Experience argues it would be tough to out-ugly today’s Republican leadership when it comes to the weaponization of personal insults.
Donald Trump has confirmed that repeatedly since Kamala Harris was elevated to the position of presumptive Democrat nominee.
It started immediately. She was “dumb as a rock.” She’d failed at everything she’d ever done. She laughed too much. She wanted to outlaw red meat to fight climate change. She “doesn’t like Jewish people,” even though she’s married to one. Doug Emhoff, her husband, is “a crappy Jew,” Trump agreed. She’s a “bum,” a “failed vice-president,” a crazy socialist. She’d fill the Supreme Court with Marxists.
If that seems like a lot, it was just the beginning. On Wednesday he went straight for her race, in front of a gathering of Black journalists of all places. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black. And now she wants to be known as Black,” Trump said during a question and answer session at the National Association of Black Journalists’ convention. “She was always of Indian heritage. And she was only promoting Indian heritage … And now she wants to be known as Black. I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”
Harris is both, as it happens. Her mother immigrated from India, her father from Jamaica. Harris was born in California. It’s not hard to ascertain such facts, especially for a former president with a bevy of aides to do quick online searches, but as usual with Trump it’s not the validity that matters, it’s the insult. The goading. The demonstration that he can be as offensive as he wants and get away with it. He can sit comfortably before a crowd of Black Americans and treat them with derision, criticize the moderators, dismiss their questions, and walk away figuring he’d done a good day’s work.
Especially since his near brush with death, the former president’s belief in his own invulnerability seems to have blossomed to even greater proportions. Just a week ago a video surfaced in which his vice-presidential pick launched an attack on women who hadn’t made an effort to give birth.
“We are effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too,” J.D. Vance said in a 2021 interview.
Cat ladies, women, Blacks, immigrants … who needs them if you’re running a Republican Party with an impregnable sense of superiority to everyone and everything that isn’t exactly like you?
Trump has been campaigning lately on a promise to Christian evangelists that, should they help put him back in office, they’ll never have to vote again. “In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote,” he pledged. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump supporters are planning a $20-million campaign to win over young men keen on sports, entertainment, wrestling and especially mixed martial arts. It’s Hulk Hogan and Jesus, a tag team for the ages.
Denigrating Harris began the moment she replaced Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket. In the first three days, US$68 million in attack ads went towards defining the new candidate before she had a chance to connect with voters.
Such tactics have worked for Trump throughout his political life, and there’s no hint he has any intention of switching tactics now. There were signs of a wobble in the immediate aftermath of Vance’s “cat lady” remarks, when aides argued he only meant women who chose not to have children rather than those who couldn’t, but things quickly returned to form. “I’ve got nothing against cats,” he told an interviewer in response to criticism of his outburst, before tossing gays into the mix of people who aren’t adequately serving America by producing children: “If you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.”
Vance has three children who, like Harris, are biracial. He’s married to Usha Chilukuri, whose mother, like Harris’s, immigrated from India. Vance and Chilukuri wed in a joint Hindu-Christian ceremony. They have three children all of whom, like Harris, are part Indian. Far from acknowledging the similarities, Vance defended Trump’s racial remarks and denounced media coverage of it. “I just frankly think it’s hysterical how much the media is overreacting to it.”
Whether Republicans can win once again with a campaign weighted heavily towards anger and division remains to be seen. Since Trump’s 2016 victory there’s been a string of disappointments, both in midterms and the 2020 presidential race. While Trump’s personal stature remains firm with his army of devoted followers, it has varied only marginally over the years, suggesting it’s solid but flat-lined, with limited room to grow.
Adding Vance to the ticket means Republicans go into the final months before November with two wealthy white men sharing identical views and appealing to the same set of disaffected voters. ABC News quoted a female executive at a Republican think-tank declaring that while she deeply disagreed with almost everything the Biden administration had done, “the primal hatred and disgust Vance stokes in me transcends politics.”
Rather than fire back at Trump with similar invective, Harris on Thursday dismissed his racial remarks as “the same old show,” adding that “the American people deserve better.”
“We need a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us, they are an essential source of our strength.”
Harris has been working the room via a series of Zoom calls aimed at voting groups Democrats will need if they are to overtake Trump. A call with Win With Black Women drew a reported 40,000 attendees, another with “White Women: Answer The Call!” drew an estimated 164,000 participants. Other overtures went out to South Asian women and Black men. The campaign says it has raised US$200 million since Biden stepped down, on top of hundreds of millions she’ll inherit from the Biden campaign, and received a flood of volunteer offers.
Polls indicate the two candidates are neck-and-neck with 13 weeks to go. If Trump’s support remains strong but effectively fixed in place, Harris’s challenge will be to lure back disaffected Democrats, win over undecideds and perhaps attract some of the sizeable portion of the population so turned off by politics they no longer want anything to do with it.
Will anger, name-calling and more insults overcome her effort? To date it’s largely been a sure thing for Republicans. Harris has to convince voters she has something better to offer than more of the same.
National Post
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