Days after she became the presumptive Presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris took a slight lead over Donald Trump in an early poll. Her rise to the position has been seamless. Delegates pledged within days and donations poured in. Then on July 23, she gave a speech that completely reframed the 2024 election.
She would not wage a conventional contest but was going to put Trump on “trial” for his behavior and beliefs in the court of public opinion. And voters will be judge and jury. The election won’t be about two old guys facing off against one another but a battle of wits between a former Attorney General and prosecutor and a 78-year-old convicted felon with a checkered past.
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Harris reminded the audience about her career in law.
“I took on perpetrators of all kinds…Predators who abuse women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”
In a few sentences, she upended Trump’s vaunted strong-versus-weak battle cry with her own law-and-order versus Trump, racists, misogynists, gay-bashers, and anti-abortion fanboys.
“The American Dream belongs to all of us,” she said. “We are not going back. The election is a choice between freedom and chaos.”
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A Reuters poll found that “some 56 percent of registered voters agreed with a statement that Harris, 59, was mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges, compared to only 49 percent who said the same of Trump, 78.”
While their IQs are not on the ballot, her obvious mental superiority will be an advantage as will her skill at litigating a case against Trump and his sidekick, J.D. Vance.
The Wall Street Journal immediately weighed in on the Republican side by attacking her “for steering” too far left.
“The VP said she sees a future where ‘every worker has the freedom to join a union,’ and ‘every person has affordable health care, affordable child care, and paid family leave,’ and ‘every senior can retire with dignity.’ The promise is that Uncle Sam will deliver it all. She also pledged to sign federal laws to ban ‘assault weapons’ and override state abortion limitations,” it wrote.
The WSJ has claimed for years that Americans won’t opt for such benefits, but the facts are that citizens in other developed democracies have opted for them and enjoyed healthcare, gun controls, and many other benefits for years.
Harris will have a field day with Trump’s hand-picked VP nominee, J.D. Vance, who is clearly not ready for prime time. So far, he’s alienated more voters than he’s won over.
Footage of an interview he gave two years ago to Tucker Carlson showed him expounding that “childless” women like Harris, and men like openly gay Pete Buttigieg, should be disqualified from holding public office because, without biological children, they have no stake in the future of the country.
This is just plain weird and suicidal given that tens of millions of voters are childless by choice across America. Worse, Vance has condemned abortion in cases involving incest or rape by smugly commenting that “two wrongs don’t make a right.” Such remarks will dog him during the campaign, as will his description a while back that Trump’s MAGA movement was “cultural heroin” and his prediction that Trump could become “America’s Hitler.”
Economic issues are critical too.
Harris claims that Trump will “weaken the middle class, cut social security and Medicare, and give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations.” But she must also address issues such as inflation, the immigration mess, and certain controversial foreign policy stances.
The world waits to see if Harris will stay the course when it comes to international alliances and situations and indications are that she will.
“She would stay tough on Russia and China, and has rebuked Israel’s handling of aid into Gaza,” wrote Politico.
She supports NATO and Ukraine’s battle to stop Russia. And her toughness – as opposed to Trumpian promises to fix everything with backroom deals – will be helpful in dealing with Putin, Xi, and the world’s other oppressive dictators. She’s not met Putin, but has publicly accused him of “crimes against humanity.”
Politico added that “on the issue of Israel, Harris voiced support for a two-state solution as a senator and backed the Abraham Accords. As vice president, Harris privately expressed that the Biden administration needed to take a stronger stance against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the civilian death toll mounted in Israel’s war against Hamas.”
Speculation is that she may be more willing to consider policy changes that curb Israel’s continued actions in Gaza and elsewhere. This week, for instance, she agreed to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, but did not attend his address to Congress because of a prior speaking engagement in another state. Her husband is Jewish, and stepdaughter, a model, has been raising funds for the United Nations’ relief effort in Gaza. In Asia, Harris will protect Taiwan and continue measures that “de-risk” Western economies from dependence on, or abuse by Beijing.
But Trump, an outright protectionist, will impose enormous tariffs on Chinese imports, charge Taiwan and other allies for military protection, and restructure trade arrangements such as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement to benefit American interests. Such tariffs will increase inflation by causing across-the-board price hikes on most consumer products Americans buy at Walmart stores or on Amazon.
By far, Trump’s best “card,” and Harris’ vulnerability, is immigration reform. Trump promises to deport the 10 to 11 million undocumented migrants that live in the United States and to build a wall across the entire southern border.
A side issue, however, is that his deportation will upend and destabilize Canada because millions of illegals will head for its undefended northern border, claim asylum, and live off its social welfare system. This will turn portions of Canada into gigantic refugee camps and damage its economy, a negative to Americans given that Canada is critical to America’s economic future, as its biggest customer, supplier, and investor.
Trump’s border track record is also abysmal. He failed to build his wall or to stop the flow of illegals during his Presidency. But he now targets Harris, calling her the “Border Czar,” to try and lay the blame on her for the mess. Facts are that she wasn’t in charge.
She was involved in border issues tangentially and was designated to negotiate with leaders in Latin American countries to convince them to enact policies that would mitigate the exodus and combat the Mexican and other cartels. But Mexico has done little and now people arrive from all over the world, through smuggling networks, and Congress does nothing.
Months ago Trump purposely sabotaged a solution that Biden and Congress had reached this year. “We’d be making even more progress if Mr. Trump hadn’t killed a bipartisan immigration compromise in Congress this year for his own selfish political purposes,” wrote Hilary Clinton in a New York Times op-ed in support of Harris.
The Kremlin already launched scathing attacks on Vice President Harris, publicly and online.
One white supremacist commentator on Russian television made a blatantly racist remark, not to be repeated here, and another launched a social media campaign ridiculing her ebullient laugh. Trump has joined in and commented “I call her 'Laffin' Kamala’,” he said. “You ever watch her laugh? She's crazy. You know, you can tell a lot by a laugh.”
In a real court all of Trump’s lies and nonsense would be ruled “out of order,” but not in an election which is why this one will become a slugfest. He will be insulting and nasty, and she will make mincemeat out of the MAGA candidates in debates and on the campaign trail.
But what’s concerning is that if Trump loses, he will once more fraudulently claim the election was rigged and trigger violence. That’s when the world’s most important democracy may turn ugly again with MAGA zealots storming the Capitol Building or worse.
Of course such hazards won’t stop the unflappable Harris, whether she becomes President or not. A quote from the strongest character in Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” says it all: “You ought to know, I’m not the Lady to be trifled with.”
Reprinted from dianefrancis@substack.com – Diane Francis on America and the World.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.
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