do whatever they want. It's just separate topic, but it's just crazy to see like, oh yeah, this was the last Time this, uh, was to be questioned about anything. Like,

0:40:32 Matt: Yeah, you can't get away with asking a question like that at all. Argument, I think that's worth highlighting just because it is a really important part of a senator's job, especially, and I don't useless at that. But I think that that is one place where being a former prosecutor is really desirable when you're used to kind of going on the attack that way, against witnesses who don't want to sell you things.

0:41:06 Thomas: Yeah. It may help in certain debates. Could be a benefit

0:41:10 Matt: Know, it's not the worst thing at this point to have a former prosecutor running against somebody who was just convicted of all those felonies and is facing many more, maybe. Already has brought a lot of authority in talking about Trump, just even in the past week, about sort of what she recognizes in the way that he avoids the law. Let's talk about her Senate record, which again, pretty brief, only four years, but it a little while to get established and actually start being able to get anything through. And obviously, yeah, absolutely.

0:41:33 Thomas: There. Extremely good voting record from my memory. I remember it

0:41:37 Matt: No, it

0:41:37 Thomas: Being one of the... I might have been the most progressive during that time.

0:41:41 Matt: Was actually, according to govtrack.us, which seems to be a pretty good nonpartisan way to find out about voting records, that session of the Senate, for those four years she had the furthest left voting record in the U.S. Senate. Yeah, pretty impressive.

0:41:52 Thomas: Yeah. And it's like evaluating where we are. It's one thing to hold someone's past against them. And I'm not saying you don't consider it, of course, but like her most recent job before vice president, she was literally the most progressive of all the Democrats. That counts for something. Oh,

0:42:07 Matt: It Should. It really should. And we'll talk about her presidential campaign right after this. But she was senator, she supported the Dream Act very vocally. I got a quick clip there if you want to play about talking about Dreamers in California, which I thought was very well said.

0:42:16 Thomas: Yeah.

0:42:18 Clip: That I've become really aware of is there are a lot of people expressing opinions about DACA that have never met a dreamer. And what I know, being from the state that has the largest number, 220,000, these are great kids. I met a a young woman this weekend. And she came up to me, and she, one, asked for support, but then she just broke down crying uncontrollably, because she's terrified, Lawrence. And this is a great kid. She's actually part of doing free arts for kids in the community, and helping out and being a part of her community. And she was crying uncontrollably, she's so afraid. Um, so I think part of what has to happen is that more people really should inform themselves about who these young people really are and stop demonizing them. It's very easy to have an opinion about something you don't know, but it's also, it's, it's irresponsible and

0:43:21 Matt: That's the standard Democratic talking point. But she was saying all of this immediately after Jeff Sessions had made the announcement that Trump would be rescinding DACA. And she had some harsh things to say about Sessions in that interview as well. All completely justified, of course, but she actually—one of the first things that she stood up and was supportive of when she got to the Senate was making sure that the Dream Act had a chance again. And of course maybe we'll talk about the legislative history of the Dream Act another time, but it has been up and down quite a lot. It's been a painful process. Yeah, no, she supported marijuana legalization, housing rights; during the summer of 2020, co-sponsored the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act with Cory Booker, which would have actually done some great stuff on qualified immunity and made it easier to prosecute cops all around.

Obviously, it didn't get anywhere, but she was instrumental in that. And I think she believes it. I think that these are things that she does care about. And she has consistently been against private prisons. She's been working on abolishing cash bail, the things that people who care about progressive criminal legal stuff care about.

0:43:39 Thomas: I just saw—I just saw somebody about how, oh, she, she, she wants cashless bail. And someone's like, you know, Trump is out right now on bail because, like, he's out on bail technically right I mean that's kind of funny yeah

0:44:29 Matt: In multiple cases Yeah. Multiple cases and his own recognizance, yeah, that is funny, and still causing trouble, yeah, no, I think that for a four year Senate career, I think she distinguished herself. She, of course, she did run for president, we remember, in 2019. She dropped out by the end of December, and it was an unfortunate campaign, because she started out with a tremendous amount of support. It does seem like, from reviewing today, kind of looking back and trying to remember that campaign, she didn't run a great campaign. She did some of that to herself, and I think it is fair to judge a candidate by how well they run a campaign, because it does kind of say how you might run other things.

But she also looks like she made some mistakes with the leadership that she picked in that. Unfortunately, one of the campaign chairs was her sister, which is never a great idea. And her main campaign manager got a lot of flack, it sounds like, made a lot of mistakes. Director of Kamala Harris for the People, which is sort of her state-based organizing campaign, Kelly Mullenbacher resigned. She wrote a very nice resignation letter saying that she still thought that Harris was the best candidate, she just had a lot of problems with the way the campaign was going, and I think that's significant.

0:44:35 Thomas: Yeah yeah and fair enough, yeah. That sounds like she was kind of right. Campaign was not good. And that was one of the reasons I was very worried about her replacing Biden at first. But I did feel better the more I kind of, you or my version of reading, listened to good podcasts about it. And it really is true that like your whole your whole career has been as a prosecutor, essentially. And then George Floyd happens and you're like, well, how do I win a Democratic primary? And I'll be honest, given that set of circumstances, that's tough. I don't know. Like, I don't know how I would do it. Like you, you don't get to change the past. And I think that she was really scrambling and couldn't find an identity.

0:45:29 Matt: Are you Yes.

0:46:03 Matt: Yeah.

0:46:03 Thomas: And I think that that's going to kill a lot of campaigns, but here's another thing we don't, I mean, we know that she has a great team now. She inherited a bunch of Biden's team and they're, they're doing a phenomenal job there. They've so far done about as good as you could do. I mean so I think if that's a worry and it is a worry, A, there's not really much we could do about it anyway now, but also I think we can feel a lot more confident in the team that's going to be behind her now, of course.

0:46:10 Matt: Yeah. That's right. Absolutely. That was, yeah, I was going to close on that. And I did want to mention her platform as well, because I, you know, my main memory of that campaign, like yours, I think was that it was a mess and it just didn't go well. She dropped out, actually very concerned that she might lose California, which would have been catastrophic, obviously.

0:46:39 Thomas: Yeah.

0:46:40 Matt: She, you know, she dropped out months before the Iowa primary.

0:46:41 Thomas: Dropped out before any primary. Yeah, like she, yeah, it was weird.

0:46:43 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. And in 2020 too. Yeah. Yeah. She had a platform that I can fully get behind. I mean, I didn't find anything in there that I didn't like when I was reviewing her 2020 platform. It was Medicare for all. It was housing reform for working people. It's kind of a mess after one of those debates, unfortunately. So her official campaign position was Medicare for all, and she was asked a question at one of the debates that made it seem like she was in in favor of abolishing private health insurance entirely. And she had to clarify afterward that she was not in favor Of that, which I don't think anybody who's in favor Medicare for all is actually in favor completely eliminating private insurance. I'm not sure. I mean, health insurance person.

0:46:59 Thomas: Sure? I thought the whole thing was she didn't support Medicare for all. Am Oh, yeah. Oh, I would love to do that but yeah

0:47:24 Matt: Would too, but I think it's going to exist in some form. Mean it's it's such a wasteful middleman but yeah, there was kind of this this takeaway from her campaign that you didn't know exactly where she stood on or maybe she didn't fully understand her own position on Medicare for all, but on paper that at least was what she was pushing for, um, Her platform, and, but you know, in criminal justice reform, everything else, yeah.

0:47:34 Thomas: Yeah And I do not believe—I'm willing to bet quite a lot that the difference between Medicare for all happening and not will not be Kamala Harris as president, it'll be, it'll be Congress. It'll, you know, like, yeah, I want her to support it there, and we'll see what her platform ends up being, but I look at the situation of what power she will have if she wins. And I don't think we'll be pinning that on her if it doesn't happen.

0:48:05 Matt: No, I mean these are long-term things to push for, these are conversations to have, but yeah, no, of course, uh, like so many of these things that people shout the loudest about, uh, they're not things the president can do in four years.

0:48:14 Thomas: I I mean, she could sign it. I'm just saying like, I doubt it'll be that Congress is all good to go with this super progressive legislation, and then Kamala will be like, you know what? I'm not signing that piece of crap. Don't think that's going to be what happens.

0:48:16 Matt: Right. Yeah. That's right. No, no. Of course she goes on to support Joe Biden and to become his vice presidential pick. They campaigned together and she is elected and her career as vice president, I want to talk about briefly here. There's not that much to talk About. I mean, as you'd expect.

0:48:42 Thomas: DON'T know know anything about it. I can't wait to hear a single thing about it, yeah.

0:48:44 Matt: Yeah a few things at least. Yeah it's hard Did you watch Veep at all? You like Veep?

0:48:49 Thomas: Love it. Veep was a phenomenal show.

0:48:50 Matt: Me too. Huge fan. Yeah. It's hard not to see a little bit of Selina Meyer sometimes with her. It's also, I mean, the whole joke of Veep is just that's kind of the job, right? I mean it's just it's, you know, the running joke of like did the president call, you know, does the president want to talk to me, right.

0:48:55 Thomas: It really is, yeah,

0:49:06 Matt: And, does she have unfortunately kind of a similar way of speaking sometimes to Selina Meyer, which makes me smile. But, you know, I think she is probably smarter and more progressive than Selina Meyer. Fact is, her major distinction right now as vice president is she has actually cast more tie-breaking votes than any other vice president in U.S. history, which is, we were kind of joking on Monday about how maybe we don't need a vice president, but we do, because that needs to exist.

0:49:03 Thomas: Yeah so good.

0:49:28 Thomas: I forgot about that, yeah I mean assuming we're at any numbers where ties happen a lot, well we won't have either of them.

0:49:30 Matt: Yeah, and as long as we have Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who's, I guess, not going to go with us, but yeah, they won't,

0:49:39 Thomas: I got great news Matt, neither of them will be in the Senate, I think they're both terms are both up, up right, oh exactly, yeah

0:49:39 Matt: I know, but I'm just saying, right, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mercifully, yes. But as long as we had them both, we needed a Kamala Harris. And about 27 of those were judicial nominations, and the rest were big Biden policy things. So it's not like she was coming out on a linum or anything, but she was doing her job. That's what she's supposed to do as the vice president, as Biden's right hand, is to make sure these things get through the Senate. And so that's just something to mention as part of her record. It'd be really weird if that were not her record, given that those are votes that she had to cast.

0:49:58 Thomas: Yeah would have been funny if she tried to like bargain with it or something, like all right Joe, give me, uh, I know. I don't know what she would bargain for. Give me more powers than I have constitutionally. I don't know.

0:50:10 Matt: Yeah, I got Or she could single-handedly get a better judge or something. I don't know. But no, that's just something to mention just because that's her place in history as vice president. That's the thing that's going to go in the history books is that she did that. And that says a lot more about our politics right now than it does about Kamala Harris, obviously.

0:50:30 Matt: I did want to mention, of course, the thing nearest and dearest to me. And She's my problematic crush, Thomas. It's not misspeaking. I know she's a problem. I did find out a little bit more about her campaign that made me very sad, but I'm not supporting Marianne Williamson for president, just to be clear. I'd be happy to talk to her if she wants to come on, but I'm just trying to get all my crushes on the show. I want to mention, though, that I said on Monday that she was appointed by Biden to oversee border policy. And that's not true. It's also not true that she Was appointed

0:50:19 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah Marianne Williamson.

0:51:02 Thomas: Yeah

0:51:02 Matt: To be a border czar.

0:51:03 Thomas: You you called her the borders, Are, I didn't know that that was a Fox News creation. You did I believe you did. I I that's my memory of it, but I, I, we can go back and check the tape, and I didn't know either. I'm not, this is not judgment, I didn't t I think that was one of those right wing, uh, right, yeah sure

0:51:05 Matt: Did I say that? Did I actually say czar? That was lazy. That was inaccurate. Man.

0:51:17 Matt: No, sure. Basically, I mean, that was what they wanted—to make her sound more socialist, I think. It's exactly what it was. And I knew this when I said it, I just was kind of making the point about how she's very much associated with the border policy right now, but she had nothing to do with actual domestic border policy. What Joe Biden did was send her down to Central America to see what we could do to help stem the flow, because the highest supply of undocumented migrants at that point were coming from the Northern Triangle countries, from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, the people I work with the most, and work with in East Boston and beyond, she actually was very effective when she went down there.

Did get some heat, and I was not happy with some of the things she said. I'll play that in a second. By the accounts I've read, she met with indigenous activists. She met with anti-government activists. She met with government people. She kind of got the whole spectrum. Made sure that money was pledged and that money actually was followed through, about $5 billion. And obviously, Kamala Harris is not going to single-handedly fight poverty, crime, corruption, and violence in Central America.

As far as a sitting vice president can do, to go and meet and listen to people and try to designate money toward those directions to make things better. Seems like she did do those things. She had nothing to do with setting border policy. She famously did not go to the border, even though these people were demanding that she do that, because that literally wasn't her job. Her job was to do this sort of international relations

0:51:30 Thomas: Yeah

0:52:36 Matt: At the border.

0:52:35 Thomas: I'm not really sure what she would do there I

0:52:38 Matt: Right. Yeah. Just like, you know.

0:52:38 Thomas: You know I feel for her in that, that interview she gave, that I'm sure everybody's already heard, that, you know, it's one of the first interviews she gave, it didn't go well, and so that's why we didn't hear from her for a while, but like, why? What happens when you go to the border, like as you know, I, what's, don't know, it's just one of those dumb things, she could have answered it better, but

0:52:42 Matt: Yeah. Was weird. Right? More concerned, actually, from that interview, that she said she'd never been to Europe. I thought that was a little strange, honestly. Maybe I'm being classist, but it is a little strange that somebody with that much of a career who's, you

0:53:03 Thomas: Think she meant, meant officially, like as part of the administration is what I thought.

0:53:06 Matt: Maybe that might've been it. Okay. And no offense if you haven't been to Europe, but anybody, but, uh, it is one of those things you get around to doing. Yeah, for sure. Uh, go see it, any of it really. So she gave this speech in Guatemala that has haunted her a bit. And I think it's only fair to play a quick clip there I've sent you.

0:53:12 Thomas: But should go. I

0:53:20 Clip: She had one resounding message for those considering making the dangerous journey Do not come. Do not Come. The Vice President, in her first foreign trip, said improving living conditions for Guatemalans at home, fighting corruption, narco -trafficking and smuggling, and encouraging private investment in Guatemala were key to stemming the flow of migrants to the U.S. border. The

0:53:24 Thomas: Oh, right. OK.

0:53:45 Matt: So that's true. Just kind of the way that she said it. Now I will say Hillary Clinton as secretary of state had exactly the same message. Almost said it in exactly the same words, that people should stop trying to seek refuge in the United States. Part of what she was saying, and again I'm not going to defend this too far because I don't like the way that she did this, but was trying to say it's a very dangerous trip. Hillary Clinton especially was trying to say don't send your kids by themselves because that was happening a lot. As we've discussed before, there's no good reason that a parent is going to send a child by themselves to the U.S. border. There's certainly a lot of bad things that are going to motivate that, but it's not like, it's desperation. At the time, you know, we're obviously, she's talking about the people that I work with who are seeking asylum here coming from gangs and violence. It is cold to hear someone say, just stop coming here.

But at the same time, what she's trying to say is that we're here to help you rebuild your country, we're going to invest in your government, and your economy. And, you know, we can't continue to have this undocumented immigration and this dangerous sort of flow, that's it's the best case I can make

0:53:52 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:54:45 Matt: For what she said

0:54:45 Thomas: This is all about trying to manage how much Republicans and Fox News have demagogued this issue. And I feel like this is a soundbite that I like, but I think it's doing your best to, you know, if the attack is constantly like they're opening the border, they're telling everyone that they could just come and have all this stuff in America.

0:54:45 Matt: Yeah free

0:55:05 Thomas: It's like, Well, this is a pretty solid rebuttal of that. But yeah, it's just the whole, you talked about we'll talk about more the whole politics of this sucks and not a big fan of where the where the Democratic Party is on this anyway. I don't see any reason why she would be particularly worse than any other replacement Democrat on this. And I guess, you know, we'll see what what the platform ends up being, I guess. Right.

0:55:05 Matt: Stuff yeah yeah And, I mean, we'll talk about it when it's released, um, you know, and I said on Monday I don't expect necessarily, because honestly I just don't have expectations for Democrats, uh, on immigration. I don't expect that she'll necessarily be dramatically better than Biden. I think that, you know, she voted for the bipartisan bill that Trump opposed, obviously, because he didn't want it to pass, that I did not like, that the Democrats were trying to push through so that they could say they'd done something about the border. But so did most of the other Democrats.

I mean, it's not a knock on her necessarily. That's just where the party's at. But, I'm open to her being better on immigration than Biden. It's certainly possible. We just don't know enough yet. But you know what I do know about what she said, generally speaking, is pretty consistent with mainstream Democrat Democrat policy. And it's possible that, and she also, though, I will say during her presidential campaign, she said that she would like to sort of rebuild ICE from the ground up or something. She had to reevaluate. She wasn't saying she would abolish it, but that she understood that it was fundamentally a bad agency.

0:55:51 Thomas: Yeah.

0:56:18 Matt: And I'm open to hearing more about that.

0:56:17 Thomas: Oh, I like that. Dad.

0:56:20 Matt: Yeah, it's yeah, you're burning it. Yeah. And maybe just rebuild it slowly or don't, I don't know. But but just the fact that she was out there with the most progressive Democrats were openly saying that it needs to go, that she was in that direction at least, which is something Biden would have never said. Open to hearing more from her about immigration. I'm interested to talk more about that and take a look at her platform when it comes. Think I was probably being a little too cynical on Monday, as I can be with these immigration issues, because I just don't trust Democrats on immigration fundamentally, but that's not Kamala Harris's problem.

0:56:21 Thomas: Rebuilding it from the ground up means it's going down to the ground. I like that. Do that first. Yeah.

0:56:37 Thomas: Yeah, Right, Matt. Well, yeah, unfortunately we are way out of time. There's so much there's even more in your notes to talk about and maybe we'll we'll have to address it another time, but, uh, this is the rapid response and I have to turn it around in mere hours. So we're going to have to call it there. I Uh, guess final impressions, uh, takeaways for people on this.

0:56:59 Matt: Sure.

0:57:08 Matt: Am pleasantly surprised, honestly, taking a closer look at all of this, because I think I might've written her off a little too much and I feel bad about that now. So let's keep it going.

0:57:14 Thomas: Yeah. I agree. You should feel better. No, I'm just kidding. All right. Well, thanks so much for listening, everybody. And, uh, like I said, look forward to some gavel-to-gavel soon, that, uh, Michael Cohen is coming, uh, before the end of the month. And also we'll see you on Monday for that episode that got preempted when Biden dropped out of the race. Crazy. It's been about a month in the last week. That was only mere days ago, Matt, somehow. All right. Well, thanks so much. And thanks so Much for listening, everyone. We'll see then.

0:57:18 Matt: That's right.

0:57:38 Matt: So it has. All right.

0:57:46 Clip: This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. It is produced and edited by Thomas Smith, who also provided the fabulous intro and outro music used with permission.