A GOP congressman called Kamala Harris a ‘DEI hire.’ Some caution it’s a sign of what’s to come

CNN
 — 

In the primary full day of her presidential marketing campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris swiftly earned sufficient delegates to safe the Democratic nomination and raised a historic $81 million.

And but, lower than 24 hours after Harris formally launched her bid for the White House, some Republicans zeroed in on a line of assault: her race.

In an interview with CNN’s Manu Raju Monday, Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett prompt President Joe Biden chosen Harris as his operating mate solely because she is Black: “One hundred percent she is a DEI hire,” he stated, referring to variety, fairness and inclusion. “Her record is abysmal at best.”

It’s a acquainted technique to political analysts who say Burchett’s feedback echo techniques Republicans used throughout the 2008 election to drive the conspiracy round Barack Obama’s birthplace, and caution that it could possibly be a sign of what’s to come alongside the already turbulent highway to Election Day.

“There’s been this constant debate about mediocrity versus meritocracy. The truth is for most of American history, White men were the only people who were ever considered, it didn’t matter if they were mediocre,” stated Democratic strategist Keith Boykin, who likened this second to the Republican “Southern Strategy” of the 1960s, the place politicians relied on racial grievance to drive White voters to the polls.

“(Meritocracy) became a part of the conversation when Black people, and women, and people of color and queer people started to enter into the workforce and society in public ways. And suddenly there became this assumption that anybody who wasn’t a straight White man didn’t deserve to be there.”

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson later addressed Burchett’s remarks throughout a information convention Tuesday, calling for the election to be about “policies, not personalities.”

“This is not personal, with regard to Kamala Harris, and her ethnicity or her gender had nothing to do with this whatsoever. This is about who can deliver for the American people and get us out of the mess that we’re in.”

The backlash to Burchett’s remarks was swift, with many noting that the suggestion Harris may in some way be unqualified or mediocre as a result of of her race traded on acquainted racist tropes about girls of coloration – particularly Black girls – within the office.

Before turning into the vp, Harris had a decades-long career as a prosecutor and was elected to be San Francisco’s district lawyer and later California’s lawyer basic. She then gained California’s 2016 US Senate race, turning into the state’s first Black and South Asian senator earlier than being elected vp in 2020.

But Harris’ expertise doesn’t seem to matter to those that would reasonably depend on identification politics to sway voters, stated Boykin, co-founder of the National Black Justice Coalition and creator of the ebook “Why Does Everything Have to Be About Race?”

“(Obama) was a United States senator, a former state senator and a constitutional scholar and a best-selling author and they claimed he wasn’t qualified. But then they picked Donald Trump, who had no experience in government, and they don’t even say anything about his qualifications,” Boykin stated.

“Kamala Harris, who was a former district attorney, former attorney general, former United States senator and current vice president is a ‘DEI hire’ in their minds, just because she’s a Black woman,” he stated. “I mean, you couldn’t get more transparent than that.”

Burchett’s feedback “have turned the value of diversity into a slur,” Bakari Sellers, a former South Carolina Democratic state consultant and a CNN political commentator, advised CNN’s Jim Acosta.

“I’m not sure people are really prepared to see what this campaign is going to be and the depths of hell that many Republicans are going to go to, to sully the spirit and soul of Kamala Harris, not knowing that she’s the fighter that she is.”

Continued assaults on Harris’ race or gender may in the end backfire towards Republicans, in accordance to Glynda Carr, president of Higher Heights for America, a political group devoted to participating Black girls in politics.

In the 72 hours since Biden endorsed Kamala Harris to substitute him on the highest of the Democratic ticket, Black ladies and men throughout the nation have rallied round her candidacy.

Tens of hundreds of Black Americans joined Zoom calls Sunday and Monday to unite across the marketing campaign to #winwithBlackgirls and #winwithBlackmales. Collectively, the calls raised greater than $2.8 million {dollars} for Harris, in accordance to organizers.

Burchett’s remarks are “energizing the very voters that Vice President Kamala Harris needs to win,” Carr stated.

“She is a woman who has run and won and governed on every level of government and is credentialed from her academic background to her lived experiences. So, continue to push that rhetoric and see how women, women of color, and Black women react … and how we will organize against that very destructive and false narrative.”

Ultimately, Boykin stated, Harris’ report speaks for itself and any suggestion that she’s a “DEI hire” is a distraction.

“It’s easy to point the finger at immigrants, at Black people, at women … or anybody who is different instead of dealing with the issues that they’re elected to solve,” Boykin stated.

“How does attacking Kamala Harris as a ‘DEI hire’ help to create a single job? How does it tackle inflation? … It’s this divide and conquer mentality that they are going to use to prevent us from coming together.”

Harris appeared undeterred by the remarks throughout her first presidential marketing campaign rally Tuesday afternoon in Milwaukee. Instead, as she reintroduced herself to the nation for the primary time because the Democratic Party’s presumptive 2024 presidential nominee, the vp touted her expertise as each a prosecutor and a politician.

“In those roles I took on perpetrators of all kinds, predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So, hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type,” Harris stated to a swell of cheers.

“And in this campaign, I promise you I will proudly put my record against his any day of the week.”