No one falls into lockstep with each other faster than Democrat officials. So, after Barack and Michelle Obama’s endorsement late last week, it’s done: Kamala Harris, after no competition, is the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee.

After months of telling us that Joe Biden was healthy enough to serve another term, he’s withdrawn his reelection bid. But according to his televised statement last Wednesday, health had nothing to do with his decision! No, it was time to pass the torch because democracy is at stake. Meaning, Biden knew he’d lose the election, and we can’t let Trump win. Because … democracy. Which is why the “Democratic” party has chosen its presidential nominee through the most undemocratic process imaginable.

An Information War

We’re seeing a sophisticated information war, and not just with this Biden-to-Harris switch—a switch that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer confidently assures us has come from the “bottom up.” Sure. Similarly, Trump is a threat to democracy, even though he never unleashed the Department of Justice on his opponents, like Hillary Clinton, whom his supporters wanted to lock up.

Today, we are being gaslit on Kamala Harris’s activities as vice president. The media and official White House transcripts show that she was put in charge of the southern border just two months after Biden took office. But now that she’s the presumptive nominee and the Biden-Harris border policy is widely perceived as a failure? That never happened! they say. Don’t trust your memory, they tell us. No, the idea that Biden put Harris in charge of the border, says Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) is a made-up narrative.

Ironically, this is a tacit admission that the border has been a disaster. But it’s not Harris’s fault! No, at no point was she overseeing that effort.

If they lied to us about Biden’s health, what won’t they lie to us about? GovTrack — a non-partisan group — rated Harris as the most liberal U.S. senator in 2019. But now, poof! that webpage is gone. It’s like Sandra Newman writes in her 1984-like book Julia: “All was false. It was known to be false, but everyone lied about the lies, until no one knew where the lies began and ended.”

Defining Harris

Truth is the best antidote, and there’s a lot of truth to be told about Harris. But it must be done with a measure of care and intentionally, lest it backfire. It should focus more on her policies and less on her persona.

Let’s start with immigration. Harris was put in charge of it and she did a terrible job. Illegal border crossings skyrocketed on her watch — meaning there was more human trafficking, more fentanyl, and less safety for Americans.

By competing for lower-skilled jobs, illegal immigrant labor disproportionally hurts the working poor. Monmouth polling earlier this year shows that more than eight in 10 Americans see illegal immigration as either a very serious (61%) or somewhat serious (23%) problem. A YouGov poll published on July 22 shows that Americans see Donald Trump as better than Harris at handling immigration (+15 points). When Biden claimed in the June presidential debate that the U.S. Border Patrol had endorsed him, the union shot back “To be clear, we never have and never will endorse Biden.” As for Harris, in her short time as a presidential candidate in 2019 — she exited the primary without winning any delegates — she supported decriminalizing illegal immigration. How might that have worked?

Energy policy is another winner. Americans remember lower gas prices in the Trump years, as it was one of the first things to change — dramatically — when Biden took office. Harris in 2019 called for a ban on fracking and offshore drilling. That won’t play well in Pennsylvania, the second-largest natural gas-producing state in the country. Harris supported getting rid of the filibuster to pass the Green New Deal. As vice president, Harris can be tied to Biden’s energy policy, which includes killing the Keystone XL pipeline.

Gas and food were much cheaper under Trump, a fact that ties into inflation and the economy — issues that favor Trump over Harris. Forty-two percent of Americans say they’re in worse financial shape now than when Biden took office; only 17% say they are better off. These numbers have been steady for a good two years. Voters in battleground states rate the economy as their top issue in this election.

Harris’s views that equity (“everyone ending up in the same place”) is better than equality of opportunity are worthy of strong critique, and in a way that naturally resonates with most Americans. You can’t have both equality of opportunity and equality of outcome because people have different levels of talent, and not all talents are equally valued in society (nor do we all make equally virtuous use of our talents). Justice means treating everyone according to the same standard, knowing that some will outperform others.

If you think about it, equality of opportunity implies inequality of outcomes. Dr. Ben Carson comes from more humble beginnings than me, but he’s achieved more. And that’s okay! If you aim for equality of outcomes, you do so by robbing the most talented and capable of opportunity.

Other issues could be added. In June 2020, Harris encouraged her supporters to post bail for the Black Lives Matter rioters, even tweeting a payment link. The Biden-Harris administration has supported biological males competing in girls’ sports, something seven in 10 Americans oppose. But immigration, energy, and the economy are probably the most effective contrasts the Trump team can draw.

Ineffective Lines of Attack

There are some things the Trump team should not do — attacks that may be fun for diehard Trumpists but that won’t win over the narrow sliver of undecided voters in the battleground states that will decide this election.

For example, J.D. Vance spoke with Tucker Carlson in 2021 about how women who don’t have natural children have less of a stake in America’s future. I’ve expressed concern that the U.S. fertility rate is at an all-time low, and that a quarter of 40-year-olds have never married, but Vance’s remark needlessly offends some women — including those who have nothing in common with Kamala Harris, but who aren’t sure what to think about Trump-Vance.

Tying Harris to DEI is another risky line of attack. I get that Biden promised a female vice president, and has spoken of DEI as being important, something that “starts at the top with the vice president.” But talking about Harris as herself being a DEI choice may be perceived as insulting, causing some black voters to identify with her more.

The other weird tactic I’ve seen people like Matt Walsh and Megyn Kelly using is saying that Harris “slept her way to the top.” For starters, it’s a sleazy, off-putting topic; it makes the average person, especially women, recoil. It comes across as ad hominem and desperate, as if you have nothing better to say. It also suggests a double standard, since even if that’s true, Trump is hardly a paragon of virtue regarding sexual ethics.

Team Trump is wise to cast Harris as an ultra-liberal. She’s certainly to the left of most Americans, especially those in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Team Trump would also be wise to discipline themselves to policy-focused attacks on issues that matter most to Americans: Immigration, energy, and the economy.

 

Alex Chediak (Ph.D., U.C. Berkeley) is a professor and the author of Thriving at College (Tyndale House, 2011), a roadmap for how students can best navigate the challenges of their college years. His latest book is Beating the College Debt Trap. Learn more about him at www.alexchediak.com or follow him on Twitter (@chediak).