We are hurtling toward the 2024 election, and the lead-up has been unhinged at best. Regardless of what I think of Harris, Biden’s stepping aside has made space for a candidate who is both mentally competent and charismatic. With a new candidate comes a new strategy, and the Democrats have an easy narrative laid before them, one they have taken up: prosecutor Harris versus felon Trump.
Harris has supercharged one of the go-to talking points of this election, Trump’s criminal history. But there is much more packed into this easy soundbite than Trump’s misdeeds, with implications that must be examined.
Kamala’s Election Campaign and Controlling the Narrative
A boom of support for Harris came out following the end of the Biden campaign with his endorsement for Harris. Fundraising, media attention, and memes have generated momentum and inspired new hope for many Democratic voters. Despite all of the attention, Harris spent much of the lead-up to the Democratic National Convention—and much of her time as Vice President—as more of a personality than a political figure with specific stances. As one Vox writer points out, this has allowed her to function as a “mirror” that a range of neo-liberal, progressive, and even self-proclaimed leftist voters can project their positions onto.
By comparing Harris’s public image strategy to Beyoncé, the same writer points out the pressures on Black women who are public figures. These women are held to high expectations, expected to be “twice as good” as their white counterparts, with huge swaths of the USA population just waiting for their downfall. Avoiding firm stances can be a self-preservation tactic designed to avoid backlash.
A backlash could hurt Harris’s campaign and is generally unpleasant to experience. In Harris’s case, one can assume a significant proportion would reflect the racist tactics that Republican officials and online trolls have thrown her way. However, this can only get her so far as a presidential candidate. Her talking points at the DNC may not be enough, and her campaign website lacks clear position statements on critical—or really any—issues. Riding her wave of current popularity to the voting booth is a dangerous strategy, and the longer she waits to take stances on the issues controversial between Democratic voters, the more time she loses to recover if her campaign turns sour.
Harris also has a responsibility to the voters of the US to offer the information needed to make an educated decision. Avoidance may evade turning voters against her, but it also represents a lack of backbone and an unwillingness to be honest with the electorate. These are not the qualities of upstanding leadership, and they prevent voters from holding her accountable to any action during a Harris presidency. Harris has publicly shifted leftward under the influence of the public, but she is muddying the power of the public to have that influence.
Kamala the Prosecutor
The centrality of the “prosecutor versus felon” in the Harris campaign positions her as a figure for justice; the evasion of accountability within her campaign does not support this image. Her career may, however, offer insight into what a Harris presidency would look like. Her career as a prosecutor may have ingrained understanding of prosecutorial independence and non-partisanship contrary to recent history, particularly with the Supreme Court in direct contrast to Trump. As a prosecutor, she displayed a shift from punishment to rehabilitation in her approach to criminal justice.
Harris’s progressive movement has not come without hiccups. Her promotion of a “smart on crime” approach that supports rehabilitation and other progressive measures to keep individuals from entering the system has not always been in line with her actions. Harris showed support for California’s three-strikes law. Despite her stated opposition to the death penalty, she actively worked to uphold it as attorney general of the state.
Her progressive movement, even if it were uncomplicated, may not be enough to overcome her early record. Her start as tough-on-crime and the resulting actions have done direct harm to underprivileged individuals. At the same time, she has previously dragged her feet on actually working toward reform, failing to act as a true supporter and avoiding controversial positions. This record pairs poorly with her campaign. She has represented a continued unwillingness to face controversy and has shown inconsistent follow-through on stated positions.
The Problem of the “Felon”
The prosecutor versus felon narrative evades any particular discussion of Harris’s career history and instead contrasts her against the “felon” in a good versus bad dichotomy utilizing a stigmatizing label and reinforcing the validity of that stigmatization via the actually awful Trump. In reality, prosecutors have a blemished history of pursuing convictions against the evidence and wrongful imprisonment, and the term felon turns complex people into walking avatars of their past mistakes who are often unable to reenter society after supposedly paying their dues.
Harris has a history of upholding wrongful convictions which therefore carries impacts beyond the time of punishment. The wrongfully convicted who do their time enter the unjust reality of living with the “felon” label and all the following consequences as a result of a conviction that never should have happened in the first place. Even under a framework of punitive justice, this is an unjust reality.
Though a useful political narrative for the election, the prosecutor versus felon binary does not only attack Trump. It ties disdain to all US residents who have a felony conviction and perpetuates the barriers they face to reintegration. Due to the mechanics of the prison-industrial complex, this overwhelmingly impacts the already marginalized, especially Black folks. The popular image of the felon as Black and poor built on a misunderstanding of how felons have ended up in that position will not be changed by association with Trump, but vitriol against them will be reinforced.
The perceived usefulness of this talking point is also up for question. The Trump campaign has itself targeted “felons” despite Trump’s convictions exactly because of the aforementioned stereotypes. It invigorates those who already hate Trump utilizing a simple label that perpetuates serious harm without effectively tarnishing his image with his base. Rather than reinforcing stigma against felons, the abhorrent actions that led to Trump’s convictions can be emphasized as individual faults, pointing toward an established history of lies and fraud. This may or may not be more effective, but it is more ethical while also avoiding the alienation of progressive and leftist voters.
Christianity and the Prosecutor
As the election approaches, those of us who are choosing to vote must consider our principles as Christians and how they align with the candidates, their policies, and the future they seek to create if we hope to make an informed, morally grounded decision. Kamala, and the narrative of this candidacy, are not uncomplicated. As Harris seeks to be an authority and leader, it is important to reflect on her past stances and actions, and the current rhetoric she chooses.
The prosecutor versus felon narrative is incompatible with a Christian perspective on justice, redemption, and accountability. Rather than grappling with the true ambiguity of her career, the narrative reduces the election to a false choice between the good prosecutor and the bad felon. And Trump, a felon, is as bad as that label wants him to be. But the image reinforced is not one that matches the man and his behaviors; it instead mistakes the criminal justice system for good and a cultural, prejudiced image of the felon as bad.
This is not to suggest that there’s a world where Trump is the more upstanding, accountable, honest candidate. It is to assert that we need to view Harris with clear eyes and resist simplistic stories that perpetuate harm and obfuscate a lack of clarity and consistency on Harris’s part. We cannot be fooled into complacency by a campaign of positivity and easy choices. It is our task to remember the compassionate, just world we aim to create by demanding transparency and follow-through from elected officials.
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