When I wrote my column in this space on July 7, 2024, with the headline – “It’s Time for President Biden To Pass the Torch to Vice President Kamala Harris,” – I was asked why I saw her political strength when so many others had doubts. I cannot claim any special prescience as we watched her speech at the Chicago convention and her surge in the polls to be even with Donald Trump.
Instead, I credit a comment about Harris made to me almost 20 years ago by the legendary Willie Brown, former speaker of the California Assembly and mayor of San Francisco. About 20 years ago, we were having dinner in San Francisco shortly after Brown had completed his second term as mayor. I first met him at the White House during a social event.
Over dinner on his home turf, as we talked about the latest in California politics, Willie said he wanted me to meet San Francisco’s recently elected district attorney. Her name, Kamala Harris, was easy to commit to memory. More memorable still was the mayor’s description of her. Two decades later, I recall his exact words. Kamala Harris, he said, was a “badass law-and-order prosecutor who happened to be female and black.”
Her record in office proved the accuracy of Mayor Brown’s words. She prosecuted and put in jail scores of crooks and con artists and was known as “tough on crime.” Then she went on to win election to two terms as California attorney general, where she reinforced her reputation, famously holding out for billions of dollars from banks who took advantage of homeowners who suffered from illegal foreclosures based on fraud.
So when it comes to the three issues Trump seems to think he can use to his advantage during the debate – inflation, crime, and the border – let’s just say Trump may meet his match – and then some. Before she came to Washington as a U.S. senator, the current vice president became known in California for her effective ability to marshal facts to convict criminals. Even many of Trump’s supporters and closest aides know that facts are not always Donald Trump’s friends.
Start with the issue of inflation and federal spending: The Trump campaign likes to pin the blame on the Biden-Harris administration for the inflation of the last four years – and the enormous federal budget deficits that have exacerbated it. But as Trump is well aware, two of his rivals in 2024 for the GOP presidential nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, pointed the finger at Trump himself. They highlighted an inconvenient truth: When Trump was in the White House, the national debt expanded by $8 trillion – in just four years. How will he spin that during his debate with Harris?
Or take the issue of immigration. What will Trump say if Harris directly challenges him to deny that he instructed Senate Republicans to block a tough border compromise crafted by conservative Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford for purely political reasons, i.e., to deny President Biden getting any credit?
On crime and law and order, Trump will probably be faced with a question from Harris or the moderators about his own criminal record, his conviction by a jury beyond a reasonable doubt of 34 felonies. If he claims the jury was rigged, what will he say when asked that one or more of the jurors, when questioned before being seated, expressed support or sympathy for Trump – yet joined in the unanimous verdict? What will he say about what a U.S. federal judge said on the record, after a jury trial and multi-million dollar judgment against Trump, that he had, in fact, committed a “rape.”
When Trump attempts to label Harris as a “radical” or “Communist” in her positions on issues, he will undoubtedly be faced with a question about his opposition to the Affordable Care Act, on which so many rural voters depend. Does he consider the ACA, based on competitive online “exchanges” with private insurance bidding for customer business, socialism, or communism?
Finally, and perhaps most important to the undecided swing voters in the swing states who will decide the election, can Trump possibly resist talking disrespectfully to a black woman, interrupting rudely, and talking over her? Numerous women who worked for him in the Trump Organization and in the White House have confirmed he is threatened by independent-minded women and disparages them as “dumb” or “less intelligent” than he is. He has said that already about Kamala Harris. What will be the reaction of women swing voters in suburban districts in Phoenix, Milwaukee, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, or Detroit?
The words of Willie Brown, proven to be true over the years and a high compliment to any prosecutor, male or female, will be pertinent during the debate. How Donald Trump reacts when a “badass” tough black female former prosecutor challenges him may well determine the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.
Now in the last few days, Trump seems to oppose a debate if there are live mics. Perhaps it’s because he’s heard what I first heard from Mayor Willie Brown almost two decades ago – and doesn’t want that “badass prosecutor” to challenge him with a live mic in the middle of a lie.
