Will Hillary Clinton's Mass Incarceration Speech Solve Some of Her Campaign's Problems?

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton gave a well-timed keynote address at David Dinkins's forum at Columbia University calling for police body cameras and an end to the era of mass incarceration. "What we've seen in Baltimore should, indeed I think does, tear at our soul," Clinton said. It was, you know, a fine speech, definitely not the most stirring one you'll hear on the topic, but the stories of police killings contain such naked injustice and human suffering and pain, that Clinton, in retelling them, had a certain winning exasperation.

But it may have been the start of something, too. For policy reasons and moral reasons, but also for pure reptilian political ones, this is a really interesting issue for Clinton to take on, one that might help her solve some of the trickiest challenges of her presidential campaign:

First, elevating criminal-justice reform allows Clinton to move left in a way that is timely, on an issue on which she isn't likely to be outflanked by Elizabeth Warren and her supporters. On economic history, Clinton's beliefs, advisors, and record simply aren't left-wing; the party's moved to the left during her public life, and she's been caught behind it. But criminal-justice reform hasn't been one of Warren's major issues, and, more important, Clinton is more or less in line with what the left wants from a president on criminal-justice issues: Many fewer people in prison, an acknowledgement that our criminal justice is very badly biased against poor people and racial minorities and an aggressive effort by the White House to fix those injustices, and a symbolic end to the era of the war on drugs and mass incarceration. After her speech this week, it's hard to see how Clinton would disagree with any of that.  READ MORE