From the first hours after Joseph R. Biden Jr. chose Kamala Harris as his running mate, President Trump, his Republican allies and conservative hosts on Fox News unfurled a string of sexist attacks on Ms. Harris.
Mr. Trump followed up on Wednesday morning with a racist tweet claiming that Mr. Biden would put another Black leader, Senator Cory Booker, in charge of low-income housing in the suburbs. That tweet did not mention Ms. Harris, but it continued Mr. Trump’s tactic of playing into white racist fears about integration efforts as he declared, “The ‘suburban housewife’ will be voting for me.”
“They want safety & are thrilled that I ended the long running program where low income housing would invade their neighborhood,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Biden would reinstall it, in a bigger form, with Corey Booker in charge!”
The president did not explain why he referred to Mr. Booker, whose first name he misspelled. But the race-laced salvo came after a chorus of Fox News hosts on Tuesday night assailed Ms. Harris, attacking everything from the pronunciation of her name to Mr. Biden’s selection process for focusing on women of color.
Over and over on Tuesday night, Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, mispronounced her first name, even growing angry when corrected. “So what?” he said, when a guest told him it was pronounced “Comma-la.”
Mr. Carlson said that there were “time-share salesmen you could trust more” than Ms. Harris and “payday lenders who are more sincere,” alluding to an institution long accused of exploiting poor communities of color.
Martha MacCallum, the Fox anchor, said that focusing the search for a running mate on women of color “takes away” from the selection process overall. The Fox News host Sean Hannity called Ms. Harris a senator with a “radical extremist record” whose selection “solidifies what’s the most extreme radical far-left out-of-the-mainstream ticket of any major political party in American history.”
Jeanine Pirro, another opinion host on the cable news channel, threw in a wildly conspiratorial twist, asking viewers, “Who really picked this woman to be the vice-presidential candidate?’
Ms. Harris ran her own presidential campaign and was widely seen as the most obvious choice for Mr. Biden: at once a conventional and groundbreaking choice. But when he finally announced her selection on Tuesday, Mr. Trump and his allies appeared to be caught without a coordinated game plan, lurching from one attack to another.
After Ms. Harris was chosen, Mr. Trump described her four times as “nasty” or “nastier,” using some of his favorite terms for female opponents, and complained that she had not been nice to his Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh during confirmation hearings.
Hours after calling Ms. Harris the “most liberal” member of the Senate, the Republican National Committee sent out an email blast saying that progressives hated her because she was not progressive enough.
Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, said Mr. Trump’s tweet about suburban housing amounted to “clumsy, bigoted lies” and showed the president was “dumbfounded after Joe Biden’s selection of a strong running mate.”
FEATURED IMAGE: Attacks against Kamala Harris began almost immediately after she was announced as the vice-presidential pick. Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
— Annie Karni and Thomas Kaplan
Biden and Harris make their first appearance this afternoon. Here are 4 big tasks they face.
WILMINGTON, Del. — The Democratic ticket is finally complete. Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Kamala Harris, two Democrats from opposite coasts and different generations, are expected to make their first appearance as running mates in Wilmington shortly before 4 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday.
Here are four tasks that face the new ticket:
Show they are simpatico. Mr. Biden was fond of saying that he wanted a vice president with whom he was “simpatico” on how to confront the major challenges facing the nation. Now is the chance for him and Ms. Harris to demonstrate that.
After all, it was less than 14 months ago that Ms. Harris unleashed a scorching debate-stage attack on Mr. Biden, and some Biden allies harbored hard feelings toward her throughout the search process. How will they show that they are truly on the same page on the central issues of the campaign?
Demonstrate how they will take it to Trump. Ms. Harris, a former state attorney general and district attorney known on Capitol Hill for her pointed questioning style, liked to talk about prosecuting the case against President Trump. Now she will have her biggest platform yet. How will she be deployed to make that argument, and how will it differ from Mr. Biden’s approach?
Team up on selling an agenda that can win. Neither Mr. Biden nor Ms. Harris ran primary campaigns that revolved around policy plans, but they still will need to get on the same page. Some differences are evident, such as their split on health care, and Ms. Harris has appeared more comfortable speaking the language of the left than Mr. Biden has (though progressive activists have often viewed her skeptically).
But they are now joining forces in a radically changed political environment compared with when they were primary rivals, with the coronavirus and the economic recovery as dominant issues, as well as an intensified national focus on racial justice after the killing of George Floyd. Can Ms. Harris engage new constituencies around their shared agenda — and if so, which voters?
Figure out Harris’s role in the campaign. One big unknown is what the final months of the campaign will look like given the pandemic. Mr. Biden has made in-person appearances rather infrequently, and his critics sneer about how he is running for president from his basement. It remains to be seen how often and where Ms. Harris will campaign.
Mr. Biden has said he wanted a running mate who “has some qualities that I don’t possess.” How will the campaign use Ms. Harris’s strengths — as a historic candidate, a skilled public speaker and someone who represents the generational and racial diversity of the Democratic Party — to add fresh value to the ticket?
— Thomas Kaplan and Katie Glueck
By The New York Times
