On Sunday afternoon, the news hit like a falling coconut to the head: President Joe Biden announced he was suspending his bid for president. Minutes later, followed by large swaths of the Democratic establishment, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to top the ticket. With Harris as the presumptive nominee, everything’s changed for the Trump-Vance campaign—their go-to strategy of attacking 81-year-old Biden’s presidential fitness and, err, aliveness is no longer on the table. Now, just a few months out from election day, they’re being forced to pivot to attacking Harris. And it’s not going well for them so far. Hours before Biden’s announcement, as the walls seemed to be closing in on the president’s candidacy, Trump tested the waters by attacking Harris: "Kamala, I call her laughing Kamala," he said at a Michigan rally on Saturday night. "Have you ever watched her laugh? She's crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh. She's nuts. She is not as crazy as Nancy Pelosi." On Sunday, when Harris emerged as Democrats’ likely nominee, right-wing influencers like Libs of TikTok shared a supercut of Harris laughing and a clip of her stating her pronouns. Fox News' Sean Hannity similarly went after Harris for her penchant for joyful outbursts. Oh no—not a president who laughs! Anything but that! Additionally, popular right-wing influencers are now pushing the sexist and misogynistic nonsense that Harris should be disqualified because she's an adult woman who doesn't have biological children. (Harris, through her marriage to Doug Emhoff, is a stepmother.) Other desperate right-wing hacks like Milo Yiannopoulos (who is, A. British, and B. has literally endorsed pedophilia) have also tried to weaponize rumors about Harris' dating history against her, as if Trump hasn't famously cheated on all of his wives, including allegedly with an adult film star while Melania Trump was pregnant. So they're going with "Kamala Harris is a childless slut" when their candidate has five children with three different women, cheated on his first wife with the second, cheated on the third with a Playboy model when the wife was pregnant & a porn star when she was postpartum, ok. https://t.co/Ur1S1I3FMh — Jill Filipovic (@JillFilipovic) July 22, 2024 The official Trump campaign Twitter account has also shared videos of Harris repeating her famous, increasingly beloved line calling on us to be “unburdened by what has been.” Reports surfaced that Trump wouldn’t agree to debate Harris, planning to write her off as an illegitimate candidate (?). And by 6 a.m. on Monday morning, Trump was busy posting away on Truth Social about how cheated and wronged Biden was, claiming the Democratic Party had stolen “the race from Biden after he won it in the primaries.” In a subsequent post, he switched back to mocking Biden: “It’s a new day and Joe Biden doesn’t remember quitting the race yesterday!” Oh he’s got nothing. https://t.co/0k0QREquu2 — Nolan ???? (@VoidOfRoses) July 20, 2024 Of course, this line of attack—that Harris isn’t a “legitimate candidate”—is entirely nonsensical. Biden wasn’t officially nominated before stepping down. As it stands, with Biden suspending his candidacy, Democrats are set to “undertake a transparent and orderly process” to nominate a replacement, DNC chairman Jaime Harrison said on Sunday. The delegates Biden earned during the primaries throughout this year are non-transferrable, meaning Harris will have to win her own. And Harris is absolutely on track to do so. The vice president vowed to “earn” the nomination and, as of Monday morning, she’s already accumulated over 500 of the 1,986 delegates needed to secure it. Biden’s campaign has coalesced around Harris, and the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue shattered records once…
