On a normal day, it does not take much to have Donald Trump going on a rant on just about anything. But these are not normal times. Stunned by the abrupt withdrawal of Joe Biden from the race and finding that Vice-President Kamala Harris has a unified party behind her with a whopping $200-odd million in the kitty, the Republican candidate and his campaign seem lost for a strategy other than falling back on a known worn-out path: name calling and personal attacks.

But the flaw lies in a failure to understand that Kamala Harris is not Joe Biden. The Trump campaign has not gleaned back into the pages of the Democratic Presidential primaries of 2020 when the former prosecutor of California did not hesitate to rip Biden for positively referring to Senators who were seen as segregationists. The words “… you are not a racist… but I was that little girl” still should resonate; this was Harris’ fiery comeback at Biden in a debate.

The Trump campaign shudders every time he talks of race, gender or anything at all that would upset the delicate balance nationally or in the battleground states. Even as it is, the six to seven point lead in the battleground states has vanished and nationally Harris has pulled even with the 45th President with some surveys showing that perhaps she is ahead by one or two points.

The extremists in the Grand Old Party played with the “birther” theory when Barack Obama was running for office — that somehow Obama was born outside the US.

A swipe at Harris

And now former President Trump maintains that he was surprised to find out that Kamala Harris is Black. “I 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. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump said, addressing the National Association of Black Journalists.

For a person used to insults and name calling from Trump, Harris brushed off the latest swipe as the “same old show” of divisiveness and disrespect. But Harris and others in the political spectrum know the former President’s track record in dealing with opponents who are women or belong to the racial minorities. He has not even spared Nikki Haley of the Grand Old Party. But Harris would not have to stay silent. And the gloves could come off very soon, well before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 19.

In raking up an identity issue, the former President is hoping to have it both ways: getting on the right side of Black Americans and the Indian American community, pointing out to the latter that Harris has somehow discarded her South Asian identity. It is unlikely to cut much ice. Republicans may have eaten into the Indian American vote bank over the years, but a solid percentage is still with Democrats and Harris.

Questioning Harris’ credentials need not be as damaging as disparaging comments on women per se. Here the pick of Vice-Presidential candidate Senator JD Vance of Ohio has rankled even senior Republicans who had urged Trump to look for alternatives. Vance’s 2021 comment that America was being run by “childless cat ladies” like Harris invited bipartisan outrage, leaving Trump himself to rush to the rescue.

“Maybe if she (Harris) had five kids with three different men and a scandalous affair with a porn star and was a convicted felon, that would be more palatable to Republican men,” comedian Chelsea Handler said.

The writer is a senior journalist who has reported from Washington DC on North America and United Nations

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