As Vice President Kamala Harris weathers a barrage of ferocious attacks on her competence and on identity, she might consider calling up Tommy Vallely.
Vallely, a senior advisor for Vietnam at Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute, was a decorated combat Marine in the Vietnam War and is a longtime friend of former Secretary of State John Kerry.
He recalls the euphoria after Kerry, who was decorated for his heroism in the Vietnam War, won the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004; it’s not unlike the Harris high of the past week and a half. He also remembers how quickly it dissipated when a Republican front group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smeared Kerry’s war record with duplicitous, but effective, attacks that were credited, in part, with sinking his bid.
Chris LaCivita helped perpetrate that particular smear campaign 20 years ago, and he now co-chairs former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign. Then, they went after Kerry’s integrity and patriotism. Now, racism will be at the core of the assaults against Harris.
Already, the dog whistles are sounding: Republicans are calling her an unqualified “diversity” candidate. At the National Association of Black Journalists conference this week, Trump raised inane questions about Harris’ racial identity, accusing her of “all of a sudden” becoming Black despite her attending Howard University (one of the most prominent historically Black colleges and universities in the nation), being active in the country’s oldest Black sorority and identifying as biracial for years. She’s the daughter of immigrant parents from Jamaica and India.
“It’s going to get worse,” Vallely warns. His advice to Harris is to strike back but not to get mired in a culture war with the right wing.
Kerry was a genuine war hero, awarded the Silver Star by Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, the Naval commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam. Almost all the men on the boat that Kerry commanded praised his courage. When one man fell off the boat under enemy fire, Kerry turned the boat around to rescue him. None of these Republican-orchestrated Swift Boat critics were present during these actions. Yet the duplicity worked.
The attacks took a toll on Kerry’s standing on national security. The smears on his war record hurt the Democrat’s campaign more than criticism of Kerry’s liberal voting record or his flip-flops on issues such as funding the Iraq War. I suspect it’ll be similar in this campaign. The criticism of Harris’ record, her past positions, and flip-flops – much of it legitimate – will be a warm-up to racist attacks.
The most substantive charge Trump is likely to level against her is on immigration. While Harris was never the “border czar” that some Republicans are trying to brand her as the porous border reflected Biden-Harris administration policies. This isn’t a winning issue for Democrats, but she can mitigate the downside if she doesn’t capitulate to the left who oppose tougher border restrictions.
Specifically, she can promise that in her first week as president, she will send the bipartisan Murphy-Lankford bill to Congress, which features a tough crackdown on migrants and was endorsed by border control guards. The proposed legislation died last May when Trump ordered congressional Republicans to oppose it so that he could continue to campaign on immigration and border security as an unresolved issue. Harris could champion the bill as a first step to trying to comprehensive immigration reform.
In her bid for the 2020 presidential nomination, Harris made a major miscalculation by trying to compete with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for left-wing support. She equivocated on public health insurance, police funding, an open border, fracking, mandatory gun buybacks, and the radical Green New Deal. Republicans have plenty of ammunition against her – much of it on video.
If she plays her cards right, she could reply with a twofold response: that she doesn’t hold those positions now – and she hasn’t for more than three-and-a-half years as vice president.
Moreover, relitigating what was said in the past could be a bigger problem for the Republican ticket: Does Trump still believe that former President Barack Obama really wasn’t an American citizen or that former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley might be executed? Does JD Vance still view Trump as an American Hitler or Harris is one of what he referred to as anti-family “childless cat ladies“? (Mind you, Harris has two stepchildren.)
In military jargon, there is mutually assured destruction, assuming Harris continues to smartly reintroduce herself. It’s a bogus claim – based on a senseless survey measuring how many bipartisan bills senators introduced – that Harris was the “most left-wing senator.”
But racist dog whistles and code words may pose a tougher challenge. Trump has shown in just the past few days that he has every intention to emphasize race.
Already, Trump and other Republicans are calling her a “DEI” candidate – a reference to workplace programs to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion – who advanced politically because of her race. Then, there are the typical phony charges that she slept her way to power.
In 2003, she was elected San Francisco district attorney, defeating an incumbent, and she was later reelected in 2007. California has a relatively small Black population, but she won three statewide elections, two for attorney general, and one for the Senate. This charge that she slept her way into office is simply a despicable lie.
Predictably, like he did with the nation’s first Black president, Trump has questioned whether she’s really a citizen and called her “dumb as a rock,” noting she flunked the bar exam the first time. Flunking the first time hasn’t been a barrier for many lawyers who did very well for themselves and were considered pretty smart: Consider former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and a former dean of Stanford Law School. (It’s comical to think of Trump, with his disdain for the rule of law, passing a bar exam.)
Trump’s goal is to keep Harris’ race front and center, as he has this week.
Harris is better off brushing off racial tropes. Vallely suggests one antidote: In 1992, candidate Bill Clinton, who was being painted as an elite liberal, deliberately criticized Sister Souljah, a Black rapper who had said since Black people are routinely killed, “Why not have a week and kill white people?”
Vallely says, “Harris could use a Sister Souljah moment.”
Washington columnist Albert R. Hunt has covered U.S. politics and presidential campaigns since 1972, previously for the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, and the International New York Times. You can listen to his weekly podcast and read more on Substack.
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