Vice President Kamala Harris neatly sidestepped a rhetorical trap set by former President Donald Trump as he courted a key voting group with less-than-convincing protection promises, a new political analysis contends.
The Republican presidential nominee failed to drag Harris down with campaign messaging, and instead provided the Democratic candidate a chance to rise above his fear-forward utterings, journalist Susan Faludi argued in a New York Times column.
"Harris has demonstrated her ability to stand up to America’s most poisonous huckster without being intimidated by or engaging with his scare campaigns," wrote Faludi.
"Crucial to our nation’s future, she’s proving to be an effective protector against the protection racket itself."
Faludi's column Monday focused on Trump's messaging to women and the many hurdles Harris must clear as a political candidate who is not a man.
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The journalist argued Trump was trying to bait Harris into messaging that would outrage male voters when he delivered an age-old promise to female ones.
"[Women] will no longer be abandoned, lonely or scared," Trump said. “You will be protected, and I will be your protector.”
Faludi believes that Trump was hoping this statement would force Harris to echo his protective rhetoric and appear as a feminist — and make some male voters turn against her.
"Many voters, especially men, perceive the prospect of being protected by a woman as a threat," Faludi wrote. "In a society where men judge their worth by their ability to protect, being protected by a woman is seen as a disgrace, a stain on one’s honor."
But Harris instead relied on her own linguistic prowess to target a weakness of the former president's — and in doing so used Trump's trap against him, Faludi wrote.
The journalist points to a single word in Harris' response that she believes changed the messaging and undercut the power of Trump's gender attack.
“I don’t think the women of America need him to say he’s going to protect them," Harris responded. "The women of America need him to trust them.”
Faludi argued this simple statement on trust pulled the narrative out of gender politics and back into plain old politics where Harris' strengths, and Trump's weaknesses, are easy to spot.
"If Mr. Trump embodies the make-believe rescuer, the bombastic redeemer who speaks loudly while carrying a tiny stick, Ms. Harris is his levelheaded, no-nonsense opposite," she concluded.
"Her record of public service and her utilitarian policy plans attest to workable fixes to actual dangers instead of the amplification of invented ones. She offers herself up as the calmly common-sensical civic warden."
