I don't know whether Donald Trump's assertion that Kamala Harris only recently began to identity as Black will work for him, but I suspect it isn't working, for a surprising reason: It's drawing too much attention to Trump.
Many people would argue that drawing attention to himself was the point of the attack. Ever since Harris became the clear favorite for the Democratic nomination, Trump has been out of the headlines. Some people believe he launched this attack on Harris primarily to get himself above the fold, in newspaper terms.
But as I argued yesterday, Trump wanted this attack to make voters begin to see Harris as a phony. He doesn't need to persuade his base to think any negative thing he says about an opponent is true, but I think he believed that swing voters would fall for this. I was thinking of mostly white swing voters, many of whom don't know much about Harris's long identification with both Blackness and Indianness; many whites in America don't feel that they have a particularly complicated heritage, so they could conceivably be responsive to Trump's argument. And as some post commenters pointed out, Trump might also have been aiming him comments at the Black men who've warmed to him. They might be receptive to the idea that Harris isn't authentically Black.
But in the aftermath of these remarks, we're mostly not talking about Harris's identity. We're talking about what Trump said. We're debating whether Trump's outburst was accident or calculation. We're watching J.D. Vance as he defends Trump. Trump made himself the story when he was trying to make Harris the story.
That's how it looks right now. I'm sure Trump and Vance will continue to call Harris a phony. The base will cheer. But the line of attack might never work beyond the base, because instead of asking, What's up with that Harris woman anyhow? -- the kind of othering Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, and other Democrats were subjected to in the media -- we seem to be asking, What the hell is wrong with Trump? That's good.
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