Josh Marshall makes a good point:
But the key part that stands out to me is this: a huge amount of modern Republican campaigns are based on wearing down a Democratic politician over months and years in the right-wing echo chamber. We saw it with Clinton, Obama, Clinton, Biden, Kerry. It’s a well, well worn thing. But it takes time. There are seldom knock-out punches. It’s a slow osmotic process. And the critical part of it takes place at the nexus where what’s happening in the right wing echo chamber bleeds into and begins to shape mainstream media reporting.
Obviously we don’t know how this campaign is going to play out. Looks pretty good ten days in, but there’s ten times more days coming. But regardless of how it plays out, this blitz factor — something totally new and unexpected right as the true campaign starts — is clearly wreaking havoc not only with the Trump campaign but with the whole far-flung Republican political and media apparatus.
It’s a often-expressed view (by Democrats, including some who comment on this blog) that a black woman can’t win the presidency because look at what happened to Hillary Clinton. I think this view doesn’t take Josh’s point into account, specifically, that by the time Hillary ran for President in 2016 the right wing noise machine had 26+ years to shit on her, to put her on bumper stickers, t-shirts, give her nicknames like the title of this post, etc. Also, she had been splattered with some of the mud that was thrown at Bill.
Kamala doesn’t have this issue. There may be attacks that hit home, but Republicans are starting with nothing in the tank to hit her with. Since they have nothing, their natural instinct is to turn to unsubtle sexism, antisemitism and racism, which can backfire. (e.g., she hates the Jewish people. She’s married to one, assholes — even the AP got that right in the headline.)
I’m not saying it’s right, and I’m not trying to re-litigate the Clinton campaigns. It’s just a key difference between 2024 and 2016. Another key difference: Trump was a new phenomenon in 2016. In 2024 (at least the last 10 days), Democrats have learned how to fight back. As noble as “when they go low, we go high” sounded, it isn’t an effective strategy. Hillary’s campaign had nothing like the Kamala HQ social media account that is a firehose attacking Trump’s campaign, all while pushing positive, fun Kamala content. That account goes low when it hits Trump, and it goes high when it posts about Kamala and her surrogates. You can do both. It’s a campaign, not an afternoon tea party.
Finally, and this is probably just short-term, I think the media took enough shit about their constant bitching about Biden’s age, while ignoring Trump, that they’re at least open to writing about the crazy shit he says and the insane policies he backs — as long as it’s served up to them on a platter by the Harris campaign. Perhaps Biden’s age was the “butter emails” of this campaign, but there’s definitely some time left for them to fall back to old habits.
Edit: This broke as I was writing the post. No gas in the tank leads to racist slurs.
Former president Donald Trump said Wednesday that he had been aware of Vice President Harris’s Indian heritage but didn’t know she was Black “until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black.” “And now she wants to be known as Black,” Trump added, questioning Harris’s identity during a very combative question-and-answer session at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago. Harris was part of a historically Black sorority and has embraced her Black identity in many ways. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called Trump’s comments “repulsive” and “insulting.”
