As Kamala Harris rapidly rose to the top of the Democratic presidential field this week, a clear argument emerged from her supporters.

“I have known Kamala Harris for a long time,” wrote Hillary Clinton, the last woman to hold the office. “This excellent prosecutor will build a case against convicted felon Donald Trump.”

Right-wing Republicans have been eager to attack Harris from a very different angle, with former President Donald Trump, known for giving his rivals vulgar nicknames, leading the way.

Trump wrote that Harris was “stupid as a rock” and an “insignificant” vice president, called her “Kamala the Liar” and said she had demonstrated particular “incompetence” as President Biden's “appointed 'border czar,'” without actually mentioning Harris by name.

In part, these opposing rhetoric reflects the traditional American political tactics of undermining one another, but it also reflects the unique nature of an unprecedented race between the first woman of color to run for office on a major party ticket and the first convicted felon to do so.

Ms. Harris’s long career as a prosecutor provides a perfect contrast to Mr. Trump and the Democrats, whose lives in recent years have been marked by legal troubles. As a Black, South Asian woman, Ms. Harris also faced attacks that other American women of color were quick to recognize: attacks that questioned her basic intelligence and seriousness, despite her rise to the pinnacle of American public life.

“There are obviously going to be some harsh attacks on Harris and on black women watching her campaign,” said Keneshia Grant, an associate professor of political science at Howard University and author of “The Great Migration and the Democrats: Black Voters and the Realignment of American Politics in the 20th Century.”

Grant said American politics has reached a point where politicians, particularly those on the right, are “rewarded for speaking to their opponents in a way that is perceived as clear, direct and aggressive.”

And some insults will come through coded language — so-called dog whistles — that are understood by a receptive base but hardly understood by others.Meanwhile, Trump and other Republicans have already demonstrated a willingness to openly use racist and sexist tropes, she said.

“It sounds like a 'dog whistle' to some, but we hear it loud and clear,” Grant said. “We know what's going on.”

“A very sharp mind”

People who work with Harris and support her candidacy said Trump's claim that she is “stupid” is absurd, as evidenced by her long career as a prosecutor and successful politician.

“In many ways, she's the quintessential lawyer. She's very methodical and analytical,” said a former longtime aide to Harris, a lawyer who spoke candidly about her on the condition of anonymity.

The aide shared this anecdote: Prior to the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Brett M. Kavanaugh, then Senator Harris, who was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, held a mock hearing with her aides to prepare questions for the conservative judge.

At one point, the team was “trying to think of the most effective way to make the point about a woman's right to choose and how it's unfair that we have laws that dictate what a woman can do with her body,” the aide said. They tossed around various ideas, but Harris stopped them with a simple question.

“What law is there that forces people to do something with their own bodies that they don't want to do?”

“Nobody had any idea,” the aide said, echoing Kavanaugh's comments. Stuck for an answer At a public hearing.

The aide said the exchange perfectly illustrated Harris' “sharp legal mind” and “political savvy.”

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), a former federal prosecutor who rose to national prominence in 2020 when he led the House impeachment of President Trump, said the former president's aggressive comments about Ms. Harris' intelligence show he is, in fact, concerned about her intelligence – as evidenced by his efforts to move the next debate from ABC to the friendlier forum of Fox News.

“There's no doubt that Mr. Trump is deeply concerned about the next debate, and for good reason,” Schiff said. “He should be concerned about it.”

Biden was criticized for not calling out Republican lies in the last debate, but Harris can use her “sharp thinking” to counter Biden. [Trump] “If he lies about this and that during the debate, that becomes a problem,” Schiff said.

“She's very agile and she cross-examines very tough,” he said.

Harris hasn't always played up her past as a prosecutor, in part because it's hindered her ability to win progressive votes, but she's always understood it to be an effective message in her direct confrontation with Trump, as evidenced by her ads before the 2020 presidential primary that positioned her as the “anti-Trump” ally.

“I've prosecuted sex offenders, Trump being one of them,” Harris said, referencing a clip from the infamous “Access Hollywood” audiotape in which she spoke about grabbing unsuspecting women's “privates.”

Since then, Trump's troubles have only grown. He was found guilty in a civil trial of sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll and of artificially inflating his net worth to secure a better deal. He was also convicted in New York on 34 felony counts in a criminal case involving payments to porn actresses to keep them from leaking sex stories, which he denies.

As Harris' nomination became more and more inevitable this week, Grant said a friend shared an old Harris ad with him. The Howard University professor was immediately struck by how modern the ad felt. Many others online echoed the sentiment. And it's clear that Harris and her campaign realize the message remains relevant.

Harris spoke of today's campaign in much the same way on Tuesday, during her first rally since securing the number of delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination on Monday.

“I've fought criminals of all kinds. Predators who abuse women. Scammers who deceive consumers. Con artists who break the rules for their own personal gain,” she said. “So listen to what I'm saying: I know types like Donald Trump.”

“These metaphors are embedded.”

Trump is not the only one who thinks Harris is unfit to be president.

Steve Cooley, a Republican who was three-time district attorney in liberal Los Angeles County, lost to Harris in a fierce 2010 race for state attorney general and remains no supporter of her.

Cooley said Harris was a “generally incompetent” prosecutor when she began her career in Alameda County, one of the “weakest” lead prosecutors in the state while district attorney in San Francisco, and an unprincipled state attorney general who “didn't follow the law” when it didn't suit her or her political ambitions.

He particularly criticized Ms Harris' decision, as San Francisco district attorney, not to seek the death penalty for a man accused of killing police officer Isaac Espinoza in 2004, a case that Mr Cooley also highlighted when he ran against Ms Harris for attorney general.

Cooley suggested that Harris was following in the footsteps of Willie Brown, a prominent San Francisco politician who served as speaker of the California Assembly in the 1990s, and that when she took over the San Francisco DA's office, Harris was so ignorant of prosecutorial rules that she simply copied the guidelines of the Los Angeles DA's office, such as the rules on disclosing past misconduct by police officers who take the stand in criminal cases.

“As a politician, I have to commend her. She seems to be in the right place at the right time and is working hard to advance her political career,” Cooley said. But as a prosecutor and leader, he said she “lacked the critical thinking skills.”

Cooley called Harris a “DEI candidate,” meaning diversity, equity and inclusion, and suggested that she was successful because she received special treatment as a woman of color. “There are probably millions of people in the United States who are qualified to be president,” she said.

As these allegations spread on the right, Republican leaders on Tuesday scolded conservative lawmakers, including those in Congress, for launching such attacks against Harris.

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican who represents the Bakersfield area, said on “Meet the Press Now” that his former colleagues' use of the acronym “DEI” was “silly and absurd.”

“I'm against DEI, but she's the vice president of the United States and a former United States senator. For senators to say that, their own instincts are wrong,” McCarthy said.

At a recent campaign rally, Trump's running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, suggested that Harris had accomplished little in her term as vice president, an idea that clearly resonated with the audience.

“What on earth did you do besides collect checks?” he told Harris.

Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University, said Vance's comments appealed to stereotypes about women and women of color.

“This is clearly a reference to the 'welfare queen' trope. It's ridiculous,” Gillespie said.

But Vance's comments, and other criticisms levelled at Harris from the right – that she is insincere judging by her laugh and “laughing out loud”; that she is incompetent despite having made a lot of progress in a competitive field; and that she is somehow subsidized or pandering to the diversity she represents – are not surprising, Gillespie said.

“These tropes are so ingrained in American life and culture that we are influenced by them and have internalized some of them,” she said. Trump's repeated use of these criticisms creates a “permission structure” for others to do the same, she said.

Mr Gillespie said such claims were “land mines that Ms Harris must avoid” if she hopes to win, and that because the top Democratic candidate is the vice president, a first lady like Michelle Obama's “you go low, we go high” approach won't be enough, he said.

Harris and her surrogates will have to find a way to respond to such attacks on her in a “constructive manner” that will prove meaningful and unfounded and will rally Harris' supporters to their cause.

Howard University's Grant said Harris has already benefited from black women rushing to endorse her, in part to ensure she won't be removed from her own party's nomination on the basis of similar claims now being made from the right.

“It was painful for me, and I think for other Black women, to see her name come up as third or fourth in the public discussion of who should be the Democratic nominee,” Grant said. “We know firsthand what it means to be on the front lines working hard and doing a great job, only to be overlooked when it comes time to nominate someone to be the face of that job.”

Grant said the path forward is clear now that Democrats have endorsed Harris. Still, she said, women of color know they'll hold Harris to a higher standard than Trump: They expect her to strike the perfect balance between aggressiveness and calm, to respond to harsh attacks with “punchy, but light” retorts.

“She has to look like Kamala was questioning Brett Kavanaugh,” Grant said of Harris's upcoming challenge: “Thoughtful, smart, thorough, forthright, but without going too far.”

Times reporter Seema Mehta contributed to this report.