Kamala Harris and the Return of ‘Tough on Crime’

When Kamala Harris published her first book in 2009, recounting her experience as a California prosecutor, she called it “Smart on Crime.” That phrase would come to signal a kinder, gentler approach, but that is not how Ms. Harris meant it. She meant, the book’s marketing copy proclaimed, “making the criminal justice system truly — not just rhetorically — tough.” By the time she ran for president in 2019, Ms. Harris was no longer talking tough. She called herself a progressive prosecutor and proposed to end the death penalty, mandatory minimum sentences and cash bail. The left was not buying it: Progressives said her record was “just slightly less awful” than that of traditional prosecutors who measured their success by their conviction rates. The left wing of the Democratic Party helped push her out of the race. Now she is back to being a Top Cop. Ms. Harris’s central pitch to voters has been her record as a prosecutor who has put away “predators, fraudsters and cheaters,” and could therefore handle her opponent in the presidential race. “So hear me when I say,” she tells crowds in her stump speech, “I know Donald Trump’s type.” It’s a refrain that voters...