Quick: What are Donald Trump’s nicknames for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz?
Bestowing cutesy nicknames on political opponents is undignified and often counterproductive, but what works and doesn’t work for ordinary politicians is not the same as what works and doesn’t work for Donald Trump. He has long had a bully’s instinct for zeroing in on a person’s weaknesses and exposing them to ridicule. His 2016 campaign was full of memorable monikers: Crooked Hillary, Lyin’ Ted, Little Marco, Low-Energy Jeb, Sleepy Ben, etc. What Trump lacked in decency and gravitas, he made up for in nerve and panache. And the pithiness and repetition of the nicknames made them irresistible enough to seep past media gatekeepers and reach the voters.
Has that gift deserted Trump? Is it another sign that the 78-year-old, who has sometimes seemed sluggish since surviving an assassination attempt, is off his game? Has he lost his edge? For the moment, after experiments with just willfully butchering her name, he seems to have settled on “Comrade Kamala.” Given that being too far left is one of Harris’s major vulnerabilities and that her feckless price-control proposals are helping make that case, maybe that’s not the worst idea. It doesn’t zing, though. I’m not sure what does — if I were workshopping ideas for this, I might try to go with “Shallow Kamala” because it gets to how she can’t go deeper than platitudes on anything. But Trump isn’t exactly the best messenger for the need for depth in policy thinking. Thus far, he just hasn’t broken through.