She has some criticisms for her past as an attorney, but I’m not sure why she’s so disliked now. What has she done to engender such distaste from the public?
- She’s a democrat. that means 42% of the population automatically hate her.
- She’s grossly inappropriate and cackles at exactly the wrong time, and that creeps people out.
- She was a “tough on weed” prosecutor who became a bleeding heart liberal overnight when she got her new job. That makes her seem disingenuous.
Just what I’ve picked up from other people, I have no feelings about her whatsoever.
This more or less sums it, there are differences between why the right and left might dislike her (ex. I’d say there’s an element of misogyny and racism on the right mixed in with valid criticisms).
But fundementally, she’s phony. And people are kind of over phony politicians. And more importantly she’s not any good at being phony. You have people like Biden who are just as full of shit, but he has a schtick that works on a lot of people to give the impression that he’s this worldly, aviators-wearing grandpa who’s gonna “give it to you straight, Jack” yadda yadda.
Kamala, by contrast, has no real convincing schtick like that, her mannerisms are overly polished and practiced, so she just looks like another empty suit.
I’m not going to argue that some of the dislike she receives isn’t due to racism or misogyny. There has to be an element of that.
But yes, phony is the perfect word.
I don’t even get that from Biden. He just seems so fake from the get-go.
(Next part is irrelevant and only opinion.) But I’d rather go into the ground by someone sneaky and quiet than by an arm-flailing maniac screaming and yelling as I get beaten down into the hole lol.
What has she done to engender such distaste from the public?
What has she done (that actually has improved the country) since she’s been VP that would make her tasteful to the public?
This is the real question. I’m sick of people dismissing criticisms against her because she’s black and/or a woman. Give me an actual reason to like her!
She’s definitely a horrible public speaker. I totally disagree with how she tackled truancy during her time as a DA/AG. Is this just my internalized racism speaking or can I ACTUALLY feel this way?
What roles does a VP have that front and center for policy though? Fundamentally a lot of the roles with in the executive branch are kind of invisible to the general public. Unless your neck deep into politics (and I don’t mean the cable news network… but more along the lines of reading stuff from federal register and CRS reports, and straight up political science research papers.)
unless your that deep into things what the VP does might as well be invisible
I don’t hate her by any means, but it just feels like she really hasn’t done much of anything during her tenure in office tbh
I’m mean the VP’s #1 job is to have a pulse, so she has full marks on that front.
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She was disliked before she was VP
She’s just incompetent. Look at some interviews with her, she can’t answer basic questions and has done absolutely nothing as a VP. It has nothing to do with her being a woman or black.
The only thing conservatives hate more than black people having power is black women having power. So, of course conservatives hate her.
Progressives are tired of neo-liberals sucking corporate cock as hard as the republicans. She is a neo-liberal (and thus a diet conservative), so progressives don’t like her (or Biden) either.
That really just leaves neo-liberals to actually like her.
Her last name literally means “horrible” in Finnish and from what I’ve heard that’s somewhat accurate
I assume nearly half of the country hates her for being black and/or a woman, while some other large chunk of the country hates her for being “a cop.” I think she’s fine. She’s done the job a hell of a lot better than a whole list of other VPs I could name. And since I’ll be voting against Republicans no matter what, if a Biden-Harris ticket is the opposition I’ll be checking that box. No problem.
This is probably the best breakdown of public perceptions of her record:
A close examination of Harris’s record shows it’s filled with contradictions. She pushed for programs that helped people find jobs instead of putting them in prison, but also fought to keep people in prison even after they were proved innocent. She refused to pursue the death penalty against a man who killed a police officer, but also defended California’s death penalty system in court. She implemented training programs to address police officers’ racial biases, but also resisted calls to get her office to investigate certain police shootings.
But what seem like contradictions may reflect a balancing act. Harris’s parents worked on civil rights causes, and she came from a background well aware of the excesses of the criminal justice system — but in office, she played the role of a prosecutor and California’s lawyer. She started in an era when “tough on crime” politics were popular across party lines — but she rose to national prominence as criminal justice reform started to take off nationally. She had an eye on higher political office as support for criminal justice reform became de rigueur for Democrats — but she still had to work as California’s top law enforcement official.
Her race and gender likely made this balancing act even tougher. In the US, studies have found that more than 90 percent of elected prosecutors are white and more than 80 percent are male. As a Black and Indian American woman, Harris stood out — inviting scrutiny and skepticism, especially by people who may hold racist stereotypes about how Black people view law enforcement or sexist views about whether women are “tough” enough for the job.
Still, the result is the same: As she became more nationally visible, Harris was less known as a progressive prosecutor, as she’d been earlier in her career, and more a reform-lite or even anti-reform attorney general. Now critics have labeled her a “cop” — a sellout for a broken criminal justice system.
Sauce is Vox
Thank you for sharing that there is nuance beyond just “she’s black.”
Because she’s black and she’s a woman.
Same reason why Hillary Clinton was widely respected every year except when she ran against a man.
While this is certainly part of it (and all of it for a large number of people), I think it is overly simplistic view and disregards her past as a DA in which she enforced a draconian truancy program.
Hillary Clinton was widely respected every year
(source needed)
Here’s a list of objectionable stuff Hillary was involved with prior to running for president:
- Hillary Clinton’s hawkish stance on war, being more hawkish than Barack Obama and Joe Biden. She is specifically noted for advocating an escalation in Afghanistan.
- Clinton’s involvement in the 2009 military coup in Honduras. Rather than condemning the coup, Clinton pressured other countries to recognize the new right-wing government, leading to increased violence and instability in the country.
- The firing of seven employees from the travel office during the Clinton administration in 1993, an act that some critics attribute to Hillary Clinton’s influence. The fired employees were later reinstated due to public pressure.
- Controversies surrounding her commodity trades from 1978 and 1979, in which she turned an initial investment of $1,000 into nearly $100,000. No official investigations were carried out, but the incident raised eyebrows and led to criticism.
- Involvement in her husband’s controversial pardons during his presidency, including those for the owners of a carnival company convicted of bank fraud.
- A controversy regarding gifts taken from the White House upon the Clintons’ departure in 2001. Some items, worth $28,000, were meant for the White House estate and not as personal gifts for the Clintons. These items were returned after complaints from the donors.
(source needed)
Gallup used to poll her favorability pretty regularly, and until she ran for president in 2015 (from which she’s never recovered) she seldom had an underwater approval rating. i’d say the characterization of wide respect is reasonably accurate given this data, although i don’t agree with the poster’s proposed causation
On the conservative side of the fence, she’s black and Indian and most unforgivable of all, a DEMOCRAT!
On the liberal side, she’s taken a hard stance on crime, including minor drug offenses that probably shouldn’t be crimes.
She’s got something for everybody! To hate![Kept an innocent man on death row] (https://news.yahoo.com/tulsi-gabbard-kamala-harris-record-as-prosecutor-on-marijuana-death-penalty-021423679.html)
[Supported civil asset forfeiture ] (https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/07/jeff-sessions-civil-asset-forfeiture-plan-government-sanctioned-stealing/)
[Arrested the mother of a disabled girl] (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kamala-harris-truancy-arrests-2020-progressive-prosecutor_n_5c995789e4b0f7bfa1b57d2e)
And more I’m sure but she was off my list of potential candidates based on any of these alone
With a record like that, she’d fit right in with the other party. I don’t know what Biden was smoking when he decided to tap her of all people, but it must be so good it’s still illegal in Oregon.
[Kept an innocent man on death row] (https://news.yahoo.com/tulsi-gabbard-kamala-harris-record-as-prosecutor-on-marijuana-death-penalty-021423679.html)
[Supported civil asset forfeiture ] (https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/07/jeff-sessions-civil-asset-forfeiture-plan-government-sanctioned-stealing/)
[Arrested the mother of a disabled girl] (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kamala-harris-truancy-arrests-2020-progressive-prosecutor_n_5c995789e4b0f7bfa1b57d2e)
And more I’m sure but she was off my list of potential candidates based on any of these alone
For me, it’s strictly because of this. I’m not suggesting truancy isn’t an issue worth combating, but going at it this way showed a shocking lack of sense - to the degree where I’m not sure I could trust any grown-ass adult who would go along with such an idea for more than 2 minutes.
What, specifically, are the issues you have with holding parents accountable for the actions of their children?
New research also suggests that “truancy” is an arbitrary metric. The term refers to unexcused absences, but California gives individual schools substantial flexibility to determine what constitutes a valid excuse. (Certain reasons, like illnesses and religious observances, are always valid by law.)
And:
Shayla frequently missed school because she was in too much pain to leave the house or was hospitalized for long-term care. Her school was aware of these circumstances; it had records on file from the regional children’s hospital explaining that Shayla’s condition would necessitate unpredictable absences and special educational accommodations. Peoples and the school had worked together to set up some of those accommodations, which are required under federal disability law. At the time of her arrest, Peoples claims she was fighting with the school to get it to agree to additional accommodations under an Individualized Education Plan, which she said the school had rejected.
So basically, it’s the school at fault here. Right?
If you argue for a law, you’re responsible for the downstream impacts of that law. It doesn’t take much forethought to realize that a situation like that is going to come up.
The fact that she threatened to have the mom of a disabled girl arrested
Criminalizing nonsensical aspects of life to feed the private prison industry is really shitty.
It’s punishing families who are the most vulnerable. Instead of defunding the fucking police a bit so that the money can go to social programs specifically to help these families, it comes at them with cops and jail. Fucked up way to “help” people.
Nothing screams “my kid is going to turn away from truancy” like having a parent in prison.
When your cure only hastens and reinforces the bad behavior, your cure is bad and you should feel bad.
I would have no issue at all with child protective services being engaged, but sending an overworked single mother to jail isn’t helping anything, it’s just slaking bloodlust for punishment when people don’t do as you’d wish.
If the goal is ensuring every child is equipped with an equal opportunity for education, then there are always better choices than hauling mom or dad off to jail. Can you seriously not see how patently absurd that is? It’s a boneheaded move from top to bottom and she should feel shame for the rest of her life for putting her political muscle behind it. Educating every last child is important, but this proposed solution only makes things worse.
And that’s what the issue is. It’s not that there was intervention, it was this specific intervention is stunningly short sighted and entirely punitive.
If your child is missing 80 out of 180 days of school, you’re doing a bang up job as a parent.
She’s not really a good public speaker for one. Not a lot of charm or charisma. She’s not good at schmoozing like Bill Clinton or Obama. A good presidential candidate needs that, and I think it’s a big part of why Al Gore and Hillary Clinton lost. She can speak well in public sometimes, but at others she sounds flat, boring, and artificial.
Charisma is a big deal. Think about Reagan Democrats and how people to this day love Reagan even though facts and hindsight analysis show that he was a terrible president who was arguably the start of America’s modern decline into horrendous oligarchy.