#the way she thinks she knows more abt trans issues as a republican than me her genderweird child

[stabbingandorbeingstabbed]

went to subway with my mom and accidentally outed myself SEVERAL times bc we started talking abt lgbt issues and i forgot to omit myself from that group by way of saying "we" instead of "they" but she didn't seem surprised or even comment on it at all. like whatever i guess she probably knew idk how you could live with me for 30 years and not know something was up

[batboyblog]

it’s totally okay if you don’t do this but would you be able to make some type of post explaining why kamala harris shouldn’t be reduced to bein “a cop” and how her policies are actually way more progressive than people think? I feel like kamala is gonna get the Hillary treatment this election and all my white liberal friends are already on the ‘shES a cOp’ train and finding proof otherwise for me ends up w posts abt her history of her jus doing her job but I guess ppl are mad abt it??

I feel like answering this opens me up to a lot hate mail, but you know here goes.

I want to open this by saying every politician will have made choices you disagree with, and everyone is entitled to their own lines, things they dislike and can’t support.

That being said I think it’s worth always measuring everyone as “is this better than having Trump has President?” and basically everyone running to be the Democratic nominee that's a true statement. A lot of the “Harris is a Cop” meme people seem to be implying they don’t think thats true and anyone who thinks 4 more years of Trump is better than any Democrat thats running is not your friend. 

Any ways the thrust of the issues with Harris seem to come down to two things, trans issues and school truancy. People feel that she took a transphobic stand on prisoners in the CA prison system transitioning while locked up, and people claim she locked up parents of children with chronic truancy issues who disproportionally happen to be black and hispanic (often single parents). 

This article in the LGBT paper The Washington Blade is a good explainer on the first issue though for me this is a key part:

It seems the cases weren’t on Harris’ radar, even though her name is on each of the legal briefs, until much later in the process of litigation.

Nathan Barankin, who’s chief of staff for Harris and served as her deputy attorney general, said around 1,100 attorneys are working on cases like these and Harris wasn’t personally aware or involved in the litigation until a later time.

“She did learn about our office’s involvement in this case by reading about it in the newspaper,” Barankin said. “Her reaction to the way the case was being litigated was to work very closely with all of the parties involved to reach what we consider a successful conclusion, which was a permanent change in state prison policy on the treatment of transgender inmates.”

Two years later after the settlements were reached, Lambda Legal struck a different tone on Harris’ handling of the lawsuit.

Peter Renn, a senior attorney in the Western Regional Office of Lambda Legal who works on transgender cases, said the situation changed in the lawsuits as Harris became more involved in the litigation.

“The California AG’s office shifted its handling of these cases significantly after now-Sen. Harris took over,” Renn said. “Initially there was language in briefing for the state that glaringly misunderstood the medical necessity of transition-related medical care and was patently offensive. But then, there was a dramatic change, which seems to have gone along with important policy shifts.”

again if people find this case to be a particular red line for them, too distasteful for them to support her in a primary, that's fine, thats their feelings, but there is an image being pushed that Harris is nearly violently transphobic and I’ve seen very stupid people trying to claim that a Harris Presidency would be worse for trans rights than an on going Trump one. I think the worst reading of this case is that trans rights aren’t high the list of things Harris cares about (given her aggressive support for trans rights in the Senate, and fighting black room bullshit as CA-AG I don’t think thats true) Republicans actively loath Trans people and want them all dead, keep it in mind if any says shit about any Democrat that sounds like it’s made to make you not want to vote, anyone who doesn’t want you to vote (for the Democrat) is not your friend. 

On the School Truancy thing, here’s a fact check basically what happened was Harris as San Fran DA made a special focus on the VERY high rate of truancy and set up a system. Starting with a warning letter from the DAs office. If attendance did not improve the office would reach out and try to have a meeting and come up with a voluntary attendance plan with the parents and student. If this failed it went to court, a special truancy court where a court mandated attendance plan would be hammered out and checked up on by a court, over the years only 25 families ended up with a court ordered attendance plan, and no parents in San Fran went to jail over it. This is in fact more progressive than in most places that might offer one warning (from a truancy officer at the door) before charging a parent with a crime and fining or jailing them without any real effort to improve attendance. This one pisses me off since it was a progressive policy, there seem to have been issues when it was expanded to a state wide law that tried to bring this state wide and DAs got to basically implement as they wanted around the state and there are red red parts of CA believe it or not.

any ways she was one of the earliest supporters of Medicare for All she just come out with a plan to lower drug prices she’s running on a major policy to close the racial wealth gap and control housing prices   basically I’d say she’s one of the most liberal people running, just behind Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and of course they agree on a lot. No one has to vote for her, but the cartoonish image of some conservative nearly Republican Democrat is very much off base and wrong and maybe based on issues with women or people of color or women who are people of color, and also Bernie fans often go out of their way to discredit people who are slightly less left wing than Bernie who they fear are more electable, or just because being anti-establishment is their brand. 

In any case no one has to like her or vote for her in the primary but if we get to the general and you thin her being President is not light years better than having Trump around well, you’re not in a fact based world.