Radical or moderate? Trump paints Democratic ticket as both

WASHINGTON (AP) — An overzealous prosecutor trying to hide her crime-fighting past — who is also weak on crime. The most radical pick for vice president ever — but too moderate to energize the progressive Democratic base.

President Donald Trump's campaign is struggling to define Sen. Kamala Harris, Democrat Joe Biden's newly announced running mate. Biden's decision to choose Harris — who ran for president last year in the same pragmatic vein as Biden did and is now the first Black woman to compete on a major party’s presidential ticket — has further complicated the Trump campaign's crude efforts to depict Biden as out of step with the country as Trump continues to lag in the polls.

Less than 90 days out from Election Day, Trump's team faces a pivotal choice in how it tries to define the Democratic ticket, as it looks to reset its strategy and recover from a coronavirus-induced summer slump.

Do they attempt to fire up their own base and scare off moderates by painting Biden and Harris as radical socialists? Or do they aim to depress enthusiasm among the Democratic base by arguing Biden and Harris are opportunistic and insufficiently liberal?

Biden and Harris can't be both. But that hasn't stopped Trump's team from trying to make the incongruous portrayals stick.

“Clearly, Phony Kamala will abandon her own morals, as well as try to bury her record as a prosecutor, in order to appease the anti-police extremists controlling the Democrat Party,” senior campaign adviser Katrina Pierson said in the Trump's campaign's first statement responding to the news.

As Trump's team and his allies tried to present Harris as the “most radical running mate ever,” in the words of Fox News host Sean Hannity, the Republican National Committee sought to frame her as insufficiently liberal, gleefully declaring:...