We endorsed Kamala Harris for president shortly after she entered the race back in July — and don't regret it for a minute. The current vice president has waged a solid campaign for president, despite being held to a different standard than Republican former President Donald Trump over and over again. Trump only needs to meet the ridiculously low bar the mainstream media has set for him. Harris must never make a mistake. The mainstream media learned absolutely nothing from its coverage of the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns. "Trump gets to be lawless, Harris must be flawless," as CNN commentator Van Jones recently said. And so here we are. The race is exceedingly close, and we don't know what will happen on November 5 or in the days after.
Last week, the billionaire owners of the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times prevented their editorial boards from endorsing Harris and said the papers would not be endorsing any candidate for president this year. That was in effect an endorsement for Trump. It's not lost on us that the publications happen to be Harris' hometown papers — she lives in Washington, D.C. and regularly returns to her home in Los Angeles. And so these non-endorsement decisions gave an opening for Trump to exploit, which he did, claiming that Harris can't even get her own hometown paper to back her, in the case of the Times.
But it's clear that Amazon founder and Post owner Jeff Bezos and Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong caved. They adhered to the concept known as "anticipatory obedience." That's when individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked, for example by self-censoring, as historian Timothy Snyder has observed, noted CNN Reliable Sources Columnist Brian Stelter. And that is dangerous — just as dangerous, in our opinion, as electing a fascist like Trump to the presidency. People should not, as Snyder offers, "obey in advance."
Yet, we're not participating in anticipatory obedience (nor do we have a billionaire owner!). Instead, we will continue to criticize Trump if he's elected, because freedom of the press matters.
Make no mistake, in addition to all his racist threats against people of color and migrants, Trump will come after transgender people, and the queer community in general, if he returns to the Oval Office. Trans people in particular are already deeply concerned about what a second Trump administration might mean for them. We've all heard Trump's baseless lies about how teachers are performing surgery on kids at school to "turn them trans." That's not even possible, of course; public school teachers aren't surgeons and schools don't have operating rooms. There is no way a student would arrive home at the end of the school day having been operated on. But some people believe this crap. Or, more likely, they pretend to believe. You see, Trump's supporters will say anything, no matter how false, outlandish, or far-fetched, to demonize LGBTQ people. And that includes his incompetent vice presidential pick, Ohio Senator JD Vance, who has repeatedly been called out on his disgraceful statements (i.e., Haitian migrants eating people's pets) only to double down, knowing they are false.
On Tuesday night at the Ellipse in Washington, Harris delivered her closing argument to a crowd estimated at 75,000 people. It was the exact spot where, on January 6, 2021, Trump encouraged his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol building in an effort to prevent the 2020 election results from being certified. Harris gave a powerful speech about why she's the only candidate who can unify the country. She cast Trump as a "petty tyrant," which he is, and how he would use his presidency to exact revenge on his enemies — real or perceived. He's "consumed with grievance," she said, "unstable," and "out for unchecked power." All true, by the way.
Harris talked about what she would do for families, and to expand Medicare coverage for home health care so that seniors can stay in their own home. She vowed to govern as a pragmatist by listening to everyone, including "people who disagree with me." "I will be a president for all Americans who put country above party and self," she said.
She talked about helping the middle class by cracking down on corporate price gouging and helping to lower costs for Americans through tax credits for home buyers, parents, and caregivers. And she hammered home the point that her administration would stand forcefully for reproductive freedom. "I will fight to restore what Donald Trump and his hand-selected Supreme Court justices took away from the women of America," she said.
And while Harris has not made LGBTQ issues a centerpiece of her campaign — a disappointment, but understandable given what she's up against — she did make reference to the LGBTQ community when she noted "patriots who came before us at Selma, Seneca Falls, and Stonewall ..." when she sees the promise of America.
"I offer a different path," she said, "and I ask for your vote."
That's exactly what people need to do between now and November 5.
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