How Harris Has Evolved on Marijuana

by Paul Armentano

 August 2, 2024
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Photograph Source: California National Guard – CC BY 2.0

Like most Americans, Vice President Kamala Harris has evolved on marijuana.

In 2010, when she was San Francisco’s district attorney, Harris urged voters to reject a proposed ballot initiative to legalize the adult-use marijuana market. At the time, Harris’ position aligned with that of most California voters, 54 percent of whom ultimately decided against the measure.

But not long after, Harris — and most Americans — changed their stance.

In 2016, Californians reversed course and passed Proposition 64 legalizing marijuana statewide.  And in 2019, Harris — then California’s junior U.S. senator — sponsored legislation to end the federal prohibition of cannabis. That same year, Gallup pollsters reported that some two-thirds of Americans believed that “the use of marijuana should be legal” — up from 46 percent in 2010.

Today, public support for legalization stands at 70 percent.

As vice president, Harris has repeatedly stated that Americans should not be incarcerated for marijuana use. She’s championed the Biden administration’s efforts to pardon low-level marijuana offenders and to loosen certain federal cannabis restrictions.

And as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, she’s the first major party candidate to have ever called for the plant’s legalization and regulation.

Harris’ trajectory from marijuana legalization skeptic to proponent mirrors that of many Americans.  Like most voters, her views on cannabis softened following the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes. As district attorney of San Francisco, Harris pledged not to prosecute people who either used or sold medical cannabis.

“In my own life, I have had loved ones and close friends who relied on medical marijuana to relieve their suffering and even prolong their lives,” she acknowledged. Many Americans had similar experiences — which is why nearly 20 states approved medical cannabis access between 1996 and 2011, almost all by voter initiative.

But it wasn’t until 2012 that voters gave the green light to outright legalization. That year, voters in Colorado and Washington became the first to approve measures regulating the adult-use cannabis market. By 2016, the total number of legal states had risen to nine.

Today, 24 states — home to more than half of the U.S. population — have legalized marijuana.

How has America reacted to this real-world experiment? For Harris, living in a legal state likely influenced her transition from a one-time critic into a staunch advocate. That’s been the case for many others too. In states like California and Colorado, a greater percentage of voters back legalization now than they did when the laws were initially enacted.

Further, no state has ever repealed its marijuana legalization laws. That’s because these policies are working largely as voters and politicians intended — and because they’re preferable to cannabis criminalization.

State-level legalization has led to a drastic reduction in low-level marijuana arrests and prosecutions. It’s significantly disruptedthe illicit marketplace, and it’s led to the creation of over 400,000 full-time jobs. Taxes from regulated cannabis sales have generated over $20 billion in state revenue. And contrary to some critics’ fears, marijuana legalization and regulation has not led to any increase in cannabis use by young people.

But while Americans’ attitudes have shifted over the years, federal marijuana policies have largely remained static.

In Congress, far too many politicians remain wed to the sort of “Reefer Madness” view that most voters have long since abandoned. Like Harris did, they also need to evolve their views on cannabis to more closely align with current scientific and public consensus. Those who refuse to adapt do so at their own political peril

Can Kamala Harris be a Truly Transformed Candidate and President?

by Daniel Warner

 August 2, 2024
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The invitation to Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress for the fourth time is an irremovable stain on the United States as is the Biden/Bibi relationship. No matter what pressure his biggest benefactor puts on him, the Israeli Prime Minister will not change. The question today is whether or not Kamala Harris will change now that she has become the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer. Will Kamala Harris transform to be truly presidential?

All new presidents are transformed. The question is the depth of the transformation. Democrats are hoping for a transformation of Kamala Harris from an undistinguished, privileged California politician and Vice-President into a successful presidential candidate and distinguished Democratic president.

The coronation of Harris has been seamless. Whatever doubts Democratic leaders might have had about the process of choosing a candidate or Harris’s qualifications have disappeared. Even Barack and Michelle Obama, who originally held out in the interest of neutrality and an open convention, have come on board. In a twinkling of an eye, Harris has become the Chosen One, in a most miraculous manner with no obvious individual or divine interference.

The question about Harris is whether or not she will be transformed from a high-society West Coast favorite (much like the bicoastal Obama) into a presidential figure for all Americans. Given that she is opposing Donald Trump, the bar is not very high. But still, can someone with no particular outstanding political accomplishments or senatorial successes and a history of a most uninspiring run for president suddenly become presidential?

(A former San Francisco public defender when Harris was District Attorney said people who worked with her had the impression, uniformly that she was very ambitious, but likable. Nothing more. Nothing less. No one is surprised by her political ascension, he said.)

An historical, radical transformation might be helpful to answer the question about Harris’ potential. Biden’s withdrawal and Harris’ sudden star-like quality some four months before the election is not similar to Truman’s becoming president immediately on Roosevelt’s death. But the story of Harry S. Truman’s transformation, majestically told by David McCullough in Truman, is nonetheless informative.

In the best-selling biography, McCullough recounts how a “flat-eyeballs” boy raised in a small, segregated country town in Missouri, who considered himself “kind of a sissy,” unexpectedly became President Truman during a world war and helped decide the geographic borders of Europe. Whereas Truman has many detractors because of his ordering the use of nuclear weapons and his rapid recognition of Israel, the focus here is on his transformation.

An obvious comparison between Truman and Harris is how Truman made his senatorial reputation on the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program where he led revelations about military corruption and overruns and Harris’ work as attorney general prosecuting fossil fuel companies and banks. McCullough quotes columnist Drew Pearson on Truman’s role in the Senate: “Slightly built, bespectacled, a lover of Chopin and a shunner of the limelight, Truman is one of the last men in Congress who would be considered a hard-boiled prober.”

What about their roles as Vice-President? “The Vice-President simply presides over the Senate and sits around waiting for a funeral,” Truman is reported to have told a friend. Historians recount how Truman was not interested in being on the ticket with Roosevelt, and the byzantine goings on at the 1944 Democratic convention before Roosevelt finally chose Truman. When learning he was chosen, Truman’s first words were “Oh, shit!” On the convention floor, the junior senator from Missouri was nominated after several contentious convention votes. Unlike Biden’s choice of Harris, Truman didn’t check all the right boxes.

As for Vice-President Harris, conservative columnist Ross Douthat called her “a liberal answer to Dan Quayle.” Her vice-presidency has had no distinguished moments. Biden’s appointment of her as “border czar” was D.O.A. – dead on arrival Her spoken affirmation for abortion rights and healthcare-for-all led to no concrete results.

Unlike Harris’s consistent backing of Biden, Truman did differ with Roosevelt on certain issues. At the time Truman was more sensitive than Roosevelt to the plight of the Jews in Europe; “Merely talking about the Four Freedoms is not enough,” he told a packed Chicago Stadium on April 14, 1943. “This is the time for action. No one can any longer doubt the horrible intentions of the Nazi beasts…. This is not a Jewish problem, it is an American problem…” Despite varying opinions from his advisors, Truman was the first world leader to officially recognize Israel as a legitimate Jewish state on May 14, 1948, only eleven minutes after its creation.

Harris’ husband is Jewish, but her comments to Netanyahu at their recent meeting – “I will not be silent” on Gaza suffering – also distances her from the president.

Both Truman and Harris dealt with presidents who were not well. Truman had to function with Roosevelt’s deteriorating health. Harris also dealt with a fading president, but she gave no indication of any concern. Truman and Harris remained fiercely loyal to the men who had selected them.

Truman was Vice-President for only 82 days, much less time than Harris who has been Vice-President since January 20, 2021. Truman met individually with the president only twice. He had inklings of a secret weapon being developed, but had no more specific information. He was purposely kept in the dark. The Vice-President did not accompany the seriously ailing Roosevelt to Yalta to discuss how to end the war.

What happened to Truman when Roosevelt died at on April 12, 1945, at 5:25 PM? Was there a transformation? Quickly, Truman went from the “flat-eyeballs,” “kind of a sissy” to be the President of the United States who would sit at Potsdam deciding on the borders of Europe with Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill. With little previous foreign affairs knowledge, he became the Cold Warrior of the Truman Doctrine – he sat on the stage when Churchill gave his March 1946 “Iron Curtain” speech in Missouri – and approved the dropping of two atomic bombs. Truman went from a rather lackluster politician to a statesperson involved in many of the 20^th century’s major events including ending World War II and racially integrating the U.S. army.

Is Harris better prepared than Truman? She has had more time than Truman to see how the presidency works. Truman didn’t know Churchill or Stalin and had only a passing conviviality with the then Secretary of State. Harris has more experience, but her initial presidential run and comments about her managerial style are not convincing of presidential stature. However, she has been chosen; Kamalamania is similar to Obamamania. The threat of another Trump presidency and Biden’s weaknesses have energized millions. Donation money is pouring in.

General Patton wrote on Truman’s becoming president: “It seems very unfortunate that in order to secure political preference, people are made Vice-President who are never intended, neither by Party nor by the Lord to be Presidents.”

Transformations can happen, but miraculous transformations are outside political realities. Truman may have been hoping for miracles when he kissed the Bible after being sworn in as president. And in his first speech to Congress, Truman said: “I ask only to be a good and faithful servant of my Lord and my people.” After the speech, McCullough writes; “The applause, sudden and spontaneous, was such as few had ever heard in the chamber. Senators, members of Congress, old friends wanted him to succeed in a way they had never felt before.”

Now it’s time for Kamala Harris to step up in a very different context than Truman’s. But like with Truman, “Senators, members of Congress, old friends wanted him [her] to succeed in a way they had never felt before.” What her success will mean is still to be determined. But the buck now stops with her. She must transform herself.

Daniel Warner is the author of An Ethic of Responsibility in International Relations. (Lynne Rienner). He lives in Geneva.

 

J.D. Vance: A Childless Cat Lady Responds

by Jessica Ramer

 August 2, 2024

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Image by Jessica Ramer.

People who know J.D. Vance describe him as a true intellectual and an all-around good guy. Overcoming a troubled childhood marked by parental substance abuse and domestic violence, he served in the Marine Corps, graduated summa cum laude from college, and attended Yale Law School. While still in law school, he began work on Hillbilly Elegy, a book that has garnered favorable reviews from people on both sides of the political divide.

Unfortunately, his intellectual acumen fails him when he writes about childless women. While some news reports have implied that these comments were a one-time, impromptu gaffe during an interview with Tucker Carlson, in fact, Vance sent out at least six emails about childless people that bordered on demagoguery.

The subject headings—the capitalization is his— for these six emails are:

August 3 ICYMI: Why are we listening to childless cat ladies?

August 4: No more CAT LADIES:

August 9: JD Vance: The Childless Left is Ruining America

August 17: Childless People Don’t Have a Stake here

August 18:(Again) The Childless Left is Ruining America

In choosing these headlines, Vance displayed both thoughtlessness and viciousness.

First, they assume that the only way to have a stake in America is to reproduce. Thus, childless educators, medical professionals, and first responders who work to teach, heal, and protect other people’s children have less of a stake than parents, even neglectful ones. Childless adults whose taxes subsidize schools that they do not benefit from should have no say in determining this country’s future, according to Vance. Since scientists working to combat diseases common to children often receive federal grants funded in part by taxes paid by all those cat ladies, maybe, just maybe, this help for other children should give them a voice in our government.

Childless cat ladies who assist relatives in caring for their children don’t contribute enough to have a stake in our country, even though in some cases they are picking up the slack for parents who have fallen down on the job because of drug addiction or disinterest in their offspring. Caring for what biologists would call collateral kin counts for nothing in Vance World.

As a military veteran, Vance should know that up to 1300 American men sustained genital injuries in the Iraq War. Many of them will be unable to reproduce. Vance, however, served as a press liaison—a relatively safe position although one not devoid of real danger. He was lucky. Almost 1300 men were not. Sometimes, women lose their only child in war and thus become childless. How is it possible that an educated military veteran can make such sweeping generalizations without considering these cases and the pain that his comments might cause to people in this situation?

As a convert to Catholicism, Vance knows that countless priests and nuns have opted not to reproduce. Many have toiled to feed and educate other people’s children. Generations of Catholic students have benefited from the high-quality education and orderly environment that these schools provided. Poor families often receive help with food, clothing, and utility bills through Catholic charities founded by the childless priests and religious. I guess their contributions mean squat, too.

Since Vance seeks a political career, he might reflect on the fact that neither George Washington nor James Madison, who is largely responsible for the US constitution, had biological children. Our tenth president, John Tyler, had fifteen. It is safe to say that Washington and Madison contributed more to our country than Tyler, a wildly unpopular president.

Vance descends to new levels of crassness when he links childlessness to sociopathy. An Ivy-League-trained lawyer should know what constitutes good evidence—and observations made while surfing the internet is not it. He does not cite expert opinion or the results of peer-reviewed research. To make this bombshell of a claim without providing proof differs little from Joseph McCarthy’s demagoguery.

It seems to me that deciding to have children and then leaving others to care for them smacks of sociopathy far more than choosing not to have them. After all, such people have enhanced their genetic fitness by ensuring that their genes survive into the next generation while investing nothing in their children’s upbringing. (I am not referring here to people who decide to place children for adoption. This decision, usually the result of an unintended pregnancy, is usually made out of love and with the best interests of the child in mind. I am referring here to people who deny their children a stable home of any sort, thus leaving them in a kind of limbo.)

In linking childlessness to sociopathy, Vance mistakes correlation with causation. Even if there were a link between childlessness and sociopathy—a doubtful claim—it does not follow that childlessness causes sociopathy. The link may be in the other direction: sociopathy may lead to less childbearing. In the absence of evidence, it is safer to assume no link at all.

By choosing name-calling rather than a critical examination of policies, Vance has resorted to an ad hominem argument, a concept that a Yale graduate should be familiar with. He has failed to demonstrate in these emails exactly how the policies promoted by “childless cat ladies” impair the future of the next generation. Generally, liberals of the kind Vance attacks often favor assistance to parents and young children—policies that mean high taxes for the childless without benefit to them—far more often than do “pro-family” conservatives.

If the thoughtlessness of Vance’s comments were not bad enough in their own right, their misogyny is chilling. The phrase “childless cat lady” hints at the more common phrase “crazy cat lady,” which evokes images of lonely, impaired women who become cat hoarders and are subjected in their old age to the humiliation of newspaper headlines detailing the poor condition of their homes. Thus, Vance summons this image of alleged female instability without saying so directly, a tactic that leaves him with plausible deniability.

The subject heading in his first two emails—“Why are we listening to childless cat ladies” and “No more CAT LADIES”—refer explicitly and solely to women. His later emails adopt a less misogynistic tone, referring only to “childless people” and “the childless.” However, none hold childless men up to the same opprobrium he heaps on women. There are no childless cat gentlemen or childless football devotees. I can only conclude that Vance feels aggrieved that powerful women have different opinions than he has and rather than debate their policy proposals on their merits, has decided to make a personal attack. He has tried to weasel out of the consequences of his remarks by claiming that his objection lies in his opposition to leftist policies, but this point was not at all evident in his emails. He has compounded the damage by refusing to apologize, even after Fox News host Trey Gowdy offered him the opportunity.

There is a further irony in Vance’s attacks. By seeking a national political career, first as a senator and then as vice president, Vance has chosen a life that includes long hours and frequent traveling. There will be many days when he will leave home before his children get up and arrive only after they are asleep. Thus, he will spend far less time caring for his own kids than many cat ladies spend working with other people’s children.

Most important for the nation, however, is that Trump has selected a vice president—who, given Trump’s age might easily ascend to the presidency— willing to suspend reason, fairness, and kindness in favor of vitriol and demagoguery that falls most heavily on women.

Jessica Ramer has spent decades teaching algebra to low-income students. She is also a published poet.

Searching for JD Vance

by Greg Godels / August 2nd, 2024

What explains the meteoric rise of a little-known principal at an investment firm to one of the youngest, least politically experienced Vice-Presidential candidates in US history? How did Senator J. D. Vance rise from relative obscurity in 2016 to become the current running mate to Donald Trump?

Simple: groveling service to the ruling class.

In 2016, Vance published a book describing his youthful hardships growing up in the Midwest, the Rust Belt, or Appalachia, depending on what you choose to call the vast lands impoverished by corporate deindustrialization in the late twentieth century. The social, political, and economic disruptions that ensued affected millions of industrial workers and their families.

Throughout the Midwest, plant closings left– in their wake—low-paying jobs, poverty, crime, drug and alcohol addiction, broken homes, unhealthy lifestyles, and a host of other tragedies associated with economic dislocations.

Vance was one of the few who escaped this fate, joining the Marine Corps after high school and using the tuition benefits from military service to attend and graduate from Ohio State University, and pursue a law degree from Yale. Soon, he felt the need to tell the public of “the anger and frustration of the white working class” and satisfy his hunger to “have someone tell their story.”

But the story was not one that we might expect or hope for. Vance did not offer sympathy to the victims of corporate policy and political neglect; Vance did not call for help to those left unemployed, desperate, or without options; Vance did not plead their case to those dismissive of their despair.

Instead, he offered his own Horatio Alger, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps “success” story, urging the losers to take responsibility for their own choices. “Those of us who weren’t given every advantage can make better choices, and those choices do have the power to affect our lives…”

The long-standing myths of self-help and individual initiative so beloved by those born on third base find confirmation with Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy. Consequently, the book became a darling of the corporate media across the political spectrum– from The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal. I wrote in 2016:

Nothing reveals the distance of the upper classes from the realities of working-class life like the current media fascination with the book Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. Writing as one of their own, J.D. Vance… relates his unhappy working-class childhood to book-club liberals and country-club conservatives.

In 2016, it was remarkable that Vance’s account appealed to the elites– the upper economic strata– whether they otherwise counted as liberal or conservative. Of course, the book allowed a peek into the world of Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables,” satisfying the voyeuristic urges of the elite. But more importantly, Vance’s advance from an abused “hillbilly” youth to the higher rungs of finance capital bolstered the ethos that anyone and everyone can make it in the land of opportunity.

It was a message that both Democratic and Republican leaders and pundits like to hear. The New York Times lauded the book as a key to understanding Trump’s presidential victory, and he was “the voice of the Rust Belt” to The Washington Post. As I wrote in 2020:

Vance’s book came out at a convenient time– 2016– when East and West Coast elites sought explanations for Donald Trump’s success in the Midwest. The corporate Democrats had long taken these Midwesterners for granted, Obama calling them gun-toting religious zealots and Hillary Clinton famously describing them as “deplorables.” It was left to a “survivor” — JD Vance– to expose the pathologies and missteps of these flawed creatures. Vance had– himself– found the grit to escape the working-class ghetto of Middletown, Ohio and parlay an elite law-school degree into the riches of high finance.

While Vance earned a place on the talk-show circuit and a calling as a cable TV expert, it wasn’t until 2020 that his national political career got a boost. Director Ron Howard– a master of feel-good movies– brought Hillbilly Elegy to the silver screen and to NETFLIX. Reaching a much broader audience with his success-in-the-face-of-adversity tale, Vance was ready to pick a party and run for office. He chose the Republican Party, influenced primarily by wealthy donors, but through no great ideological commitment. Indeed, during the years of Trump’s political prominence, Vance frequently expressed scathing public criticisms of Trump and Trumpism, only to join his ticket in 2024.

For a dedicated servant of wealth and power, consistency is no obstacle. Vance can pose as the spokesperson for neglected white workers at one moment, while carrying water for ruthless capitalist billionaires like Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen at another. He can be the darling of patronizing liberals when called on, while serving Donald Trump’s political machine when invited.

In that regard, he has a Democratic counterpart in Senator John Fetterman, who– like Vance– opportunistically pushed himself onto the national political stage.

But unlike Vance, whose roots drew a broader, sympathetic audience, and whose background earned a measure of street credibility, Fetterman came from privilege. Consequently, he had a more difficult journey to establish himself as a savior of the forgotten or discarded. He chose to adopt a small, neglected, predominantly Black, Rust Belt community on the outskirts of Pittsburgh as a personal experiment in elite colonization.

Fetterman convinced a critical mass of liberals that this scion of Republican parents was a legitimate answer to the souls lost to deindustrialization.

Taken in by his reverent deference to liberal social conventions, his “cool” trademarks of cargo shorts, hoodies, and tattoos, and his marijuana radicalism, he was quickly elevated to the status of a progressive icon, a fearless defender of the little people.

All this was sheer nonsense to those of us living in his backyard, watching his careful cultivation of his political opportunities. Today, after a swift rise to the US Senate, Fetterman eagerly renounces his “progressivism,” embraces Israeli genocide, and constructs a safe, centrist image.

The ruling class needs the Vances and Fettermans to benignly explain the anger and despair of those bulldozed by deindustrialization. They serve as a buffer between wealth and power, and the unruly masses.

They represent the new phony populist faces of both parties, offering bogus gestures of sympathy and loud, but meager support for  destitute workers– Black and white.

More than fifty years ago, the ruling class sought similar interpreters and explainers of justifiable Black rage. Patronizing white intellectuals sprang up with comforting analyses and for-hire solutions (think Robin DiAngelo, more recently, in the Black Lives Matter moment), and many ambitious African Americans eagerly brought their political aspirations forward to dilute the rage and redirect the energy into the two-party charade. Then, as now, serving the ruling class pays off handsomely.

Vance, like Fetterman, exemplifies the current breed of bourgeois politicians of both parties, totally devoid of principles and unabashedly pledged to the service of the ruling class.Facebook

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Greg Godels writes on current events, political economy, and the Communist movement from a Marxist-Leninist perspective. Read other articles by Greg, or visit Greg's website.