Column: Can Kamala Harris and an army of ‘childless cat ladies’ overcome Republicans’ sexism?

Do MAGA Republicans hear themselves?

Earlier this month, as he speculated on Newsmax about how Vice President Kamala Harris might perform as the Democratic presidential nominee, the reliably noxious Donald Trump supporter Sebastian Gorka dismissed her in the most offensive way, using the abbreviation for “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs.

“She’s a DEI hire, right? She’s a woman. She’s colored,” he said, adding sarcastically, “Therefore, she’s got to be good.”

The 20-year-old chairwoman of Hawaii Young Republicans piled on, suggesting on Instagram that Harris would be more effective in the White House kitchen than in the Oval Office. “I can see how some would view my words as misogynistic or sexist, but it’s simply a joke,” explained Rocklin Youngstrom — unaware, perhaps, that her post could be all three without being funny.

“Low IQ Kamala” is how the “Official War Room account of the 2024 Trump campaign” described Harris on the social media platform X.

And Trump rallies have long featured merch with the slogan “Joe and the Ho gotta go.”

I assume this outpouring of super-classy behavior is what led Republican leaders to warn GOP members of Congress to refrain from “overtly racist and sexist attacks” on Harris.

“This election will be about policies and not personalities,” Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters after a closed-door meeting with House Republicans on Tuesday. “This is not personal with regard to Kamala Harris, and her ethnicity or her gender have nothing to do with this whatsoever.”

Now, I’m just spitballing here, but if you have to instruct your political allies to avoid sexist and racist rhetoric against the first woman of color to head a major presidential ticket, doesn’t your party have a sexism and racism problem?

And if you are urging them to forswear only overt attacks, does that mean you are fine with more nuanced ones? Is it overtly sexist or racist when Trump calls Harris a “nasty woman,” a “radical-left lunatic” and “dumb as a rock”? Or when he constantly butchers her first name (properly pronounced “comma-la”) and claims she “shouldn’t even be allowed to run”?

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, must not have gotten Johnson’s memo. Last week, he evoked the despicable Reagan-era caricature of the Black welfare queen to describe Harris, a former San Francisco district attorney, California attorney general and United States senator.

“What the hell have you done other than collect a government check for the past 20 years?” he demanded of the vice president during his first solo campaign rally.

Former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway declared on Fox News that Harris “does not speak well. She does not work hard.”

It’s been kind of fun watching Vance’s missteps in his early outings as Trump’s vice presidential nominee, which has led to speculation that Trump must be having a serious case of buyer’s remorse.

The internet caught fire after Hillary Clinton resurfaced a 2021 clip of Vance telling Tucker Carlson that Democrats such as Harris and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.” By contrast, he said, those meeting his narrow definition of parents “who go home at night and see the face of a smiling kid, whatever their profession, I think they’re happier, I think they’re healthier, and they’re going to be better prepared to actually lead this country.”

It takes a special kind of cluelessness to simultaneously slam women who don’t have kids and cat lovers. Vance’s bizarre fetishization of parenthood — he has suggested parents should have more votes than people who don’t have kids — is already backfiring. Once his cat lady comments were out of the bag, a 2023 Time magazine “Person of the Year” cover featuring the childless Taylor Swift with her cat Benjamin Button around her neck went viral. One of Harris’ two stepchildren and their mother also rebuked Vance’s inaccurate attack on the vice president.

Even the childless Jennifer Aniston, who only occasionally dips into politics, weighed in Wednesday on Instagram. “I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of the United States,” she wrote. And, alluding to Vance’s vote against ensuring access to in vitro fertilization, she added, “Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day. I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too.”

Democratic campaign consultant Tim Hogan described the Trump-Vance campaign on CNN recently as “a testosterone ticket that I think is going to explode the gender gap in this election.”

It’s too early for polls to determine whether that is true. Harris’ flawless debut as the probable Democratic nominee is bound to give way to a misstep here or there. That’s just how campaigns work.

And the torrent of racism and sexism that has already flowed from Trump and his supporters will surely continue to inundate us between now and election day. We can be grateful at least that the race has just 100 days to go.

@robinkabcarian