Kamala Harris is being attacked at a “DEI” vice president who, if elected, would be a “DEI” president. The usually wrongheaded Matt Bai recognizes that this is an unfair attack:
It’s true that Joe Biden had committed to choosing a woman as his running mate by the time the death of George Floyd threw the country into turmoil in the summer of 2020. It’s also true that he then came under enormous pressure to choose a Black candidate, as well, which is why his final list included multiple Black women.
… Absent her identity, it’s hard to imagine she would have been anywhere near Biden’s top choice.
But you know what? You could say the same for almost every vice-presidential pick in recent memory. Would JD Vance be on Donald Trump’s ticket if he weren’t a rural White guy from Ohio? Was Sarah Palin chosen for her vast policy experience? Would Barack Obama have chosen Biden if he hadn’t felt he needed a validator for White working-class voters?
To say that Harris is where she is largely because of her identity is to say she is the vice president of the United States. To say that makes her somehow different from everybody else who gets the job is just plain ignorant.
But Bai thinks Harris should respond to the smear directly — and, because he can never resist taking a cheap shot at liberals, he blames us for the fact that she might not:
What Harris can do … is tell her own personal story: of a girl born to two immigrant academic parents (one Indian and one Jamaican), a child of divorce raised with the help of a strong African American community, who willed herself to a higher level in U.S. government than any woman in history. It’s the story she only started to tell during that [2020 primary] debate with Biden — not of victimization or futility in the face of prejudice but of the promise of American opportunity, aided by activist government. Simply by recounting her own improbable journey, Harris can embody the American story that most voters still want to believe.
That’s not the pessimistic story some on the left want to hear right now.
Maybe she should talk that way. Or maybe she should keep doing what she’s doing, which seems to be working.
A story in The New York Times today discusses the attacks Harris faces online and is genteel in talking about the sexist ones:
Sexist posts … claimed that Ms. Harris was indebted to men for her success.
That’s … putting it mildly. Online posts claim that Harris used sex to advance her career, including, for some reason (and basecd on no evidence), one particular sex act. (Here’s a selection of memes on that subject, though you’ll want some brain bleach after looking at them.) But the Times story is correct: The message is that she got where she is without deserving it.
She could address this directly, too. But I think what she’s doing is a better response.
If haters are saying that you don’t deserve to be where you are, you need to show them that you do deserve it. Harris is doing that right now. We’re seeing her skills as a politician. Through the long months of the Joe Biden reelection campaign, I said that voters, especially swing voters, judge politicians on how they speak, because if you can respond to the news articulately and confidently, that conveys a sense that you understand the nation’s problems and are on top of them, and that you’re steady and reliable and well informed and capable of sound judgment. Sure, it’s possible to be good at speaking while also being ignorant or incompetent — think of Sarah Palin’s 2008 Republican concvention speech, which sounded pretty sharp — but you need to create a sustained impression of sharpness and competence, and Palin couldn’t.
Right now, Harris looks as if she can. This won’t persuade the haters, obviously. But it should persuade many of the doubters.
She sounds good on the stump. She sounds fearless in the video at the top.
Harris looks as if she knows how to campaign. Trump, with great fanfare, released an ad attacking her on immigration:
Instead of ducking the subject, Harris attacked him right back:
You might not agree with her immigration stance, but she’s offering solutions. She’s not afraid to talk about the issue, and she has proposals.
In 2008, Barack Obama was accused of being a celebrity and a lightweight, but it was clear when he spoke that he understood the issues in depth and could talk about them in a clear, compelling, and inspiring way. In 1992, when Bill Clinton was being called “the failed governor of a small state,” the same thing worked for him. Pete Buttigieg’s intelligence and eloquence, though not as compelling as Obama’s, Clinton’s, or Harris’s, has persuaded many people since the 2020 campaign that he deserves to be taken seriously.
Harris has the verbal chops. Harris has smart ideas about how to take on Trump. Does she deserve to be where she is? By demonstrating skill, she’s showing that she does.
Published with permission of No More Mister Nice Blog
