Opinion: The Who-Can-Beat Trump Test Leads to Kamala Harris

Opinion
The Who-Can-Beat Trump Test Leads to Kamala Harris
Bringing the energy and hope to stare down Trump and his movement.

By Roger Cohen
Opinion Columnist

...President Trump, in the name of making American great again, has trampled on America’s essence. He is angry, a stranger to happiness, angrier still for not knowing the source of his rage. He is less interested in liberty than the cash of his autocratic cronies. As for life, he views it as a selective right, to which the white Christian male has priority access, with women, people of color and the rest of humanity trailing along behind for scraps....

The gravest thing Trump has done is to empty this idea of meaning. His has been an assault on honesty, decency, dignity, tolerance and civility. On this president’s wish list, every right is alienable. He leads a movement more than he does a nation, and so depends on fear to mobilize people. Any victorious Democratic Party candidate in 2020 has to counter that negative energy with a positive energy that lifts Americans from Trump’s web....

Kamala Harris does that for me. The California senator is a work in progress, with uneven debate performances, and policies, notably health care, that she has zigzagged toward defining. But she’s tough, broadly of the center, has a great American story, is passionate on issues including immigrants, African-Americans and women, and has proved she is not averse to risk. She has a former prosecutor’s toughness and the ability to slice through Trump’s self-important bluster.

Last month Harris said Trump was a “predator.” She continued: “The thing about predators you should know, is that they prey on the vulnerable. They prey on those who they do not believe are strong. And the thing you must importantly know, predators are cowards.”

Those were important words. It’s early days, but Trump’s biggest electoral vulnerability is to women. They have seen through his misogyny at last, and they know just where the testosterone of nationalism leads.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/opinion/trump-2020-kamala-harris.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage