A A funny thing happened in the hours after Joe Biden dropped out of the U.S. presidential race and Kamala Harris took his place: For a candidate who had previously failed to inspire, It was a huge, real wave of excitement. This is not just a stopgap measure. In the 48 hours after Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, donations totaled more than $100 million, and voter registrations reportedly increased by 700%. It was overwhelming and exciting; it felt like this was someone who could actually win.
The strangest thing—besides the immediate sense of history—is how quickly it has adjusted. It’s like looking at a magic eye picture or an MC Escher painting. On the surface, nothing has changed for Harris since her failed bid for president in 2020. It’s not entirely clear what her politics are. Yet in the face of the drama of Biden’s painful exit, it’s hard not to applaud Harris’s relative youth, energy and sheer consistency. For the reasons that made many on the left suspicious of Harris four years ago, the 59-year-old Harris suddenly looks like the perfect candidate to confront and defeat Donald Trump.
Of course, Trump’s team latched on to the vibe and scrambled to counter it, which was pure comedy gold, with many running around trying to find dirty words for female politicians. In the days following Harris’ rise to prominence, Trump called her “crazy,” “crazy” and “stupid,” an automatic reaction that even his supporters behind him may begin to bristle at, a generic attack Way. Meanwhile, Trump’s surrogates are getting into trouble in similar ways. When Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy called Harris “a bit of a jingle” on Fox News this week, the remark was so awkward that even the Fox host had to retort.
These attacks will inevitably be narrowed in scope and personalized. But evidence from the first 10 days of Harris’ campaign suggests the Republican machine is working hard to find viable ways to undermine her. J.D. Vance, a decidedly unattractive man who seems to scare even those who think Trump is a good thing, defended himself this week for his comments from a few years ago attacking Harris for not having children. defended. (She’s a stepmother of two.) In some cases, the taunting still works, but not here, and Vance, 39, looks downright ridiculous — like a Victorian hologram ready to break The word “old maid” – make a song and dance about motherhood.
One of the reasons these approaches have failed is because of Harris’s personal image. Trump’s first choice when facing a female opponent is always sexual humiliation. He did so with E. Jean Carroll (“not my type”) and, more surprisingly, with her lawyer, who was told by Trump during a 2022 deposition at Mar-a-Lago: “You’re not going to be honest, it was my choice.” Trump’s subtext to Hillary Clinton is that she’s your sleazy ex-wife, and he’s casting Elizabeth Warren as a boring librarian .
But the Catwoman thing doesn’t work for Harris. By Trump’s own standards, she was too young, too elegant, and far above him in the rankings of women he values so highly and habitually uses to denigrate her. In his own value system, Trump himself is twenty years older than she is and looks like someone sitting on the couch picking crumbs from the creases of a vest. Harris looks like his worst nightmare: a high-heeled, polished, telegenic former California attorney general whose corporate image and politics are essentially somewhere in the middle — so when Trump says, “She’s a Radical left-wing lunatics who will destroy our country,” he sounded ridiculous.
Although Harris has not been a particularly confident politician thus far, she seems to know instinctively how to deal with Trump. With a goofy smile that was more effective than any serious attempt by Clinton or Warren to debate him, Harris met Trump on a popular level and noted the obvious bloodshed: “These people are weird.” So it works because it’s true, but also because she’s doing what Trump hates most: She’s laughing at him.
