Kamala Harris' First Impression

 There is a race to define her.

She now defines herself on the Biden-Harris website as "the first Black and Indian American woman to represent California in the United States Senate."

Harris in New Hampshire, Sept. 2019

She leads with identity.

Meanwhile, Trump and Fox call her a radical socialist, a loser with a failed campaign, a nasty woman who will dominate and displace Biden.

Today's post is a look back to January 2019, when this blog gave Harris her first long look. Her first campaign rally was in Oakland, California and 20,000 people showed up. It was a favorable first impression. Back then she wanted to emphasize her fearless prosecution of wrongdoing, her personal rectitude, and law and order.

That brand evolved during 2018. Democrats wanted to hear about economic and racial justice, not criminal prosecutions.

Back at the beginning Fox thought to attack her with a "slut shame" focus, noting her former relationship with California legislator Willie Brown. They thought that was her vulnerable spot: the ambitious woman with a oh-so-convenient relationship with a powerful man. The slut!!

In today's political climate that attack seems even more nakedly misogynistic and gratuitiously  personal than it did then. She was little known then, but today she has been on the national stage for twenty months. I expect them to drop this line of attack, although I see remnants of it in Facebook comments from citizen partisans. Sean Hannity is dating a Fox colleague; Donald Trump, Jr. has separated from his wife and is dating a former Fox host. An attack from that direction exacerbates the problem Trump has in reconnecting with suburban women, a demographic that has switched away from him. Trump said he was defending those women, the "suburban housewife." Today that suburban  woman is not a housewife. Like Harris, she works, she has a career. Harris presents as a woman fully capable, fully legitimate, fully worthy of respect.  De-legitimizing Harris by calling her a slut insults and de-legitimizes by implication other women in the workforce.

Here is how things looked back at the beginning. 

Note: I leave my posts up, even when history shows me to have been wrong. We live in real time and I attempt to observe the unfolding present. This and all other posts are unchanged, except for minor corrections of typos if I notice them later:

                                                  ----    ----    ----

January 30, 2019

Fast Start. Big Crowd. "Fearless."

First impressions matter. 

The first things we know about a candidate are the mental structure that we use to understand the next few things we learn.

And we don't have mental shelf space to know very much. We get impressions. 

Kamala Harris's first campaign rally had 20,000 people, standing in a plaza in Oakland. I attended Trump's first rally in New Hampshire, where there were 3,000 people in a high school gymnasium in the town of Rochester, which seemed like a lot.

It's a very good start for Kamala Harris.

The typical American voter outside of California has barely heard of Harris. She starts with an appearance and biography. She is 54 years old, female, dark skinned, a lawyer, a California US Senator, a former Attorney General and District Attorney.

The pundits and activists and political "inside baseball" writers like myself will learn and integrate dozens of more things about her in the weeks ahead, but an ongoing premise of this blog is that most voters will have made up their mind about a candidate knowing about seven things on election day.  Her biography used up about four of them because her being a 54 year old dark skinned woman is a single category.

Archetype: Another premise of this blog is that a candidate for president is understood by voters as an archetype, a stock character in a simple fight in a near-wordless match up--sort of like professional wrestling, but for real. Then voters choose which character they prefer.

Trump has his character: the dominating tabloid newspaper bully, simple-minded but strong, fighting for traditional American values against liberal snobs, criminal aliens, outsiders.

Kamala Harris is creating her counter-brand. Her appearance is a given. Her clothes and manner present her as "professional" which is consistent with her law enforcement background.  She is adding an adjective: FEARLESS

This is a good choice for her. 

There were alternatives. She could have emphasized that she was a scrappy poor person, or fair-minded, or bi-partisan good government oriented, or not-a-narcissist, or intelligent, or really experienced in government. 

There are a multitude of ways to be not-Trump. 

By choosing to be a fearless former District Attorney, voters can make a choice between two worthy champions, two alternative fighters in a ring.  Americans are pre-programmed to understand this matchup. The white-hat sheriff versus the crook. 

Marshall Dillon in Gunsmoke. 

Good guy calling out the bad guy

Harris embraces her law enforcement background--casting against type. Blacks, women and Democrats generally have been positioned as the people sympathizing with Rodney King rather than the white policemen who beat him, and with hands-up blacks shot by white police. 

She is getting criticized for this by the left. The criticism will help her, if she handles it right, i.e. by not backing down and apologizing. She will demonstrate by unmistakable body language behavior that she was fearless. She is what she is. She will not get every left-leaning vote in the primary and her willingness not to pander to those lost votes will give her political credibility.

She has disrupters to this first impression narrative. 

Fox News slut shames Harris, accusing her of using sex to advance her career. They use a woman to do it. Tomi Lahren calls her a hypocrite. "Kamala, given you're a vocal and proud supporter of the MeToo movement, what are your thoughts about using an extramarital affair to boost their political career?"

Lauren says she lets viewer in on a secret, that Kamala Harris is a conniving imposter who used sex to advance her career over the careers of others, having an extramarital affair with a powerful man thirty years her senior. He helped her career. He got her jobs.

This created a tweet-storm from multiple sides. including widespread criticism of Fox for leading with this. There were thoughtful articles in the Washington Post saying that this is an example of misogyny and that these accusations would not be made against a male.

In general this hurts Harris. The entire subject is bad. In the limited-mental-shelf-space model, Fox managed to put "conniving slut" into the mix of seven things we are learning about Harris. 

It was smart of Fox. Position Harris as the slut who became Senator. Make her appearance a negative. 

But it is a mixed bag, and may well help Harris in the primary. 

Other women, particularly Gillibrand, are associated with MeToo, branding formed by Gillibrand's early criticism of Senator Franken. Slut-shaming by Fox makes Harris a victim. A Google search for Kamala Harris put his Lauren video and Fox News' coverage of the past relationship with Willie Brown within the top five or six about Harris, as of 6:00 a.m. this morning. The charge is working and  Democratic women may take her side: a single woman can't date--how unfair. What we did 20 years ago is held against us--how unfair.

It is a challenge for Harris. Perhaps she can retain her brand as the fearless warrior who represents rectitude, and therefore a worthy archetype opponent of Trump. She needs to appear unbowed and unapologetic. Matt Dillon of Gunsmoke did not apologize for whatever relationship he had with Kitty.

It would have been better had Willie Brown said nothing about their having dated beyond that he barely remembered. But he did help preserve her narrative when he said he dated lots of women and it was along time ago: "The difference is that Harris is the only one who, after I helped her, sent word that I would be indicted if I 'so much as jaywalked' while she was D. A." 

Harris confirmed it with a generational and prosecutorial challenge: "His career is over: I will be alive and kicking for the next 40 years. I do not owe him a thing."

Brown observed about her ingratitude: "That's politics for you."

No. It is Harris positioning herself as a law enforcement professional. "If there is corruption, it will be prosecuted."

Harris will prove herself worthy of being a candidate by how she gets through this.