The next four weeks, culminating in the Democratic Convention, are crucial for Kamala Harris. Half-buried until now in the thankless job of veep, she has an excellent second chance to make a favorable first impression – to successfully define herself and her candidacy, trumping Team MAGA’s tsunami of smears.

The smears are already in play. In the brief passage of time since her ascent to the nomination (raising more than $100 million in roughly 48 hours), she has been denounced as “a Marxist,” as “Lucifer,” as an immoral “Jezebel,” as “a DEI hire” (because a woman of color is, by definition, not as qualified as a white person), as too lazy to work hard (you know what they say about Black people), as an “illegitimate” candidate (fact check: she was born in America), and other stuff I deem unprintable. Plus, Trump said yesterday that she’s “dumb as a rock” (this is the same guy who’s long been described by former top aides as a “dope,” a “moron,” and an “idiot”).

But, going forward, there will be relentless attempts to paint Harris as an “elitist” who’s out of touch with “real Americans.”

Indeed, the MAGAts road-tested that theme way back in November 2021, when the new veep visited Paris (uh oh, France equals effete!) – and she had the temerity to spend $500 of her own money on some cookware. Fox News’ website duly assailed her for “dropping 516 euros on pots and pans,” and the GOP’s official website huffed “While Americans are struggling to pay more than EVER for the holidays, Kamala Harris is out buying a $375 pot.” They also said she “faked” a French accent while in France (in truth she speaks some French, having once attended a French language school in Montreal).

The cookware attack drove a few MAGA news cycles, but I thought it was kinda weird, given the fact that Melania Trump spent $75,000 on a Birkin bag and $51,000 on a Dolce & Gabbana jacket, that her hubby spent $10,000 on a painting of himself (using money from one of his charities), and that we taxpayers spent $141,000,000 footing the bill for the future felon’s golf trips. Indeed, Harris would’ve had to spend $500 a month on cookware for the ensuing 260 months in order to equal the $130,000 that Trump spent to keep Stormy Daniels quiet. (And by the way, anyone who thinks that $500 for cookware is wildly lavish clearly needs to get out more. A set of stainless steel cookware at Crate and Barrel retails for around $1400. Williams Sonoma’s Le Creuset cookware lists for around $1300.)

Presumably, Trump and the MAGAts will focus on stuff more substantive than cookware. They’ll try the “California liberal” label. They’re reportedly researching her old record as a prosecutor for evidence that she might’ve been “soft on crime” – like in 2004 when she declined to seek the death penalty for a guilty defendant who killed a San Francisco cop (the guy was sentenced to life in prison). They’ll also call her “soft on migrants,” and try to tie her to recent crimes committed by migrants (although studies have found that people living here illegally are less likely than native-born Americans to have been arrested for violent crimes).

Presumably she’ll be ready for those attacks. But while MAGA Republicans scramble to define her in their inimitable fashion, she got ahead of the game yesterday with a campaign address that introduced her anew to the electorate, on her own terms – using relevant bio material to craft a kickass attack on the convicted criminal:

“Before I was elected as vice president, before I was elected a United States senator, I was the elected attorney general of California. And before that I was a courtroom prosecutor. In those roles I took on perpetrators of all kinds. Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type...Are we ready to get to work?”

And presto: A new national poll, conducted after Joe Biden stepped down, has Harris two points ahead of Trump (and four points up when RFK Jr. is in the mix). The Democratic reboot is already paying off.

For months, it felt like we were witnessing the beginning of the end. But now it’s all just beginning.