56% of Democratic voters and more and more congressional Democrats want Biden to call it a day. He claims his advisors are telling him not to because he can win. I’m getting the impression that most Democrats on Capitol Hill think it’s just a matter of time before Kamala is their nominee. And Republicans think so too. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that their attacks aimed at her directly have intensified in recent days, including the sexist racist kinds of attacks you can always count on Republicans to go for. Sabrina Siddiqui wrote how one of Trump’s worst in-house fascists, Sebastian Gorka, “recently referred to the vice president as ‘colored’ and a ‘DEI hire.’ The former president’s campaign referred to Harris as ‘Low IQ Kamala’ on social media. Some of the former president’s supporters have for years donned shirts, carried signs or sported ‘Joe And The Hoe Gotta Go’ bumper stickers. Before she became vice president in 2021, Harris had a lengthy career in public service, elected as California’s attorney general in 2010 and then serving as a U.S. senator from that state beginning in 2017. She earned a reputation for her withering interrogations of Trump administration officials while serving on the Senate Judiciary Committee.”
The recent attacks, which Democrats and some Republicans say stand to alienate voters, largely stem from the far right. Some conservatives have used the phrase “DEI hire” in a derogatory manner when talking about Black and brown people, referring to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts that they say are being pushed by progressives and Democrats. It is an attack several have directed at Harris in recent days.
“She’s a DEI hire, right? She’s a woman. She’s colored, therefore she’s got to be good,” Gorka said during a segment on the conservative news channel Newsmax. He was responding to a question on whether donors believed Harris would fare better than Biden in such battleground states as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) used similar language in a Fox Business segment this past Monday, in which he said Democrats have “got to choose between a mentally incompetent president and a DEI vice president.”
Asked about subsequent criticism of his remarks, Roy referred to comments from Biden in 2019 that he would prefer a woman or person of color as his running mate. Biden “literally made clear he was picking a female / minority… which is different than saying he’s picking the best regardless of sex or color,” Roy told the Wall Street Journal by text.
A recent New York Post column by the commentator Charlie Gasparino was widely criticized for saying “America may soon be subjected to the country’s first DEI president.” The paper’s editorial board doubled down on the characterization in its own opinion column published Wednesday.
“It’s fair rhetoric in the context of what Harris has done as vice president,” Gasparino said when asked about the column.
A spokesperson for the New York Post didn’t respond to a request for comment. The Post and the Wall Street Journal are both owned by [neo-Nazi] News Corp.
“If you’re getting attacked, it means you matter and you’re scaring someone,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) said of the increased Republican focus on Harris. “I just think that that’s inevitable, but it’s also one of the reasons that we should be cautious of just putting someone new in the current media landscape. It is a risk, and that’s why I think the president is clearly running again.”
…It appears that the bulk of the race- or gender-related attacks against Harris have come from people not directly involved or affiliated with Trump or his team. Still, the former president and his campaign have stepped up their focus on Harris, while occasionally lobbing personal insults her way.
Trump took aim at Harris at a rally at one of his Florida golf clubs on Tuesday, suggesting that Democrats would have booted Biden from office years ago if he had picked “someone even halfway competent” as his vice president. He repeatedly mispronounced Harris’s first name as Cuh-MAH-la in public even though a recently leaked video of Trump on his golf cart shows the former president pronouncing it correctly, as Comma-la.
Some Democrats said Trump’s mispronunciation of Harris’s name, intentional or not, made the vice president sound more foreign— or at a minimum was a sign of disrespect.
In the past, Trump highlighted former President Barack Obama’s full name with an emphasis on his middle name, Hussein. Trump has pushed conspiracy theories that the nation’s first Black president wasn’t born in the U.S.
“I think we all knew a bully in school who did that to the kid who didn’t have a Timmy-Julie-Emily name,” said Jess McIntosh, a Democratic strategist and former communications adviser to Hillary Clinton. “Republicans are attacking Harris with these tired racist tropes because they truly have no idea how to take on a woman who is smarter and tougher than their wannabe strongman Trump.”
The former president has also referred to a Republican primary opponent, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, by her first name, Nimarata. He has amplified questions regarding Haley’s eligibility to run for president, even though she was born in the U.S. and is an American citizen, and nicknamed her “birdbrain.”
A Trump campaign spokeswoman, Caroline Sunshine, didn’t directly address why the former president was mispronouncing Harris’s name or criticism surrounding the tenor of the attacks on the vice president. “No one has lied about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and supported his disastrous policies over the past four years more than Cackling Co-Pilot Kamala Harris,” she said.
Trump recently named Harris as his “potentially new Democrat Challenger” in a post on Truth Social that mentioned her run for president and her dating history.
“She did poorly in the Democrat Nominating process, starting out at Number Two, and ending up defeated and dropping out, even before getting to Iowa, but that doesn’t mean she’s not a ‘highly talented’ politician!” Trump wrote. “Just ask her Mentor, the Great Willie Brown of San Francisco.”
Harris dated the former San Francisco mayor in the 1990s. Harris’s backers have argued that scrutiny surrounding their relationship is sexist.
Brian Fallon, a Harris spokesman, said in a statement: “Trump and his friends are lying about the Vice President because she has been prosecuting the case against him on the biggest issues in this race, and his potshots will only further turn off key voters he needs to win.”
Alex Conant, a Republican strategist, said Trump’s attacks have always been highly personal and frequently crossed the line. “He says things that no other politician can get away with,” he said, but added that some of the attacks carry risks given how tight the election could be. “The ultimate deciders are going to be suburban women— the exact voters that are most likely to be turned off by sexist attacks and name-calling,” he said.
Republicans have put this anti-Kamala video together to try to make themselves feel better about Kamala at their Hate Fest in Milwaukee next week.
Yesterday, Vox took a look at her pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses. “If Harris were to take over for Biden,” wrote Li Zhou, “she’d have some version of the incumbency advantage as the sitting vice president. Though there are important caveats… As part of that advantage, Harris would be able to tout her role in the Biden administration’s wins— like the Inflation Reduction Act, which will help lower prescription drug costs and invest in climate initiatives, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which includes historic funding for bridges and roads. She’d be able to point, too, to the experience she’s garnered as vice president and how it’s prepared her to become commander-in-chief. It’s a strategy Biden himself successfully employed in 2020, when he linked himself to the Obama administration’s achievements— and emphasized how he was often the ‘last one in the room’ when key decisions were being made.”
On the other hand, “latent sexism and racism among voters is a key worry some Democrats have raised. “I don't know that a lot of people want to admit this, [but] I think there are a lot of people who are uncomfortable with a Black woman being the president,” says Carter. Candidates of color and women, including former President Barack Obama, have long had to navigate such biases— and electability concerns— though he was ultimately able to win in spite of them.”
Since the fall of Roe, Harris has also taken on the mantle of abortion rights, meeting with advocates and voters across the country, and rallying people on the issue in places like Wisconsin, Arizona, and Florida.
This subject has been particularly motivating for Democratic voters and women in recent elections, with multiple ballot initiatives— like those in Vermont and Michigan— passing with overwhelming support. During the 2022 midterm elections, protecting reproductive rights was a central policy for many voters, and a decisive one that helped boost Democrats. Harris’s defense of abortion access is a point that would allow her to paint a sharp contrast with Trump, who has taken credit for Roe’s demise and argued that abortion should be decided on a state-by-state basis.
In addition to the experience she has in the White House, Harris also brings legislative expertise from her four years in the Senate, and background on criminal justice reform from her time as attorney general in California. Although some of her tenure as vice president has been plagued with communications missteps, she’d previously been known for her viral moments questioning Trump appointees as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and made a big splash in 2019 during a debate confrontation of Biden over his past stance on busing.
Harris could infuse the ticket with new energy as well. Numerous polls have found that majorities of Americans don’t want Biden on the ballot, including a July 2024 PBS News/NPR/Marist survey placing that number at 56 percent, and want to see options other than Biden or Trump.
Harris could potentially be that alternative. At 59, she’s decades younger than both the current nominees. And she’s also emblematic of both an increasingly diverse Democratic Party and country, making her a candidate who could be especially motivating for key voting constituencies including Black women. (In a July 2024 YouGov poll, Harris’s favorability numbers were at 41 percent with adults overall, and 69 percent among Black respondents.) That could bode well for better turnout and enthusiasm.
“She’s the second Black woman elected to the Senate, which in a state like California is no small feat,” says University of Maryland public policy professor Niambi Carter. “So she’s shown that she can get voters, white, Black, Latino, and others, to come to the polls.”
She's just as corrupt. Her service to the money is not in doubt. She's better than the other only in that she's younger and lucid. But you won't get any progressive issue addressed with her either.
And she'll make nazi voters, you know the types, racist misogynists... even more hysterical and eager to vote. Can she make up for 6-decades of blue malaise, the extra biden drag AND the nazi hysteria gap + 5% (for the electoral college)? nope.