Kamala Harris's formula for taking down Trump

Kamala Harris’s Democratic convention speech served two purposes: She introduced herself to the American people, and she revealed the case she intends to prosecute against Donald Trump.

Harris picked familiar targets: Trump’s attack on democracy, his approach to taxes, and his anti-abortion rights record. But on each, she took a slightly new tack.

Democrats (and pundits) have warned for years about the threat Trump poses to democracy, but Harris connected it to a critique of his character — that he is fundamentally out for “himself,” not for typical Americans.

Wonks have been raising the alarm about a Trump policy to impose 10 percent tariffs on all imports — but Harris rebranded this plan as the “Trump tax.”

Finally, Harris asked voters to believe that Trump would side with allies who are pushing sweeping anti-abortion policies — rather than believing what he’s saying about the issue as he campaigns.

1) Harris warned of a second term Trump “with no guardrails”

Harris tagged Trump as “an unserious man,” but argued that the consequences of putting him back in the White House “are extremely serious.” Part of that involved recapping his attempt to steal the 2020 election (“he tried to throw away your votes”) and his criminal conviction (“for an entirely different set of crimes, he was found guilty of fraud”).

But Harris argued that next time could well be worse because of the Supreme Court ruling last month giving presidents broad immunity from prosecution for acts they commit as president. “Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails,” Harris said. “How he would use the immense powers of the presidency of the United States. Not to improve your life. Not to strengthen our national security. But to serve the only client he has ever had: himself.”

This is an important recognition that the democracy issue is bigger than just repeating that Trump is a convicted felon or that January 6 was bad. Indeed, Harris treated Trump’s conviction as a small part of a larger argument that he is a fundamentally corrupt person, unfit for the presidency, and out for himself rather than everyday Americans.

Later on, while discussing foreign policy, she was even more blunt. “Trump won’t hold autocrats accountable,” she said, “because he wants to be an autocrat.”

2) Harris characterized Trump’s import tariff proposal as a “Trump tax”

On economic policy, Harris went on to characterize Trump as fighting “for himself and his billionaire friends” rather than the middle class. “He will give them another round of tax breaks that will add $5 trillion to the national debt,” Harris said. But she also zeroed in on a Trump policy that hasn’t gotten enough attention yet.

One of Trump’s major campaign proposals this year is for a 10 percent tariff on all foreign goods imported into the US — a policy that has been much criticized because it would lead to higher prices for Americans buying such goods. Yet Democrats haven’t really effectively attacked Trump on this, perhaps in part because the word “tariff” is boring and makes people tune out.

So Harris chose a different word. “He intends to enact what, in effect, is a national sales tax — call it a Trump tax — that would raise prices on middle-class families by almost $4,000 a year,” she said. (In contrast, she said, she would support a middle-class tax cut “that will benefit more than 100 million Americans.”)

Typically, it’s Republicans who claim their opponents are proposing scary-sounding tax hikes and Democrats who are struggling to defend themselves. But attacking a “Trump tax” seems like a savvy and potentially effective way to go after Trump’s tariff proposal. Expect to hear much more of this as the campaign continues.

3) Harris argued Trump would side with his “allies” on abortion

On abortion rights, Harris first made it crystal-clear that it was Trump’s “hand-picked members of the United States Supreme Court” who overturned abortion rights. (A surprising number of voters in swing states hold the mistaken belief that Biden did it.)

Harris quoted Trump’s remark at a Fox News town hall taking credit for overturning Roe v. Wade: “I did it, and I’m proud to have done it.” She then pivoted to arguing that Trump’s second term would bring about awful developments for reproductive rights:

“As a part of his agenda, he and his allies would limit access to birth control, ban medication abortion, and enact a nationwide abortion ban with or without Congress. And get this, he plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator and force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions.”

“Simply put,” she continued, “they are out of their minds.”

Now, Trump has not actually said he would do any of those things. He’s been hazy on what he’d do on abortion policy if elected again but has typically suggested he’d try to leave things to the states.

But Harris is suggesting he’s lying and that he would in fact end up siding with extreme proposals put forth by some of his key anti-abortion rights allies.

There are proposals to limit access to certain birth control and roll back federal approval of medication abortion drugs in Project 2025 – the policy plan for the next GOP president cooked up by conservative advocates (including many former Trump appointees) that Trump has tried to partially disavow now that it’s become a political liability for him.

Harris’s suggestion that Trump and his allies would ban abortion nationwide is unlikely to prove correct. Such a sweeping proposal isn’t even in Project 2025 and is viewed on the right as politically impossible (though anti-abortion rights groups would in a perfect world love to see it happen).

But Trump will have a hard time pushing back against these critiques because he did appoint those Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe. The reality is that anti-abortion rights activists are one of Trump and the GOP’s most important and loyal constituencies, and they push to rein in abortion rights to the greatest extent they think is politically possible.

Trump’s anti-abortion allies dictated his positions on the issue his first time in office. Harris wants to make the case that they’ll do that again if he wins a second term.

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