"White Out: The Unrelenting Quest to Erase Kamala Harris"

[Otto Lidenbrock]

Fascinating blog post in the link. I was very disappointed at how pundits including democrats sneered and mocked Kamala Harris for her emphasising Trump's Twitter as a vehicle of hate and violence. People at Twitter seemed to take heed as I posted here yesterday: https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287311532

But this post goes beyond that. It explores how Harris has garnered a reputation that is misleading and in some cases downright lies yet she hasn't received the opportunity others have in responding.

The Democratic Primaries started off promisingly diverse. Secretary Julian Castro was the first to announce his candidacy, and Senator Kamala Harris was one of the next to join the race barely a week later. Senator Cory Booker declared the beginning of February — and for a brief moment, we had a primary that reflected the voting base of the Democratic party.

It didn’t last.

Kamala Harris announced her candidacy to a roaring crowd of over 20,000 people, which remains a record in the 2020 Primary. Many were excited about her entry into the race, particularly after the hearings of Jeff Sessions and Brett Kavanaugh. Anticipating the likelihood of her run, the hit pieces began before her formal announcement, including the creation of the hashtag #KamalaIsaCop as a continuation of Russian bot propaganda to subdue the turnout of black voters.

The distortion of Kamala Harris’s stellar record came from both right wing sources like the Washington Examiner, and leftwing sites like The Intercept. Most of these “criticisms” (such as wrongly attributing her to Jamal Trulove’s incarceration, outcries for not prosecuting Mnuchin, and allegedly fighting to keep prisoners in jail for cheap labor) have been completely debunked, but they remain staples in the comment sections of Twitter and Facebook from both Trump supporters and so-called progressives. Journalists also permit these distortions to go unchallenged, with the lone exception of Politifact debunking Tulsi Gabbard’s false claims after the second debate.

The disinformation surrounding Kamala Harris is inordinately persistent, but it is not limited to bad faith takes from journalists. The bot activity surrounding Kamala Harris is striking, particularly for a candidate that polls between 4th and 5th place. On a weekly basis, Kamala receives between 125 to 190 mentions on TV news stations, which is staggeringly less than the three people polling above her — yet the estimated bot activity stalking her account outnumbers every single other candidate in the top 6 combined. This means that Kamala has fewer options to defend herself on television (and those mentions usually skew negative, rather than neutral or positive), and far more attacks targeting her.

Kamala Harris is empirically mentioned less often than other candidates, even when there is every reason to center her in a news story. This has been seen time and time again. The first example to be shown considers Kamala Harris’s signature policy — the LIFT Act, which is her tax proposal that would reverse the Trump tax code and create the option for families to tap into their refund for up to $500 a month. An entire article was written about a California program that piloted something similar, yet Kamala Harris — the junior California Senator — is not mentioned once.

Similarly, Kamala Harris was the first person to introduce a maternal mortality bill that centered black women. California took measures at the state level to combat this epidemic, yet despite being the Senator from California and the leader on this issue, Elizabeth Warren was quoted for the article.

In truth, most of Kamala Harris’s policies go unmentioned or unexamined by the media, a fact which Rep. Wilson highlights in this interview.

Kamala Harris will present an excellent proposal, an excellent idea, and they’ll say it, but they won’t cover it. Start to pay attention, and you’ll see it. -Representative Frederica Wilson, FL.

Kamala Harris’s healthcare proposal was the first to create a cap for monthly prescription drug costs; unbeknownst to The Daily Beast, who reported that Pete Buttigieg had the first plan despite Kamala announcing hers months beforehand. When Harris spokesman Ian Sams pointed out the discrepancy, The Daily Beast removed and reposted the article omitting the “first” without an apology or correction.

Gun control is another realm where Kamala Harris has come out strong, and early, proposing her plan in April 2019 to take executive action if Congress did not act within 100 days. The Giffords Foundation coordinated with all the major 2020 contenders to release a call to action video on gun control, which Kamala Harris naturally participated in. And she was removed from the ad by MSNBC when they ran it for her trouble. This example is particularly egregious because it was not a case of an omission — they had to intentionally edit the video to remove her segment.

Of a similar vein, Kamala Harris was one of many 2020 candidates to wish Bernie Sanders a speedy recovery after his heart attack, both privately in a phone call and publicly to reporters. NowThis, however, managed to include everyone who had spoken out except her.

The erasure of Kamala Harris’s long, impressive history with the LGBTQ+ community is possibly the most heinous example. The aforementioned Intercept hit pieces targeted the fact that two trans inmates were denied gender affirmation surgery in California, ignoring the fact that it was Kamala Harris’s job to represent the state, and also that she reversed the policy within a year (far before that was a popular stance and during the period of time where Elizabeth Warren was calling gender affirmation surgery not a “good use of taxpayer dollars”), AND her efforts made California the first and one of the only states to ban the trans panic defense.

The two LGBT forums of the 2020 Primary apparently only read the smear articles, however. The now infamous moderation of Lyz Lenz (a white, non-LGBT woman) highlighted this, in which she framed the same premise of a question about gender affirmation surgery to Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris very differently: “How can people trust you?” to the latter, and “How can people evolve like you?” to the former.

Lenz’s questioning, refreshingly, did not go unnoticed, especially by black women on Twitter — who were subsequently blocked for their righteous indignation. Rather than apologizing, Lenz doubled down that she was proud of the work she did, shielding behind Biden’s remarks in a peak white feminist fashion.

When the second LGBTQ forum was held, the questioning by Chris Cuomo was more tame — with the obvious exception of his making light out of Kamala Harris’s opening in which she stated her preferred pronouns to a roaring applause. To Cuomo’s credit, he at least apologized immediately, unlike Lenz.

Rest of blog: https://medium.com/@courtneybswanson/white-out-the-unrelenting-quest-to-erase-kamala-harris-d8b4de2c3fb7

[tblue37]

1. K&R for visibility. nt

[blm]

2. Lots of truth in that blog.

[Modern Fictions]

3. The Cover of Time Magazine?

Kind of a weird way to erase somebody.

IMHO, her debate performances after the first one have been strangely muted.

[Jake Stern]

4. I'm betting Daniel Larsen doesn't feel like his story has been "debunked"

Before his release, the Attorney General (Kamala Harris) appealed the judge’s ruling, arguing that even if Danny was innocent, his conviction should not be reversed because he waited too long to file his petition. Almost three years later, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Attorney General’s appeal.

Read More: https://californiainnocenceproject.org/read-their-stories/daniel-larsen/

Perhaps the author can ask Jose Diaz if he feels his story was "debunked"

But when he sought compensation, state attorneys (working for AG Harris) argued that Diaz had waited too long to apply — even though he applied shortly after he was cleared.

“They’re trying to base it on a technicality instead of justice,” said Diaz, a tech worker and married father of four who lives paycheck to paycheck.

He had been cleared with help from local prosecutors, including the head of the Santa Clara County district attorney’s conviction integrity unit.

Read More: https://graphics.latimes.com/towergraphic-stories-innocence/

[maxsolomon]

5. I started out on the Harris Train.

I do not give a fuck about her strictly enforcing the law as California AG - I think it is an asset in the General. The same way that I saw Obama's zealous enforcement of Immigration Laws and continued use of Drone Strikes in the WoT as assets to his 2012 campaign.

Sadly, I just haven't seen the charisma or rhetorical gifts I'd hoped to see from Harris.

But I haven't seen that from any other Dem candidates, either.

[Turin_C3PO]

6. Interesting article.

I do think Kamala faces a racist and sexist combo against her.

[Blistering Sun]

7. My junior Senator has no one to blame but herself for her her struggling campaign.

She started with a clear shot at winning this thing. Or at least being on the ticket. But she's struggled with appearing authentic.

You can't tell different groups different stories in this day and age and think the discrepancies won't surface.

It too bad. Had she positioned herself as the person we know here in CA, as a liberal in the mainstream who is enlightened on social justice, but also is also pragmatic and reasonable, she'd have had a shot.