WASHINGTON ― It took less than 24 hours since she all but locked up the Democratic presidential nomination for Republicans to start bringing up Vice President Kamala Harris’ race and gender, a signal of how potentially nasty the last four months of the 2024 race against Donald Trump is shaping up to be.
Upon returning to Washington this week from recess, several House Republicans quickly dismissed Harris, the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president, as a “DEI hire,” a pejorative term conservatives have used to refer to programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion. Unsurprisingly, the attack has often been launched against minorities, including the mayor of Baltimore earlier this year.
“One hundred percent, she was a DEI hire,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) told CNN on Monday of Harris, adding, “When you go down that route, you get mediocrity.”
When several of his colleagues echoed Burchett, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) urged his conference to focus on their policy differences and the vice president’s record. “Her ethnicity and her gender have nothing to do with this whatsoever,” Johnson said at a press conference on Tuesday.
But Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) didn’t appear to get the message, calling Harris, a former district attorney, attorney general and senator, “intellectually just really kind of the bottom of the barrel.”
“I think she was a DEI hire. And I think that that’s what we’re seeing, and I just don’t think that they have anybody else,” Hageman told Gray TV’s Josh Rultenburg.
President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race over the weekend and endorsed Harris, passing the torch to a younger standard bearer to the relief of many Democrats who worried about his physical fitness and ability to beat Trump in November. He praised Harris in a statement on Sunday, calling his decision to pick her as his running mate after winning the 2020 Democratic primary “the best decision I’ve made.”
At the time, Biden was considering a group of diverse potential running mates, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Harris and three other Black women, after vowing during the campaign to pick a woman as his vice president. That pledge was separate from his vow to specifically appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court, which he later did.
The president ultimately chose Harris for several reasons, according to an August 2020 report from The New York Times, including “her ability to help Mr. Biden win in November, her strength as a debater, her qualifications for governing and the racial diversity she would bring to the ticket.”
Harris, as the likely Democratic nominee, may be facing similar considerations. Already, her vice presidential shortlist includes at least seven prominent Democratic rising stars with strong resumes who also happen to be white men.
Still, it’s often only people of color who face such attacks over their background, as one Republican lawmaker acknowledged on Tuesday on Capitol Hill.
“Of course it’s not appropriate, for heaven’s sakes,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told HuffPost about the “DEI hire” attack. “What, are they just going to say if you’re not a white male, it’s a DEI candidate?”
“I’m sorry. No,” the senator added.
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), who is one of only four Black senators in the upper chamber, also slammed the GOP attacks on Harris.
“Here’s a woman who’s an accomplished lawyer, an attorney general, an incredible prosecutor, United States senator, vice president for the last four years, and they’re talking about ‘DEI hire’?”
“That’s beneath the rhetoric the American people deserve at this time, and it hasn’t taken 48 hours for them to show us who they are,” Warnock added.
Harris isn’t the first presidential candidate to face racist attacks, of course. Former President Barack Obama, the first Black president, and his wife Michelle were forced to contend with a racist backlash for much of his presidency, including the insidious and false ‘birther’ conspiracy theory fueled by conservatives and Trump, its most prominent peddler.
What may be different this time is the gendered attacks being hurled at Harris at the same time. Some on the right have gone after her for having no biological children, even though she has two stepchildren with her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff. Other MAGA commentators have suggested that it’s somehow not manly to vote for Harris.
“This is the kind of weak cry-for-help misogynist shitstorm that is coming. Be ready,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) wrote in response on X, formerly Twitter.
Democratic lawmakers aren’t the only ones bracing for an ugly campaign.
After Harris met with civil rights activist Al Sharpton on Sunday, according to the Times, he told her, “You cannot get ready for a prize fight. This is a street fight.”
To which Harris replied, “I’m prepared for that.”
