Photo via The White House - whitehouse.gov
Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris
Just like that, we’ve got a whole new presidential race. For every American this year who longed for a more exciting presidential election than a rematch between the same two old White guys, we’re suddenly in the middle of a great one that could reshape American history.
Responding to voter concerns within his party that his age could increase the possibility of the criminally indicted Donald Trump regaining power to resume his destruction of democracy, President Biden abruptly ended his reelection campaign and endorsed his Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidency.
The danger to democracy from Trump was thrown into stark relief by Milwaukee’s Republican convention where Trump chose his vice president, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, a toxic White male extremist who met the most important requirement for anyone serving as Trump’s vice president.
Vance publicly declared if he’d been Trump’s vice president on Jan. 6, 2021, he would have done what Vice President Mike Pence refused to do. He would have violated the Constitution to throw out the certified electoral votes Biden won in seven states including Wisconsin to accept the “fake electors” fraudulently submitted by Trump Republicans in those states to overturn President Biden’s election.
Trump’s Criminal Accomplices
Trump has made it clear that if he’s elected to a second term, he intends to surround himself with criminal accomplices just like Vance. Trump already has created a six-vote Republican-appointed supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court ready to step in to sabotage Trump’s prosecution for committing presidential crimes.
It's the perfect time for Vice President Harris to showcase her skills as California’s attorney general prosecuting felons like Trump. She was already one of the best campaigners for the Biden-Harris ticket in the swing states that will decide the presidential election.
Harris also attracts large crowds on college campuses talking about the issues young voters care about most—abortion rights, voting rights and ending the deadly humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
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If Trump shows up for the next presidential debate to face Harris as the Democratic presidential candidate, he’ll know he’s been in a debate. It’s a great time for a woman of color to face down Trump right after Republicans’ macho Christian White Nationalist convention with Hulk Hogan tearing his shirt off spewing threats.
After Trump’s openly racist and misogynist campaign defeated Hillary Clinton, everyone wondered whether a female candidate could ever be elected president. Now Harris has an opportunity to defeat the double haters.
Democrats Come Together
Democrats are already coming together quickly behind Harris’s candidacy. The national media that ignored her for years will now be watching her every move. That’s good because they’re about to find out just how passionate and effective she’s become on the most important issues in the election—restoring equal rights for all Americans.
Trump and Vance openly attack diversity, inclusion and equality in our democracy. Although Trump forbid convention delegates from saying the A-word on television, his ban on mentioning a national abortion ban will expire the moment Republicans regain control of both houses of Congress to pass one.
Vance is beyond extreme on abortion. He supports a national ban without exceptions for rape or incest, opposes public access to safe and effective abortion pills and supports laws tracking women leaving states banning abortion so they can be prosecuted if they receive a legal abortion in another state. When Vance told the convention he would never forget where he came from, he already had. When Ohio voters amended their state constitution last year to protect abortion rights, Vance called it “a gut punch.” That was an obscene response after the ugly Ohio case that prompted the vote. That was the 10-year-old rape victim who was forced to travel to Indianapolis for an abortion to escape Ohio’s extreme abortion ban.
Women and their families who want to restore the Constitutional rights and religious freedom they had for a half-century in our democracy to make their own decisions about their lives weren’t the only Americans excluded from the Republican convention last week.
The entire convention was a freak show put together for enjoyment of one man watching on camera from his private box as Republican opponents who previously warned that he was a deranged threat to democracy took turns groveling before him to be accepted back into his party.
Most of the wasted lies about Biden’s deteriorating mental capabilities more appropriately apply directly to Trump now, who babbles nonsensically in public about shark attacks and appears to believe Hannibal Lecter was a real person.
There’s one dynamic new candidate in the race and she’s running on Biden’s historic record as president bringing America back from Trump’s disastrous mishandling of the pandemic that killed well over one million Americans and shut down the U.S. economy. Biden’s successful economic recovery has America ready to start reducing interest rates. He’s the bridge to a new generation of American leadership for democracy and the world.
