It's Official!

Taylor Swift has spoken. A few minutes after the presidential debate last week. the most famous diva of our time, the headliner of The Eras Tour, posted her endorsement of Harris for President. It included a picture of herself with a cat – The Childless Cat Lady. Thankfully, her tour doesn’t take her to Springfield, Ohio. J.D. Vance says cats and dogs don’t stand a chance in that town. Anyway, it’s official now. The candidates can begin the campaign.

Does Swift’s endorsement really have an effect on the electorate? That depends to whom you speak. She has 284 million followers on X. Four hundred thousand responded positively within one hour of her posting. The November vote count will tell us.

The debate was a runaway win for Harris, but Trump thought it was his best debate. One wonders if it will have any effect on the final vote count. It is possible both candidates made some inroads with the undecided voters of the country, although only a little movement, based on network interviews just after the debate. So why bother?

The 2020 election was decided by less than one hundred thousand votes. Some pundits suggest that it will be even closer this year. That means the election comes down to a few precincts in a few states. All of the polls are within the margin of error.

Pope Francis said recently that we should do two things – vote and vote for the candidate we think is the lesser of two evils. That doesn’t give a lot of people a lot of comfort. He spoke from the point of view of the leader of the world’s largest Christian denomination and as an Argentinian, which gives him a different perspective on U.S. politics. So what are we to do?

Most voters believe they have an easy decision; nearly fifty percent want Trump again and nearly fifty percent want Harris. Half of the voters will be disappointed with the results. The candidates represent two different views of America. One wants to go back to a time when rural life and conservative values permeated the nation; the other wants to move forward to a more perfect union. One has been remarkably successful as the stormtrooper for those who consider themselves the forgotten, the passed-over, the regular folks. The other is seen as the representative of the coastal elites. Two things are true about those thoughts: only 17 percent of the U.S. population live in non-urban areas so their needs are often forgotten or unrecognized by the 50 percent who live within fifty miles of the coasts and/or the 83 percent who live in urban areas.

So it is going to be a close call. The emotions are high. Because we are a democracy we are subjected to contrary views every day, and that is ok. What I don’t like is the obvious way in which many in the Republican Party are buying into the lies spewed by many of the former president’s surrogates and the conspiracy theories that abound. Millions are convinced that undocumented immigrants are voting in big numbers and they support new laws to keep them from voting. It is illegal in every state for a non-citizen to vote and there is no evidence of undocumented immigrants voting. Some states are creating new procedures for reviewing all votes before the results are certified based on lies about fake votes and illegal voters. It goes on.

The election should be about the character of the candidates. Trump doesn’t meet the high bar required of a president. He didn’t the first time and he doesn’t now. Did I mention that he was a convicted felon awaiting sentencing and trial for another 30-plus felony indictments?

The election should be about policies and programs. Trump’s former staff, hundreds of them, helped the Heritage Fund write Project 2025, a 900-page plan to tear down our democracy and replace it with a strong autocratic form of government. Trump has demonstrated his willingness to favor the rich over the poor in tax codes and safety-net programs. He doesn’t measure up to the needs of the nation.

The election should be about the Constitution. Trump said he would ignore the sacred document on his first day in office. He has said that he would use the military to quell protests, which is against the law. He has demonstrated that he is unwilling to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic. He showed that on January 6, 2020. He demonstrated that by his friendship with the dictators of North Korea, Russia, and Hungary to name a few, all known enemies of America or its institutions. He hasn’t met the high bar required of a president.

Kamala Harris has demonstrated a willingness to support the Constitution, to fight for the middle class, to disrupt our trek to oligarchy, and protect our civil rights. She may not be the perfect candidate but she seems to be honest and focused on more than the upper one percent of the population.

What are we to do?

First, we must vote. That is what a democracy is all about. In his book On Tyranny, Yale professor Timothy Snyder references a hero in a David Lodge novel who says that you don’t know when you make love for the last time, that you are making love for the last time. Voting is like that. Consider the Germans who elected an autocratic government who then started WW II. Consider the Czechs and Slovaks elected an autocratic Tito, or the Russians who continued to elect an autocratic leader. Even if we are unhappy with our current state of affairs, we must vote to protect our democracy, to prevent the destruction of our institutions. We may not all agree on how to do those things, but we know that those who don’t vote allow bad leaders to win.

But, we have a choice. If we want to keep  America great, if we want to preserve our democracy, if we want to write a new chapter for our country, and if we want to ensure that it is not the last vote, or the next to the last vote, the choice seems easy to make. Vote for Harris.

 

We Have A Choice

 The conventions are over! We have the candidates. In early November we should know who won the election for the most important job in the world. How so? The President of the U.S.A. is the leader of the first democratic country in the world, the most powerful country in the world, and the most relied upon country to help keep the world peace.

The first duty a President assumes, no matter the political party is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. That is the sacred oath that they take. They don’t take an oath to a god, they don’t take an oath to support a person, but they do take an oath to support the Constitution. It is their job to protect our democracy and in this age to ensure that a democratic form of government delivers for the people.

The nationalist populism movement is afoot across the globe and many in the U.S. have been sucked into its beliefs. Populism contains two primary claims: “True people” are locked into conflict with outsiders, including establishment elites, and nothing should constrain the will of the “true” people.[i] Nationalist movements generally fall into three groups: anti-establishment, socio-economic, and cultural. We see the Nationalism movement led by Viktor Orban in Hungary, Recep Erdogan in Türkiye, Donald Trump’s MAGA movement in the U.S., and Evo Morales in Bolivia, to name a few. Just last June, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party won enough seats in the Parliament to make a coalition government almost impossible. On September 1, the far-right Alternative Fur Deutschland Party won an election in the eastern states, the first time since the Nazis were ousted at the end of WWII. Nationalist Populism is a direct confrontation with our Constitution. But, because it is a worldwide movement and because MAGA has so many adherents in the U.S., we easily could lose our democracy and be subjected to an authoritarian administration that we elected, just as the Germans did in the 1930s. We expect our president to push back on these movements.

The second job of the President is to preserve and defend our alliances designed to keep the world at peace, and to fight against attempts of one country to invade others.

After World War II the U.S. led an effort to create the United Nations and NATO. Both were charged with keeping the world at peace and forming a new world order that included the notion that one country should not invade another. That world order was held until February 2014 when Russia invaded the Crimea. Again, in February of 2022, they pushed troops inland attempting to occupy the rest of Ukraine. Two years later they still hold only a small part of the country. Ukraine is receiving aid from most of the NATO countries even though it is not yet a member because if Ukraine falls, the rest of Europe is at risk of invasion. Article 5 of the NATO Charter states that if one country is invaded all of the other members will come to their aid. They came to the aid of the U.S. on 9/11.

The third job of the President is to uplift the people of the country, to be the adult in the room. They are asked to continue to build a more perfect union. They do that by supporting the institutions that weld the citizenry, which make us who we are. They uplift people by treating them with respect, by providing for the common good. And yet, even today we hear a candidate tout the axioms of the 1920s Klan boast that whites are “of this superior blood”… “upon whom depends the future of civilization.”[ii]

We are supposed to be that shining city on the hill, the beacon that beckons others, the glow from our torch invites even the wretched refuse of teeming shores[iii] to join our trek to a unified set of values. Those whom we welcome do not poison the blood of those currently living here.

If the sacred oath calls for the president to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, they need to do that. They can’t boast that they will be a dictator on their first day in office. They can’t ignore the non-political status of the Department of Justice; they can’t say they will use the armed forces to control the people who disagree with them or march in opposition to a government mandate. If they do any of those things they disqualify themselves from the position.

The U.S. is a traditional leader of the free world. Our treaties, pacts, and behaviors are designed to create a free world order where each nation respects the sovereignty of the other. A president should not say that they will ignore those institutions and encourage an enemy nation to do ”whatever the hell you want” to our allies. A person who would do that is not qualified to be president.

The nation's leader is responsible for at least trying to ensure that we are a united nation rather than trying to separate people, make them unhappy with others, heap scorn on civil servants, and try to upset the peaceful transfer of power and other institutional upheavals. If they can’t encourage us to experience the “joy that comes in the morning,[iv] why bother to run for the job.

We can stipulate that the price of groceries is too high and that gas prices are too high and that that makes making ends meet each month a difficult task. But those strains pale in comparison to what is at stake in this year’s election.

The Greeks taught us centuries ago to reach deep into the soul of our leaders. Socrates would be appalled by the current state of affairs. No candidate is a perfect choice for president, so we have to decide by comparing what we see deep down in the candidates.

One candidate is a convicted felon, found guilty of sexual abuse, accused of trying to overthrow the government, falsifying business and personal information to secure loans as well as interfering with vote counting in the last presidential election. And yet, he has tens of millions of people who support his candidacy. Millions of people are buying into the Populism charade plan, a reflection of the gap in perceived equal treatment in this country, distrust of the “establishment” and dislike of immigrants and minorities. They have heard the same lies so often that they believe them. Nearly half the country is willing to vote against our democratic values and accept the torches of the far-right to better themselves. They are willing to vote for a man who could not pass the background check for a minimum-wage job.

National Populism flies in the face of everything American. We have seen its destructive power that nearly wiped out the “greatest generation.” We have seen how it tore our nation apart years ago in the time of the Robber Barons and in the McCarthy era. We have never in our history had a serious candidate for president who was awaiting sentencing for felonies and awaiting trial for more offenses against our government. 

We have a choice.

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[i] Populists in power around the world, Institute for Global Insights, 11/17/2018

[ii]The Klan of Yesterday and of Today – Proceedings of the Second Imperial Klonvocation Held at Kansas City Missouri 1924, Hiram Wesley Evans

[iii] “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Poem on Statue of Liberty – Emma Lazarus, 1885

[iv] Psalm 35.5