How The Right Plans To Attack Vice President Kamala Harris In The 2024 Election

3 months ago

On "Forbes Newsroom," Kelly Dittmar, director of research for Rutgers' Center for American Women and Politics, sat down with ForbesWomen editor Maggie McGrath to talk about attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris.

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00:00Some of the attacks she's already seen, in my opinion, feel very gendered and

00:06racialized. We've seen some critiques about how she laughs and we've also seen

00:12some critiques that she is just a stepmom and has not given birth herself.

00:18What have you made of the early attacks against Vice President Harris? Yeah, yeah,

00:24I mean, I absolutely, again, a lot of these attacks have been filtering not

00:29only through the internet, but through the RNC and through the Trump campaign

00:34for, like I said, many years. And so attacks on the laugh, right, this is

00:41something Donald Trump has attacked women's looks and voices historically.

00:46That's a trope, right? It is saying, like, we don't want to listen to women. They're

00:51so jarring and it's a contrast to what is actually, like, the power of women's

00:57voices, right? And so if you critique the actual tenor of the voice instead of the

01:02substance, right, you try to diminish the seriousness of that candidate. So I think

01:08we're definitely seeing that in a sort of gendered way that has been used. It

01:12was used against Clinton. It will be used against many other women in powerful

01:15positions to say, I just can't listen to that voice, right? And so the laugh is

01:19part of that. We've seen attacks on her qualifications. That's playing absolutely

01:24into perceptions. We know that people assume credentials for men. They assume

01:29white men are particularly qualified for any position of leadership because

01:33they've seen them in those positions of leadership. They tend to question and

01:37seek out credentials for women and question whether or not they actually

01:43have the skills and expertise necessary for the job. So if you are somebody

01:48running against a woman, you're going to start to try to put holes in those

01:52credentials. You're going to use sexualized tropes like she slept her way

01:56to the top. We're seeing that happen to Kamala Harris. This is not new. But so

02:01what that means for the campaign and her advocates is they're going to have to

02:04talk more about her credentials to push back. She has plenty, so it shouldn't be

02:08that hard, but that's absolutely a tactic. And then you mentioned, you know,

02:14the motherhood piece, and I would add to that in terms of race, folks saying

02:18she's not black enough. She's not mom enough, right? And so this piece on

02:23identity is really complex in that we have purity standards sometimes for

02:29these identities, and she's going to push against them. She's multiracial, right? And

02:36so to the extent that she has already and will continue to push back against

02:42these purity kind of standards for any identity, I also think there are big

02:47swaths of the population who will actually relate to that, right? There are

02:51a lot of stepmothers or bonus moms who are going like, wait a second, hold on,

02:57right? And maybe I can identify with her in a unique way. Or multiracial

03:01populations, which are absolutely growing across the United States. So I

03:05think there's our, you absolutely think she's going to face, but at the same

03:09point, there are ways for her to leverage these identities and these

03:12questions as well into discussion and advantages. Maybe not her directly, I

03:16think she'll probably try to stick to the campaign issues, but certainly those

03:20who are around her and who will speak on her behalf and advocate for her.

How The Right Plans To Attack Vice President Kamala Harris In The 2024 Election

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