ZadekpediaKamala Harris appears in these episodes chiefly as a reference point in arguments advanced by Bob Zadek and his guests, rather than as the subject of an episode. The treatments span bail reform, healthcare, climate and infrastructure policy, sex-work legislation, and the internal direction of the Democratic Party. No excerpt presents a sustained account of her career, and several mentions are passing.
Bail reform
In a discussion of bail with Scott Shackford, Bob Zadek says that Senator Rand Paul and Senator Kamala Harris have joined forces to initiate bail reform measures, describing this as evidence that the issue has somewhat of bipartisan support How Bail Traps the Poor in Jail with Scott Shackford (2018). The same episode frames the problem the reform responds to: judges, Zadek argues, have a profound bias to set high bail because a judge will never have a headline for setting bail too high, but might have one for setting it too low. Bail’s primary purpose, on this account, is to make sure a defendant shows up for trial, not to punish or incarcerate. The excerpt breaks off before the promised discussion of the reform measures themselves and of protective detention, so the content of the Paul–Harris proposals is not stated.
Healthcare and single-payer
Sally Pipes places Harris among the supporters of single-payer Medicare for All, alongside Bernie Sanders, Pramila Jayapal and Elizabeth Warren Sally Pipes on the High Cost of Free Stuff (2019). Pipes says that in Des Moines, Iowa, earlier that year, Harris said she supported single-payer and wanted to get rid of the insurance companies, but that she then backtracked; in the first debate, when the host asked who supported single-payer, Harris raised her hand along with Sanders, Warren and Bill de Blasio, and later that night said she had not really understood the question. Pipes adds her own assessment that deep down Harris does support single-payer. The episode also notes Sanders’ revised plan and his statement that it would probably cost between $30 and $40 trillion over 10 years.
Climate and infrastructure
Charlie Dice, filling in for Bob Zadek, names Harris as a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal bill associated with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, describing the proposal as hearkening back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal Not Enough Bricks (2019). Dice introduces the topic through what he calls a race among Democratic candidates to outflank one another from the left.
Sex-work policy
Cathy Reisenwitz, discussing decriminalization of sex work, says that SESTA-FOSTA was introduced, she believes, by Kamala Harris, and was definitely championed by Harris, with a lot of Democrats on board The War on Sex (2022). Reisenwitz argues that Republicans are worse on what she calls the war on sex, citing 16 states declaring porn a public health emergency and a Utah law requiring a porn filter on devices sold in the state, but that Democrats are not good either, pointing to SESTA-FOSTA and to Democratic participation in sex-trafficking moral panicking. She notes that the legislators submitting sex-work decriminalization bills appear to her to be all Democrats. The same passage is repeated in a second episode, where Reisenwitz again says SESTA-FOSTA was introduced, she believes, by Harris and definitely championed by her The War on Sex (2022).
Party politics and the left
John McGinnis, assessing the state of classical liberalism, says that Kamala Harris has a large chance on the prediction markets to be the Democratic nominee and that he would consider her not really that different from Bernie Sanders Here Comes the Storm (2019). McGinnis describes Sanders running as a socialist as a sea change and argues that the Democratic Party has moved to a more left party that has called into question some of the central ideas of the American founding. He locates the gathering storm less in Donald Trump’s policies than in what likely comes afterwards.
Across episodes
The episodes show no development in the treatment of Harris across episodes; she is cited in each as an illustration of a separate policy argument — bail reform with Scott Shackford, single-payer with Sally Pipes, the Green New Deal with Charlie Dice, SESTA-FOSTA with Cathy Reisenwitz, and Democratic Party positioning with John McGinnis — and no guest or host revisits or revises an earlier characterization. The one apparent repetition, Reisenwitz’s SESTA-FOSTA remarks, is the same passage appearing in two episodes rather than a later reconsideration.