A pair of Republican and Democratic political insiders agreed Tuesday night that Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ latest dig at Vice President Kamala Harris — in which Sanders echoed Sen J.D. Vance’s “childless cat lady” attacks — was “unnecessary.”
Despite intense backlash to Vance’s criticism of “childless cat ladies,” Sanders told attendees of Donald Trump’s town hall in Flint, Michigan, on Tuesday, “My kids keep me humble.”
“Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble,” said Sanders, an apparent jab that Harris does not have biological children.
Harris is, however, the stepmother to two children, Cole and Ella Emhoff, through her marriage to Doug Emhoff.
CNN anchor Kairlan Collins asked Republican Kristen Soltis Anderson her reaction, noting, “We just got over ‘childless cat ladies’ gate. And the concerns you’ve heard, even from Republicans, who said it wasn’t helpful at appealing to women.”
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“You’re right,” replied Anderson, adding that Sanders’ statement was a “touching statement — up until that very last part where she tried to get a dig in on the vice president and it seems unnecessary to me.”
Anderson lamented that Sanders was potentially a “really great messenger” to women and young moms, particularly after Sanders spoke at the Republican National Convention and showed a “different side” of Trump.
“To the extent that this was the job tonight, it’s unfortunate that it’s undercut by that need to kind of twist the knife in a little bit to Vice President Harris.
Karen Finney, former communications director of the Democratic National Committee, agreed with her Republican counterpart.
“I also just think it’s unwise to continue to attack those of us who don’t have children,” she said, noting “plenty” of young women who don’t have kids who plan to vote, as well as women who are “beyond” their child-bearing years who will as well.
That doesn’t mean, she said, they don’t have people, circumstances and other things in their lives that keep them humble.
“It just seems, it was unnecessary, but also it just seems like a very dumb strategy because there are so many women you turn off with that. And really the message is you don’t get to be part of our America. You don’t get to be part of the country that we see, that we envision.”
That leads those women to look at Harris, said Finney.
Watch the clip below or at this link.
