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Americans have known for a while that my uncle has the thinnest skin on the planet. We now know that Vice President Kamala Harris is all the way under it because Donald keeps admitting it.
“I’m very angry at her,” Donald said Thursday. “I think I’m entitled to personal attacks. I don’t have a lot of respect for her. I don’t have a lot of respect for her intelligence, and I think she’ll be a terrible president.”
Donald can’t handle losing, but losing to a Black woman is particularly hard for him to bear. Harris’s campaign team deserves a lot of credit for understanding just how to put pressure on Donald’s very fragile psyche. Their rapid-response and press teams are running an edgy presidential campaign that is unique, as far as I know, in modern American political history. It’s the kind of approach that both highlights and exacerbates Donald’s weaknesses. It also makes it impossible for Donald to stay on message and stay away from the kind of personal attacks that his advisors are desperate for him to drop because they’re endangering his reelection bid.
Donald’s narcissistic injury is so great that he has essentially stopped campaigning in swing states. Multiple reports say that he can’t control his impulses in private. He continues to be furious that he’s no longer running against President Biden. More than anything, he perseverates about crowd sizes—both publicly and privately.
Sensing its advantage, just a few hours before Donald’s pathetic attempt to reclaim the spotlight by holding another staged event, the Harris campaign put out a media advisory, but not just any media advisory:
“TODAY: Donald Trump To Ramble Incoherently and Spread Dangerous Lies in Public, but at Different Home. TODAY at 4:30 p.m. — Donald J. Trump, loser of the 2020 election by 7 million votes, will hold another public meltdown in Bedminster, New Jersey.”
That’s quality trolling. It’s was also pretty prescient.
For so many years, Democrats have taken the high road (remember “When they go low, we go high?”). Unfortunately, Donald and the Republican Party have gone lower than most people thought possible.
So, we’re not “going high” any more. What the Harris and Walz ticket understands is that the best way to take down a bully with the kind of power Donald Trump has, the kind of unimaginable power he hopes to seize, is to mock him and encourage others to laugh at him.
“She actually called me weird,” Donald whined Thursday. “‘He’s weird.’ And it was just a soundbite. And she called JD and I weird. He’s not weird.” Methinks thou dost protest too much. Also, cry harder.
It’s a disjointed and rattled response from a clearly unwell man. Harris and Walz, on the other hand, are running a joyful, cohesive campaign. And while the joy they have brought to this race has been widely discussed, the effect that joy has on Donald hasn’t. It’s his kryptonite because he doesn’t understand it, he doesn’t know how to generate for himself or for his campaign, and it causes him pain. He has no idea how to combat the fact that he’s losing, so he engages in more cruelty. And so the cycle continues, and he continues to get worse.
The Harris campaign is happy to help. I want to note, however, that it’s not only getting under Donald’s skin that’s going to propel Harris to win this race; it’s the contrast between the campaigns.
Examples one, on Friday, while speaking at her economic policy rollout in North Carolina, Harris remarked that she used to work at McDonald’s. Donald had a million dollars by the time he was a year old.
Example two, the Harris campaign recently sent out a fundraising email in which the Vice President talked about how she felt on Election Night 2016.
It was incredibly bittersweet. When I took the stage for my acceptance speech—to represent California in the Senate—I tore up my notes. I just said, ‘We will fight.’ Then I went home and I sat on the couch with a family-sized bag of nacho Doritos. I did not share one chip with anybody. Not even Doug. I just watched the TV with utter shock and dismay.
That may be one of the most relatable things a candidate has ever said. I challenge anybody to come up with a comparable moment of honesty and vulnerability from Donald Trump.
Kamala Harris isn’t afraid of Donald, and her campaign reflects that. But Kamala Harris also isn’t afraid to be herself, and her campaign reflects that, too.
