In the home stretch before the election, Kamala Harris is warning of a despotic Trump. That hardly reaches voters anymore.
The U.S. presidential election is well under way. Almost 30 million American citizens have cast their ballots, and the number is growing each day. People have made up their minds and formed their camps. Polling numbers for Donald Trump and Kamala Harris’ have changed more or less marginally for months, and they point to a statistical tie in the decisive swing states. If anyone has an advantage, it is Trump; he has been trending upwards in recent weeks whereas Harris has almost entirely lost her small lead.
No wonder Harris supporters are nervous — and are ramping up their rhetoric. This week, they detonated their latest salvo, accusing Trump of being a fascist. It started with Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly in an interview with The New York Times. Kelly dramatically warned about a second Trump administration. He checks all the boxes of a fascist, Kelly said. If Trump could govern like a dictator he would, Kelly said. Trump has no appreciation for the Constitution or the rule of law.
Kelly described Trump’s uninhibited and inhuman character in a book and interviews in 2023. What is new is that Trump often praised Adolf Hitler during his conversations with Kelly. And Harris doubled down. “Yes,” Trump “is a fascist,” she told CNN. The statement predictably went viral.
The Target Group Is Wavering Republicans
Harris’ fascism campaign has a clearly defined target group: independent and Republican voters who have trouble with Trump and are conflicted between their conscience and party. Accordingly, Harris is getting increasing backup from high-profile anti-Trump Republicans such as Liz Cheney and Kelly during the last stages of the campaign.
Of course, there are many plausible reasons to see the risk in Trump’s return to the White House. His campaign rhetoric has reached new lows in dehumanization, and some of his campaign promises are more than questionable. For instance, he wants to circumvent the Posse Comitatus Act and send in the military instead of the police to restore order in American cities and round up immigrants. He describes political opponents as “the enemy within” who need to be prosecuted. He wants to decimate the ranks of civil servants and fill career positions with his minions.
In short, Trump’s behavior after the last election and on Jan. 6 [2021] should serve as a warning that his appreciation for democracy is limited. Still, wielding the fascist cudgel seems exaggerated — and desperate. The comparison with Hitler is especially untenable, not only because it is ahistorical. People often forget that Trump’s administration was chaotic and amateurish in many respects. His efforts to outsmart the rule of law are a leitmotif in his professional and political biography. But Trump is not pursuing a policy of Lebensraum, nor has he ever planned a Holocaust.*
A Question of Style
If Harris is really so concerned that Trump is a modern fascist, why is she only raising the issue now? Why is Kelly just now alleging that Trump admires Hitler? The timing of the fascism cudgel is annoying; it is far too late. This is not a new strategy, after all. Joe Biden launched his campaign with apocalyptic messaging, and Harris is now back there again — after her perhaps too optimistic “brat” summer. As anxiety increases over whether Harris can win the election, so does the inclination to instill fear in voters.
The fascism panic button should be applied with caution lest it be overused. The Republicans, most of whom support Trump, have proven immune to warnings. Moreover, they feel they are being ridiculed. Whether Harris can reach the few undecided voters with this move or offends more voters is beside the point. In the end, it’s a question of style, especially when the opponent is named Trump.
*Editor’s Note: Lebensraum was a German policy of expansionism and nationalism, followed in its most extreme form by Nazi Germany.
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