This is a post from FrameLab contributor Jason Sattler. Jason is LOLGOP on Twitter and pretty much any other social media platform. His writing has appeared in USA TODAY, Wired.com, the New York Daily News and Alternet.
Kamala Harris is a woman. And she’s not just a woman – compared to Donald Trump, she’s a young woman. And she’s Black and Asian-American and biracial AND exuberant. If you were going to design a person who is NOT supposed to be president, according to the strict-father conservative hierarchy that defines Trump's Republican Party, it would be Harris.
Yet Donald Trump and JD Vance are floundering. They’re stumbling, bumbling, and seething as they attempt to find any attack that will pierce the euphoria now overwhelming the Democratic Party.
They’re scrambling: Attack her for being Black, or a woman, or both?!
Trump has already leaned into using “dumb as a rock” to describe her. This is his go-to insult for African-American women. His evidence for this oft-repeated allegation? His right-wing brain. This smear fits squarely within the Conservative Moral hierarchy that says “Man over woman” and “Whites over non-whites.” He doesn’t need any evidence to support it, and he doesn’t have any. He knows his audience will understand.
His new running mate, meanwhile, has fallen victim to the classic blunder of attacking ladies who love their cats.
“Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, said in 2021 that Vice President Kamala Harris is one of the ‘childless cat ladies’ who is ‘miserable’ with her life and has no direct stake in America because she is not a mom,” Jennifer Bendery reported.
Alienating tens of millions of single women voters might be a strategy, but it’s definitely the politics of subtraction rather than addition. Along these same lines, they mock the vice president’s laughter, as if they’re furious that she’s enjoying herself rather than suffering miserably under the boot of patriarchy.
Both men have veered back to strategically racist “dog whistle politics” that will likely define their rhetoric until November (if they can control their strong impulse to engage in flagrant misogyny).
Vance attacked Harris for working in public service as a government prosecutor for most of her career, suggesting this was tantamount to being on welfare. Trump tried to tie her to the border (since screeching about the danger of immigrants he doesn’t want to marry is essentially the whole of his campaign).
But even the New York Times, which championed Trump’s assault on Biden for being too old, is worried about the inevitable sexism that will persist for as long as there is a woman directly opposing Donald Trump. His “harshest instincts,” the paper of record called them.
Trump knows he’s stuck
Donald Trump’s political instincts are often underrated. Not by George Lakoff, of course, but by many others who don't understand his skills as a super salesman.
The convicted felon and adjudicated fraud and perpetrator of sexual assault innately sensed the GOP base’s lust for a famous person who was willing to champion the ridiculous bigotry of birtherism. He sensed that this same base wanted someone to bloodthirstily bash immigrants (despite own hiring patterns and marital history). And when he figured out that Joe Biden was the Democrat most likely to beat him in 2020, he tried to extort Ukraine into investigating Biden’s son and got himself impeached.
Perhaps the best example of why he’s the only Republican whose con is strong enough to be competitive in the Electoral College was on display last week in Milwaukee at the bizarre yet somehow media-lauded Republican National Convention.
I’m not talking about when he delivered the same blabbering rant against immigrants (and in favor of fictional psychopath Hannibal Lecter) that he offers at every rally, with a few minutes about unity as a preface to fool pliant reporters. I’m talking about two words people do not generally associate with this profligate spewer of nonsense: message discipline.
“If you want to know how afraid the GOP is of abortion rights, consider that there wasn’t one single mention of the issue at last week’s Republican National Convention,” Jessica Valenti mentioned.
This follows a sleight of hand in the GOP platform that convinced compliant reporters to insist the party had “softened” its stance on abortion rights, despite coded language calling for a national abortion ban that implies that abortion is already illegal in all fifty states while calling into question the legality of contraception and IVF.
If this is about freedom, Trump’s done
Trump blames the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs, and the GOP’s response to Roe v. Wade being overturned, for Republicans' underperformance in the 2022 midterm elections. This conveniently allows him to ignore his own unpopularity – not to mention the effectiveness of the January 6th Commission and Joe Biden’s powerful arguments in favor of democracy. It also conveniently allows him to ignore his own role in one of the most unpopular Supreme Court decisions in American history.
Trump tries to “power of positive think” away from the popularity of Roe by saying everyone wanted it gone. He does this even as polls show nearly two-thirds of Americans still want the protection of that landmark precedent. The court's decision has activated voters, who have voted to protect abortion rights – even in Kansas.
Having Joe Biden on the top of the ticket was a huge advantage for Trump. It allowed him to evade the issue in many ways. Biden didn't like talking about it. Some voters, bizarrely, blame Biden for Dobbs because it happened when he was president. And two old men talking about abortion rights is a conversation that almost no one wants to watch.
The nomination of Kamala Harris is an argument in itself. Her candidacy and ability to run as a Black and Asian-American woman – and a proud stepmom to two adult children who call her “Momala" – is a tribute to freedom.
Harris revels in defending abortion rights. Democrats’ challenge is to include this central issue in the broad argument for the progressive vision of freedom that George Lakoff has advocated for decades. And it’s hard to think of a more perfect person to do it.
Kamala Harris, like Taylor Swift, “challenges the traditional social hierarchy,” as Gil Duran explained. And MAGA’s response to that alone may be more offputting than any argument they can make.
Especially if Harris can make a cohesive argument that combines race-class-gender interests by pointing out Trump’s strategic divisiveness only serves the greedy billionaires and polluters he pays off with his policies.
End of Trump's lucky streak?
Donald Trump is used to inheriting things that make him look like a winner.
Since he tried to end American democracy, he’s been on a lucky streak. He’s been enabled by the vengeful cowards in his party, backed up by a Republican Supreme Court majority and the vast capital interests who oppose Joe Biden’s pro-worker and pro-environmental accomplishments. And he's been blessed by opponents who were ill-suited to take him on directly.
With Harris in the race, his luck may have run out.
He’s managed to find a way around his previous failings. But if Americans are given a clear choice about the two futures these candidates represent, most Americans will choose the future where women are allowed to laugh.