Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris (AP …Read More
WASHINGTON: Facing vituperative attacks from the right-wing of Republican Party, Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris said on Sunday that she’s ready for their “dirty tactics” and no progress has ever come about without a fight.
“They’re going to engage in an attempt to distract from the real issues that are impacting the American people. And I expect that they will engage in dirty tactics. And this is going to be a knockdown, drag-out. And we’re ready,” Harris said in an interview to the media outlet The Grio, when asked about President Trump promoting birther conspiracies questioning her eligibility to run for vice-presidency .
“I’m very clear-eyed about the fact that they are going to engage, as you said, in what they have done throughout his administration, which is, let’s just be very candid and straightforward: They’re going to engage in lies. They’re going to engage in deception,” she said, adding, “Nothing that we have ever achieved that has been about progress has come without a fight,” she later added.
Trump’s sly endorsement twice of reports questioning her eligibility was topped with vicious personal slander from his surrogates and supporters, who have unleashed what is loosely called “oppo research” on social media. This includes not just political failures but also personal indiscretions or contretemps far into the past.
For instance, the conservative and influential radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh dredged up Harris’ rise in California politics, attributing it to her relationship with influential San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, while using ugly slurs to characterize their relationship. Others invoked her record as a prosecutor, tracking down an innocent black man who was sent to prison for murder during her tenure.
Still others have continued to question her birthright and citizenship status –scrutiny that Harris has faced before – although it is well chronicled that she was born in Oakland, California, and raised in the U.S except for about five years when she went to school in Montreal, Canada, where her mother worked at McGill University.
“Look, this is the same thing they did to Barack (Obama). This is not new to us and so I think that we know what they are trying to do,” Harris had said in an earlier interview.
The attacks on Harris began intensified even as Democrats begin their virtual national convention on Monday night with the wind beneath their wings.
Two new polls by ABC/WashingtonPost and NBC/WallStreetJournal show the challengers ahead by 12 and 9 points over the incumbents, but President Trump took comfort in much narrower margin in a poll from his bête-noire CNN that showed him behind by only four points. An average of nine “poll of polls” shows the Biden-Harris team ahead by 7.7 per cent.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama, former Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, and a slate of governors and failed presidential aspirants are slated to address what is the country’s first digital convention because of the coronavirus pandemic. The four-day online event, sans the boisterous roistering and rah-rah rapture that marks conventional in-person conventions, will culminate on Thursday with an acceptance speech by Biden, preceded by addresses by Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, the party’s eminences grises.
Ahead of the event, Republicans, whose own jamboree has also been shifted online, torched the Democratic ticket, dredging up what is called “oppo research” to highlight follies and failures in the careers of opponents, including personal indiscretions. Trump himself continued to focus on Biden’s age (at 77, only three years older than the President), suggesting that Kamala Harris would be a virtual regent for Biden should he win the Presidency, which his supporter say she is not eligible or qualified for.
“Joe is shot, let’s face it, Joe is shot. You can’t have a guy that shot. You can’t have a guy that doesn’t know where he is. You can’t have a guy that’s afraid to leave his basement because he can’t speak any longer,’ Trump said in one his frequent call-ins to Fox and Friends, adding, “You can’t feel sorry for him and vote for him and because of that reason the Kamala Harris’s are going to take over. She’s a disaster.”
As Trump headed out for an in-person campaign trip to Wisconsin in part to show he’s a man on the move and to steal the thunder from the Democratic convention, the poll numbers don’t look good for him at this point.
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows Biden/Harris ticket beating Trump/Pence by 12 points (53-41) among registered voters, with the margin narrowing to 52-43 among those who say they are absolutely certain to vote in November and who also voted in 2016. A separate NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll out Sunday had Biden leading by 9 points, 50-41.
But Trump shrugged off the numbers saying “Although crazy CNN is bad as they are, I guess there was a poll that I was 14 down and I picked up 10 in the last month.”
While Trump will be touring battleground states this week to address his mostly white flock in an effort to neutralize or at least dilute attention on the Republican jamboree, Democrats are showcasing their diversity already made apparent by Biden’s choice of Harris. On Sunday, scriptures from Vedas and Mahabharata were rendered by a Hindu woman from Chinmaya Mission in Texas and prayer by a Sikh community leader from Wisconsin Gurdwara echoed at an interfaith service held virtually to kick off the Democratic National Convention (DNC), which was to be held in Milwaukee and was scrubbed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Harris also named Indian-American Sabrina Singh and Sri-Lankan American Rohini Kosoglu to her campaign staff. Kosoglu returns as her chief of staff after having departed following the Presidential nomination bid coming up short, and Singh, who comes in as the press secretary, has handled media for DNC before, and has managed the press shop of two Democratic presidential candidates- New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg.
