The return of ‘Kamala the Cop’

President Joe Biden was barely out of the 2024 race when the first ad for Vice President Kamala Harris as the new Democratic front-runner dropped.

This opening argument for Harris’s presidential campaign was interesting for three reasons. It was heavy on criticism of former President Donald Trump. There were no mentions of her vice presidency or the Biden administration. Instead, the ad focused on Harris the prosecutor.

“She prosecuted sex predators,” the narrator of the 53-second spot said. “He is one.” This was accompanied by a snippet of the Access Hollywood tape with the infamous “grab them by the p***y” quote. 

“She shut down for-profit colleges that swindled Americans,” the ad continued. “He was a for-profit college.” This was paired with footage of the former president promoting the now-defunct Trump University, which paid out a $25 million settlement to ex-students who said they were deceived by the school.

“He’s owned by the big banks,” the ad went on to say. “She’s the attorney general who beat the biggest banks in America and forced them to pay homeowners $18 billion.” 

The ad said Harris is “in every possible way” the “anti-Trump.”

While continuing with Biden’s Trump-centric campaign and ignoring the actual Biden-Harris record are debatable strategic choices, the most striking thing is the return to the theme of Harris as a prosecutor. The Rev. Al Sharpton amplified this message on Monday’s Morning Joe. 

“If [Trump’s] friend was promoting the bout, Don King, it would be the prosecutor vs. the felon,” Sharpton said of a Trump-Harris debate as Joe Scarborough cackled approvingly. “That’s how you’d promote it.”

Harris made her bones politically as a prosecutor. She worked in two district attorneys’ offices, prosecuting child sex abuse cases, served as San Francisco’s district attorney for six years, and was elected California’s attorney general. While she was in the Senate, she was known for tough cross-examinations of Trump administration officials during hearings.

But when Harris sought the Democratic presidential nomination, her prosecutorial record became a liability. In one viral debate moment, then-Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard attacked her as the symbol of a racist and broken criminal justice system.

“Now Sen. Harris says she is proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she will be a prosecutor president,” Gabbard said. “But I’m deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite, but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations, then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana.” As the crowd applauded, Gabbard accused Harris of blocking evidence “that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so.” 

Gabbard also claimed Harris “kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California” and assailed the Californian’s support for the cash bail system. It was a bad moment for a Harris campaign that ultimately went nowhere.

Progressives, and some libertarians, dubbed Harris “Kamala the Cop.” They did not mean it as a compliment.

Biden tapped Harris to be his running mate in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in police custody, amid riots and social unrest. While the Biden-Harris campaign largely eschewed calls to defund the police, this was not a moment where progressives were looking for a prosecutor. Harris promoted a controversial bail fund that wound up freeing violent criminals.

Harris also softened her image. Gone was the prosecutor. In her place was the fun aunt who laughed, talked about hip-hop, and waxed philosophical about space and a future unburdened by the past. In addition to shedding the cop label, this seemed aimed at helping Harris avoid the likeability problem that plagued Hillary Clinton.

The makeover did not improve Harris’s popularity. Instead, she became known for cringeworthy moments and videos with paid child actors in an attempt to humanize her. Before the June 27 presidential debate, Harris’s poll numbers were often worse than Biden’s.

But the presidential race is an opportunity to rebrand yet again. Harris would like to be unburdened by what has been going on in the Biden White House. The political climate surrounding crime is noticeably different than it was four years ago, and Trump, as both Biden and Harris frequently remind us, is now a convicted felon.

The Trump campaign will likely counterpunch by tying Harris to the weaponization of the justice system. They will also simultaneously hit her as too tough and too soft on crime, reprising some of Gabbard’s criticisms while also tying the vice president to progressive district attorneys throughout the country, depending on the audience.

Nevertheless, Harris could be ready to cop to her prosecutor past as she suddenly takes her spot at the top of the Democratic ticket. She’ll start by prosecuting her case against Trump.