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Radio Atlantic

Kamala Harris, Progressive Prosecutor?

Radio Atlantic

The Atlantic

Politics, News, Society & Culture

4.41.9K Ratings

🗓️ 1 February 2019

⏱️ 37 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Senator Kamala Harris has drawn criticism for beginning her 2020 campaign by pitching herself as a ‘progressive prosecutor’ despite a more mixed record. Alex Wagner sits down with two people who have thought deeply about the power of prosecutors in America: Georgetown Law Professor Paul Butler and New York Times Magazine staff writer Emily Bazelon. What exactly is Harris’s record? How does race inform the debate about prosecutorial power? And what does it all mean for the broader conversation in 2020 about criminal justice? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

So we are barely into 2019 and 2020 is upon us. The presidential race has

0:08.2

officially begun with the entry of Democrats including Elizabeth Warren

0:11.7

Julian Castro,

0:13.2

Tulli Gabbard, and Kirsten-Jillibrand,

0:15.4

and of course, heightened expectations

0:17.5

that Bernie and Beto and Bloomberg

0:20.0

might be waiting in the wings.

0:21.5

But the biggest rollout so far has been that of Kamala Harris.

0:25.7

I stand before you today to announce my candidacy

0:30.7

for President of the United States. The two-year senator from California is already being talked about as a

0:37.4

presumptive front-runner. Kamala Harris came out yesterday and had a message

0:41.6

and it was a message that I think resonates.

0:44.0

Giant crap!

0:45.0

A gigantic crap.

0:47.0

So number one that we have on our rankings is Kamala Harris.

0:50.0

A lot of people see Harris as a liberal icon, a mixed-race self-made American success story in the vein of Barack Obama.

0:58.0

But Harris's previous career in law enforcement complicates this.

1:02.0

Before she won federal office in 2016,

1:04.9

Harris was the attorney general of California. Before that she was a career

1:09.3

prosecutor and some people say she was not a particularly progressive one.

1:15.0

In the era of criminal justice reform and Black Lives Matter, can a former prosecutor

1:20.0

win the Democratic nomination?

...

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