24 July

One Man’s Truth: Pssst! A Free Tip For Mr. Trump And Followers. Don’t Insult Black Women! Here Is Why That Is Stupid, And Why They Are Not.

by Jon Katz

I am convinced that Vice  President Kamala Karris, with her strategic prowess, has already set the stage for defeating Donald Trump. She accomplished this in just two days, outmaneuvering her opponent, perhaps the most incompetent political strategist of the century for all his bluster.

As always, he set out to defeat himself long before  Vice President Harris had a chance. He waltzed right into her trap.

President Biden never figured out how to handle Trump and his cadre of losers, hypocrites, cowards, racists, and thugs, the ones he made the core of his already doomed movement.  The working masses who believed in him will be betrayed once again.

Harris figured it out in a day, even as Trump and his followers can’t stop calling her stupid and mediocre. The very sight of her seems to terrify him.  He’s over the top. Joe Biden certainly did not.

Black women all over the country, especially in the Swing States that will determine the November election, have been slipping away from Joe Biden for many months, according to every poll taken by every respected polling group.

This was why Nancy Pelosi was so determined to get Biden to quit; she remembered what he seemed to forget:  He could never win the election without them. Black women have been the driving force behind every national Democratic Victory for decades, even as so many young and older white men and women were drifting towards the Republican Party in half of the 50 states.

They had lost faith in President Biden.

Pelosi saw what the media, as usual, missed – Biden could never win the race against Trump that way, even as the party has been hemorrhaging moderate and independent (as well as African-American women) for a couple of years now.

Pelosi, one of the most challenging and brilliant political strategists on the planet, was not intimidated by Biden’s myopic insistence that nothing was wrong with him, a lie eroding his support worldwide. She grew up with seven brothers and is tough as nails, even at 84. Nothing is wrong with her cognition.  Trump refers to her as “Crazy Nancy Pelosi.” She loves it.

Since Sunday, a score of Republican politicians, from Trump himself to various senators and congressmen and Trump’s newest slobbering puppy, J. D. Vance (who referred to Vice President Harris recently as  “one of the “childless cat ladies” who is “miserable” with her life and too dumb and incompetent to be President,”) have been calling her ugly names, turning off women of all colors along the way.

Trump has always been an awful campaigner; His genius is degrading and humiliating opponents and ruining their confidence, smearing them with insults and many lies. His “rallies” draw the faithful but nobody else. They are endless, dull, and incoherent. Harris may have to take his keys away.

All over America, Republican politicians, led by Trump and Vance, were calling Harris dumb, incompetent, and mediocre.

Of course, disagreeing with her or pointing out some of her mistakes (and she has made some, as I have) was not enough; they felt obliged to insult and trivialize her, call her a college graduate, trial lawyer, City Attorney, and Attorney General of California dumb, among other things, and show her no kind of respect or basic courtesy. They refuse even to call her Vice President Harris.

Every target of Trump becomes an evil spirit and enemy, and every politically enslaved person who signs up with him must go along and do. The vicious assault on one of America’s most admired black women was another awful Trump mistake.

For all the people he has trashed and beaten down, this is the very thing that will almost ensure his failure this year. It is a nearly sacred truth of modern politics: Don’t insult black women and call them incompetent and stupid. It’s an old, deep trigger that angers and drives them to the polls.

Politics aims to attract voters, not turn them into opposition warriors.

Yesterday,  in one day, 40,000 African American women and thousands of African American men called into the Harris campaign to sign up as volunteers for her campaign.

Tens of thousands of white women signed up as well.

As one black commentator said on CNN today, “Every one of those women, many of whom were not eager about voting at all, will walk across broken glass to get to the polls this year. It’s not about winning. It’s about Kamala….”

One local black official in North Carolina told a reporter there: “We have been called inferior, incompetent, stupid, and lazy for four hundred years. It stops now. We are all on fire with what they are saying about Kamala. It’s okay to disagree with her, but why disrespect her? Why call her names; she is a role model and shining star for us, the woman our daughters and granddaughters want to be. How stupid can a politician be to call us stupid?

Well,  pretty stupid, it seems.

This is why Trump lost four years ago and will lose again. He is the master of insults, a disaster as a campaigner.  He feeds his followers hate and resentment but is just beginning to draw new followers.   Kamala Harris might be right or wrong about some things, I’m not the one to say, but one thing is already quite evident about her: she is anything but stupid or incompetent, and the best thing that has happened to her so far is that her opponent is calling her names while she smiles and bows to roars of approval. She makes some of those Trump rallies look like funeral memorials.

I covered many campaigns as a political writer, watched the news, and shook my head this week: Don’t Insult Black Women if they want to win a national election. They neither forgive nor forget, and they love to vote. Trump almost gave a powerful speech at the Republican Convention. He had to go off prompter and blow the other half. That’s Trump.

I am not one of those pseudo-progressives who trembles and is terrified to say there is so much more than politics happening here or that the good guys will win this time.

I don’t qualify my ideas or warn that they might be wrong. Until otherwise informed,  I speak my heart and am quite willing to be incorrect. That’s the price for being able to think. But I haven’t been wrong about Trump yet, and I don’t believe this is the year I will be.

The other nation, the quiet one and invisible one, the one the media does not seem to know exists away from Washington and New York, is on fire.

And on the march.

If even half of those insulted black women walk on that broken glass to get to those polls in the five states that will decide any American election this year. If I am right, Donald Trump just shot himself in the foot 48 hours after this campaign began.

He did it in 2020; he will do it again.

15 Comments

  1. I still don’t understand how DT won in 2016…same guy…same rhetoric…that is what scares me…the Big Shock of him winning again…

    1. Thanks, Nancy; I’m not scared; it accomplishes nothing but weakens a good cause. I don’t see the other side doing it. I’m proud of being confident. Pain is inevitable; suffering is a choice.

      1. It seems the tool Trump will use to dig R’s political grave is a microphone. Hand him one and be seated, the implosion is about to start.

    2. Trump *didn’t* win in 2016 — Hilary Clinton won the popular vote. It was the archaic and obsolete electoral college that gave the Presidency to Trump. In the early days of this country, there were no effective communication systems that could provide candidate info to those in the western regions, so the electoral college was created to do the electing for the states. It has been obsolete for more than 150 years, and now has become detrimental to the democratic electing of leaders by the people and for the people. It should have been abolished long ago.–Pamela Moser

      1. So true…many a corrupt, incompetent and unqualified individuals have become president via the archaic electoral college. I am praying for divine intervention.

  2. Your blog on Harris gave me hope and encouragement. I have turned the news off as if tonight. I will read it. It has become overwhelming. I give Biden a lot credit for the willingness to lay down himself for the. Country. Having been an Evangelical nationalist for many years I am thankful to Trump for opening my eyes to the deceitful hatred that is in this party. I have lost friends and can’t attend church anymore.

  3. Excellent essay! It reminds me of what Trevor Noah said on his last night on the daily show….”If you want to know about America, ask a Black woman”

  4. jon, all I can say is THANK YOU. Thank you for your posting here, you never fail to find the right words to descrive US politics. Trump has literally filled the US with hateful words and Daily Mail this morning described Biden’s speech as mumbling. I watched it, he was clear in what he said. This is just an example of people getting on Trumps bankwagon of insults. You’re right, all he does is insult if you get in his way or you challenge him in any way. As a political reporter, you are still that. And a good one. Unbiased truth.
    Sandy Small Proudfoot
    Canada

  5. I am so relieved, honestly, that Kamala is running. She will keep right on attracting more and more female voters, and Trump and his misanthropes will keep right on insulting more women into voting for Kamala. The clock is ticking for the patriarchy, and they know it.

  6. Thank you Jon! Well said and spot on. The orange one’s campaign really has nothing to offer and it is sad how many white people buy into it…it is a rich man’s scheme to get more for rich men. I hope there are 2 debates…1 on ABC or NBC or better yet PBS and one on Fox. Harris has a plan, and she has worked in an administration that has done good things. All the orange one has is insults and grievance. I lived in a middle class, predominantly black neighborhood for 30 years and these women are not going to stand by and let all the work of the last 60 years go down.

    I too am feeling a glimmer of hope. And I am glad I kept my Kamala Harris for the people shirt from 2020.

  7. Great and true description of the current political situation and mirrors how I feel and see it. You’re a great political reporter and I’m sure you know it. I truly enjoy your and Maria’s Blog which I read daily for the last 3+ years.

  8. Trump is equal to the school yard bully. The name calling, the picking on those who have a disability, surrounding himself with other bullies who bow down to him in fear. He was a joke as a president – firing everyone who wouldn’t kiss his ring and he is a failure as a human being.
    This is to Laurie – you are obviously smarter then your friends, and I’m sure there are many churches who would accept you as a woman who has a brain. Trump’s Evangelical support blows my mind. They are supporting a liar, a man who cheats on his wives, and a man who cares nothing for other people (he’s incapable), a man who caused an insurrection and did nothing to stop it resulting in people being killed and maimed. This to me is just the opposite of a good and Christian man.

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