Welcome to Birtherism 2.0.  Or Birtherism 2020.

Less than 24 hours after presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden announced Kamala Harris would be his running mate on the 2020 ticket, a conservative commentator writing for newsweek.com reignited the debunked birtherism argument.

The “argument” the author is trying to make is that Harris, whose mother was from India and father was from Jamaica, isn’t a “natural born citizen”–even though she herself was born in California and granted American citizenship at birth–because her parents weren’t citizens, and therefore she is ineligible to be Vice President.

Now remember:  John C. Eastman is supposedly a law school professor at the Chapman University School of Law in Orange County, California.  He’s also a fellow at the Claremont Institute, a conservative “think tank” (which is obviously an oxymoron). 

This, of course, is a variation of birtherism targeting Barack Obama, except more insidious.  Obama’s mother was born in the United States, and conservatives twisted themselves into pretzels trying to disprove his citizenship–and thereby invalidate his presidency.  This includes Donald Trump, who apparently still has a team of lawyers in Hawaii desperately hunting for Obama’s real birth certificate… which he should have in, ah, two weeks.

But now, Eastman brings into play the idea that people who were born in the US, regardless of the nationalities of their parents, aren’t actually US citizens even though the 14th Amendment says so… and court cases verify.

This is a long-standing nationalist trope:  the 14th Amendment only applies to children of American citizens.  It’s wrong, of course–it was debated and argued in courts during the Obama Administration–but it persists, and it will be so long as children of immigrants have birthright citizenship.

But it goes to show that the conservative playbook doesn’t change.  The names change to smear the innocent.