Tom Minear: Donald Trump his own worst enemy in election race

Kamala Harris’s sudden emergence has deprived Donald Trump of attention, and Tom Minear argues he is being needlessly self-destructive in an effort to reclaim the spotlight.

Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally on August 3, in Atlanta, Georgia. Picture: Joe Raedle/Getty Images/AFP

Of all the ways Kamala Harris’s emergence as the Democratic candidate has up-ended the US election, the simplest may end up most significant.

Donald Trump is no longer the centre of attention. That is not something he is ever willing to accept – and his efforts to win back the spotlight are inevitably self-destructive.

Exhibit A: the former president’s suggestion last week that his opponent – America’s first Black and first Asian American vice president – “happened to turn Black” a few years ago.

It was classic Trump. Sick of the positive momentum surrounding her campaign, he reframed the conversation on his terms. The fact that the conversation revolved almost universally around condemning Trump seemed irrelevant to him.

Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally on August 3, in Atlanta, Georgia. Picture: Joe Raedle/Getty Images/AFP

The 78-year-old’s defenders reckon this is clever, and often it has been. His stunning victory in 2016 was built on these five words from Steve Bannon: “Flood the zone with s***.”

This time around, however, Trump looks needlessly reckless and obviously confused. If you disagree, bear in mind that his staff pulled him off stage barely halfway through the panel event in which he questioned Harris’s ethnicity, among other controversial claims.

The Republican has potent lines of attack against Harris, especially her role in America’s border crisis. But he is still recycling the same jibes he used against Joe Biden, and he can’t decide on a derogatory nickname for her – his favourite way of defining his opponent in the minds of voters.

The presidential election race between US Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, and former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump still has three months to go. Picture: Brendan Smialowski and Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP

Compounding this problem for Trump is that, perhaps for the first time since he entered the political fray, his insulting and inflammatory behaviour is no longer being met so earnestly.

Biden’s campaign centred on Trump being a threat to democracy. Rightly or wrongly, this was not connecting with voters, especially after he defiantly survived a horrific act of political violence. Harris and her surrogates have settled on a snappier description for Trump: weird.

The Vice President is campaigning relentlessly and joyfully, like a happy warrior. Barack Obama called her that when he endorsed her, a telling comment given the bitterly partisan gerontocracy that is US politics has not seen a candidate as unique as Harris since him.

She is not the politician Obama was, of course, and her campaign is still in its honeymoon phase. But the election is only three months away. That’s not a lot of time for Trump to figure out how to beat her – and maybe too much time for him to stop being his own worst enemy.

Originally published as Tom Minear: Donald Trump his own worst enemy in election race