Republicans are wrong to dismiss Kamala Harris
Here’s how they should target her
Who’s laughing now? Cackling Kamala Harris, the Vice President who is very much the caricature she is portrayed as, is now one step closer to the presidency.
Less than two full days after Joe Biden officially dropped out of the presidential race, Harris has all but secured the Democrat Party’s nomination. Party leaders like Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, and Bill and Hillary Clinton have endorsed Harris. She has already raised $81 million since Biden’s withdrawal, which she will add to the approximately $100 million in campaign funds Biden leaves behind.
It’s an amazing ascension for a politician who was once mediocre (and to Republicans, still is) by her own party’s standards. Harris ended her presidential campaign in 2020 without a single delegate to her name and before a single state held a primary contest. Her list of accomplishments as vice-president is nonexistent. In fact, the two most significant responsibilities she was assigned as vice-president—managing the border crisis and preventing war in Ukraine—happen to be the Biden administration’s most consequential failures. Her more memorable moments are nearly all gaffes and word salads.
And yet here Harris is, readying to face off against former President Donald Trump and his vice-presidential pick, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance.
Laugh at her if you want, but Kamala Harris remains a legitimate threat to Trump’s reelection hopes. Republicans would be wrong to underestimate her. Yet many MAGA influencers online are already doing exactly that. They are declaring victory, acting as though the election is over.
What they fail to understand is that there are two Kamalas: the mainstream media portrayal of the vice-president, and the babbling buffoon who gives Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Selina Meyer Veep character a run for her money.
It does not matter how Kamala Harris is portrayed on Fox News or on social media. Many Americans either have not seen Harris’ gaffe reel or they simply don’t care. Americans have twice recently voted for mentally deficient candidates over the more sentient ones—John Fetterman in Pennsylvania and Biden against Trump in 2020. So it’s not like voting for Kamala is beyond the realm of imagination.
Though Trump remains the favorite according to most polls, Harris appears to be closing Biden’s gap. A new Reuters/Ipsos poll from earlier this week shows Harris flipped Biden’s two point deficit against Trump into a two point lead of her own, and that’s without having done a single thing except being placed on the top of the ticket. A race that just days ago was looking more and more difficult for Democrats to win now suddenly seems, at the very least, within reach.
Trump also isn’t helped by the fact that Democrats quickly coalesced around Harris. His campaign seems unsure how to message against her.
Almost immediately after her entry into the race, The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta, who has been embedded with the Trump campaign, reported that the campaign had gone from “cocky about Biden’s deficiencies to fearful of his ouster to stunned” at Biden’s withdrawal from the race. Alberta added that he was “struck” by the concerns of Trump’s top two campaign aides Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita over what Alberta described as the “potential of a dramatic switch” that would push Biden out of the race.
It’s not hard to see why. Trump was uniquely positioned to run against Biden. He and his supporters rightfully believe he has unfinished business in the White House. His campaign is a remarkable comeback story from the ashes of the “stolen election,” January 6, and the lawfare against him. But running against Harris is a different story. Trump will have to do more than just paint Harris as a fool (even though she so obviously is).
HOW TRUMP SHOULD ATTACK HARRIS
Trump allies reportedly told Alberta that they plan on attacking Harris from the left by accusing Harris of being too tough on crime.
Yes, you read that correctly. At a time when America’s cities have never felt more unsafe and when violent criminals can commit crimes and be released without consequence, Trump plans on attacking Harris for being too harsh against criminals.
It is a bizarre line of attack, and it is straight out of Trump’s 2020 playbook when he attempted to win black voters by attacking Biden for sponsoring the 1994 crime bill, which helped cut violent crime in half a decade after its passing.
That tactic didn’t work in 2020, and it won’t work now. Four years ago, Trump improved his black support by two points. But because he lost support among white men, and some white working class voters in swing states, he lost the election.
As Ann Coulter recently explained in a post on her Substack Unsafe, this strategy only targets 0.026% of voters.
TRUMP: Let’s see ... should I sacrifice the votes of millions of Americans fed up with crime in order to get up to 20% of 13% of the vote? Why, that’s 0.026% of the vote. YES! Hey, guys! Biden called you “super predators.” Did you know I’m letting people out of jail?
Instead of attacking Kamala Harris the prosecutor, Trump and Republicans should attack Harris for her far-left record as Attorney General of California and U.S. Senator. As Trump once said of Senator Rand Paul, “there is plenty of subject matter there.”
As Vice President, Harris was tasked with managing the U.S. southern border. Under her watch, over ten million illegal immigrants have invaded in the country. And that does not even include illegal immigrants who have evaded authorities.
The website GovTrack once ranked Harris as the “most liberal” Senator in the country—a title they are now trying to scrub from their website to protect Harris.
When she was running for President, Harris endorsed the Green New Deal and banning fracking. Harris also said she would not treat illegal immigrants as criminals, and she supported abolishing ICE. She endorsed providing universal healthcare to illegal immigrants.
During the 2020 George Floyd riots, Harris helped raised money for the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which helped post bail for criminals who were rioting in the streets. According to the Washington Free Beacon, Harris was still fundraising for the group as of last week.
Harris’ efforts helped get an upstanding citizen named Shawn Michael Tillman released. He had been previously jailed for indecent exposure and criminal sexual conduct. But just a few months after his release, he shot and killed a man at a rail station in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Another man she helped release was twice-convicted rapist Christopher Boswell. After he was released from prison, he returned to assaulting women and was charged in several new cases. Who would have guessed?
As Attorney General of California, she misled voters by titling Proposition 47–a ballot measure that reclassified felonies like shoplifting, forgery, fraud, and drug use to misdemeanors—the “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.” Thanks to Prop 47, California now is now the capital of retail theft and organized looting in America.
Harris also misled voters on the follow-up to Prop 47, Proposition 57. As Coulter recently explained, Prop 57 granted thousands of violent criminals, including criminals convicted of murder and child molestation, early release from prison.
So the strategy against Harris is not complicated. The attacks write themselves. On every major issue important to voters, Harris is an extremist. Trump can either highlight that fact, or paint her as a tough-on-crime moderate. His decision might just determine the election.