Regarding the Aug. 12 article “'Fearless Fighter’: Biden picks Kamala Harris as running mate,” Trump's laughably lame attacks against Harris since then ("nasty," "disrespectful" "most horrible") have been typically predictable and embarrassingly ineffective. The obvious truth is that Trump despises Harris — even though, side-splittingly, he donated a total of $6,000 to her 2011 and 2013 campaigns for California attorney general — since she’s the embodiment of everything Trump hates to see (or even imagine) in women.
Both before and throughout his presidency, Trump has brazenly paraded his reprehensible, bottomless disrespect for women (nonwhite ones especially, of course) unless they are — to use the ridiculously archaic term he's tweeted several times recently — "suburban housewives." Thus, Harris is his quintessential nemesis — not only politically, but in his xenophobia- and misogyny-poisoned bloodstream — for three fundamental reasons.
First, heritage. Harris is a first-generation American with parents from predominantly nonwhite nations (India and Jamaica), like those Trump called "s--- hole countries" in 2018. At his racist core — mixed with his abject ignorance of history and pitifully simpleton mindset — that reality strikes Trump as sickeningly “un-American.”
Second, courage. Harris is an extremely intelligent, thoroughly accomplished person who's never accepted the hateful racist constraints of the rapidly fading white power structure in U.S. society — from politics, the legal system and policing to business, voting, education and housing.
Third, skills. Harris is a ferocious, stiletto-sharp prosecutor, and every semi-sentient human — even (and particularly!) Trump — knows that she'll gobble up current VP Mike Pence like a cheap corn dog at the Indiana State Fair in the vice presidential debate this October.
The Biden-Harris ticket's inclusive, hope and change message is the absolute antithesis of the regressive, repulsive fear-and-stasis message that the disastrous, dastardly duo of Trump-Pence has doled out. And it’s precisely what the U.S. — and the entire world — needs immediately.
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.