It is unlikely that Trump will change his 'combative' mode of campaign as he targets Harris

Donald Trump was all set to run against President Joe Biden. When momentum started to build for Biden to drop out, the Trump campaign moderated its fire, hoping Biden would stay in. But now that he has stepped aside and Vice President Kamala Harris is the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, what does it mean for the conduct of the Trump campaign?

Despite a near-death experience from a would-be assassin’s bullet, Trump has already said that he will not be “nice” and has tried to hang the title “lying” on Harris just as he tried to attach “crooked” to Biden. Indeed, the chief effort of the Trump campaign will be to paint Harris in the same negative light as it painted Biden.

Economic and immigration issues

The Trump economy was not the best in history, as Trump falsely claims. The Biden/Harris administration did come up with a bipartisan fix for the border—which Trump torpedoed to keep the issue alive—but facts will take a backseat in the campaign against Harris.

On the economy, Trump will not only try to build an image of Harris as a “socialist,” but a “radical socialist”. Her support of “Medicare for all” in 2020 will be offered as exhibit A in the campaign’s “radical socialist” thrust. Exhibit B may very well be her previous opposition to fracking as opposed to Trump’s “drill baby drill” slogan. According to the Trump campaign, Harris will now be responsible for inflation as a sort of “power behind the throne” who incited Biden to take what MAGA Republicans consider disastrous economic measures.

The Trump campaign can be expected to double down on anti-immigration attacks against Harris, both because of her ethnic background as a child of a Jamaican American father and an Indian American mother and because of her unsuccessful efforts to keep Central American immigrants from moving toward the United States. Internationally, this may well dovetail into a Trump campaign against foreigners generally as taking American jobs, and renewed opposition to outsourcing and H-1B visas.

Because Harris is a woman of colour, Trump and his campaign will tailor personal attacks on her to “dog whistle” issues of race and gender. Harris’ sometimes garbled syntax will be cited to indicate that she is of inferior intellect. She is already being described as “not hard working”. Most prominently, the Trump campaign attacks on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programmes will be applied to Harris. She is being called an example of why DEI programmes produce incompetent officers.

Law and order

It has long been the “stock-in-trade” of Trump to take what his opponent views as strengths and turn them into weaknesses. With Biden, it was his honesty and selflessness as a public servant. The Trump campaign turned it around into attacks on Biden, and accusations of him using public office for self-enrichment. With Harris, it will be her history of criminal prosecution in San Francisco and California as contrasted with Trump as a convicted felon who has seen many of his associates go to prison. Instead of Harris’ track record of being an excellent prosecutor, each law-and-order problem in California will be attributed to her. California will be portrayed as a sort of criminal “hell hole”. Never mind criticism from the left that she was too tough on criminal defendants, Harris will be portrayed as soft on crime and criminals of colour.

Another apparent strength of Harris is her standing up for democracy as opposed to Trump’s attacks on the democratic process. The Trump campaign is already trying to make the case that she is being chosen by a process that is anti-democratic and illegitimate because she did not go through the primaries as a candidate. She is being portrayed as an authoritarian who has risen to her position because of an un-democratic process that she has instigated.

The prominent issue used against Biden that he was “too old” obviously does not apply to Harris who is 18 years younger than Trump. Thus, there will be much less talk about age.

On abortion, the Trump campaign will obviously need to make some adjustments. It is one thing to say to a male opponent that he should not advocate for a woman’s right to choose control over her own body. It is quite different to say directly to a woman that she should not have control over her body. Probably the Trump campaign will deal with this by him not saying much about abortion beyond his appointment of Supreme Court Justices who overturned Roe versus Wade and letting surrogates like vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance work the right-to-life MAGA base.

The Trump campaign will also have to make some adjustments in their drive to split off men of colour, primarily black and Hispanic, from the Democratic coalition. The pitch that “Biden as an old white guy who did not help them much, so why not try something new”, will not be as effective against a woman of colour. Instead, the Trump campaign will need to devise a pitch to these voters emphasising strength and tying it into material prosperity.

Foreign policy

As in most political campaigns, be it in the US or India, foreign policy will take a back seat to domestic issues. But to the extent foreign policy is an issue, the Trump campaign will probably double down on the false dichotomy of male strength versus female weakness.

Harris will be attacked as not having the strength needed to deal with Xi Jinping and that she won’t be able to deal with Putin “man to man” to end the war in Ukraine. On Gaza, she will not be strong enough to let Benjamin Netanyahu, in the words of Trump, “finish the job”. Harris will be pictured as a captive of the foreign policy establishment in support of an outdated NATO and institutions that do not “put America first”.

In summary, Trump will campaign against Harris much the way he did against Biden, only more so. His campaign will make some adjustments, but Trump will continue to follow his own path, and the campaign will have to follow.

 

Raymond Vickery, Jr. is senior adviser at Albright Stonebridge Group. Previously, he served as assistant secretary of commerce for trade development, where he launched the US-India Commercial Alliance. He also served three terms as an elected member of the Virginia General Assembly and in other political capacities.