How Biden can insulate Harris from Trump’s racist attacks

I don’t need to tell you one of Vice President Kamala Harris’ biggest goals is attracting white working-class voters, especially men, in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. If she can reach enough of these voters, she can win these states and, hence, the whole shebang.

I also don’t need to tell you one of Donald Trump’s biggest goals is minimizing her ability to reach enough of these voters. He will do so by arousing all manner and form of bigotry and prejudice, creating conditions similar to 2016’s, in which many white working-class voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, especially men, couldn’t bring themselves to trust the last female candidate, Hillary Clinton.

This time around, Trump doesn’t have the old manufactured controversy over stolen emails to sow doubt within the white working class. However, he can be trusted to manufacture something.

For instance, he suggested that Harris is exploiting her Blackness to win some kind of advantage over white people. According to Greg Sargent, citing Adam Serwer, he wants voters “to sense something deeply inauthentic, something sleazy, about her self-presentation: It’s getting over on you in some way; it’s a race-hustle.”

Greg said this is why Joe Biden’s speech on Monday, the first day of the Democratic National Convention, was so important. In addition to enumerating his administration’s populist achievements, he “subtly rebutted some of the racialized attacks on Harris.”

Greg said Biden “defended the goal of tapping her as vice president precisely in order to achieve racial diversity in his cabinet, unabashedly describing this as a good thing — he ‘tapped’ the potential of America. In other words, he cast it as the realization of America’s promise.”

I agree with Greg. That seems to be what Biden was doing. But I think he was doing something else specific to reaching just enough white working-class voters, especially men, in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. And he did this, I think, because he gets them. He understands that feeling good about racial progress might be important, but it’s not that important. They are who they are. There’s a reason Donald Trump encourages the cynical, racist view that there is “something deeply inauthentic, something sleazy,” about Kamala Harris. To a lot of these voters, that view is true.

Biden knows it’s foolish to take that on directly. So, in his speech, he sent a subtle two-part message to those white working-class voters. On the one hand, he said, you can’t trust a man (Trump) who calls himself a populist but won’t deliver on promises. On the other hand, he said, the real populists are me and Kamala. We got the job done.

Consider one illustrative moment. Biden recounted how it came to pass that Medicare, for the first time, has the authority to negotiate directly with drug companies to lower the price of prescription drugs that millions of Americans need, not just senior citizens. That power comes from the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act two summers ago.

“Instead of paying $400 a month for insulin, seniors with diabetes will pay $35. Starting in January, every seniors’ total prescription cost can be capped at $2,000, no matter how expensive the drugs they have.”

Guess who cast the tie-breaking vote on that law? Biden asked.

“Vice President, soon to be President, Kamala Harris.”

That wasn’t the only time.

Over and over, Biden listed the popular things he and Harris have done together, for instance: rebuilding roads, bridges and tunnels; replacing lead pipes; protecting drinking water; providing affordable high-speed internet to rural areas; restoring domestic manufacturing; reducing carbon emissions; and creating hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs that, as Biden said pointedly, “don’t need a college degree.”

Not only did he link Harris to his populist achievements, he turned the tables. The guy trying to convince white working-class voters that there’s something deeply inauthentic and sleazy about Harris is the same guy who “promised infrastructure week every week for four years, and he never built a damn thing. Because of what Kamala and I have done ... we’re giving America an infrastructure decade,” Biden said.

This isn’t rhetoric. Thanks to polices pursued by the Biden-Harris administration, and to laws enacted by a Democratic Congress between 2020 and 2022, every single one of the so-called left-behind counties has made “a remarkable comeback,” according to the Times. These counties are rural, white and very conservative, and used to be manufacturing centers before companies offshored their jobs to China. Left-behind were devastated communities, often steeped in drug addiction. Their plight was said to have led to Donald Trump’s victory in 2016. He didn’t do a damn thing for them. Biden and Harris did.

For her part, Harris is making it clear that her administration’s economic policies will be a continuation of Biden’s. During her first policy speech Friday, she echoed Biden’s populist themes. Her goals are virtually the same. Investment in the middle class and support of unions are her priorities, too. Where they part ways is a matter of degree, not kind. For instance, Harris seems more focused on groceries. She wants the Congress to pass a federal ban, which would be in addition to state-level bans, on the gouging of food prices. That’s a variation of their joint focus on restoring competitive markets.

While in office, virtually everything Biden did, in terms of economic policy, was done with an eye toward the white working class in states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He knows how vulnerable these voters are (if you’ll allow me to use such a word) to racist demagogues like Donald Trump. He knows the best way to counteract the power of Trump’s fake populism is with real populism. And I think he knows the best way to insulate her against the poison and bile that brought down Hillary Clinton is to make it clear somehow to these voters that Harris is the real deal while her opponent is the real fraud.