Step aside, Biden-Trump — this year's veep race is the contest for the future

Don’t think about the two older white men likely to be at the top of the November presidential tickets. Focus on when they inevitably depart the stage.

That future of American politics starts Sept. 24 with two women on the vice-presidential debate stage at Lafayette College.

It is likely to be a contest between two women of color, two daughters of brown-skinned immigrants — Vice President Kamala Harris (D) and Nikki Haley (R), the former governor of South Carolina.

Already, that prospect is threatening to some people, especially on the right.

Trump-loving provocateurs on conservative social media get a laugh out of calling the former governor by her full name — "Nimarata Nikki Randhawa Haley."

Is this the new version of conservative media’s 2008 use of the full name of the Democrats' presidential candidate “Barack Hussein Obama”? In both cases, the ugly suggestion is that Obama and Haley are not aligned with the values of “real” patriots, particularly Trump-loving Republicans.

Never forget that Donald Trump built his brand as a Republican presidential contender on the racist lie that the first Black president was not born in America. He even said he sent his private investigators to Hawaii to find evidence that Obama wasn’t born there.

That ugly trait remains among some of his backers. Note........

© The Hill