Trump/Republicans Resort to Racist, Anti-Woman Attacks on Harris

For decades Republicans and talking heads on Fox News and its imitators have resorted to racist, homophobic and misogynist attacks to incite the right wing base - now the MAGA base - of the Republican Party.  Through these efforts to fan hatred, division and prejudice, many, especially working class whites, have been duped time and time again into voting against their own economic interest as the GOP has pursued a reverse Robin Hood agenda of taking from the majority of citizens and giving to the extremely wealthy and large corporations. With Kamala Harris now the uncrowned Democrat presidential nominee, the standard GOP lies and ugliness are in overdrive as Donald Trump finds himself as the elderly, mentally declining presidential candidate in the election contest who has saddled himself with a VP running mate who is becoming a male Sarah Palin and alienating countless voters with his statements on unmarried women and families (the New Yorker has a great article) that do not conform to his imaginary image. A column in the Washington Post looks at the ugliness and nastiness of the Trump/Republican attacks on Harris to benefit the GOP's felon, sexual assaulter, Russian stooge  candidate:

Within hours of learning that Vice President Harris might lead the Democratic presidential ticket, Donald Trump called her “Dumb as a Rock.”

A few days earlier, former Trump adviser and radio host Sebastian Gorka referred to Harris as a “female Black diversity hire.” Kellyanne Conway, another former Trump adviser, said Harris “does not speak well. She does not work hard. She should not be the standard-bearer for the party.”

“The only reason she is in the White House,” said Fox News host and cheap-shot artist Jesse Watters, “is because of the DEI deal Biden cut with [Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)] to seal the nomination.”

And so it goes as the presidential campaign slogs toward Election Day. Efforts to marginalize Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, as an unqualified underachiever who got to where she is because of her skin color will never end. And that’s because the denigration of Black people as inferior lies at the heart of the belief in white supremacy that still infects some American souls.

The appetite of Harris’s right-wing detractors for racial derogation has a long history.

Think back to 1898, when Rep. John Sharp Williams (D-Miss.) said, “You could shipwreck 10,000 illiterate white Americans on a desert island, and in three weeks they would have a fairly good government, conceived and administered upon fairly democratic lines. You could shipwreck 10,000 negroes, every one of whom was a graduate of Harvard University, and in less than three years, they would have retrograded governmentally; half of the men would have been killed, and the other half would have two wives apiece.”

That turn-of-the-20th-century racism is with us today. Words can be weapons, too.

But Gorka is dead wrong. Harris is nobody’s “hire.” She was elected district attorney of San Francisco, elected attorney general of California, elected U.S. senator and elected vice president of the United States.

Harris earned those jobs the hard way. She put her vision, skills and judgment before the voters and let them decide. And, yes, like other achievers of a darker hue, Harris has had to overcome the odds and obstacles thrown in her way, such as Conway’s hoary slur that Harris is lazy and doesn’t know how to speak.

I submit that Harris spoke well enough, and worked hard enough, to successfully prosecute child sexual assault cases. She spoke well enough, and worked hard enough, to win massive settlements for people whose homes have been unfairly foreclosed on, and students and veterans who had been exploited by a profit-making education company.

The slander that people of Harris’s ancestry are lazier (per Conway), less intelligent (per Trump) and less devoted to country (“a radical California left winger,” as Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida called Harris) than others has a life of its own.

Why reprise the spirit of John Sharp Williams, why echo the malice of today’s political right? We elders have heard it all before. Some of us have also been on the receiving end. It’s not about us.

This is a heads-up to the energized and enthusiastic young voters who are being drawn to the Harris campaign in huge numbers.

You are going to see your candidate subjected to the most blistering, vile and specious personal attacks based on her race and gender. The effort, to be sure, is aimed at villainizing her with those who are undecided. But it’s also intended to tear her down in your eyes; to distract and demoralize you; to dampen the high spirits that are driving you toward the one goal that is above all this presidential election year — winning — which depends on voting. Let nothing stop you from getting to the polls. Because Election Day 2024 will decide who will govern and uphold democratic values.

Tellingly, Trump told a right wing :Christian" gathering that if they voted for him in 2024, they'd never need to vote again, once again showing his autocratic, anti-democracy goals.