She has some criticisms for her past as an attorney, but I’m not sure why she’s so disliked now. What has she done to engender such distaste from the public?

  • She’s a racist, classist noeliberal and a fucking cop (or close enough).

    Her political career has been chock-full of attacking public institutions like schools, protecting white-collar crime which destroyed countless lives, protecting child molesters in the church, implementing policy against the poor, and protecting prison slavery. I’m not sure where exactly the confusion lies.

          • But like this is all common knowledge if you want to have something of use to offer to this conversation. She was the California AG, literally the top policing position. Before that she was San Francisco’s DA and ran on a platform of Tough On Crime. She’s literally is cop and many would argue by extension, racist, as in systematic.

            As for her neoliberal status, I don’t think that needs to be explained.

            I hate when people say “do your own research” as much as the next guy, but there is a certain degree of familiarity with the subject matter that should be expected to participate, even ACAB dude up there knows what he’s talking about.

            • Well, her being a cop is self-evident, but let’s review the entire comment:

              She’s a racist, classist noeliberal and a fucking cop (or close enough).

              Her political career has been chock-full of attacking public institutions like schools, protecting white-collar crime which destroyed countless lives, protecting child molesters in the church, implementing policy against the poor, and protecting prison slavery. I’m not sure where exactly the confusion lies.

              I would argue that, frankly, her being a neoliberal should be explained, for the sake of discussion, but her being racist and classist should be. The details of her career being “chock-full” of various acts should be coupled with specific citations to reporting of those acts. And so on.

              I don’t like Harris, mind, but the comment being discussed could have established its evidence in a more convincing manner.

          • Excuse me, but at some point someone will have to do research themselves, otherwise there won’t be any knowledge.

            Also, how do you know anything if you don’t do any research yourself? Do you have someone else whisper in your ear to tell you things all the time?

            • I know things because people teach me. Just like other people know things because i teach them. I dont tell my math students to just read the damn book and figure it out themselves lol. Vast majority of people do not have the critical thinking or media literacy skills to properly research a topic let alone a plethora of them. If you dont wanna expend the energy to properly explain things thats fine, but telling people “just look it up yourself” helps no one

                • I dont learn from the books I teach from I learned from my teachers and professors. Learning math by yourself is incredibly difficult lol. Yes writing research papers isnt that hard for some people but I also worked with plenty of students in university who absolutely could not write at even a high school level. Most people dont learn critical thinking from english class because they are too immature and close-minded ("the curtains are just blue! symbolism isnt real!!!). So at the end of the day, if you want to be a condescending unhelpful tit thats your prerogative but dont expect to win anybody over or make any friends that way.

        • This is so lazy. The burden of proof is upon the claimant. Feel free to toss out wild claims without providing anything to support what you are saying, but then don’t be surprised when no one believes you.

    • I get why rich people are Republicans. It pisses me off when poor people gladly vote against their own interests in order to “own the democrats.” OK but you’re still in west va coal country with mountains being pulled down and the only hope for your kids is to leave and maybe visit. And now Republicans are making child labor legal so they might not even get that opportunity.

      • The reasons she got tapped is because she’s very moderate and tows the party line. With in the party institution she’s played by “the rules” and garnered a lot of popularity and favors with in it. She also fits in a demographic that the party upper echelons want to appeal more to without pushing legislation that those demographics are asking for.

    1. She’s a democrat. that means 42% of the population automatically hate her.
    2. She’s grossly inappropriate and cackles at exactly the wrong time, and that creeps people out.
    3. She was a “tough on weed” prosecutor who became a bleeding heart liberal overnight when she got her new job. That makes her seem disingenuous.

    Just what I’ve picked up from other people, I have no feelings about her whatsoever.

    • Used to really like her as senator. She was a bulldog questioning people in front of committee, and going after other senators for nonsensical arguments. When she became candidate, she became completely stage-managed to the point that she seems so phoney. I’m not suggesting that most politicians are not phoney, but she just comes off fake and smug to me.

      • I agree. I was a big fan of hers during Congressional testimony. But she is definitely awkward in unscripted environments and would be a poor presidential candidate in a nation where a significant portion of the electorate wants a president they can have a beer with. Additionally, her history as a prosecutor makes Democrats suspicious of her.

        Republicans hate her because she’s a Black woman. They’ll make up other excuses, but none of them hold water.

    • Yup. Everyone here giving their own reasons for disliking her seems to be missing that the amount of vitriolic hatred spewed at her is wildly disproportionate to anything she’s actually done or failed to do.

      (speaking as someone who doesn’t like her either, in that I don’t “like” 99% of politicians)

  • The single biggest problem standing between the left and sustained and meaningful control of the federal government is the complete lack of ability of voters to circle around a consensus candidate. There are several valid reasons to be critical of Harris just as there are pretty much every single Democratic Presidential decade basically of my lifetime. But Republicans vote consistently for candidates they dislike or even hate just to beat Democrats. Every single candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2016, 2020, and undoubtedly in 2028 will have some vocal subset of registered Democrat voters telling you exactly why they will never in a million years vote for them. I saw it constantly on Reddit and I don’t see any reason why it won’t continue.

    Until somebody drops the magic “consensus candidate” name that somehow pleases everyone, Democratic voters are always going to be a major hurdle to their own success. And frankly I don’t think that “consensus candidate” name exists. Such is the curse of being the big tent party opposite the GOP. Republicans know they can continue winning elections for at least a little longer thanks to Democratic infighting alone.

    • Democrats fall in love. Republicans fall in line.

      It’s reductive, but look at the Christian Right and Trump. Trump is nowhere close to the picture of a Christian. It’s astounding he can safely cross the threshold of a church. But he promises to make sure abortion is illegal and men can’t pretend to be women to steal kids, so they vote for him. Replace the abortion issue with guns and you get another set of voters who will vote Republican regardless of what they might personally feel.

      Meanwhile and to your point on the left, each candidate’s worst flaws are held as some kind of uncrossable line by people who are terminally online (which isn’t helpful) and the Democratic Party does what they can to feed this and make sure they don’t have to enact meaningful change. They just want to maintain the status quo but they get to do it with a pride flag waving behind them. If the Party establishment would just stop putting a thumb on the scale (not just against Bernie but ANYONE remotely progressive/left of the neoliberal center) and let the primary process shake out the most popular candidate, they might actually find themselves winning elections.

        •  coolin   ( @coolin@beehaw.org ) 
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          31 year ago

          I don’t really think compulsory voting would be that beneficial for democrats. Yes, it may boost them a few points across the board, but my general intuition about the general public is they lean towards democrats but are more socially conservative than you see in online spaces. 2020 is probably the best example: super high turnout yet Dems still clipping by with only a +4 advantage instead of the +10 predicted by looking at far more politically engaged voters.

          • It’s not social stuff. A lot of Americans are socially conservative, but social progressives and social libertarians (live and let live types) together make a clear supermajority. The problem isn’t that Americans are socially conservative, it’s that a large number of people have the notion that Republicans are good for the economy and Democrats are bad for the economy, and that therefore when things are economically rough they should vote in the Republicans. This group of people play a large role in why Congress flips so often.

            •  BrikoX   ( @BrikoX@vlemmy.net ) 
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              11 year ago

              Both are parties are mostly corporate owned so it makes no real difference in quality of life for people so the only way for them to differciate is pointless culture issues.

      • The DNC doesn’t put their thumb on the scale as much as people like to pretend. The real problem is the under 40 crowd simply not showing up to vote in primaries. There is nothing stopping the same turnout in general elections happening in primaries except people refusing to get off their couches.

        • Bernie was the frontrunner in 2020, and Biden was doing terribly, until the DNC brokered a deal with all of the other candidates to have them simultaneously drop out and endorse Biden.

          In 2016, the DNC had a special fundraising deal with Hillary that funneled joint money directly into her campaign.

          IMO these are good examples of the Democratic establishment internally picking a candidate and throwing their weight behind that candidate. I haven’t seen anything like this from the RNC.

          • Bernie was the frontrunner in 2020, and Biden was doing terribly, until the DNC brokered a deal with all of the other candidates to have them simultaneously drop out and endorse Biden.

            There’s nothing illegal or unethical about that. The party is entitled to support the candidate they think has the best chance of winning, and they were proven right when he got the most votes in history… while Trump got the second most in history. At that point if Bernie were the more popular candidate he should have been able to beat Biden head to head and he didn’t. Because progressive voters talk a good game but are too lazy to actually show up for primaries. You get out of the system what you put into it and believe it or not the DNC doesn’t throw it’s weight behind establishment candidates because they hate progressivism, they do it because progressive voters are historically less reliable. And lo and behold Biden got 19 million votes to Bernie’s 9. This is literally a “prove us wrong” situation with the DNC. Show them a progressive candidate is viable by voting for one. But don’t be surprised when the DNC is prioritizing winning the general election and in doing so is already promoting the candidate they know has the best chance of winning. That’s literally the entire purpose of a party apparatus existing in the first place.

            In 2016, the DNC had a special fundraising deal with Hillary that funneled joint money directly into her campaign.

            Again, nothing wrong with that. Bernie lost because more people voted for Hillary, not because she had more money. She beat him by 4 million votes. 4 million real human beings. Not party elite. Bernie was winning the caucuses, the parts of the primary where regular voters don’t get a say. But when the voters got their turn, they made their choice free of coercion. Bernie had more than 4 million additional supporters easily who sat on the sidelines, watched the outcome, and then complained without ever considering actually participating. I guarantee you that. Feels like about 3 million of them gave me shit daily on Reddit back in 2017 when I said all these same things then. All openly accusing the DNC of rigging the outcome while admitting they didn’t vote in the primary because they refused to register with a party that “rigged” primaries, despite the fact that the accusations of rigging occurred after said primary was over. So I guess being too lazy and jaded to even show up is somehow everyone’s fault but their own.

            I haven’t seen anything like this from the RNC.

            We shouldn’t be emulating the RNC. A fascist authoritarian party that got Trump because they don’t vette their candidates and the party has gone completely insane as a result and the country will never be the same again. Not exactly a glowing example of good outcomes. That’s exhibit A 1 for why a political party exercising some level of discretion over which of their candidates gets the most attention isn’t inherently bad. And believe me, with Trump’s upcoming legal troubles, you’re going to see some pretty heavy scale tipping in favor of DeSantis by next spring.

      • Replace the abortion issue with guns and you get another set of voters who will vote Republican regardless of what they might personally feel.

        The funny part is, Trump suggested to take away guns first, and do due process second - and these 2nd Amendment goobers still voted for him.

      • This is mostly right but there’s also a harder element to the social behaviours of the two voting groups. Republicans are happy to play dirty and Democrats always take the high road. Dems don’t seem to mind screwing each other over by meddling with public will in the primaries, why don’t they for once take the gloves off and play at least a little bit of the Repubs game? I can see how this could make it a totally populist nightmare, but that’s what we’re already facing.

      • That’s not the only option. People can start participating in primaries to get the candidates they actually want. But when the general election rolls around and the other option is christofascism, yes, you need need to vote against that. Or you won’t be voting for anything ever again pretty soon.

          • I don’t think I agree with that. I haven’t seen a single Democratic nominee who wasn’t also the lead vote getter in my lifetime. Pretty sure there hasn’t been one since the modern primary process was introduced in the 70s. Sure you can argue that the DNC throws it’s weight behind certain candidates in terms of money and exposure, sure the order of the primaries influences how the later ones tend to lead. And superdelegates will always be controversial. But you can’t argue in good faith that the DNC is choosing the candidates for us until you show me one who didn’t win the primary popular vote somehow getting the nomination.

            Ironically the closest we’ve gotten to that in recent years was 2016 when Bernie won very few primary elections but won many of the caucuses. The caucuses are inarguably less small-d democratic than primaries but the same people arguing that the DNC rigged those primaries against Bernie conveniently ignore that actual voters didn’t want him.

            At the end of the day it’s still the voters who pick the nominee. And voters can easily pick more progressive candidates if they want to, but the numbers don’t lie. Turnout in the primary in 2016 for Dems was 14.4 percent of eligible voters. In the general it was over 40%. In 2020 primary and general participation among Democrats both went up which is good, but the relative gap between primary and general participation more or less stayed the same. Biden won the Presidency with over 80 million votes. He won the primary cleanly, more than doubling second place Sanders’ total… with 19 million votes. That’s a massive, massive discrepancy.

            Saying the DNC hand picks their candidates when younger and more progressive voters can’t be bothered to participate is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or moderates simply still outnumber progressives. Those are really the only two possible conclusions you can draw. I don’t really think the latter is true personally so what it comes down to is primary turnout. All the money and exposure and power brokering within the DNC doesn’t change the fact that nobody is going into these voters’ houses in primary season and physically restraining them to keep them from voting. They are simply choosing not to. And you can’t really expect to be taken seriously if you’re going to complain about the outcome of a process that you willingly abstain from. That’s like going into a restaurant, telling the waiter to surprise you, then being angry that you get served a burger when you wanted chicken. Next time order the goddamn chicken.

            • Sure you can argue that the DNC throws it’s weight behind certain candidates in terms of money and exposure, sure the order of the primaries influences how the later ones tend to lead. And superdelegates will always be controversial. But you can’t argue in good faith…

              This is exactly what I’m arguing. In good faith. To dismiss the impact of those concerns is just putting your head in the sand to hide from reality. Sure there are exceptions to the rule. AOC taking out Crowley for example. But as we’ve seen, that made waves, and the boys at the top, they did not like waves.

              • It’s not that I am dismissing their impact, I am dismissing that they’re wrong to do that. Primaries are not an official part of governance, they are a process of the party organization. They are not established or regulated by the constitution or federal law. As such the parties have every legal right to come out in support of a specific candidate which they think has the best chance of winning in the general election.

                They also have allowed voters to have the lion’s share of the say in who that candidate is. Before the 70s it wasn’t that way and the party simply told you who the candidate was. Now voters have an unprecedented level of control over the direction a political party takes… if they choose to utilize that control. As of right now there is literally nothing stopping voters from picking a candidate in the primary that goes against the will of the party. It is 100% feasible and possible, all people have to do is show up. So if you don’t like the DNC throwing their weight behind Biden…show up and vote for someone else.

                But when Biden gets 19 million votes and Bernie gets 9, that’s not the DNC telling you against your will who the candidate is. That’s not the result of a rigged outcome. That is the voters, the actual real people, choosing Biden. Or at least it’s the ones who would choose differently being too apathetic to do it.

    • The party needs to figure out what they actually stand for and focus on that. The Republicans have distinct factions but the conflicts between those factions are somewhat in the details. The factions in the Democratic party are wildly different and in direct opposition sometimes. The Democratic party has Socialists, Pacifists, and Environmentalist in the same tent as Corporatists and war hawks. Some of these factions just have zero common ground.

    • sustained and meaningful control of the federal government

      You want a one party system? I’m not a big fan of the Republican party but there are some issues they are championing at the moment like free speech. Back in the day that was the Democrats, and I have no doubts it will flip flop again at some point but that just goes to show how we need at least two parties to act as a check on each other.

      Silencing your ideological opponents is great and all until it’s you being silenced.

    •  yarr   ( @yarr@lemmy.fmhy.ml ) 
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      151 year ago

      Hillary Clinton was widely respected every year

      (source needed)

      Here’s a list of objectionable stuff Hillary was involved with prior to running for president:

      • Hillary Clinton’s hawkish stance on war, being more hawkish than Barack Obama and Joe Biden. She is specifically noted for advocating an escalation in Afghanistan​.
      • Clinton’s involvement in the 2009 military coup in Honduras. Rather than condemning the coup, Clinton pressured other countries to recognize the new right-wing government, leading to increased violence and instability in the country​​.
      • The firing of seven employees from the travel office during the Clinton administration in 1993, an act that some critics attribute to Hillary Clinton’s influence. The fired employees were later reinstated due to public pressure​.
      • Controversies surrounding her commodity trades from 1978 and 1979, in which she turned an initial investment of $1,000 into nearly $100,000. No official investigations were carried out, but the incident raised eyebrows and led to criticism​​.
      • Involvement in her husband’s controversial pardons during his presidency, including those for the owners of a carnival company convicted of bank fraud​.
      • A controversy regarding gifts taken from the White House upon the Clintons’ departure in 2001. Some items, worth $28,000, were meant for the White House estate and not as personal gifts for the Clintons. These items were returned after complaints from the donors​.
      • (source needed)

        Gallup used to poll her favorability pretty regularly, and until she ran for president in 2015 (from which she’s never recovered) she seldom had an underwater approval rating. i’d say the characterization of wide respect is reasonably accurate given this data, although i don’t agree with the poster’s proposed causation

  • She’s not really a good public speaker for one. Not a lot of charm or charisma. She’s not good at schmoozing like Bill Clinton or Obama. A good presidential candidate needs that, and I think it’s a big part of why Al Gore and Hillary Clinton lost. She can speak well in public sometimes, but at others she sounds flat, boring, and artificial.

    Charisma is a big deal. Think about Reagan Democrats and how people to this day love Reagan even though facts and hindsight analysis show that he was a terrible president who was arguably the start of America’s modern decline into horrendous oligarchy.

  • The only thing conservatives hate more than black people having power is black women having power. So, of course conservatives hate her.

    Progressives are tired of neo-liberals sucking corporate cock as hard as the republicans. She is a neo-liberal (and thus a diet conservative), so progressives don’t like her (or Biden) either.

    That really just leaves neo-liberals to actually like her.

  • I assume nearly half of the country hates her for being black and/or a woman, while some other large chunk of the country hates her for being “a cop.” I think she’s fine. She’s done the job a hell of a lot better than a whole list of other VPs I could name. And since I’ll be voting against Republicans no matter what, if a Biden-Harris ticket is the opposition I’ll be checking that box. No problem.

  • For me, it’s strictly because of this. I’m not suggesting truancy isn’t an issue worth combating, but going at it this way showed a shocking lack of sense - to the degree where I’m not sure I could trust any grown-ass adult who would go along with such an idea for more than 2 minutes.

      • Nothing screams “my kid is going to turn away from truancy” like having a parent in prison.

        When your cure only hastens and reinforces the bad behavior, your cure is bad and you should feel bad.

        I would have no issue at all with child protective services being engaged, but sending an overworked single mother to jail isn’t helping anything, it’s just slaking bloodlust for punishment when people don’t do as you’d wish.

        If the goal is ensuring every child is equipped with an equal opportunity for education, then there are always better choices than hauling mom or dad off to jail. Can you seriously not see how patently absurd that is? It’s a boneheaded move from top to bottom and she should feel shame for the rest of her life for putting her political muscle behind it. Educating every last child is important, but this proposed solution only makes things worse.

        And that’s what the issue is. It’s not that there was intervention, it was this specific intervention is stunningly short sighted and entirely punitive.

          •  dax   ( @dax@beehaw.org ) 
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            Sure, that parent is failing that child. I’m not disputing that. It doesn’t matter whether the parent has an intent or capability to do right by their child, only whether they are. In the end, the child is being failed, and I don’t think for a second that the right call is to sit back and do nothing.

            But jailing the parent is simply not going to make it any fucking better. It’s like trying to fight a house fire with a flamethrower.

            It is simply and solely because of this incredibly poor lack of reasoning and judgement that I don’t have a positive opinion of her. If I had to say anything nice, I would say “she was able to identify a problem”, but her solution was so astoundingly and obviously counter-productive I’m not inclined to have even a neutral opinion of her, much less a positive one.

            (Edit: And where I say “her solution”, I mean the one she championed; I have no insight as to whether it was her brain-child or just something she threw her political muscle behind)

        • New research also suggests that “truancy” is an arbitrary metric. The term refers to unexcused absences, but California gives individual schools substantial flexibility to determine what constitutes a valid excuse. (Certain reasons, like illnesses and religious observances, are always valid by law.)

          And:

          Shayla frequently missed school because she was in too much pain to leave the house or was hospitalized for long-term care. Her school was aware of these circumstances; it had records on file from the regional children’s hospital explaining that Shayla’s condition would necessitate unpredictable absences and special educational accommodations. Peoples and the school had worked together to set up some of those accommodations, which are required under federal disability law. At the time of her arrest, Peoples claims she was fighting with the school to get it to agree to additional accommodations under an Individualized Education Plan, which she said the school had rejected.

          So basically, it’s the school at fault here. Right?

          • If you argue for a law, you’re responsible for the downstream impacts of that law. It doesn’t take much forethought to realize that a situation like that is going to come up.

  • as you can probably pick up from the responses so far: she gets all of the racism and bigotry you’d expect from being a visible minority public figure and all of the flack you’d expect from her fairly cringeworthy, not great track record as a politician. her core demographic is basically a slice of liberals who don’t care that much about politics and enjoys the facade she puts on–and that’s a small audience, politically. anyone who examines her track record more deeply will probably find a bone to pick with her, or is likely going to hate her because of her identity.

  •  trekz   ( @trekz@beehaw.org ) 
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    What has she done to engender such distaste from the public?

    What has she done (that actually has improved the country) since she’s been VP that would make her tasteful to the public?

    • This is the real question. I’m sick of people dismissing criticisms against her because she’s black and/or a woman. Give me an actual reason to like her!

      She’s definitely a horrible public speaker. I totally disagree with how she tackled truancy during her time as a DA/AG. Is this just my internalized racism speaking or can I ACTUALLY feel this way?

    • What roles does a VP have that front and center for policy though? Fundamentally a lot of the roles with in the executive branch are kind of invisible to the general public. Unless your neck deep into politics (and I don’t mean the cable news network… but more along the lines of reading stuff from federal register and CRS reports, and straight up political science research papers.)

      unless your that deep into things what the VP does might as well be invisible

  • Partly because of discrimination, partly because she lacks charisma. There are a substantial number of people that dislike her because she’s a black woman and they have biases against both, sometimes without even knowing it. There are also some people on the left that dislike her because she’s a moderate liberal that used to be a prosecutor. Honestly she’s about standard as vice presidents come, so though I’m farther to the left than her I don’t have any strong feelings on her.