Month: August 2019

Wednesday’s Democratic debate was the first one that felt like it was taking place inside the classroom of a critical theory instructor. Several candidates confessed their various privileges, speaking in terms that might appeal to the minority of Democratic voters who are progressive activists but are likely to alienate everyone else.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee lead the way, admitting that he had no idea what it felt like to be a black teenager, or a woman being talked over in a board meeting, or an LGBTQ person hearing a slur. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D–N.Y.) quickly followed suit, vowing to berate suburban white women for being insufficiently woke.

“I don’t believe that it’s the responsibility of Cory [Booker] and Kamala [Harris] to be the only voice that takes on these issues of institutional racism, systemic racism in our country,” said Gillibrand. “I think as a white woman of privilege, who is a U.S. senator, running for president of the United States, it is also my responsibility to lift up those voices that aren’t being listened to. And I can talk to those white women in the suburbs that voted for Trump and explain to them what white privilege actually is, that when their son is walking down a street with a bag of M&Ms in his pocket, wearing a hoodie, his whiteness is what protects him from not being shot.

“When his—when her—when their child has a car that breaks down, and he knocks on someone’s door for help, and the door opens, and the help is given, it’s his whiteness that protects him from being shot. That is what white privilege in America is today.”

This is Intersectionality 101, and it has become the operating system for progressive activists. People are oppressed because of their overlapping marginalized identities—for reasons of race, gender identity, LGBT status, class, religion, ability, size, etc.—and it’s the job of everyone else to center the marginalized in every policy discussion. In practice, this often means policing language in a manner that is off-putting to all but the ardent progressives.

It’s important to remember, as The Atlantic‘s Yascha Mounk pointed out in a writeup of a survey that found more than 80 percent of people despise political correctness, that the number of Americans who think people should routinely check their privilege constitute a tiny minority. It seems curious that Democrats are so determined to win them.

For more on this subject, check out my book, Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump.

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A sharp exchange at tonight’s Democratic debate showed that, no matter how much he’d like to, former Vice President Joe Biden won’t be able to sidestep his disastrous record on criminal justice.

CNN moderator Jake Tapper asked Biden to respond to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker’s criticism that Biden’s recently unveiled criminal justice reform proposal was “an inadequate solution to what is a raging crisis in our country.”

“Right now, we’re in a situation where, when someone is convicted of a drug crime, they end up going to jail and to prison,” Biden said. “They should be going to rehabilitation. They shouldn’t be going to prison. When in prison, they should be learning to read and write and not just sit in there and learn how to be better criminals.”

Booker took the opportunity to describe Biden’s record on policing and incarceration.

“Mr. Vice President has said that, since the 1970s, every major crime bill—every crime bill, major and minor, has had his name on it,” Booker said “And, sir, those are your words, not mine. And this is one of those instances where the house was set on fire and you claimed responsibility for those laws. And you can’t just now come out with a plan to put out that fire.”

Biden responded by attacking Booker’s record of lax police oversight as mayor of Newark, but Booker stayed on the offensive.

“We have a system right now that’s broken, and if you want to compare records—and frankly I’m shocked that you do—I am happy to do that,” Booker shot back. “All of the problems that he’s talking about that he created, I actually led the bill that got passed into law reversing the damage your bills did.”

“There are people right now in prison for life for drug offenses because you stood up and used that tough-on-crime phony rhetoric that got a lot of people got elected but destroyed communities like mine,” Booker continued.

Booker was right. As Reason‘s Christan Britschgi has written, Biden’s new criminal justice reform platform is a rather explicit repudiation of, well, pretty much Biden’s entire legislative career:

When he was a senator from Delaware, Biden was one of the original co-sponsors on the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. That law imposed mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders and created the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine, two policies Biden now says should be eliminated completely.

Biden was also a sponsor of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, which expanded the application of the death penalty—another policy he now says should be abolished […]

Biden also supported the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act—indeed, he sometimes calls it the Biden Crime Law. That piece of legislation helped to drive mass incarceration at the state level by expanding federal funding for prison construction.

Now, it’s not true that any of Biden’s bills single-handedly created mass incarceration, which was largely a state-level phenomenon. Those bills were also all the product of wide bipartisan agreement. But they all did their part to make the criminal justice system larger and crueler. 

It was only this year, and through an enormous amount of bipartisan effort, that more than 3,000 federal inmates serving draconian sentences under the 100:1 crack/powder cocaine disparity finally had their sentences reduced. 

This is Biden’s chief legacy, and he can’t run from it. As one of Reason‘s recent podcasts put it “Hair-Sniffer Joe Biden Should Apologize For His Whole Career.”

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When New York Mayor Bill de Blasio gave his opening speech at tonight’s Democratic primary debate, there was a brief shout from somebody in the audience. It was hard to decipher, but it became clear that the mayor was being heckled when Sen. Cory Booker (D–N.J.) gave his opening statement, only to be interrupted with chants of “Fire Pantaleo!”

The target wasn’t Booker. It was de Blasio. NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo was the man responsible for the aggressive chokehold that led to the death of Eric Garner five years ago. The takedown of Garner—police were responding to a call about a fight, suspected Garner of selling loose cigarettes, and attempted to arrest him—became a national rallying point to demand police accountability.

But so far nothing has come of it. A grand jury declined to charge Pantaleo, and this month the Department of Justice decided it would not file federal civil rights charges in Pantaleo’s death. New York City has finally begun administrative proceedings to decide whether to discipline or fire Pantaleo at all. There is anger among not a few folks in New York about the foot-dragging. Hence the heckling.

Much later in the debate, the moderators asked Julián Castro, former secretary of housing and urban development under President Barack Obama, about whether Pantaleo should still be serving. Castro bluntly said that the officer should be fired. “He knew what he was doing….He should have been off the street.” The audience responded with very loud cheers.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D–N.Y.) agreed. She said that she’s met with Garner’s mother and added, “If I was mayor, I’d fire him.”

De Blasio, given the chance to respond, deflected responsibility to the federal Department of Justice. He claimed that the department told New York City that he could not act on Pantaleo’s behavior because of the federal investigation. That is not true. De Blasio was asked to refrain from acting during their investigation, but he was not ordered to keep Pantaleo on the force. And, in fact, the city actually finally went ahead and began administrative proceedings against Pantaleo before the Justice Department formally announced they were not pressing charges.

On Twitter, de Blasio responded to the heckling by vaguely saying he “heard” the protesters, understood their pain, but believed in “respecting the process”:

While I believe that respecting the process is the best way to get justice for Eric Garner's family, I recognize and identify with the pain people across this country are feeling. #DemDebate

— Bill de Blasio (@BilldeBlasio) August 1, 2019

Unfortunately for Garner’s family, the “process” is dominated by deference to police union agreements that make it hard to fire bad cops, that shield them from accountability, and that keep individual officers’ histories of misconduct a secret from the public. We might not even know what sort of discipline, if any, is ultimately handed down in the case.

De Blasio also spent a lot of the debate declaring his own support for union influence over domestic policy. The process that has kept Pantaleo on the force appears to be one that de Blasio supports.

De Blasio also said that there would “never be another Eric Garner.” Given that he has, since Garner’s death, increased the price of cigarettes in New York City even further, fostering the black market that led police to arrest the man, he is in no position to make such a promise.

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Sen. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.) “put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana,” said Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D–Hawaii) during Wednesday night’s Democratic presidential debate.

In its promotional framing and question, CNN pushed hard for another showdown between Harris and former vice president Joe Biden. But the more authentic and substantial spat so far came between Harris and Gabbard.

Responding to Biden, Harris said she was proud of the work she did as attorney general of California, positioning her efforts as a matter of cleaning up policies put in place by people like the former VP. (Biden had just taken a well-deserved takedown from New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker about his “phony tough on crime” rhetoric.)

But Gabbar wouldn’t let this revisionist history stand.

Harris says she’s proud of her record, “but I am deeply concerned about this record,” said Gabbard. “There are too many examples to cite, but…she blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California. And she fought to keep cash bail system in place that impacts poor people in the worst kind of way.”

Gabbard is right. Given the opportunity as AG, Harris actually defended the state’s death penalty after a judge ruled it unconstitutional. She also ramped up penalties or enforcement for not just drug crimes but prostitution, truancy, and many other misdemeanor offenses.

Gabbard told Harris that the people who “suffered under [her] reign” were owed an apology. “The bottom line is, when you were in a position to make a difference and an impact in these people’s lives, you did not. And worse yet, in the case of those who are on death row, innocent people, you actually blocked evidence from being revealed that would have freed them until you were forced to do so. There’s no excuse for that.”

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