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. 

Hours after Kamala Harris gave her acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, the president of the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” organization J Street took a victory lap in an effusive e-mail to supporters. “Wow,” Jeremy Ben-Ami wrote. “What a week! As J Streeters leave the Democratic National Convention fired up and ready to go, it’s clear we’re having a greater impact than ever.” He added that “the vice president’s remarks on Israel-Palestine were perhaps the clearest articulation of J Street’s values from a presidential nominee.”

But what are those “values” and how do they apply to what’s happening in Gaza?

The reason I find myself fighting with both Harris supporters and Trump supporters is because they see the other party as the problem while I see the US empire itself as the problem. They seek to make things better by ensuring that the empire is under the correct management, while I seek the end of the empire.

People say things like “Oh but Kamala Harris speaks so compassionately about the suffering of the Palestinians!”

These dupes had eight years of Obama speaking eloquent, compassionate-sounding words while continuing and expanding all of Bush’s ugliest policies, and they still haven’t learned the lesson here.