Kamala Harris’s marketing campaign ought to rethink “prosecutor vs. felon“ body

Since launching her presidential bid, Vice President Kamala Harris’s marketing campaign and its supporters have been keen to border this election as certainly one of a prosecutor versus a felon. It was among the many themes of the primary night time of the Democratic Nationwide Conference on Monday. “Within the felony justice system, the persons are represented by two separate but equally vital teams: the police who examine crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. That is the story of Donald Trump,” a deep-voiced narrator mentioned in a video that blared to the viewers on the United Middle in Chicago. “We want a president who has spent her life prosecuting perpetrators like Donald Trump.”

The video was a play on what has turn into part of Harris’s stump speech, by which she burnishes her legacy as a prosecutor. “I took on perpetrators of all types,” she instructed a crowd in Philadelphia on August 6. “Predators who abused girls. Fraudsters who scammed shoppers. Cheaters who broke the principles for their very own acquire. So hear me after I say: I do know Donald Trump’s sort.” Others have made the distinction between the 2 candidates extra specific. “The script writes itself: the prosecutor in opposition to the convicted felon,” California Sen. Alex Padilla instructed Vox final month.

The framing goals to create a stark cut up display between Harris and Trump, exhibiting how they each fall squarely on reverse ends of the regulation. But it surely’s not clear that this line of assault is efficient, and there are actual downsides to propagating the simplistic story of fine versus evil within the context of prosecutors and felons.

That’s as a result of it’s not all the time such a transparent distinction. Prosecutors, for instance, have a historical past of bending the principles to get a conviction, and 1000’s of individuals have been despatched to prisons for crimes they didn’t commit. Which brings us to the time period “felon,” a label that stigmatizes greater than it describes — and does an actual disservice to efforts to reform a damaged justice system.

Let’s get one thing out of the way in which up entrance: Calling Trump a felon will not be unfair to Trump personally. Whereas there are thousands and thousands of people that’ve been mistreated by the US justice system, Trump will not be certainly one of them. He has spent years, if not many years, skirting the regulation, but he has nonetheless evaded any significant private penalties for his misdeeds. Certainly, after the Supreme Court docket’s ruling in Trump v. United States, his standing as above the regulation has the US judiciary’s seal of approval.

However for others — notably these residing on the margins of society — the label “felon” is usually a mark of injustice. It reduces a full human, even one who’s rehabilitated, to certainly one of their worst moments, and it additional stigmatizes individuals with a felony conviction as inherently harmful and undeserving of a second likelihood.

“Practically 20 million Americans have a felony conviction, and 1 in 3 individuals throughout our nation have some kind of report. Labeling individuals as ‘felons’ or utilizing the phrase as a badge of honor for political functions is a slap within the face to the thousands and thousands of impacted people and households,” Desmond Meade, president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, wrote in a Time op-ed final month. “The reality is the label doesn’t hurt Trump, as a lot because it harms the thousands and thousands of different individuals residing with felony convictions.”

When she ran for president in 2020, Harris tried to dub herself a “progressive prosecutor” — a label that didn’t stick as a result of her report had some tough-on-crime bona fides that didn’t sit effectively with many progressive voters.

This time, nevertheless, Harris and her supporters don’t appear as shy about touting a few of the more durable parts of her report as district legal professional and legal professional common. That’s why the “prosecutor versus felon” framing appears to be taking maintain with little concern about the way it may alienate some progressive voters or felony justice reform advocates.

The issue with the way in which lots of people use the phrase “felon” — as a few of Harris’s supporters are doing — is that it’s usually used not simply as a impartial descriptor however as an insult. And it’s an insult that leans on society’s current prejudices about who “felons” are.

Take this telling instance from the Trump marketing campaign. Regardless of representing a candidate convicted of 34 felonies, the marketing campaign — in certainly one of its opening assaults in opposition to Tim Walz — criticized the Democratic vice presidential nominee for “embracing insurance policies to permit convicted felons to vote.”

The Trump marketing campaign is comfy attacking “felons” regardless of Trump’s felony convictions exactly due to the tropes related to the phrase “felon.” The marketing campaign clearly is aware of that for many individuals, particularly its supporters, the phrase isn’t related to individuals like Trump — irrespective of how frequent white-collar crime is.

“When most People take into consideration who’s within the felony authorized system, they envision any individual who’s Black, who’s poor, who’s any individual who’s ‘not like us,’” mentioned Insha Rahman, director of Vera Motion, a felony justice reform advocacy group. “There’s an othering there that’s inherent in calling any individual a ‘felon.’ It doesn’t keep on with Donald Trump as a result of he doesn’t match these traits which are in individuals’s minds, however the hazard is that it’ll keep on with others and reinforce that stigma the extra it’s thrown round.”

American politicians have lengthy weaponized the stigma across the time period felon to bar thousands and thousands of individuals from voting by the years, even after serving their sentences. And felony disenfranchisement legal guidelines, lots of which cropped up throughout Reconstruction, have been particularly designed to undermine Black voter blocs. That’s why campaigns to uphold felony disenfranchisement legal guidelines usually lean on racist tropes, labeling individuals with felony convictions as inherently harmful to society whereas disproportionately disenfranchising Black, brown, and poor individuals.

When a mean individual is labeled a “felon,” the phrase carries much more weight all through their life than it does for Trump. As soon as individuals go away jail, reentering society has many limitations, and the stigma that comes together with being seen solely by a felony conviction makes it tough to reintegrate into society. From voting rights to housing to employment and academic alternatives, individuals with felony convictions face harsh discrimination.

Over the past decade or so, many organizations have been pushing individuals to cease utilizing the phrase “felon” to explain people due to the way in which it reduces an individual’s identification to a single class. Media shops have additionally been discouraged from utilizing the time period. Invoice Keller, the founding editor-in-chief of the Marshall Challenge, for instance, wrote in 2016 that “Phrases that not way back have been used with out qualms could come to be thought to be demeaning: ‘coloured,’ ‘illegals.’ ‘Felon,’ which makes the individual synonymous with the crime, is such a phrase.”

One of many obstacles to boiling the election right down to “prosecutor versus felon” is that Harris’s personal report as a prosecutor underscores precisely why these labels aren’t so black and white. And whereas some voters could relish watching a prosecutor at work, others in her coalition — particularly progressive voters — are solely reminded of her tough-on-crime bona fides that they’re not followers of. That’s notably true of instances the place she pushed to uphold wrongful convictions that had been received by prosecutorial misconduct.

“I do assume that [the prosecutor versus felon] framing glosses over lots of the nuances of what prosecutors do,” mentioned Wanda Bertram, a communications strategist on the Jail Coverage Initiative. And it’s coming at “a time when we’ve got actually solely simply begun to see the good points from electing precise progressive prosecutors.”

None of because of this Harris ought to keep away from mentioning Trump’s crimes. On the contrary, that’s precisely what her marketing campaign ought to concentrate on when drawing a distinction between the candidates. However to do it successfully, Democrats want to maneuver previous broadly portray Trump as a “felon” and discuss extra particularly about what Trump truly did — and the way his corruption defrauded voters.

“The issue with lowering a race between two candidates to the prosecutor versus the felon is it’s turning the election and the selection voters have in entrance of them right into a soundbite as a substitute of an precise judgment on the values and the platform and the insurance policies that both candidate runs on and owns,” Rahman, of Vera Motion, mentioned. “And voters deserve extra and wish greater than soundbites.”

Whereas the video that performed on the DNC Monday night time seemed like a tacky advert from a law-and-order marketing campaign, it additionally highlighted why Trump has been held liable in civil court docket and convicted in felony court docket for his misdeeds. “He lies, he rips off staff, he sexually abuses girls,” the video mentioned. “He cheats in enterprise, he cheated on his spouse with a pornstar and paid her off so the American individuals wouldn’t discover out throughout an election.”

The extra particular Harris is, the simpler her message will probably be. In spite of everything, being convicted of a felony doesn’t disqualify somebody from operating for public workplace, and it shouldn’t imply that somebody is inherently unfit to serve anyway. However the specifics of what Trump did — the lies and the fraud — make a extra compelling case in opposition to him than anybody label might.