Despite editorializing a few weeks ago about moving beyond President Joe Biden's bad night at his debate last month with former President Donald Trump, it became clear to us that the changes Biden was making — national TV interviews, the NATO news conference — weren't working. Democratic political leaders and donors grew increasingly concerned about his ability to seek reelection. Sure, his age had a lot to do with it. But recall that many ordinary voters have long thought Biden, 81, and Trump, 78, were both too old and they didn't want a rematch of the 2020 election. Trump accepted the Republican Party's nomination for a third time at its convention last week. Biden was stuck in isolation at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware with COVID. We speculate that the time away from the White House gave Biden time to consider the state of the presidential race.
What Biden did last Sunday — bowing out of his reelection campaign and endorsing his vice president, Kamala Harris, to be the Democratic nominee — was utter selflessness that will go down in history. Biden has served with distinction. His commitment to the LGBTQ community has been steadfast — and the community has benefitted from it since he took office. But it was time to pass the torch. And he should be commended for recognizing that.
Harris quickly announced that she's running for president and reportedly spent much of Sunday calling leaders asking for — and receiving — their support.
The sheer excitement generated by these developments has been breathtaking. We know the race will be tough — Harris' favorability rating is on par with Biden's — but Democrats across the country have suddenly been energized in a way that was missing previously. Harris has raised over $100 million dollars since Sunday, an extraordinary sum, big donors are back on board, and people are rallying to her side. Biden's decision to endorse her squelched any possibility of a contested Democratic convention next month in Chicago, which could have gotten messy and divisive. The speed with which elected Democrats raced to support Harris quickly put that idea to rest. At 59, Harris also immediately makes Trump the oldest presidential nominee in history — and he doesn't like that at all.
The Republicans started attacking her during their convention, as they, too, had heard the complaints from Democrats about Biden. One of the most obvious — and racist — was deliberately mispronouncing her name. Republican New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu was asked about it by reporter Eugene Daniels and denied it was a tactic — before deliberately mispronouncing her name again. (It's "COM-mah-la," which sounds like comma-la, not "Camel-a," "Kuh-MAHL-a," or "Kuh-MEL-a," all of which was heard at the GOP convention.)
Harris' support for the LGBTQ community is real and deep. As state attorney general, she led the effort to restore marriage equality in California. She refused to defend Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban. After Prop 8 was ruled unconstitutional by a federal court (and that decision was upheld by the federal appeals court and the U.S. Supreme Court), Harris officiated the first same-sex marriage in June 2013 at San Francisco City Hall of the Berkeley women who had been part of the historic case. She also had to make a phone call to the Los Angeles County Clerk's office to tell the staff that they had to marry same-sex couples, the first being the male co-plaintiffs who were also part of the federal lawsuit.
As San Francisco district attorney Harris fought to end the gay/trans-panic defense in criminal trials. (That's a defense employed when defendants "panic" after discovering someone they likely have been intimate with are gay or trans, freak out as a result because they think that makes them gay or trans, and assault or, more likely, kill them.) Four years ago, she commented on Facebook when New Jersey took a similar step.
"The 'gay/trans panic' defense has been used to justify horrific acts of violence against the LGBTQ+ community," she wrote. "I was proud to help make California the first state to outlaw it when I was San Francisco's district attorney and am happy to hear New Jersey is following suit."
As Advocates for Trans Equality noted in its endorsement of Harris this week, her administration would continue many of the policies that she and Biden implemented. Harris has collaborated with Biden to lay a strong foundation for trans Americans, the group noted, including reinforcing protections for transgender youth against discrimination.
Lately, Harris has been at her best on the campaign trail when discussing reproductive rights. And since the U.S. Supreme Court two years ago overturned the federal right to abortion an earlier court had established in its Roe v. Wade decision, access to abortion services has been a winning issue for Democrats. Whether it's state measures to codify that access, which have won, or those that seek to curtail it, which have lost, we know that the majority of Americans want safe access to reproductive services. MAGA men (and women) have worked to derail reproductive freedom with state abortion bans and other legal maneuvers. But when it comes to that issue being on the ballot, Democrats win. That's what MAGA is afraid of.
It's more than just LGBTQ issues, however, that compels us to back Harris. The threat of another Trump presidency is so dangerous that it cannot be overstated. It showed in his 90-minute speech at the convention, where he pivoted from the story of the assassination attempt on him July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania to his lies about the 2020 election and his laundry list of other grievances. It showed in his choice of Ohio Senator JD Vance to be his running mate. Vance is a vile character who will do or say anything to kiss up to Trump.
Then, of course, there's Project 2025, which we recently wrote about. The Heritage Foundation's massive guide for a second Trump administration, Project 2025's anti-LGBTQ language dehumanizes trans people as a proxy for all LGBTQ people. "Look at America under the ruling and cultural elite today: Inflation is ravaging family budgets, drug overdose deaths continue to escalate, and children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries," it states.
While Trump has tried very hard to distance himself from the document, he cannot. Harris must keep emphasizing it during the campaign. It is an authoritarian blueprint cooked up by Trump's cronies that would negatively affect all Americans.
Two things the American people can count on in the next 15 weeks are racism and misogyny emanating from the right over Harris. We must not let either of those things detract from the big picture — seeing Harris elected president.
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