The prosecutor and the convicted felon: Kamala Harris’ weapon against Trump

Kamala Harris spoke again on Tuesday about Donald Trump. She did so in Milwaukee (Wisconsin), during her first formal rally after Joe Biden decided to withdraw from the race, clearing the way for her to become the Democratic presidential candidate: “I was a prosecutor; I know Donald Trump’s type,” she said, repeating a phrase she had already used on Monday at an event at the headquarters of her newly launched campaign. It sounded like more than just a phrase; it is the weapon that Harris is ready to use against Trump, a strategy that consists of presenting the dispute between the two as the fight between the prosecutor and the convicted felon.

A day earlier Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, widely considered one of the top candidates to become Harris’ vice-presidential pick, expanded on that idea during an interview with CNN. Beshear alluded to J. D. Vance, chosen by Trump to be his running mate. Not so long ago, Vance had defined Trump as “America’s Hitler.” The Kentucky governor played with words: “J.D. Vance has no conviction. But I guess his running mate has 34.”

The Harris campaign extracted that clip and posted it on its account, @KamalaHQ, which has doubled the number of followers since Sunday. Meanwhile, millions of dollars in donations have poured in ($100 million in less than 48 hours, a new record) and the candidate has secured the support of hundreds of delegates, enough to clinch the nomination at the Chicago convention in August. The last heavyweights to join her cause were the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, early Tuesday afternoon.

The party’s strategy to stand up to Trump has been reminding the world of the Republican nominee’s pending issues with the justice system for months; he still has two ongoing cases; another one, involving the classified documents he took from the White House, was thrown out last week by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, in a decision that is being appealed. The Harris campaign is contrasting that criminal record with the vice president’s own professional past. Between 2004 and 2011, she was district attorney in San Francisco, and between 2011 and 2017, she was the attorney general of California. After that, she served in the Senate.

At the rally in Milwaukee, she repeated almost word for word another message that she delivered on Monday to the Biden campaign workers who came to work for her that day. She told them that in her capacity as prosecutor she “took on perpetrators of all kinds: Predators who abused women; fraudsters who ripped off consumers; cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.”

Studied strategy

It is not an improvised strategy. The vice president and her team worked on it at her official residence on the grounds of the Naval Observatory, northwest of Washington, in recent weeks, as clamor grew for Biden to give up his efforts to run and it gradually became clear that she would have to step forward.

On Monday, Harris also said: “As attorney general of California, I took on one of our country’s largest for-profit colleges that was scamming students. Donald Trump ran a for-profit college that scammed students. As a prosecutor, I specialized in cases involving sexual abuse. Well, Trump was found liable for committing sexual abuse. As attorney general in California, I took on the big Wall Street banks and held them accountable for fraud. Donald Trump was just found guilty of fraud on 34 counts.”

These comparisons were already used by Harris in an ad for her 2020 presidential run, when she launched her race for the White House with a campaign full of failures that never took off. The motto then was “Kamala Harris for the people,” and the ad in question has gone viral again these days.

Harris’ record as a prosecutor has earned her criticism in the past from those among her own party who consider her to be too tough on crime. Curiously, that could help her win over undecided and independent voters. One of the main arguments of the Republicans these past few years has been that wherever the Democrats are in charge, with their calls to defund the police following the murder of George Floyd, safety suffers due to woke laxity in dealing with criminals.

“Americans today rate crime and violence among their top concerns in the country, with 61 percent of registered voters saying that they believe that the criminal justice system is not tough enough on criminals, in 2020, just 48 percent of respondents said that was the case,” writes Ankush Khardori in Politico. Suddenly, ‘Kamala the cop’ [the label they attached to her at the time to attack her] doesn’t sound so bad in 2024, writes Khardori. “It’s a sign of how dramatically the politics of crime have shifted in the last few years — even within her own party.”

Her campaign also trusts that her age (59 years old, while Trump is almost 20 years older) and her prosecutorial skills for questioning and arguing, forged in court, will help her succeed in the presidential debate scheduled for September 10, organized by ABC News.

His sentencing over the hush-money case is expected eight days later. It is highly unlikely that any of the other trials will begin before the November 5 elections, especially after the Supreme Court decided late last month to increase the immunity of presidents in the performance of their duties.

This week it also emerged that Trump donated $6,000 to Harris’ campaigns for state attorney general between 2011 and 2013. The magnate had not yet gotten into politics, and at that time he boasted of giving money to people from both parties.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition