Rightwing playbooks used in past election campaigns are being dusted off for an all-out assault on the vice-president
For Barack Obama there was “birtherism” and a name they said sounded like a specific Middle East terrorist. For Hillary Clinton there was “Lock her up” and merchandise that said, “Trump that removed”, “Hillary sucks but not like Monica” and “Life’s a removed: don’t vote for one.”
Rightwing playbooks deployed in past election campaigns are being dusted off for an all-out assault against Vice-President Kamala Harris, the de facto Democratic nominee aiming to become the first Black woman and first person of south Asian descent to be US president.
“It’s obvious that the Republicans are going to play the race and gender card, which we’ve seen already in some of the attacks on social media,” said Tara Setmayer, a Black woman who is co-founder and chief executive of the Seneca Project, a women-led super political action committee. “It may be catnip for their Maga base but it will be a turnoff for the moderate voters in the battleground states that will determine this election.”
Yep. My grandmother, born in the first decade of the 20th century, had some pretty racist ideas. But when she lived in the UK, she always voted Labour and when she emigrated to the U.S. and became a citizen, she always voted Democrat. And she died before Obama was elected, but I have no doubt she would have voted for Obama even if she had pretty obvious racist issues with her black next-door neighbor.
Reminds me of the story going around during the 2008 election about the canvasser in the south being told by a white person, “we’re voting for the n-!”
Canvasser: “… Okay!”
“I… I guess that… I’ll just mark it down as a win and move on”