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Charlotte, NC — California Democrat Senator Kamala Harris, a former presidential rival to Joe Biden and now a possible Vice Presidential pick, has an interesting past that may not play well with the party’s woke Leftist base. Currently, the Democratic party is working diligently to transform our country and not for the better.
The Intercept reported that her decision to support Orange County prosecutors for “rampant misconduct” and her saying that “it is not progressive to be soft on crime” could turn off voters should she get on the national stage as the VP nominee.
Harris’s former career as a prosecutor and Attorney General of California included many controversial “tough-on-crime” incidents, and now they are being scrubbed from her Wikipedia page. With the Left now the party of “Defund the Police,” this can create waves with woke Leftists across the country.
According to the Intercept:
“At least one highly dedicated Wikipedia user has been scrubbing controversial aspects of Harris’s “tough-on-crome” record from her Wikipedia page, her decision not to prosecute Steve Mnuchin for mortgage fraud-related crimes, her strong support of prosecutors in Orange County who engaged in rampant misconduct, and other tidbits — such as her previous assertion that ‘it is not progressive to be soft on crime’ — that could prove unflattering to Harris as the public first gets to know her on the national stage. The edits, according to the page history, have elicited strong pushback from Wikipedia’s volunteer editor brigade, and have drawn the page into controversy, though it’s a fight the pro-Harris editor is currently winning.”
The Intercept continued by saying, “In 2016, The Atlantic published an article about Wikipedia edits and how a burst of activity could foreshadow Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential pick, noting that Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine’s page had seen significantly more edits than any other candidate’s in the weeks leading up to the announcement. The article also cited a 2008 Washington Post report about Sarah Palin’s Wikipedia page seeing more than 65 edits in the hours leading up to John McCain’s announcement.
Last month, a Reddit user remembered this Atlantic piece and wrote a Jupyter script to see which 2020 vice presidential contender had the most edits in a span of three weeks: Harris had 408, Stacey Abrams had 66, Sen. Elizabeth Warren had 22, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar had four. Another Redditor pointed out that a majority of Harris’s edits were coming from a single person.
Jeremy Frankel, who writes for bongino.com, discusses the Intercept piece saying it “continues that on June 11, the Wikipedia user removed this section about the Orange County scandal, saying that they were proofreading for length:
“Later that year, Harris appealed a judge’s order to take over the prosecution of a high-profile mass murder case and to eject all 250 prosecutors from the Orange County District Attorney’s office over allegations of misconduct by Republican D.A. Tony Rackauckas. Rackauckas was alleged to have illegally employed jailhouse informants and concealed evidence. Harris noted that it was unnecessary to ban all 250 prosecutors from working on the case, as only a few had been directly involved, later promising a narrower criminal investigation. The U.S. Department of Justice began an investigation into Rackauckas in December 2016, but he was not re-elected.”
Furthermore, the Intercept discusses how Harris’s first bid for public office running for San Francisco DA, where she attacked her opponent, Terence Hallinan, for not being tough enough on crime:
“In her first bid for public office, Harris embraced a “tough-on-crime” approach in the San Francisco district attorney race and unseated Terence Hallinan, who was considered one of the “most left-wing politicians in the country.” Under Hallinan, the district attorney’s office focused on rehabilitative justice initiatives instead of incarceration, which led to the lowest felony conviction rates of any county in California.”
While campaigning in the Mission District, SF Weekly reported at the time, Harris slammed Hallinan for failing to prosecute anti-war protesters for property destruction. “It is not progressive to be soft on crime,” she said.
On June 8, the Wikipedia user removed this quote from the page, saying that the changes made were “minor edits for length.”
The Intercept goes on to say that, “Harris has been working to distance herself on the national stage from her prosecutorial record in California, which has increasingly become a political liability, while taking a lead on Democratic police reform legislation after the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.”
Senator Harris branded herself as a “progressive prosecutor” and shifted left on several issues like health care and climate change. However, the most drastic leap is between her current message on crime and her past.
As Leftists attempt to whitewash Senator Harris’s prosecutorial record, it will be interesting to see how this goes forward. Joe Biden has already boxed himself in by saying he will pick a woman as his VP running mate; but we still don’t know exactly who that will be. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) withdrew from considering back in June.
With all this doubt looming, what is certain is the MSM won’t rush to ask the Biden campaign about this news regarding a top VP contender.