The jabs attack a former president who has exhibited almost no boundaries in hurling his own, crude insults at Harris. Trump has questioned her racial identity and her intelligence, calling her "low IQ" and "dumb." And the posture is not entirely new for Democrats, who began sharpening their edges after Trump won in 2016 — and "we go high" didn't work.
But less than three months before the election, it marks an all-out abandonment of the old rules of political politesse. "We saw what happened when we let them define us. Now, we define their messaging about us," said Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright.
"We went from 'when they go low, we go high,' to 'when they go low, we go with the flow.' That's what's happening." Or as James Carville, the veteran Democratic strategist, put it: "After eight years of Trump, there's no discussion among anybody about going high.
" "That's a luxury we may have some time in the future, but we certainly don't have now," he said. As Trump adheres to his standard campaign playbook — including name calling and attacks on the vice president's race and gender — Harris has rarely responded directly. When asked about a litany of criticisms Trump made about her at a news conference last week, Harris told reporters: "I was too busy talking to voters, I didn't hear them.
" But her campaign and its surrogates are throwing punches. At a fundraiser in Massachusetts earlier this week, Walz went after Tommy Tuberville, the Republican senator from Alabama, saying, "I feel like one of my roles in this now is to be the anti-Tommy Tuberville, to show that football coaches are not the dumbest people." When Trump held a news conference last week at Mar-a-Lago, the Harris campaign sent out a press release that read: "Donald Trump.
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