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Like a middle school bully, Donald Trump likes to assign his adversaries nicknames. Sometimes this juvenile tactic, which is an attempt to either take advantage of a person’s actual weakness (“Low-energy Jeb”) or imply some invented vulnerability (“Crooked Joe Biden”), works for him, and sometimes it falls flat.
For example, the jab at former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was surprisingly effective and seemed to throw the one-time GOP frontrunner off his game during the 2016 Republican primary.
On the other hand, calling former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) “birdbrain” never caught on, and his primary foe said it reflected poorly on the former president.
“It says more about Donald Trump that he will call the last remaining candidate ‘birdbrain’ or ‘brain dead,’” Haley said earlier this year. “It says more about Donald Trump that everybody thinks that it is funny that he acts that way. I don’t think the rest of the world thinks that is funny.”
While it is probably true that Trump’s penchant for nicknames, and the GOP’s embrace of them, reflects poorly on all of them, it also appears as though the former president can’t help himself.
And that is why he test-drove a nickname for Vice President Kamala Harris, whom he will likely face in November, at a rally in Michigan last week.
“I call her laughing Kamala. Have you seen her laughing?” Trump said. “She is crazy. You can tell a lot by a laugh. She is nuts.”
In this case, the name not only fell flat, but he is also playing with fire.
Trump is already much more unpopular among women than men.
In 2016, he lost that demographic group by 15 percent. In 2020, he managed to shrink that gap to 11 percent.
Recent polls have shown that the former president has made further inroads and was only 8 points behind Joe Biden with women voters before the president announced Sunday that he would not run for reelection.
Now, faced with a female opponent for a second time, Trump may want to tread lightly.
Perhaps with the exception of Hillary Clinton, his insults against women have fallen flat, and going after Harris in this way may not sit well with a demographic that already doesn’t like him. This is especially true in light of Trump’s history of misogyny.
He admitted to sexually assaulting women in the infamous Access Hollywood tape, was recently found guilty of sexual abuse, and has spoken disparagingly about women on numerous occasions.
This is one of the reasons why the former president performs so poorly with suburban women, which is a key demographic for him that he can’t afford to lose by too much.
It seems doubtful that any nickname for Harris, especially one based on her appearance or a characteristic like her laughter, would help in that regard.
In addition, Trump has also made some gains among Black voters. However, calling Harris names could also quickly reverse that trend.
All that being said, the former president, who is not known for his impulse control, likely won’t be able to stop himself from trying out another insult at his forthcoming rallies.
