Veteran political strategist James Carville smartly said that the big challenge for Kamala Harris is introducing herself to voters before the Trump camp trashes her.
“We’re holding the bucket of paint to define her at a time of our choosing,” Chris LaCivita, the Trump campaign’s co-manager, recently told The Bulwark.
“She owns the Biden record. We’ve got everything ready for what she did as [District Attorney in San Francisco],” LaCivita said. “And she was part of the coverup with Biden’s fitness to serve.”
Another Trump campaign aide said they plan to deploy “several Willie Hortons” to attack Harris.
I must confess my 2024 bingo card did not have images of a scary Black criminal -- “Willie Horton” – turning up in this presidential campaign.
But get ready to see even worse given former President Trump’s hostile relationship with women – especially Black women. Don’t forget he slandered his own former aide Omarosa Manigault-Newman as a “dog.”
Trump famously labeled New York Attorney General Letitia James a “racist” and “grossly incompetent.” He said federal Judge Tanya Chutkan suffered from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Trump has described Vice President Harris as a “nasty” woman after her tough questioning of his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during Senate hearings.
Trump’s latest jump into racially toxic denigration of Harris begins by regularly mispronouncing her first name.
He gives it a foreign accent to turn it into the guttural name used by the hulking Black male pro wrestling character of the 1980s. That stereotypical character wrestled in a loin cloth with African tribal war paint on his face.
Trump also likes to linger on Harris’s first name much in the same way he drew out President Obama’s middle name, Hussein.
“Critics of the tactic,” The Washington Post wrote last week, “see it as an attempt to ‘otherize,’ Harris.”
In addition, Trump is already linking Harris to a bullying nickname -- referring to her as “Lyin’ Kamala Harris.”
At his first rally after Harris became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Trump called Harris a “lunatic,” and abandoned his frequent attacks on President Biden as a liberal. Now he claims: “He wasn’t that liberal…she’s a real liberal.”
He also falsely repeats that she was the Biden administration’s “Border Czar,” tying her to voters’ concern about immigration.
Trump’s right-wing supporters have gone even lower in maligning Harris.
They labeled her the “DEI candidate,” questioning her intellect and experience to suggest she won political office only because she is a woman and has Black and South Asian heritage.
Trump’s bullies also delight in demeaning Harris’s laughter. They describe it as “cackling” and “weird,” as if she is a witch.
Trump has joined that line of attack: “Have you ever watched her laugh?” he asked. “She is crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh…she is nuts.”
Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), is also throwing barbs.
“She talks about the history of this country, not with appreciation but with condemnation,” he told a rally.
That fits with the conservative libel of Harris as distant from family values because she never had a child. Vance justified calling her a “childless cat lady” before he became the GOP vice presidential candidate. He said a woman with no children has no “direct stake,” in America.
Those personal attacks feed conservative social media mockery of Harris.
But the most politically damaging line of attack being previewed by the Trump campaign is aimed at undermining Harris’s claim to be a law-and- order prosecutor ready to face a felon – Trump, who was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records and found liable for sexual assault.
Harris got national attention as a California prosecutor for a strong record of convicting criminals but also for her hardnosed pledge to jail parents of children frequently truant from schools.
Trump’s team is hinting at tarring Harris by saying she put too many people, especially young Black people, in jail.
That line of attack on Harris was previewed in the 2020 Democratic primaries.
“There are too many examples to cite, but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana,” said then-Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.
“She blocked evidence—she blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so…,” Gabbard continued. “And she fought to keep a bail system in place that impacts poor people in the worst kind of way."
I named then-Senator Harris the winner of this column’s coveted “Politician of the Year” award back in 2018. I wrote she was “a good bet as the future of her party.”
On the issues, she is still a good bet.
Harris positioned herself as a leader on the issue of income inequality, as well as limiting tuition debt. She proposed a bill to give a $6,000 tax break to families making less than $100,000 per year. She also co-sponsored Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) “Medicare for All” health care bill.
Her strong support for abortion rights has also won applause from women. Those are left-leaning ideas with proven centrist appeal.
Trump is busy trying to pull her down, but Harris has an impressive record to stand on.
Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.
