Not one of us: Trump uses old tactic to sow suspicion about Harris

She is not one of us.

When former President Donald Trump challenged Vice President Kamala Harris’ racial identity at a public forum Wednesday — and again on social media the next day — that was the message at the core of his remarks.

It is a tactic that has long been part of the underside of American politics: presenting an opponent as somehow “other” or “not one of us” — someone who cannot be trusted or truly known.

But while this has been a recurrent theme in American campaigns for at least a century, Trump has taken it to a new level, historians and analysts said. What has often been a subtext or a whisper campaign driven by surrogates is, in Trump’s hands, a central message of his campaign — projected on screens at a rally, promoted on social media and reinforced by his running mate.

Trump has personally led the effort, explicitly falsifying the biography of his opponent and invoking race and gender in ways no modern major-party leader has done before. Even as a noncandidate in the 2008 election, he deployed such tactics against Barack Obama, demanding to see Obama’s birth certificate and claiming that Obama — who went on to be the nation’s first Black president and was born in Hawaii — was not born in this country.

“Whenever the United States is poised to break a political glass ceiling, we see an intensification of othering in our politics,” said Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. “What makes Trump a singularly poisonous political player is that the top of the ticket is overtly engaging in othering against his political opponent.”

Over decades, the tactic of othering has been wielded against candidates with various backgrounds, characteristics and traits, among them race, ethnicity, gender, economic class and religion — all in the service of making them seem alien to voters. And it has often been effective. In 1928, Republican opponents seized on the fact that Al Smith, the Democratic candidate for president, was a Roman Catholic, suggesting that he would therefore be beholden to the pope.

And it has long been a strain of politics in New York City, where Trump spent many of the formative years of his life. In 1989, Rudy Giuliani, who went on to become a close ally of Trump, ran against David Dinkins, who was Black. One of Giuliani’s top campaign surrogates, comedian Jackie Mason, described Dinkins, who would defeat Giuliani, with a pejorative term used against Black people.

In the case of Harris, Trump for weeks had mispronounced Harris’ first name, Kamala, which is a common name in India, and he made fun of her laugh. On Wednesday, during an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, he said he had only recently realized that she identified as Black, asserting — falsely — that she had abruptly changed her identity.

“She was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person,” he said before the audience of journalists. Harris’ father was Black and an immigrant from Jamaica, and her mother emigrated from India; throughout her career in law and politics, Harris has identified as Black.

Trump returned to the theme Thursday on his social media platform, Truth Social, posting a photograph of Harris with members of the Indian side of her family. “Your warmth, friendship, and love of your Indian Heritage are very much appreciated,” he wrote.

This is not Trump’s only line of attack: He has sought to draw distinctions from her as well on some of the critical issues of today, in particular immigration and the economy.

It is, to say the least, an open question whether Trump’s othering of Harris might chase voters away from her or bring any to his camp. More than 12% of Americans identify as multiracial.

Obama was elected president, despite Trump’s attempt to question his citizenship. “I think it will work less,” said Howard Wolfson, a former senior adviser to Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, who lost the presidential election to Trump in 2016. “The country is different. But given the politics he grew up in, it’s not surprising that it’s Trump’s first instinct.”

Voting in America has often been tribal, especially in the 20th century as the country became home to more immigrant groups that, as they rose in influence and size, sought to play a bigger role in society and politics.

Voters want political leaders who understand them and with whom they can identify. Trump clearly understands this and, in some ways, has sought to exploit it.

In 2012, Obama’s campaign set out to portray Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger, as an elite business executive whose company thrived at the expense of its employees. One advertisement, presenting Romney as a mysterious millionaire, questioned why he would not release his tax returns. “What is Mr. Romney hiding?” it asked.

“It would show that on the millions of dollars in income he enjoys each year, Mitt Romney pays a lower tax rate than teachers, firefighters, police officers or other middle-class wage earners,” said Melanie Roussell, the press secretary of the Democratic National Committee, which produced the advertisement.

Candidates from both parties often try to keep a distance from this kind of tactic because it is polarizing and risks a backlash. In 2008, John McCain, the Republican candidate running against Obama, distanced himself from the birtherism claims about Obama’s nationality that percolated among voters across the country.

“I can’t trust Obama,” a woman said to McCain at a rally in Lakeville, Minnesota, a month before Election Day in 2008. “He’s an Arab.”

McCain shook his head. “No ma’am,” he said. “He’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues that is what this campaign is all about.”

Even Abraham Lincoln was the object of unfounded rumors that he had Black ancestors, often promoted by segregationist Southern newspapers.

But it is fair to say that no presidential nominee in the nation’s history has embraced this tactic so frontally and exuberantly as Trump has. He turned up the volume on these strategies as his campaign witnessed the enthusiastic response to the arrival of Harris, at least among Democrats.

“It’s easier to play up the fears, the angst and the resentments that people have about others — aspects of individuals’ lives that they don’t like — than actually confront real issues,” said Michael Steele, the former head of the Republican National Committee.

“Trump has perfected it,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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