Now that we’re getting to know Kamala Harris, what’s not to like?
By Herbert Rothschild
Right after the debate between Biden and Trump, I wrote a column that was published with the headline, “Even I no longer believe that Biden is fit for the office.” I ended it by writing, “I am deeply troubled by this development. A second Trump presidency will be much worse than the first. … My best hope is that Biden will withdraw in time for a more eligible Democratic nominee to emerge and prevail.”
When that hope was realized, I breathed a sigh of relief, along with perhaps half the adult population of the U.S. It was as if a great weight had been lifted from us, and we responded with an enthusiasm that was expressed in measurable ways. According to Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, in the first week it raised more than $200 million dollars and signed up more than 170,000 new volunteers. Of the donors, 66% hadn’t given to President Joe Biden.
That it took Biden so long to acknowledge that he was leading his party — and thus his country — to disaster worked out for the best. Democrats expended no time or money, nor created any intramural grievances, deciding who would take his place at the top of the ticket. And it’s become apparent that Harris is probably a better standard bearer than anyone else who might have emerged from primary contests.
Her charisma had no scope to manifest itself in the crowded field of the 2020 primaries. And despite the current necessity of crediting her with a share of Biden’s accomplishments, in fact she was no exception to the rule that vice presidents are kept on the periphery of presidential power. Thus, she was largely unknown to most of us.
Now that we are learning about Harris, what’s not to like? She projects strength even as she projects human warmth. That may be the undoing of former President Donald Trump’s candidacy, because his entire shtick is projecting strength, and meanness is a part of it. That self-presentation worked in proximity to Biden. In proximity to Harris, Trump as strong man seems like a head pushed through the hole in a cardboard cutout of Superman.
For a misogynist, that a woman projects more strength than he adds insult to injury. It seems to have confused Trump. How else can one account for his bizarre claim that “I’m a much better looking person than Kamala”? He said that on Aug. 17 at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, after referencing Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan’s assertion that Harris’s beauty gives her a big advantage. After saying he had never before thought of her that way, three times Trump said he was better looking than she. I infer that, troubled by finding his “manhood” (i.e., his power to dominate) challenged by a woman, he was emotionally impelled to challenge her “womanhood” (i.e., her physical beauty).
On the last night of the Democratic convention, former Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger gave utterance to the gathering sense that Trump as Rambo is a phantasm. “Donald Trump is a weak man pretending to be strong. He is a small man pretending to be big. He’s a faithless man pretending to be righteous. He’s a perpetrator who can’t stop playing the victim. He … puts on quite a show. But there’s no real strength there.”
That truth needed to be voiced explicitly at the convention, but only once. When Harris appeared shortly thereafter, she communicated it by being herself.
Those who composed the messages of the convention and orchestrated the various ways they were pitched did a superb job. The phrases “turning the page” and “We’re not going back,” the second of which became a mantra, resonated in multiple ways. Most obviously, they communicated that we’re not going back to a Trump presidency. But they also exploited the turn of events that has made Trump the old candidate, plucking from his hand one of his winning cards. And more subtly but also effectively, they cast Trump as an entertainer past his heyday, an act that has become stale.
The campaign organizers worked hard and intelligently to undermine the perception that Trump is a champion of workers without college degrees, those who, truth be said, were abandoned by Democrats as well as Republicans from 1980 to 2016. Those folks need to realize that nothing changed in 2017 but the rhetoric, that Trump was a faux populist. Some speakers, such as United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, tackled the assignment head-on, pointing to the Trump and Biden (-Harris) records. But there were less-straightforward tactics. Several changes were rung on the contrast between the working-class backgrounds of the Democratic nominees and Trump’s, such as Harris’s stint at McDonalds. And simply by being who he is — a white, male, Midwestern former football coach without a portfolio of stocks and bonds — Tim Walz greatly helped make the case.
But what struck me as the best salvo was when Michelle Obama spoke of “the affirmative action of generational wealth.” In a speech that was the best I heard at the convention, she dismantled Trump’s claim to champion working people against the elites. He was born into the elite class and remains loyal to it because he remains loyal to his material self-interest. But that phrase she used, “the affirmative action of generational wealth,” was a brilliant way of communicating to the white males whose grievances Trump has hitherto exploited so effectively that they allowed him to turn their gaze away from the real cause of their grievances.
The convention gave women and people of color multiple reasons to vote the Harris-Walz ticket. Freedom, specifically applied to reproductive freedom, freedom to vote and freedom from fear of gun violence was a message sure to appeal to them. And the prominence of women and people of color at the podium, culminating with Harris herself, was an even more effective appeal.
Whether the convention gave white working-class males sufficient reason to vote the Harris-Walz ticket remains to be seen. The Democrats don’t need a majority of them to win. Still, were they to start voting Democratic again, it would signal an end to the politics Trump epitomizes.
Herbert Rothschild’s columns appear on Friday in Ashland.news. Opinions expressed in them represent the author’s views. Email Rothschild at [email protected].
