Trump leans into ‘Comrade Kamala’ label as Harris pivots left

Vice President Kamala Harris is making an appeal to her progressive base with a series of campaign moves that are equally tantalizing to her GOP rival, former President Donald Trump.

Trump has sought to define Harris as a “California radical” by pointing to her embrace of far-left policies during her 2020 run for president. She has, to some extent, attempted to insulate herself from that line of attack since taking over the Democratic ticket, disavowing her previous support for a ban on fracking and single-payer healthcare. But Harris has simultaneously given Trump fodder that he is crystalizing with a new nickname: “Comrade Kamala.”

Harris announced an anti-price-gouging initiative last week that critics described as a price control scheme. Before that, she picked the progressive Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) as her running mate.

“Comrade Kamala Harris is terrible for our Country. She is a Communist, has always been a Communist, and will always be a Communist,” Trump posted on Truth Social Sunday afternoon. “Under her ‘leadership,’ the USA will fail, and fail quickly. We will not let that happen!”

Trump followed that up Monday morning with a post describing Harris as a “Marxist trained and believing President whose father is a Marxist professor.”

Harris’s choice to pivot to the middle on some issues and to the left on others reflects her attempts to appeal to swing voters while maintaining the support of the Democratic base. She had two other Democrats on her running mate short list, but each was more centrist and risked turning off progressives who were skeptical of President Joe Biden before he stepped aside.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) faced criticism over his union record, while Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), a Jewish supporter of Israel, was panned as “Genocide Josh” by pro-Palestinian activists.

With the price-gouging plan, Harris has gone further than most Democrats. Rather than merely blame “corporate greed” for the rising cost of grocery bills, she laid out a proposal that drew comparisons to previous price cap schemes, such as the one President Richard Nixon tried in the 1970s.

One headline that picked up traction came from Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell, who wrote, “When your opponent calls you ‘communist,’ maybe don’t propose price controls?”

Harris laid out the proposal in an attempt to distance herself from Biden, who oversaw a decades-high spike in inflation following the coronavirus pandemic. Meanwhile, her allies have gone on television to defend her against the attacks.

“I know Kamala Harris believes in the free market. What she put out in her proposals includes tax incentives for us to increase the production of housing and, yes, reductions in the prices that seniors pay for prescription drugs,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said on Fox News Sunday. “I don’t think there’s anything communist about wanting to make housing more affordable and prescription drugs more affordable.”

But the decision has opened up a headache for Harris, giving Trump, who has faced GOP criticism for a lack of discipline, new opportunities to focus his campaign message.

The former president previously tried out other nicknames including “Laughing Kamala” and “Lying Kamala,” but in recent days has landed more squarely on the communist theme. Staffers including Corey Lewandowski, a former Trump campaign manager who recently rejoined his team, has begun using the nickname as well.

Harris has surged in the polls since replacing Biden atop the Democratic ticket on July 20 and now leads Trump in the RealClearPolitics polling average. Democratic strategists say that Trump is still trying, and failing, to get traction on his messaging about Harris.

“This is more of the same,” South Florida-based Democratic strategist Sasha Tirador said. “The whole Biden resignation and Kamala running thing happened too fast for them. It caught them absolutely with their pants down, and they haven’t been able to recover and get their footing.”

Tom Cochran, a partner at 720 Strategies, took a similar view.

“I think he’s desperately trying to come up with a nickname that sticks,” Cochran said. “Ever since the GOP convention, Harris has controlled the narrative almost exclusively, and that makes Trump incredibly uncomfortable. She has him on his heels at the moment, and that’s not a good place for him to be.”

The warnings about communism — Trump has also said Harris’s plans sound “like something straight out of Venezuela or the Soviet Union” — may be an effort to tap into Trump’s polling issue advantages.

For example, an ABC News-Washington Post-Ipsos poll released on Sunday showed Harris leading Trump among registered voters 49%-45%, but it also found Trump holding a 9-point lead over Harris in handling of the economy, 46%-37%.

Sens. Rick Scott (R-FL) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) made that point during a Republican countermessaging event near the Democratic National Convention on Monday. Scott warned that “Socialism is death, destruction, and shortages, and that’s exactly what will happen if Harris gets elected.”

A number of conservative-leaning social media accounts also highlighted a clip of Harris saying in 2019 that she would “snatch” patents away from drug companies in an effort to lower costs.

“Yes, we can do that! The question is, do you have the will to do it?” Harris said at the time. “I have the will to do it.”