US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his team have been forced to review their campaign strategy and come up with a misogynist, racist campaign to attack the new Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris who has compelled change in the election strategies of both parties. The endorsement by former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama of Harris’ candidacy last week has seemingly led to the sharpest attacks by Trump and his campaign managers. The new strategy is using gender discrimination and racism as the main propaganda against Harris.
Trump was seemingly caught off guard when President Joe Biden suddenly opted out of the race and let Harris throw the gauntlet at the former. The move was so unexpected that for the next few days, the Republican campaign was clueless on how to take on Harris as it had long used all its resources and energies to target Biden, who was determined to run for the second term. But once the shock of his withdrawal from the campaign was over, Team Trump is now seen stacking misogynist and racist cards against Harris.
Samples of Trump’s rhetoric make it obvious how venomous the attack against Harris is going to be. In his first campaign rally since Biden’s exit in North Carolina, Trump called Harris “a radical-left lunatic who will destroy our country.” He also branded her “lyin’ Kamala Harris” and repeatedly pronounced her name wrong. This was his old tactic of racist ridicule of Harris whose first name he had deliberately distorted as “comma + la and whatever.” While immigration is meant to be a central line of attack for Trump, he did not even mention it once in an interview with Fox News last Monday. This suggests Republicans are yet to settle on a message that is likely to sway undecided voters. At the moment, they are testing a number of messages and have not yet been able to narrow down which ones would resonate with the people most.
Four years ago, Donald Trump articulated his anti-feminine bias with the remark that Republicans “are not going to have a socialist President, especially any female.” Now, his running mate JD Vance has stooped low in his attempt to run down Harris. He has described her as one of the “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they have made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.” It may be noted that Harris has no biological children of her own. This was a cue given to the supporters who have become even more vicious. However, this strategy may boomerang as it may alienate moderate voters. On the side, in an international survey it was suggested that in many developed countries, including the US, women aged 18 to 30 are on an average 30 percentage points more liberal than men of the same age range.
Harris in her first campaign ad has sought to draw a sharp contrast with Trump through her advocacy of freedom. The tune of Beyoncé’s song of the same name is played in the background as she talks about “the freedom to be safe from gun violence, the freedom to make decisions about your own body.” It is to be noted that this call for freedom to make decisions about your own body does not stop at abortion. It extends to the extreme sickness that is being viewed in the activities of the Alphabet community as was evident in the opening of the Olympic Games at Paris last week. The call of Harris was an obvious reference to Trump’s record of exhorting his supporters to overturn the electorate’s verdict last time, his open support for the gun lobby and his role in abolition of the abortion rule by Supreme Court judges appointed during his presidential tenure. She has described Trump’s vision of America as “a country of chaos, fear and hate.”
It is interesting that the scale of the fundraising has remarkably improved for Harris – $200m in the week since she was endorsed by Joe Biden. The bulk of the money has come from first time donors numbering nearly 900,000. A national poll conducted by the New York Times and Siena College shows Harris is closing the Biden-Trump gap by five points.
It is too early to predict the voters’ mood at this stage with many white conservatives and older voters known for their support for Trump. On the other hand, Harris is getting traction from the coloured population of African and Asian origins. Battle lines are drawn for the most crucial contest ever.