Race and gender-based attacks

Right-wing media figures target Kamala Harris with race and gender-based attacks

By Oliver Darcy

The right-wing media machine is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at Kamala Harris.

As she held a rally Tuesday for the first time as the likely Democratic presidential nominee, Fox News, talk radio, and the constellation of digital news websites and online personalities were busy blitzing her with a wide array of attacks, aiming to quickly villainize her with only 100-some days to go before Election Day.

Over the last 48 hours, Harris has been derided as a radical California liberal; she has been smeared as a “DEI” candidate; she has been denigrated as a “mistress” for her previous relationship with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, even though it occurred after Brown was separated from his wife and was not a secret; she has been ridiculed for her laugh and described as unlikeable; she has been characterized as having been too tough on crime as a prosecutor, but also pro-illegal immigration; she has had her candidacy labeled a “coup”; and she has been subjected to commentators mocking even the pronunciation of her name, among other things.

Suffice to say, it has been a lot.

If elected, Harris would not only be the first woman president, but she is the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants. Her heritage and status as a powerful woman on the cusp of winning the Oval Office has, quite plainly, spurred the attacks drenched in racist and sexist vitriol.

“Suddenly she’s the next messiah?” Fox News host Jesse Watters said Tuesday night as he railed against Harris. “The only reason she is in the White House is because of the DEI deal Biden cut with Bernie [Sanders] to seal the nomination.”

The salvo is a page out of the right’s playbook targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, a bogeyman it has used to blame for everything from airline safety issues to the Baltimore bridge collapse.

In most of corporate America, even calling someone a “DEI” candidate would be grounds for stiff disciplinary action, if not outright dismissal. But attributing the success of Harris to her race and sex has become standard fare among Donald Trump’s media allies who conveniently ignore her wealth of experience in both law and government. (It is somewhat ironic, given that J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate, actually has a rather thin resume.)

To a degree, the onslaught of attacks Harris has been subjected to recalls the ugly treatment that Barack Obama received from right-wing media more than a decade ago as he campaigned for president and served in office. Most prominently, Obama was targeted with the false and reprehensible conspiracy theory suggesting he was an illegitimate president because he supposedly wasn’t born in America, a movement that Trump himself endlessly fanned the flames of. The attacks on Harris are, without question, in the same vein.

While right-wing media figures have for years attacked and mocked Harris as the administration’s “border czar” and a “socialist,” the blitzkrieg of attacks now being directed toward the vice president signal how flummoxed MAGA Media is over how to tackle her candidacy. Until Sunday, the focus of right-wing media had been on Joe Biden, which waged an unrelenting campaign on the president, portraying him as a senile, mentally incapacitated man under the control of nefarious “globalist” forces.

Now, with the sudden and last-minute switcheroo by the Democratic Party, Trump and his media allies are left searching for the most effective narrative to present to the public to damage Harris’ chances at denying them the White House. Those efforts will, surely, increase as new polling emerges showing Harris could seriously threaten Trump’s odds of winning in November.

Which narrative Trump’s media allies settle on remains to be seen. It may ultimately prove too difficult to identify a singular line of attack on Harris, in which case several charges could be tossed into a stew that blends together. That’s how right-wing media confronted Obama in 2008. But, notably, it did not prove to be a successful strategy.

And for some Republicans, the race-based attacks on Harris have already crossed the line.

“Of course it’s not appropriate, for heaven’s sakes. What, are they just going to say if you’re not a white male, it’s a DEI candidate?” moderate Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said. “I’m sorry. No.”