Republicans were cautiously optimistic after hearing Kamala Harris delivering her speech accepting the Democratic vice presidential nomination on Wednesday night, capping an evening of speakers who argued that President Trump has let the country down during the coronavirus.
“She’s a good speaker and should be taken seriously,” said a Republican strategist of Harris and her low-key address. “But does she move the needle for Joe Biden? I’m not sure.” A second Republican operative said Harris was “overshadowed” by former President Barack Obama, whose own speech elicited two all-caps Twitter responses from Trump and who will loom large in the fall campaign. Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Elizabeth Warren, frequent Trump targets, all spoke Wednesday night as well.
“Joe Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris to be his VP pick solidified the left-wing’s takeover of Joe Biden and the Democrat Party,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Steve Guest in a statement during Harris’s speech. “Harris is ranked the most liberal of all her Senate colleagues, even farther left than self-described Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders.”
The idea that Biden is a captive or puppet of Democrats more liberal than he is a major part of the Trump campaign’s message against the Democratic challenger.
“Donald Trump’s failure of leadership has cost lives and livelihoods,” Harris said during the mostly virtual Democratic National Convention. The Trump campaign shot back that Harris was a “phony, far-left radical who’s wrong for America.”
The nomination of Harris, 55, takes on added importance because of presidential nominee Biden’s advanced age. The former vice president will turn 78 before Inauguration Day, which would make him the oldest president in history.
Harris has been blasted as a political opportunist. She entered the Democratic presidential primaries a top-tier candidate but cratered into the single digits before dropping out, launching some since-disavowed attacks on Biden’s civil rights record before ending her campaign. Civil libertarians in both parties mocked her as “Kamala the cop.”
“Harris is a total phony,” the Trump campaign said in a statement. “Last year she attacked Joe Biden for palling around with racist segregationists and working with them to enact racist policies that hurt her personally. Now she’s agreed to be Biden’s political living will.”
“How can she credibly go from calling Biden a racist and saying she believes his accusers to now being on the ticket with him?” asked the RNC’s Guest.
Still, Harris’s record as a prosecutor has made her a formidable cross-examiner of Trump administration officials when they testify in front of the Senate. Trump has called her “nasty,” especially because of her treatment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings. She intends to utilize these polemical skills on the campaign trail, directing her fire at the president himself.
“We’re at an inflection point,” she said, in a not-too-thinly-veiled criticism of Trump. “The constant chaos leaves us adrift. The incompetence makes us feel afraid. The callousness makes us feel alone. It’s a lot. And here’s the thing: We can do better and deserve so much more. We must elect a president who will bring something different, something better, and do the important work.”
The Trump campaign has hit both Harris and Biden for their contributions to mass incarceration. Biden helped pass the 1994 crime bill as a senator from Delaware, and Harris’s prosecutorial record has come under bipartisan scrutiny. Some Republican insiders, however, worry the variety of attacks leveled against the Biden-Harris ticket will contribute to muddled GOP messaging in the fall campaign. “Is he radical, or is she phony?” asked one strategist.
As the third night of the Democratic convention began, the Trump campaign blasted out a fundraising email under the president’s signature: “Just when I thought this pathetic event couldn’t get more CORRUPT, they decide to bring in CROOKED Hillary, Crazy Nancy, Pocahontas, Phony Kamala, and Lyin’ Obama all in ONE NIGHT.”
“All these Radical Democrats HATE me and they HATE you,” the email said.
