Trump will attack and brand his opponent.
The attacks on Biden will divide Democrats. The ones on Harris will unify Democrats.
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| Tough Harris |
The Democratic nominee will be subject to withering criticism.
Trump won't just disagree with them. He will mock them. He will intend to humiliate, to diminish the opponent.
Disagreement would be too kind.
Disagreement implies that the other person has validity and standing--mano a mano. Trump will position his opponent as unworthy. Crooked Hillary. Little Marco. Lyin' Ted. Pocahontas.
Disagreement would be too kind.
Disagreement implies that the other person has validity and standing--mano a mano. Trump will position his opponent as unworthy. Crooked Hillary. Little Marco. Lyin' Ted. Pocahontas.
The problem with Joe Biden is that he comes across as friendly and affable. That will be the direction of Trump's attack. Joe, the nice guy who stood beside Obama, the glad handing, warm ethnic pol who reaches out to shake a firefighter's hand.
Trump will make Joe out to be a fool. The affable, gullible fool.
Trump will divide Democrats: Joe will be the fool who is taken in by the Delaware corporations with nominal headquarters there, the fool who supported the Iraq war, the fool who let Anita Hill be beaten up, the fool who helped Obama save the bankers, the fool who supported mass incarceration.
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| Affable Biden |
Joe would be the friendly dog, worthless as a guard dog Commander in Chief.
Kamala Harris will get attacked, too. She has vulnerabilities, within the Democratic primary. She isn't as liberal as Bernie or Warren and the left knows this. As a long-time prosecutor, she gets special criticism from the anti-incarceration left.
In the general election Harris' identity helps Trump solidify his white, male base. She is a woman of color. She will bring out the misogyny and racial resentments present in response to Obama and the 2016 election--elements that were high predictive of a person's vote for Trump. Moreover, she is from San Francisco, the archetype of mockable, resented modern woke liberalism. She isn't ideal for winning the upper midwest.
The problem for Trump is that those areas of vulnerability tend to energize Democratic constituencies. I expect Trump to run against San Francisco and political correctness, and to slut-shame Harris, mocking her association with Willie Brown. It may get some traction, criticizing a woman who got ahead from a relationship with an older, powerful man. This will turn off some women. But Biden's Charlottesville criticism has put new focus on Trump's racial politics, and Trump is in a poor position to mock relations between older men and younger women. Trump did not win because he won more votes than Romney. He won because fewer Democrats--especially black and progressive Democrats--voted for Hillary than for Obama.
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| Sleepy Joe. Nice guy, but wrong. |
When Trump diminishes Harris for being who she is, Trump energizes Democrats. She represents the modern Democratic Party.
He will have a hard time positioning her as weak--his ploy against Hillary. Harris appears physically sturdy, in a way that Hillary and Warren do not. Her questioning of Barr suggests that Harris's primary image descriptor will be tough, not affable, and not weak.
She is a prosecutor and a woman of color, and nobody's fool.
3 comments:
Good points, and I wonder if a better strategy would be to ignore Trump until after the primary. A lot of energy will be needed to address the expected attacks and if the candidates tacitly agree to keep the discussion internal and find the ticket best able to not only win, but send a message that Regressive politics will not prevail. There's plenty to talk about within the Progressive movement and it would drive Trump nuts if no one paid any attention to his slurs and nonsense.
Certainly among the elite, neoliberal, right-centrist candidates, Harris would be better than Biden. While Harris has shunned PAC money, she is doing quite well with donations from individual wealthy donors from the following industries: lawyers, retirement, TV/Movies, Securities/Investment, Real Estate https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/summary?cid=N00036915
Harris' failure to prosecute Steven Mnuchin speaks volumes, IMHO, about where her loyalty lies https://shadowproof.com/2017/08/15/kamala-harris-neoliberal-record-reckoning/
Should she be the nominee, the Democratic Party elites will have, at best, once again settled for that Obamaesque "hopey-changey" thing rather than substantive change and/or, at worst, played upon the sentimentality of an electorate yearning for a idyllic past that never was.
Andy Seles
Bravo Peter.
Senator Harris correctly implies (argues) that "electability" is a last gasp racist and sexist dog whistle of white establishment Democrats. It is used in the early "media primary" to condition the party faithful to "prefer" a white male in the polls and fundraising. Obama and Hillary were both labelled unelectable early on in 2008, yet Biden was labelled electable back then.
In 2019 only white men are thus far presumptively able to defeat Trump. NPR "On the Media" this week showed that historically early "electability" assessments are poor predictors of actual election outcomes. Our primary process will be labelled sexist and racist if in the name of "electability" Democrats don't nominate a woman or person of color in 2020.
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