Excerpts:
“I think she’s dangerous, and probably maybe the most dangerous, from our view,” a veteran Republican political consultant told me this month. “She theoretically would do very well with African American turnout and end up being positioned as a Vienna Soccer Mom.” In case you’re wondering, that’s Vienna, Virginia, an upscale bedroom community just west of Washington, D.C., that has accelerated its drift from the Republican orbit since a certain former reality-television star secured the Republican nomination three years ago. Suburbs just like it in critical battlegrounds could hand the White House back to the Democratic Party in 2020.
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But some dialed-in Republicans described Harris as a serious threat. “I have long been most concerned about Harris. I think she has an appeal to the Scottsdale soccer mom who is a registered Republican. Between her appeal and Trump’s women problems, she has probably already won those voters,” said an experienced Republican consultant in Arizona, an emerging battleground that sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 2018 for the first time in a generation and is ground zero for suburban discontent with Trump. “But I also think she does better amongst Independents who generally split ideologically in Arizona,” this GOP insider added. “Independents are just sick of everything, and her no-nonsense approach would have appeal broadly, and even to some white Independent and GOP men. She doesn’t have the Biden wimp factor, and that’s probably important in a place like Arizona.”
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Referencing how she dealt with Joe Biden:
Imagine what Harris might be able to do against a real villain like Trump, some worried Republican insiders back in Washington were simultaneously telling me via text message. Hillary Clinton, unlikable, clunky, and corrupt, could never do that. “Kamala is a nightmare” for Republicans, one of them told me.
Indeed, imagine what Harris would do to Donald Trump in the sure to be watched by millions debates.
Harris made her bones as a prosecutor before she was elected Attorney General of California in 2010. Harris has stood in front a judge and jury, faced down defence attorneys, cross-examined defendants, and no doubt won enough cases to gain a public profile. In fact, she was even considered to be presidential material in 2008:
While Harris is mentioned just once in this article, consider that in 2008 hardly anybody outside of California knew who she was.
Mrs. Clinton seemed to have the most success in the last months, fighting like a mama bear for her cubs. So some people look to women who have earned reputations as tough fighters: Lisa Madigan, a Democrat who is attorney general in Illinois, and mentioned as a possible successor to the embattled governor, Rod Blagojevich. On one list was Kamala Harris, an African-American who is the district attorney in San Francisco.
Trump doesn’t fear anything, at least not if you don’t count losing the unrelenting battle to hide his balding pate and his diminishing sexual prowess. I rather doubt he fears going up against any Democratic candidate, even one with the prosecutorial chops possessed by Kamala Harris.
In the real world outside of “Law and Order” where D.A. Jack McCoy, pictured above, almost always got a conviction, by the time a person is indicted by a grand jury for a major felony and stands trial there is an excellent chance they are guilty although rich defendants often get off what with their high priced legal talent. Trump won’t be judged by a jury and he won’t have a high paid ambulance chaser to be there to defend him when he goes one to one against his prosecutor.
Of course before a defendant is sentenced that must be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the highest burden of proof in any court in the United States. It is up to the prosecutor to make this case.
Kamala Harris has done this numerous times.
When the candidates take to the stage and walk to their podiums it will be like Trump is taking his place behind the defence table and Harris is sitting at the prosecution table.
Unlike in a criminal case she will have been able to shake up the defendant prior to the trial/debate. For example, a few days before the first debate she could release both her tax returns for the previous 5-10 years and a copy of her undergraduate and law school transcripts.
During the debate/trail she could challenge Trump to do the same.
Unlike in a criminal trial she will be dealing with a defendant/opponent who is not only mentally unbalanced, overly confidence (to say the least) but who refuses to take the advice of his own lawyers/advisors. To the extent that the debates will be like a trial, the adage “a man who is his own lawyer has a fool for his client” is apropos.
Arguably Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the debates where it counted, in the rust belt states that gave him the electoral college win. All Harris would have to do have the first debate is to score a draw in the media to set Trump back on his heels. If she leaves him struggling for words and reduced to incoherent attacks while she maintains an aggressive but unflappable prosecutorial demeanor she will make him look, to put it bluntly, as a hapless guilty-as-hell criminal. In all but the Trump-media she will be judged as the winner.
The polls would ultimately tell what the public thought.
If Harris clearly won the first debate this would prompt Trump to become more unfettered from reality, to unleash his rage, and to make him even more vulnerable in the second debate, if he even agreed to have one.
I think that more than any other candidate Trump has to fear going up against Harris.