"Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time?
Satisfied: 13% Dissatisfied 86% Unsure 1%
Gallup, July 2020
This is a tough time to be Trump.
It will get ugly. His campaign needs to eliminate Biden and Harris as plausible alternatives. He needs to disqualify them.
We have had time to see how they will disqualify Biden: Call him senile. But that isn't enough. Voters might grudgingly admit to themselves that Biden is old, sure, but "still pretty good" and then take comfort in the idea that Kamala Harris is right there behind him. Harris, the articulate, vigorous, Senator and former prosecutor seems grounded and totally with it. Presidents have staff, cabinet officers, generals, thousands of Secretaries and Under Secretaries--all people to do the actual work. Biden will oversee it, not do it.
Kamala Harris is no Mike Pence. He is a sycophant and enabler of Trump. But Kamala Harris is noteworthy for getting into Biden's face. This could work out, people might think. Sleepy Joe, sure, but Kamala is right there..
Trump needs to destroy that avenue of thought, and it is happening now. Slime Kamala Harris.
1. Slutty woman. Yesterday's post mentioned this. The conservative media have given Trump's supporters the information they need to circulate the slut meme around social media. A commenter who calls himself "Curt" repeats them here on this blog, saying she "slept her way to power" by having been taken under the wing of Mayor Willie Brown "in return for sex" and would otherwise have "just been another nobody." He has two comments up yesterday that make that case.
2. Birtherism, redux. In the new version it is agreed that Harris was born in Oakland, California, but that notwithstanding the plain language of the 14th Amendment and the 1898 Wong Kim Arc case that confirmed that people born in the US were citizens even if their parents were not citizens, maybe--just maybe--Kamala Harris isn't really a natural born citizen because this may not be settled law after all. Her parents were students here, and foreign nationals. The argument was advanced by John Eastman, a Chapman Law School professor, who says there is, maybe, an arguable case to be made that the 1898 case was wrongly decided and the 14th Amendment doesn't mean what it plainly says. Maybe Americans have been wrong for over a century and we can say people born in America aren't citizens.
This is the Obama-birtherism attack all over again. Both Obama and Harris have clear evidence they were born in America, sure, but they are mixed race and darker skinned than the "regular," i.e. White American. Birtherism is an effort to make them "other"--outsiders from the existing American polity. The argument has particular appeal to those who want America to maintain its prior racial and ethnic makeup. People who see entrants like baby Barack and baby Kamala as unwanted interlopers seek an arguable legal or factual basis for keeping them "other." Maybe Hawaii lied. Maybe the 14th Amendment has been misunderstood.
Trump demonstrated that the issue has potency within GOP voters. All that was necessary to establish a partisan talking point is someone asserting that it was a question. Then keep asking the question. Never stop asking.
Fox News and Trump know exactly how to play this for maximum exposure and outrage, simultaneously raising the issue while denying it. That keeps their hands clean. They are only asking questions. Fox frames the story as another example of Trump being the one attacked, Trump the victim for asking questions. Trump discusses it as a matter of Democratic negligence in failing to learn that Kamala Harris--maybe, he doesn't know--is not eligible to be president. It isn't his fault if Democrats made the horrible mistake of nominating a person who might be ineligible to be president. It is diabolical, cynical, clever, and exactly suited for Fox, talk radio, conservative media, and a great many GOP voters who feel, instinctively, that Kamala Harris just doesn't really belong here and should not be Vice President.
3. Racial fraud. Talk show host Mark Levin and Donald Trump, Junior, made the point that Harris was not Afro-American. Her father, they noted, was Jamaican, with African heritage, but was not himself immediately from Africa or the American South. Her mother was from India. Does this matter? Isn't Kamala Harris considered "Black?"
No.
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| Click: Fox story |
This is the Obama-birtherism attack all over again. Both Obama and Harris have clear evidence they were born in America, sure, but they are mixed race and darker skinned than the "regular," i.e. White American. Birtherism is an effort to make them "other"--outsiders from the existing American polity. The argument has particular appeal to those who want America to maintain its prior racial and ethnic makeup. People who see entrants like baby Barack and baby Kamala as unwanted interlopers seek an arguable legal or factual basis for keeping them "other." Maybe Hawaii lied. Maybe the 14th Amendment has been misunderstood.
Trump demonstrated that the issue has potency within GOP voters. All that was necessary to establish a partisan talking point is someone asserting that it was a question. Then keep asking the question. Never stop asking.
Fox News and Trump know exactly how to play this for maximum exposure and outrage, simultaneously raising the issue while denying it. That keeps their hands clean. They are only asking questions. Fox frames the story as another example of Trump being the one attacked, Trump the victim for asking questions. Trump discusses it as a matter of Democratic negligence in failing to learn that Kamala Harris--maybe, he doesn't know--is not eligible to be president. It isn't his fault if Democrats made the horrible mistake of nominating a person who might be ineligible to be president. It is diabolical, cynical, clever, and exactly suited for Fox, talk radio, conservative media, and a great many GOP voters who feel, instinctively, that Kamala Harris just doesn't really belong here and should not be Vice President.3. Racial fraud. Talk show host Mark Levin and Donald Trump, Junior, made the point that Harris was not Afro-American. Her father, they noted, was Jamaican, with African heritage, but was not himself immediately from Africa or the American South. Her mother was from India. Does this matter? Isn't Kamala Harris considered "Black?"
No.
There is a purpose here. It is to disassociate Kamala Harris from America's Black community. After all, say these political opponents, Harris lacks a direct connection the the slave and Jim Crow experience of Black people who lived in the United States during slavery and in the 160 years after. The implication is that she is an imposter, a fraud, not a real Black American.
Once again, as with birtherism, the effort is to disqualify the opponent by making them an interloper. It is a one-two punch. Harris isn't a "real" American notwithstanding being born in a hospital in Oakland, and she isn't even a real Black person either.
4. The Angry Black Woman. Trump called Harris a "madwoman," angry," "vicious," and "nasty." Since the goal is to disqualify Harris as the competent backup to Biden, she needs to be thought dangerously unpleasant. We saw her asking questions of Brett Kavanaugh and Attorney General Barr, asking questions that forced Barr to look evasive as he tried to avoid a yes or no answer by pretending not to understand the word "suggest." She took a prosecutorial tone in Tuesday's announcement speech saying the case against Trump was "open and shut." The self controlled prosecutor demeanor is familiar to television viewers. We have seen Law and Order on TV and watched the Sam Waterston character at work--a good guy character.
One way to define what we saw was "competent and effective."
But Trump is an accomplished brander, including negative branding. People see what they expect to see and are told they are seeing. Trump is prepping people to interpret Harris an an angry, mean-spirited, dangerous woman--someone we cannot dare have backing up the frail, doddering, and manipulable Biden.
One way to define what we saw was "competent and effective."
But Trump is an accomplished brander, including negative branding. People see what they expect to see and are told they are seeing. Trump is prepping people to interpret Harris an an angry, mean-spirited, dangerous woman--someone we cannot dare have backing up the frail, doddering, and manipulable Biden.
Not visible now, to me, but coming. There is another line of attack in conflict with the Harris as the anti-police enabler of urban violence, and that is the Harris who performed her job as a prosecutor of crimes by Black criminal defendants. This is the record that caused progressive Democrats to be wary of Harris. She was not the police reform champion they wanted, and in a field of two dozen candidates, engaged Democrats did not think they had to settle for Harris. Her campaign did not get traction, including among Black voters.
Neither I nor my other White readers will likely see much of this coming attack, and I expect it to come late in the campaign. It will be micro targeted to Black voters, intended to depress their vote. It will describe Harris as the cold hearted prosecutor of crime by Blacks. She will be shown as the turncoat, who sought approval of powerful White Americans at the expense of Black Americans. This line of attack will need to be done stealthily, since it contradicts the larger Trump theme that Biden, Harris, and Democrats generally are sympathetic to Black crime and violence, and that the suburbs and "suburban housewives" need Trump's protection from it.
Currently Kamala Harris' worst detractors are Republicans who think Harris a Socialist, and Bernie Sanders supporters who think she isn't one but should be. By election day every voter will have reason to dislike and be afraid of her. A billion dollars will see to that.
Neither I nor my other White readers will likely see much of this coming attack, and I expect it to come late in the campaign. It will be micro targeted to Black voters, intended to depress their vote. It will describe Harris as the cold hearted prosecutor of crime by Blacks. She will be shown as the turncoat, who sought approval of powerful White Americans at the expense of Black Americans. This line of attack will need to be done stealthily, since it contradicts the larger Trump theme that Biden, Harris, and Democrats generally are sympathetic to Black crime and violence, and that the suburbs and "suburban housewives" need Trump's protection from it.
Currently Kamala Harris' worst detractors are Republicans who think Harris a Socialist, and Bernie Sanders supporters who think she isn't one but should be. By election day every voter will have reason to dislike and be afraid of her. A billion dollars will see to that.
4 comments:
13% think the country is on the right track? Yikes!
Who are these people?
Haters gotta hate, we'll see how the polling goes. As of this morning Biden got a bump of...wait for it...1 percentage point. While a seven percent lead at this point is encouraging, it should be double digits.
I'm not certain who they are trying to convince with all the negative chatter. It seems reflexive, or maybe just self soothing. It's all pretty benign, actually. What I'm nervous about is a phony investigation from the DOJ, or worse. We know what they are capable of and willing to do.
Just like Peter Sage, I'm a White guy who married an Asian woman. But I still find it interesting that both Kamala Harris and Susan Rice both married (White) Jewish guys, and not Black men. That tells you who they identify with.
To be quite frank, I don't think that Kamala Harris considers herself to be "Black", unless it becomes politically expedient. In her personal life, I think that she identifies as an East Indian. Harris was mostly raised by her mother, who is an Indian. Harris' appearance is more of an Indian. Harris spent her teenage years living in Canada (and not Oakland). She has certainly done more for Indians than she's done for Blacks. Harris is a chief sponsor of a congressional bill which will greatly increase the number of East Indians allowed to get H1B visas. Harris is doing this because she's owned by Silicone Valley, and she doesn't give a rat's ass about American high-tech workers. Americans will lose their jobs. Kamala doesn't care. Kamala supports open borders, the Green New Deal, the reduction of police, more taxes, gun confiscation, and basically a destruction of the current United States. Harris can hide behind her "Blackness", but she's still a hard-core socialist, and the majority of voters have already rejected White socialists Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren. Harris will lose not because of her ethnicity or gender, but because of her radical leftist politics (pure and simple).
Curt Ankerberg
Medford, OR
While Joe Biden's age and attention span are a worrying factor he represents the best alternative to the racist bigot now occupying the oval office. Yes, considering the circumstances, the selection of the Democratic vice-presidential candidate is of grave importance, but I submit that a ring tailed monkey relying on sign language could easily surpass the pernicious, dictator-like path the nation has endured for over three years. The issue of "executive orders" along with the electoral college should be reviewed so as to prevent yet another ignoramus the means of transforming our nation from leader of the free world to that of an international pariah. We must remain fully aware that the moneyed interests of our nation are composed largely of old people who received an education over half a century ago, an education that ignored most of the world's and the'nation's ills This elderly group is easily frightened of change even when the change is beneficial. This frightened but well-healed group stand willing and ready to bankroll the election of yet another demagogue because of their dated and inadequte perceptions concerning both domestic and world events. Perhaps it is fortunate that the demagogue presently occupying the White House is crude, blasphemous, a liar, a cheat and a seriel sexual predator. So let's refrain from criticizing Joe's choice of running mate. And even more importantly lets not forget, that for many decades Old Joe has been winning when he runs for office.
Bob Warren
What the Trump campaign can’t escape from is that this election really isn’t about Biden and Harris, their record, their platform, how far to the left they lean—or even their past romances. This election is a referendum on Donald Trump’s failed presidency. Mitch McConnell and the Republican senators protected Trump from impeachment, but now it’s our turn to sit as judge and jury. All Biden and Harris have to do is continually refocus the public’s attention to Trump’s failures.
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