“The prosecutor and the convicted criminal”: Kamala Harris’ weapon against Trump

Kamala Harris spoke again on Tuesday about Donald Trump. She did so in Milwaukee (Wisconsin), during her first formal rally after Joe Biden’s resignation, which has cleared the way for her to be the Democratic candidate for the White House: “I was a prosecutor; I know guys like him,” she said, repeating a phrase she had already dropped on Monday at an event at the headquarters of her newly launched campaign. It sounded like more than just a phrase; it is the weapon that Harris is ready to use against Trump, a strategy that consists of presenting the dispute between the two as the fight between “the prosecutor and the convicted criminal.”

The day before, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, one of the names most strongly linked as a vice presidential contender alongside Harris, elaborated on that idea during an interview with CNN. Beshear was referring to the change of heart of Trump’s pick for his VP candidate, JD Vance, and how he might have joined the campaign of someone he recently called “America’s Hitler.” The governor played with words: “Vance has no convictions,” he said, “but I assume his running mate is 34.”

Beshear, who is not exactly a politician known for his use of irony, used the double meaning of the English word convictionwhich can be used to talk about principles as well as convictions. In this case, the 34 convictions that Trump received for serious crimes in the Stormy Daniels case, where he was tried in New York on charges related to paying a porn actress under the table.

Harris’ campaign pulled that clip and posted it on her account, @KamalaHQ, an account that has doubled its number of followers since Sunday – the day Joe Biden’s resignation from his re-election campaign and his immediate endorsement of Harris became known -. Meanwhile, millions of dollars in donations poured in (100 in less than 48 hours, a record) and the candidate secured the support of hundreds of delegates, enough to leave the Chicago convention in August with acclaim. The latest heavyweights to join her cause were the Democratic minority leader in the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffreys, and the majority leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, early Tuesday afternoon.

The party’s strategy to confront Trump has been to remind the world of the pending issues with the rival justice system for months; she still has two other ongoing cases, and another, regarding the handling of the papers she took from the White House, which the judge dismissed last week, a decision that is being appealed. With the emergence of the new candidate, this argument gains strength by contrasting this criminal record with the vice president’s professional past. Between 2004 and 2011, she was district attorney in San Francisco, and between 2011 and 2017, attorney general of California. After that, she made the leap to the Senate.

In Milwaukee, she repeated almost word for word another message she delivered Monday to Biden campaign workers who came to work for her that day. “I have seen predators of all kinds,” she warned. “Predators who preyed on women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules of their own game. So listen to me when I tell you that I know guys like Donald Trump. And in this campaign, I will proudly fight him.”

Strategy studied

It’s not an improvised strategy. The vice president and her team worked on it at their official residence on the grounds of the Naval Observatory in northwest Washington over the past few weeks, as clamor grew for Biden to back off from his bid to run and it became increasingly clear that she would have to step up.

On Monday, Harris also said: “I specialized in sexual abuse cases. Trump was convicted by a jury of committing sexual abuse. I took over one of the largest for-profit universities in our country and put it out of business.” [se refiere a la demanda que presento en 2013 contra las universidades Everest, Heald y WyoTech por publicidad engañosa y otros delitos que provocaron su cierre]. Donald Trump ran a for-profit college, Trump University, which was forced to pay $25 million to students he defrauded.”

Harris already used these parallels in an ad for her 2020 presidential campaign, when she launched her bid for the White House with a flawed campaign that never really took off. The slogan at the time was “Kamala Harris, for the people,” and the ad in question has gone viral again in recent days.

Harris’ record as a prosecutor has earned her criticism in the past from those among her own who consider her too tough on crime. Curiously, that could help her win over the wills of undecided voters and independents. One of the main arguments of attack by Republicans in recent years is that wherever Democrats govern, with their calls to defund the police following the murder of George Floyd, insecurity grows due to laxity. woke in dealing with criminals.

“Americans now rank violence among their top concerns, and 61 percent of registered voters believe the system is not tough enough on criminals,” writes Ankush Khardori in Political. “In 2020, only 48% thought that. Suddenly, ‘Kamala the cop’ [etiqueta que le colgaron entonces para atacarla] It doesn’t sound so bad in 2024. (…) It’s a sign of how dramatically he has changed crime policies in recent years, even within his own party.″

Her campaign is also hoping that her age (59 years old; Trump is almost 20 years older) and her skills for questioning and arguing, forged in court, will help her emerge victorious in the presidential debate, which is currently on the calendar: it will be on September 10, and is being organized by the ABC News network.

The sentence that the judge is going to impose for the crime is expected to be known eight days later. Stormy Daniels case.It is highly unlikely that any of the other trials will begin before the Nov. 5 election, especially after the Supreme Court decided late last month to increase immunity for presidents while in office, effectively delaying the case against him in Washington over his attempts to overturn the legitimate 2020 election results.

This week it also emerged, in another curious twist, that Trump donated six thousand dollars to Harris’s campaigns for state attorney general between 2011 and 2013. The tycoon had not yet entered politics, and at that time he boasted of giving money to people from both parties. So many years later, one of those politicians has changed his cards halfway through the game from which the next occupant of the White House will emerge.

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