Joseph Sabino Mistick: Sticks and stones flung at Kamala Harris

When Joe Biden announced that Sen. Kamala Harris will be his vice presidential running mate, Donald Trump and his supporters responded with a barrage of frantic personal attacks. It was as though someone had dropped the flag and said, “Let the hysteria begin!”

When you were a kid, you knew you had the blowhards on the run when all they could do was insult you and call you names. That was a sure sign they had nothing — not an intelligent response or even the brainpower to come up with one.

It is a bully tactic common on elementary school playgrounds, but anyone who ventures into the public arena now should be prepared for gutter insults. Some good potential candidates are turned away by this. But it makes others stronger.

Harris looks like someone who gets stronger. That’s a dilemma for Trump, who prefers attacks over facts. In 2016, his impressive knack for finding just the right slur or denigrating nickname helped him vanquish all of his opponents.

Within hours of the Harris announcement, Trump went with his go-to insult, calling Harris “nasty,” “extraordinarily nasty” and “very, very nasty.” He used those same words successfully in 2016, and he hopes it is still red meat that signals his supporters to have at it.

They promptly hurled insults and false accusations at Harris on social media and pro-Trump websites, saying things about her you wouldn’t want your mother to hear, things that would get you slugged in a lot of good neighborhoods.

They must enjoy attacking Harris, but it is politically baffling for an incumbent president who should be looking for more women voters. As veteran Republican consultant Frank Luntz told The Washington Post, “He’s doing poorly among women with school-age children. Attacking her will not help that deficit.”

They attacked Harris over her race, too, which is really dumb for a campaign that hopes to suppress Black voter turn-out. Right-wing commentator Dinesh D’Souza questioned whether Harris can claim she is Black because her father is from Jamaica and her late mother from India.

And pro-Trump tweeters incorrectly claimed the California-born Harris is ineligible to be president because her parents were not U.S. citizens at the time of her birth. It’s a reprise of Trump’s debunked “birther” claims about Barack Obama.

None of these personal attacks have anything to do with the real issues of this election, but Trump is having trouble finding his footing with Harris’ public record. He swings between calling her too tough on crime when she was a prosecutor and too soft on crime now.

On the same day Trump called Harris a socialist during an interview, a Politico headline declared “Left wing rankled by choice of Harris for VP.” It’s hard to pigeonhole Harris on other issues, too, and that may be the best measure of her public service.

When neither side of a political issue is thrilled with your position, and both sides are equally dismayed, it usually means you have found some middle ground that allows government to move forward, leaving the extremists behind. It means you’re a moderate.

And Joe Biden is betting America is ready for moderate.