Kat Timpf: Biden-Harris on criminal justice – what they have in common may surprise you

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Kamala Harris confronts Joe Biden about his record on busing, school desegregation

Former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris get into a heated exchange about court-ordered busing in the 1970s during a Democratic debate on June 27, 2019 in Miami, Florida

The Democratic National Convention begins this week, and voters are anticipating hearing not only from presidential nominee Joe Biden, but also from his vice presidential pick Kamala Harris – especially since the memories of her slams against him as his challenger in the primary are still fresh in our minds. 

It’s true: Since last week's announcement, much of the focus has been on how odd it seems that Biden would have chosen someone who had been so openly antagonistic toward him just a matter of months ago. 

In some respects, of course, that’s understandable. After all, who could forget Harris absolutely destroying Biden over his past work with segregationists in the Senate during one debate? It was, certainly, one of the primary’s most memorable moments – which Harris’ campaign quickly capitalized on by selling “That little girl was me” T-shirts (for $30, I might add).  

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In another respect, though, the pick makes absolutely perfect sense: The pair’s draconian criminal justice records. 

To me, it makes perfect sense that the guy who used his power to ensure that people would be locked up for ages for nonviolent drug “crimes” would team up with the woman who used hers to keep people locked up, even in cases when any reasonable person would have had concerns about those convictions. 

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I’ve written about Joe Biden’s criminal justice record before, and it isn’t a good one. Here are just a couple of examples: Biden co-authored the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which played a huge role in contributing to mass incarceration, especially of Black men, in the 1990s.

He also co-sponsored the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which instituted requirements for mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders and created the sentencing disparity for crack versus powder cocaine – which, again, (you guessed it!) resulted in disproportionately longer sentences for Black offenders than for white ones, all for doing pretty much the exact same thing.   

I’ve written about Harris' criminal justice record, too, and it isn’t much better. Throughout her career as a prosecutor, Harris had the chance to stand on the side of those who very likely may have been wrongly accused but, instead, often fought to uphold their questionable convictions. 

One of these cases, for example, involved George Gage, who was convicted of sexually abusing his own stepdaughter based almost entirely on her testimony. Then, the judge found, as Lara Bazelon wrote in The New York Times, “that the prosecutor had unlawfully held back potentially exculpatory evidence, including medical reports indicating that the stepdaughter” had repeatedly lied to law enforcement.

Biden and Harris have tried to paint themselves as progressive, criminal-justice-reform heroes, but failed to address exactly how or why they’ve changed.

The case wound up reaching the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco in 2015, and Harris’ prosecutors still fought to uphold the conviction – and they won. Now, as Harris heads to the DNC as the VP nominee, Gage remains behind bars. 

Another example: In 2015, Johnny Baca was convicted of murder despite the fact that judges found a prosecutor had given false testimony at his trial. Harris still initially supported this conviction, changing her position only after the issues with this case had gained national attention.

This sort of opportunistic flip-flopping is hardly an isolated incident for Harris. In fact, it seems as though the only thing that ever could get her to take the side of the accused was public pressure – and, of course, the implied risk that refusing to do so would damage her reputation and therefore her chances at maintaining power. 

Speaking of politically convenient flip-flops, it’s also important to note that although both Biden and Harris have recently tried to paint themselves as progressive, criminal-justice-reform heroes, they’ve also failed to address exactly how or why they’ve changed. One thing is clear, though: their new views are far more popular with voters than their old ones would have been: A recent poll found that a whopping 95% of Americans support at least some level of criminal justice and police reform.  

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What’s more, “voter support” also seems to be something that could certainly come with Biden’s choice of Harris; a recent ABC News poll found that the former prosecutor boasts a 71% approval rating among Democrats. 

In other words, the pair found something else in common beside their history of locking people up: Their willingness to put animosity aside for the noble cause of increasing their chances of gaining power. 

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