Kamala Harris’s Harsh New Trump Takedown Cleverly Flips Script on GOP

As Republicans scramble to attack the youthful, energetic Vice President Kamala Harris, after spending months hammering President Biden’s age and infirmity, they’ve hit on a new argument: that Harris owns her boss’s record of failure from top to bottom, so running against her will involve only minimal repurposing of the ongoing GOP indictment of Joe Biden’s America.

“This is the essence of what Trump’s campaign believes—that any Democrat who picks up the party’s banner will inherit the baggage that made Biden unelectable,” reports The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta. The campaign wants this election to remain a referendum on the status quo under the unpopular incumbent, allowing Republicans to continue exploiting deep voter dissatisfaction with the country’s direction.

But Harris’s maiden speech as the presumptive Democratic nominee on Monday shows that she may be able to flip this script in a surprising way—thanks to the national debate over abortion.

It’s often said that Harris can “prosecute the case” against Trump on reproductive freedom. But there’s far more to it than this: As a skillful communicator on the issue, she can also argue that if voters elect a Democratic president and Congress, they will codify protections for abortion rights nationwide—and argue it far more compellingly than the devout Catholic Biden ever could.

If that were to be accomplished, it would actually constitute a dramatic redirection of the status quo that now reigns in post–Roe v. Wade America. Importantly, it would reverse the status quo wrought by Trump, who brags about appointing the Supreme Court justices that struck down Roe—a status quo that will be perpetuated into the indefinite future, and likely made much worse, if Trump is elected to a second term.

That’s why some of the most important moments in Harris’s speech—delivered at campaign headquarters in Delaware—came when she contrasted two sharply opposed visions of our country’s future through the prism of reproductive rights.

“If Trump gets the chance, he will sign a national abortion ban to outlaw abortion in every single state,” Harris said. “But we are not going to let that happen.”

Democrats, she added, will work to elect congressional majorities “who agree that government should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.” When Congress passes a measure “to restore reproductive freedom,” she said, “as president of the United States, I will sign it into law.”

Much has been made of the hardest-hitting portion in Harris’s speech, in which she described her previous work as a prosecutor going after “predators who abused women,” before adding: “Believe me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.” The suggestion, of course, is that the prosecutor is well positioned to challenge the sexual predator.

But when placed alongside the abortion contrast—codified reproductive rights versus a national ban—that broadside takes on sharper meaning. Harris, whose speech linked reproductive freedom to other fundamental liberties, is campaigning on a promise of a freer society for women, a place where self-determination flourishes. After all, control over family planning and bodily autonomy are essential if we are to live as free equals.

By contrast, Harris said, Trump promises an America awash in “chaos, fear, and hate.” The post-Roe regime has indeed unleashed darkness and turmoil: women everywhere wondering if they will get emergency reproductive care in red states that have banned abortion, even as doctors operate in perpetual fear that treating women in dire conditions could violate the law.

What has gone largely unnoticed is how this could address Harris’s profound political challenges. She does face deep vulnerabilities related to public perceptions (often highly inaccurate) of the current state of the country, particularly on the economy and immigration. Nate Cohn of The New York Times made the serious version of this argument, concluding that Trump will be tough to beat for deep structural reasons:

In fairness to Ms. Harris, it would be challenging for any Democrat today to advance a clear agenda for the future. Mr. Biden struggled to do so in his re-election campaign. The party has held power for almost 12 of the last 16 years, and it has exhausted much of its agenda; there aren’t many popular, liberal policies left in the cupboard. As long as voters remain dissatisfied with the status quo and the Democratic nominee, a campaign to defend the system might not be the slam dunk Democrats once thought it was.

But there’s another strange structural fact about this election: Trump is a kind of “super-incumbent,” as Biden adviser Ron Klain recently told me, one who is in no small part responsible for creating the status quo on abortion. It’s a despised status quo too: Large majorities oppose Roe’s demise, and state-level referendums enshrining abortion rights keep passing by large margins, including in red states.

A promise to codify Roe gives Harris the opportunity to campaign on an agenda of change. Whether or not Trump would sign a national abortion ban—he likely would if a GOP Congress sent him one—red states will continue imposing ever more onerous reproductive restrictions, regardless of the awful consequences they continue to unleash. Codifying national protections would counter that.

From the 2022 midterms and the fall of Roe to the present, Harris has been out there arguing the case on reproductive freedom, acquitting herself particularly well when calling for the codification of Roe. This often received little press attention given her vice presidential status. But now that she’s the presumptive nominee, that well-honed case will get wide elevation in the national media.

“The analogy I use is that she’s like a Dave Chappelle-level comedian doing basement shows,” Democratic strategist Caitlin Legacki told me. “And now she’s ready for her network special.”

On top of all this, as Ron Brownstein points out, Harris’s energy and fluency on the issue enable her to use it to appeal to core constituencies that Democrats are struggling with. These include younger and nonwhite voters, particularly women, as well as educated and independent women in the battleground states.

Indeed, this is a key reason why Trump’s choice of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as running mate now looks questionable. Vance is supposed to maximize appeal among blue-collar men, but he has endorsed a national abortion ban. And Vance has had some ugly moments linked to his vision of the proper place of women in familial and social life:

JD Vance says women who haven’t given birth like Kamala Harris are “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives,” and have “no direct stake” in America. pic.twitter.com/3DJY3pQTGe

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 22, 2024

That contrasts rather sharply with Harris’s new speech linking reproductive rights to a freer, more accommodating society, doesn’t it?

It would be folly to be confident that all this will outweigh Harris’s other liabilities. She is nationally unpopular, though not well known. She is likely vulnerable to attacks over her liberal pedigree, handling of immigration for Biden, and the unpopularity of Biden’s presidency. And for the incumbent vice president to indict her opponent as the architect of the hated status quo is counterintuitive and challenging to offer persuasively.

But this could constitute a powerful argument, one that might make the campaign about starkly opposing visions of the future. And it’s one Harris is uniquely positioned to make.