Kamala Harris’ campaign should rethink its ‘prosecutors vs. felons’ framing

Since launching her presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and her supporters have been eager to frame the election as a battle between prosecutors and felons. That was one of the themes of the first night of the Democratic National Convention on Monday. “In the criminal justice system, people are represented by two separate but equally important groups: the police who investigate crimes and the district attorneys who prosecute criminals. That’s Donald Trump’s story,” a deep-voiced narrator said in a video played to the audience at Chicago’s United Center. “We need a president who has spent his life prosecuting criminals like Donald Trump.”

The video is adapted from a campaign speech by Harris, in which she touted her reputation as a prosecutor. “I’ve taken on all kinds of criminals,” she told a crowd in Philadelphia on August 6. “Pretenders who abuse women. Swindlers who defraud consumers. Crooks who break the rules for their own selfish gain. So listen to me: I know what Donald Trump is like.” Others made the contrast between the two candidates even starker. “The script is written: prosecutors versus convicted felons,” California Sen. Alex Padilla said. told Vox last month.

This framing is intended to separate Harris from Trump, showing how they are on opposite sides of the law. But it’s not clear that this line of attack is effective, and in the context of prosecutors and felons, there are real drawbacks to promoting a simple story of good versus evil.

This is because the two are not always so distinct. For example, prosecutors have History of breaking the rules To convict thousands of people Sent to prison Because they didn’t commit a crime. That brings up the term “felon,” a label that’s more stigmatizing than descriptive — and does real harm to efforts to reform a broken justice system.

First, let’s be clear: Calling Trump a felon does not do Trump himself justice. While millions of people have been abused by the American justice system, Trump is not one of them. He has spent years, even decades, evading the law, and yet he continues to evade any meaningful personal consequences for his misconduct. In fact, in the Supreme Court’s ruling on Trump v. United Stateshis position above the law has been recognized by the American judicial community.

But for others, especially those living on the margins of society, being labeled a “felon” can be a mark of injustice. It traps a whole person, even one who has recovered, in their worst moments, and it further brands those convicted of crimes as inherently dangerous and unworthy of a second chance.

“Nearly 20 million American citizens have been convicted of felonies, and 1 in 3 people nationwide have some sort of criminal record. Labeling people as ‘felons’ or using the term as a badge of honor for political purposes is an insult to the millions of individuals and families affected,” said Desmond Meade, president of the Florida Rights Restoration Alliance. In an op-ed in Time magazine, last month. “The fact is, this label doesn’t hurt Trump, it hurts millions of other felons.”

When running for president in 2020, Harris tried to call herself a “progressive prosecutor” — The label is not sticking Because her resume includes some tough-on-crime rhetoric, which irks many progressive voters.

This time around, however, Harris and her supporters don’t seem shy about touting some of her tough performances as district attorney and attorney general. That’s why the “prosecutors versus felons” framing seems to be catching on, with little concern that it might alienate some progressive voters or criminal justice reform advocates.

The problem with the way many people use the term “felon” — as some Harris supporters do — is that it’s often used as a neutral description rather than an insult. This insult relies on society’s existing biases against “felons.”

Take this example from the Trump campaign. Despite representing a candidate who had been convicted of 34 felonies, in their first attack on Tim Waltz— Criticism of the Democratic vice presidential candidate for “accepting policies that allow felons to vote.”

The Trump campaign is happy to attack “felons” despite his felony convictions precisely because the term “felon” is metaphorical. The campaign is well aware that for many people, especially its supporters, the term has no association with a man like Trump — no matter what. Common white collar crimes are.

“When most Americans think about who is in the criminal justice system, they imagine black people, poor people, people who are ‘not like us,’ ” said Insha Rahman, director of the criminal justice reform advocacy group Vera Action. “Calling someone a ‘felon’ carries with it a sense of othering. Donald Trump does not fit that profile, so it’s not applied to the other, but the danger is that it will be applied to others, and the more widely it’s spread, the more stigma it will cause.”

American politicians have long exploited the stigma of the term “felon” to bar millions of people from voting over the years, even after serving their sentences. And felon disenfranchisement laws, many of which emerged during Reconstruction, specifically targeted Aims to undermine black votersThis is why movements to uphold felony disenfranchisement laws often Relying on racist tropesLabeling felons as inherently dangerous to society while disproportionately disenfranchising Black, brown, and poor people.

When an average person is labeled a “felon,” that word can have a far greater impact on their life than it did on Trump. Once people are released from prison, there are many barriers to reentering society, and the stigma attached to a felony conviction makes it difficult to reintegrate. From voting rights to housing to employment and educational opportunities, people with felony convictions face many obstacles to reintegration. Facing severe discrimination.

Over the past decade or so, many organizations have urged people to stop using the term “felon” to describe individuals because it reduces a person’s identity to a category. The media has also been discouraged from using the term. For example, Bill Keller, founding editor of the Marshall Project, Written in 2016 “Some of the words that people used without hesitation not long ago might now be considered derogatory: ‘people of color,’ ‘illegal immigrant.’ ‘Felon’ is one such word that makes the person and the crime synonymous.”

One obstacle to reducing the election to “prosecutors versus felons” is Harris’ His record as a prosecutor That just underscores why these labels aren’t so black and white. While some voters might enjoy watching a prosecutor do her job, others in her coalition — particularly progressive voters — will only be reminded of her tough-on-crime bona fides, which they don’t like. Push to uphold wrongful convictions This was won through prosecutorial misconduct.

“I do think the (prosecutor versus felon) framing obscures a lot of the nuances of what prosecutors do,” said Wanda Bertram, communications strategist for the Prison Policy Initiative. And this comes at a time when “we’re just beginning to see the benefits of electing truly progressive prosecutors.”

This doesn’t mean Harris should avoid mentioning Trump’s crimes. On the contrary, that’s exactly what her campaign should focus on when contrasting the two candidates. But to do so effectively, Democrats need to move beyond generalities that paint Trump as a “felon” and talk more specifically about what Trump actually did — and how his corrupt behavior deceived voters.

“The problem with reducing the race between the two candidates to a contest between prosecutors and felons is that it turns the election and the choice facing voters into a sound bite rather than an actual judgment of the values, platforms and policies that both candidates hold and have,” said Rahman of Vera Action. “Voters deserve more, they want more than sound bites.”

While the video played at the Democratic National Convention on Monday night looked like a cheesy ad for the law and order movement, it also highlighted why Trump should be held accountable in civil court and convicted in criminal court for his misconduct. “He lied, he exploited workers, he sexually abused women. He cheated on his wife in business, he had an affair with a porn star and paid her so the American people wouldn’t find out during the election,” the video said.

The more specific Harris gets, the more effective her message will be. After all, a felony conviction doesn’t disqualify someone from running for office, or that someone is inherently unfit to hold office. But the specifics of what Trump did — lies and fraud — are more incriminating than any label.