Be assured my view is neither hazy, gauzy, rose colored nor simplistic. I have the clarity of close association, from both sides of the bench.

The federal 94 bill was a mashup, bits and pieces patched together so as to attract enough votes for passage – 60 in the senate. Your vaporous nuggets were enough to get Bernie Sanders’ vote, hang an albatross on him as well.

Beneficial provisions were gutted by Gingrich and the VRWC. They get that blame.

The Biden bill did not lead on any punative issue; it followed. Punishment driven three strikes law began in the states. Between 1993 and 1995, 26 states adopted 3strikes law, nearly all of them harsher than the feds. Overwhelming public support drove all of it, grassroots up not top-down.

It is in the states where the greatest injustice has been done, in both magnitude and severity. The states and their citizenry bear that responsibilty, not the feds. California has been the worst, originating with Reagan who I blame a lot. Our 94 3strikes law passed 6 months before the 94 feds, and has been almost entirely self-funded at the expense of education and public infrastructure. California was all in on our own, regardless of the feds and their trivial funds.

I know the 94 Biden bill well. As foreperson of a decidedly not rubber stamp special grand jury charged with investigating organized crime, I signed oh over 12 very complex indictments, many names, manifold acts, multiple charges from drugs to extortion to human smuggling, slavery, sex trafficking, rape, assault, torture and murder.

(And another 10 or so narrower OCTF generated indictments, plus a few random others. 18 months of a cranky judge, agro prosecutors and a jury of people who would rather be elsewhere, an intense highspeed educational experience I hope to never repeat.)

We made the AUSAs work for every charge, to their unending surprise and annoyance, and in result our work product was ironclad. Those were bad people, hell yes we RICOed them, and I stand by the work we did. The Biden bill made it much easier.

The California 3strikes law I also know well. My son is incarcerated on a 3rd strike sentence, from a fight with another crack addict over a couple of rocks, drunk on cheap vodka and days off his schizophrenia meds. Again. Been in a long while, no set release date. He’s a sweet kind gentle soul sober, but Reagan and the VRWC shut down our asylums while preventing funding for outpatient mental health support. They put the mentally ill on the streets at the same time they cut what little public support structure there was, feeding a crime wave feeding on selfmedication, addiction, homelessness, hopelessness and easy victimization by criminals and courts alike. I ache for my son, and the too many like him, but my blame goes to Reagan and the VRWC, not Joe Biden.

What I was doing back then was what I did near all my life, health care professionally for adventure on the frontiers of medicine and surgery, struggling against pain and damage and staving off death, in the end an exercise in humility, along with low level outsider politics for occasional elation in a sea of frustration.

I learned in both arenas the importance of forgiving the mistakes of others, when the intention was honest and well meant. Biden and the others acted as they thought was right, in light of the best available advice from the leading experts of the day who misinterpreted the meaning of flawed data, all to overwhelming popular approval.

I cannot sort out blame towards, much less hang collars of shame this many years out on selected individuals from what cannot be characterized as anything more – or less – than a horrific societal blunder in response to a crisis created by others – the VRWC. Them, I blame.

From an electoral strategy standpoint, attacks on Hillary Clinton from the Left pulled her away from the center she wanted to run on, and charges of corporatist corruption validated longstanding VRWC tropes, together enough to negatively affect Democratic voter turnout. Not the only factor but still one of those that cumulatively sqeaked Trump into office.

Banging on Biden and Harris for insufficient purity on justice policy will have the same effect now. Assuming a Biden win, right after the election is when the banging should begin, while the sausage is still being made and the pies are just going in the oven.

Constructive criticism on future policy, informed by the past, and be prepared to accept incremental progress if that is all that can be had. To get more, the Left will need to stop carping about impure Democrats and defeat more Republicans, at all levels. Then big progress can be had.

IMHO.

The data do not support your contention. State incarceration rates began exploding coincident with the VRWC driven Great Divergence.

The fed 94 crime bill was a panicky attempt to keep up with a nationwide mass movement driven by VRWC policy objectives. The rate of increase holds steady after 94, unaffected by the fed law. States now incarcerate 90% of all inmates, and a similar proportion of longterm sentences. The recent rethinking and leveling out of rates is also state driven..

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/state_driver_rates_1925-2015.html

From NixonNixonFordReaganReaganBushBushBush to Trump, a straight line leads from then to now which the Dems have in their sharply limited time in power been politically unable to reverse.

I blame the VRWC, and the people who fail to deliver sustained Democratic majorities. Want big change? Then deliver big Democratic majorities where progressive advance is a political benefit, not a suicide.

Beating on Biden for a 25 year old admitted mistake won’t get us there.

There was a lot of support for the 1994 Crime Bill, including among Black leaders, who were witnessing a storm of crack and other drug-related deaths in their communities. Biden and the Clintons rode a wave to get it passed, in part, because it fit with their then neoliberal priorities.

The critical issue is whether, 26 years later, Biden’s contrition is meaningful and he gets legislation enacted to fix the problems he helped create. That’s the litmus test. The same is true with his backing for the incredibly pro-creditor 2005 reforms to federal bankruptcy laws.

The middle of a global pandemic and near depression would give him whatever cover he needs with banks to undo those regressive reforms. Married to that is material student debt forgiveness, championed by Warren and Sanders. Those reforms, like many, are needed Now, to keep people whole and to help the economy recover.

PREACH!!

FWIW, I never voted for Hillary’s hubs… I know when I’m being trolled for my “gay” vote.

We got handed instead DADT and the Offensive Marriage Act ~ thanks, Bill!

Monica was just icing on the cupcake…