"She's dangerous": GOP insiders fear Harris could be the next Obama

“I think she’s dangerous, and probably maybe the most dangerous, from our view,” a veteran Republican political consultant told me this month. “She theoretically would do very well with African American turnout and end up being positioned as a Vienna Soccer Mom.” In case you’re wondering, that’s Vienna, Virginia, an upscale bedroom community just west of Washington, D.C., that has accelerated its drift from the Republican orbit since a certain former reality-television star secured the Republican nomination three years ago. Suburbs just like it in critical battlegrounds could hand the White House back to the Democratic Party in 2020…

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Not everyone buys the idea that Harris is the next Obama, superficial similarities aside. “She’s overrated,” says a Republican grandee who still has battle scars from run-ins with the 44th president. “Obama had authenticity. She doesn’t.” Another Republican strategist who doesn’t buy the the hype called Harris “terrible” and “a disaster.”

But some dialed-in Republicans described Harris as a serious threat. “I have long been most concerned about Harris. I think she has an appeal to the Scottsdale soccer mom who is a registered Republican. Between her appeal and Trump’s women problems, she has probably already won those voters,” said an experienced Republican consultant in Arizona, an emerging battleground that sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 2018 for the first time in a generation and is ground zero for suburban discontent with Trump. “But I also think she does better amongst Independents who generally split ideologically in Arizona,” this GOP insider added. “Independents are just sick of everything, and her no-nonsense approach would have appeal broadly, and even to some white Independent and GOP men. She doesn’t have the Biden wimp factor, and that’s probably important in a place like Arizona.”

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