Fighting fire with fire — to make a point

Opinion

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This article was published 27/08/2024 (408 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Apart from the glitz, glam and promises of a better day offered at last week’s Democratic National Convention, there was an undertone of fear that revealed just how close the race is between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

Even the most inspiring of speakers dived into the muddy waters of negative campaigning that once was the exclusive domain of secondary players and voiceovers.

For example, former first lady Michelle Obama of the “when they go low, we go high” sentiment recently added a caveat that going high doesn’t mean “putting on a smile and saying nice things when confronted by viciousness and cruelty.” This time, she’s fighting back.

As one of the most popular and highly anticipated speakers of the convention, she minced no words after delivering her “contagious power of hope” message by also imploring voters to “vanquish the demons of fear, division and hate,” and called Trump a byproduct of “affirmative action of generational wealth.”

Undoubtedly, she knows the most effective way to move soft support away from the Trump camp and into the Democrats’ is to attack his credibility and play on voters’ fears about what a Trump presidency would do to the country.

Not even Oprah Winfrey shied away from taking a swing against Trump. In one of the more surprising events of the convention, Oprah took the stage to great fanfare and implored Americans to “choose the sweet promise of tomorrow over the bitter return of yesterday.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, in between his nod to the sports-loving crowd with jaunty football metaphors, issued affirmations that government should “stay the hell out of your bedroom,” while telling anti-choice politicians, namely the Republicans, to “mind your own damn business.”

But the one to offer the most searing rebuke against Trump was none other than the candidate herself.

Never appearing more confident and ready to get the job done, Harris took the stage and was all business in her 40-minute rousing speech that offered at least half of it to smearing her opponent. She began with a heartfelt tribute to her late mother while providing glimpses of the tenacity and perseverance she learned from growing up in an underprivileged, immigrant family.

Harris then promised to ensure sexual assault survivors and victims of crime were never left alone again, said she’d bring back equality to women in America and vowed to stand up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong Un who are “rooting for Trump” because he’s easy to manipulate. She played up her strengths as a prosecutor who’s dedicated her life to justice and serving the American public.

Peppered in between promises to be a president for all, declaring that she can be counted upon to “put country above party and self,” and committing to fair elections and the “peaceful transfer of power,” Harris was quick to provide a contrast between herself and the insurrection-inciting ways of Trump.

Undoubtedly, there will be those who wish Harris would’ve stuck to her own agenda without going negative. Yet in a race as tight as this one is, it’s no surprise she used her platform to chip away at Trump’s credibility. For her, there’s no greater way to do that than to demonstrate her prosecutorial skills while reminding voters of his unsavoury, criminal past, turning the court of public opinion into a courtroom that provides her the upper hand.

Further reinforcing this message against Trump, the Democrats also launched an ad campaign that took the form of a parody of one of nighttime drama’s longest running and most popular shows, Law & Order.

This attack ad opens with the voiceover and the ominous jingle recognizable to anyone who’s ever watched the show, stating: “In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups, the police who investigate crime, and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. This is the story of Donald Trump.”

The ad then offers up a plethora of disparaging photos while rehashing Trump’s history as someone who sexually abuses women, cheats on his wife with a porn star, rips off small businesses and is a threat to national security, while underscoring the point that for the first time, there’s a convicted felon running for president.

In the lead-up to the election, it will be no surprise to see both campaigns delivering some of the strongest negative attacks we’ve seen in a long time. Yet the one thing the Democrats have on their side, unlike Trump with his weirdly unrealistic smears against Harris’s “fake Indian heritage,” is that they have the added benefit of the truth.

Rochelle Squires is a recovering politician after 7 1/2 years in the Manitoba legislature. She is a political and social commentator whose column appears Tuesdays. rochelle@rochellesquires.ca