Harris should let Donald be Donald
One of the difficulties Joe Biden encountered during his disastrous debate with Donald Trump in June was that he apparently tried to cover every one of Trump’s outlandish lies and misstatements.
This is an impossible task. Trump’s fabrications, distortions, and slanders come so fast and furious that it’s literally impossible to keep up. A verbal acrobat would have a hard time; the task undid Biden. At 81, the president can deliberate; he can no longer stand toe-to-toe with the blustering Republican Trump, as this summer’s debate clearly demonstrated.
Enter Kamala Harris, the vice president and the soon-to-crowned Democratic nominee for president.
Harris has already redefined the campaign. Her age alone – she’s 59 – is more than enough of a contrast. Donald Trump is 78.
Of course, age is not the only difference between the candidates. She smiles; he scowls. She tries, on the whole, to uplift and unite people, recalling the well-worn dictum that politics is a matter of addition, not subtraction.
The Trump campaign is calibrated on the idea that the best offense is to be offensive and to divide. Why else would he take questions, as he did the other day, from a panel of black female journalists during which he questioned Harris’s racial identity?
“I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago,” Trump said, “when she happened to turn black, and now she wants to be known as black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she black?”
Not that it matters to Trump, but Harris, bi-racial and graduated from Howard University, a historically black college. And while a senator from California, she was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.
“What Trump did today was to take a page from the same old playbook,” noted veteran Democratic operative Donna Brazile.
“One way to weaken [an opponent] or try to marginalize them is to question their identity or question their background or their qualifications,” Brazile said.
For Trump to bring into dispute his opponent’s singular personality – her selfhood – is to gaslight voters and the American people in the most pernicious possible way. It is demagoguery at its best, or worst.
How to respond to a demagogue? It’s certainly not to ignore him. Nor is it to engage him in prolonged debate. That’s exactly what Trump wants. Now you’re speaking his language, playing on his turf The campaign then turns on you.
Better to point out, briefly, that his tactics are the same ones that were employed against John Kerry in 2004 (Swift Boat war hero, Swift Boat fake) and against Barack Obama (Trump falsely implied that Obama was born in Kenya, therefore was ineligible for the presidency, therefore had divided loyalties).
Better to get a laugh at his expense, or to bat him away with a swift, stinging jab. Yes, “weird” as a response comes to mind. Or, “There you go again, Donald…. Please, Donald, at least come up with something new! … We’ve seen this movie before, and once, twice is enough – more than enough.”
What Harris actually said was this: “The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth. A leader who doesn’t respond with hostility and anger when presented with the facts. We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us. They are an essential source of our strength.”
Okay, good. Repeat, as necessary.
To go further into the swamp with Trump will only serve to ensnare Harris in the trap he’s laying for her. She shouldn’t go there. Maybe, maybe, a one-time Kennedy-like speech (JFK, Houston, a discussion of religion in American public life) will be necessary, in early September, say, but that’s something that can be decided later.
For now, the Trump campaign is trying to define Harris in the worst possible light. San Francisco liberal. Soft on crime. The border “czar” who opened the door for criminals and terrorists to enter the country.
That’s the Trump message on paid TV. It’s crafty, hard-hitting, and, to those inclined, persuasive. Trump the live campaigner hits the same points before veering off. His embellishments and enhancements on stage and in social media, garnering the kind of free coverage the ex-president lives for and thrives on, despite their frequently dubious political utility, is the beating heart of the Trump campaign for president.
Donald Trump is unfit for the presidency. He’s both crazy and reckless, among other things. The Harris campaign should afford him the luxury of demonstrating such as often as he wishes – like every hour of every day from now until the election.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com