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Editorial: Republicans Can’t Agree on How Best to Malign Kamala Harris

The Republicans are having a difficult time with 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s pick of Kamala Harris as his running mate. She’s formidable, and she’s a woman (two characteristics that, together, offend the sensibilities of a few in the GOP), but the issue is that they can’t agree on how best to attack Kamala Harris.

To the party of Trump (and we should note here that there are Republicans who would like to distance themselves from the party of Trump), Harris is all at once a socialist and a sellout to Wall Street. She is a moderate (which, to many Republicans, means she is without principles), at the same time that she is a radical extreme leftist. She is too tough on crime, but she’s too weak on crime. Donald Trump has been less analytical, placing Harris into the category of other intelligent and assertive women like Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton, whom he calls “nasty.”

When Joe Biden first announced Kamala Harris as his running mate, some Trumpers gleefully pointed out the disapproval from the far left because she isn’t progressive enough.

“Bernie Bros get burnt!” Tweeted Brad Parscale, a Trump campaign aide.

Immediately following the announcement of Harris as Joe Biden’s pick, some right-wing pundits were warning about a hostile extreme liberal takeover of the Democratic Party.

“Kamala Harris’ extreme positions … show that the left-wing mob is controlling Biden’s candidacy, just like they would control him as president,” said Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.

That the Republican Party would float the idea of “left-wing mob control” of Biden and Harris is in keeping with the party’s increasing slant to the far right, which fits well with its bent for supporting conspiracy theories.

For other Trumpers, the fact that financial advisory firms such as Signum Global have started telling clients that Biden’s choice of Harris reinforces the notion that the Democratic ticket is more moderate than progressive is a sign that progressives will be disenchanted with the Democratic ticket.

But wait— Other Trumpers are saying that Harris wants to turn the Democratic Party toward socialism (a concept they appear not to understand).

On the Wednesday following the announcement of Kamala Harris on Biden’s ticket, Vice President Mike Pence, in a fundraising email, wrote, “From the very first day of this Administration, President Trump has set our Nation on a path to freedom and opportunity. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would set America on the path of SOCIALISM and DECLINE.”

Speaking of takeovers, the Republican Party seems to have been taken over by people who don’t know much about history or political science.

Quick to depict Kamala Harris as a radical lefty, they have posited that in Kamala Harris, the far left has infiltrated the Democratic Party. Not only that, but Joe Biden, they hint, is little more than a puppet controlled by the radical left.

David Bossie, Trump’s 2016 deputy campaign manager, thinks both Biden and Harris are malleable. In a recent op-ed piece, Bossie wrote, “Make no mistake about it, if elected, this weak Democratic duo will aid and abet the radical socialists and anarchists at every turn…Americans must reject Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and their dangerous ideology.”

CNN contributor Scott Jennings, a former special assistant to President George W. Bush and a former campaign adviser to Sen. Mitch McConnell, writes, “Her politics— liberal with more than a hint of authoritarianism (think of her attempts to get Donald Trump banned fro Twitter) sprinkled in for good measure— fit well on a national ticket trending hard towards both.” Jennings ignores the fact that his party supports a president who regularly defies the checks and balances of the federal government, wants to hobble the U.S. Postal Service in order to interfere with the presidential election, and fires government officials just for disagreeing with him.

Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson, on the other hand, knows that hate and love are just two sides of the same emotion, so instead, he chose an attempt at indifference by simply trying to diminish Harris. In a monologue on his Fox News show last week, he not only dismissed the correct pronunciation of Kamala Harris’ name, he said this: “So, it seemed inconceivable that given his current state, Joe Biden would choose someone so transparently one-dimensional as Kamala Harris, someone as empty as he is. It would be the first entirely hollow presidential ticket in American history and we thought it could never happen. But it is. They’re doing it anyway.”

Still other members of the Party of Trump have taken to insulting Harris by making a show of being insulted by her. On Fox News host Jeanine Pirro’s show, Lara Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, who is married to Eric Trump, and who spearheaded the Women for Trump tour, said, “I for one was insulted when months ago Joe Biden came out and he said, ‘Guess what? It’s going to be a woman who’s my running mate.’ Let’s not worry about qualifications, let’s not worry about what they bring to the table. If these people want to stand up for equality, people in this country will never be fully equal in their eyes until they stop pandering for votes and playing identity politics.

“It didn’t even matter who it was going to be,” Lara Trump concluded. “Women were already insulted.”

As if to demonstrate that she wasn’t too passionate about Kamala Harris, she did what appears to have become a standard move by the right to show disregard for Harris: she mispronounced Kamala Harris’ name.

Kamala Harris is neither a radical left-wing extremist, nor a socialist, nor a noncommittal people-pleaser. Nor is she a token. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden’s “dangerous ideology” talks of a future, and their ideal for the American experience in that future, where groups of people are not marginalized; where Americans can earn a living wage, and where they can have access to affordable health care. The party of Trump, on the other hand, hopes for a future that is dangerous to everyone but straight white folks; one that looks like its version of an idealized past, where white heterosexual people are in power and everyone else “keeps their place;” and where no one gets help or health care or food that they may not “deserve.”

Americans are free to disagree with Kamala Harris’ platform, but she is clear on what she stands for. The party of Trump has a platform that is not based on what it stands for, but what it is against.

Republicans Struggle To React To Kamala Harris As VP Pick | TODAY
[2020-08-13]

Republicans Can’t Agree On How To Attack Kamala As Biden/Harris Make 1st Appearance | Roland S. Martin. [2020-08-13]

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Editorial: The Fine Print in Trump’s Coronavirus Executive Orders

After Congress failed to come to an agreement on a new coronavirus relief package, Donald Trump, self-proclaimed “deal maker,” sidestepped Congress and signed three memoranda and one executive order (all four of which he incorrectly called “bills”), claiming they would “take care of, pretty much, this entire situation.” The “deals,” however, are legally questionable, since Congress must approve federal actions on spending and taxation. Additionally, when one looks more closely, the four hollow executive orders are not “deals” at all for Americans.

House Democrats passed the more than $3 trillion Heroes Act in May to continue relief to Americans, but the bill stalled in the Senate. Republicans can’t even agree among themselves on how to move forward with a relief bill. Donald Trump is no doubt hoping his base will see him as stepping in to save the country, with these four actions as proof of his 2016 campaign claim that “I alone can fix it.” In reality, though, they fix nothing, and, in fact, make things worse. Here is what Trump’s “dealmaking” will get Americans:

Payroll Tax “Cut”

What Trump is calling a “tax cut” is actually a tax deferment that lasts from Sept. 1 through Dec. 31. Under this executive order, the U.S. Treasury will stop collecting payroll taxes during that time from workers who earn less than about $104,000 a year, or $4,000 every two weeks. Though workers will temporarily feel as if they’ve gotten a pay increase, they will owe those payroll taxes at a later date.

This does nothing to help those who don’t receive a paycheck because they are unemployed.

Trump ordered a tax deferment instead of a cut because he does not have the power on his own to cut taxes. He is, however, calling on Congress to make it a permanent tax cut. This sounds great until we realize that the payroll tax is what supports Social Security. If a tax cut is made permanent, it will deplete the funds in our Social Security system.

Deferred Student Loan Payments

Trump’s memo regarding student loan payments waives interest on all federal student loans until December 31, and allows delayed payments until December 31. Principal payments will be due on December 31, and full payments including interest will start again on January 1. Student loan debt will not be canceled.

Relief for Renters and Homeowners

Trump’s “relief” here amounts to nothing more than a “study” to see if a moratorium is needed. The federal moratorium on evictions has ended, and Trump’s new executive order does not extend it; evictions due to financial hardship are now no longer banned. Trump has instead called on Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Robert Redfield to study whether halting evictions stops the spread of COVID-19. This doesn’t address the financial hardships that have already resulted from COVID-19.

Trump’s memo also doesn’t provide money to help homeowners. It only calls for Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson to “see if they can find” any more funds to help, though no aid is promised, and no legislation is in place to protect homeowners from losing their homes due to COVID-related financial hardship.

Supplemental Unemployment Aid

Unemployed Americans were receiving $600 a week from the federal government in addition to their state unemployment aid, but that expired at the end of July. Democrats and Republicans could not agree on how or if to extend the federal aid; Democrats wanted to continue the $600 per week, and Republicans wanted to reduce it to $200 a week. Trump’s memorandum calls for the federal aid to restart at $400 a week. This sounds like a compromise until we look more closely at how it would work.

The federal $400 a week has two conditions in order for unemployed workers to receive it: their states must ask for it, and their states must contribute 25 percent ($100) of that $400 per week for each recipient.

Many states, already financially strapped from the coronavirus pandemic, won’t be able to afford to provide this supplemental benefit for their unemployed workers. And because of outdated and inadequate processing systems in some states, many unemployed Americans are still waiting on their first round of unemployment benefits. It could take months for states to adapt to new guidelines and systems for executing this latest scheme if they do sign on.

What’s more, the source of this additional unemployment aid is questionable. Trump wants to fund it by shifting $44 billion of funds from the Department of Homeland Security’s Disaster Relief Funds which are designated for tornadoes, hurricanes, and extensive fires such as forest fires. Currently, 30 million Americans are unemployed. The funding to cover them all would run out in less than five weeks.

And again, in reality, Trump’s action assumes and ignores Congress’ rightful authority.

David Super, a constitutional law expert at Georgetown Law, says, “The basic notion here is the president is rejecting Congress’s power of the purse. That is something nobody who cares about separation of powers can let slide, even if they like what the money is being spent on.”

The legality of these four actions is already being called into question by members of both parties, and it’s likely that Trump will face formal legal challenges over them, since he is attempting to bypass Congress.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Trump’s actions “absurdly unconstitutional.”

Trump has offered a hollow set of pseudo-relief measures that are full of contingencies, not the least of which is whether they are even legal or enactable. Besides offering no real and definitive relief from financial hardship, Trump’s executive actions fail to address several other important issues, including funding for schools to help ensure safe reopening, relief for the hungry, and assistance for cities and states as they continue to battle COVID-19. Trump’s “deal” for financially strapped Americans is hardly a deal at all.

Trump signs executive orders on coronavirus relief l GMA
Good Morning America  [2020-08-10]

Trump signs executive orders on payroll tax, evictions, and unemployment bonus | Global News [2020-08-08]

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