What a week this has been since President Joe Biden announced his patriotic decision to end his candidacy and endorse Kamala Harris. The surge of enthusiasm for the vice president has been breathtaking and inspiring. But then last night Trump made appallingly clear the stakes of this election. There was no parsing, no pretending to just be a dictator for a day: His goal is to end our democracy, to end elections and stay in power if he gets back in office. He was speaking at the Turning Point Action “Believers Summit” in West Palm Beach, Florida:
Christians, get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years. You know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians…. Get out, you’ve got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.
You can call these the words of a desperate man, a visibly sweaty convicted felon facing more charges, who knows he’s in trouble with the emergence of Harris. Soon his enablers will be claiming he didn’t really mean it, that he was just kidding or some other form of gaslighting to soften the reality of what Trump told that crowd. But let’s not kid ourselves about this anti-democrat who idolizes dictators. He explicitly said that if he’s voted in for four more years, “we’ll have it fixed so good” that “you won’t have to vote anymore.”
If you have felt the existential danger facing our republic during the last long weeks as the Democrats fought over the fate of President Biden, this should be another wake-up call of how stark the choice is in November. As much as we always believe we are voting for a particular candidate, this election really is a binary choice between ensuring the survival of democracy and ushering in its demise.
But here’s the thing: The last week’s turn of events has hit like a crack of lighting, a massive release of pent-up energy that is now focused on ensuring that Trump is defeated and Kamala Harris is the next President of the United States. The most telling data point is not that her campaign has already raised over $250 million or that Harris is now in a statistical tie in key battleground state polling. The most promising fact is that, since last Sunday, over 170,000 people from diverse communities have signed up with Team Harris to help get her elected.
This weekend alone, more than 2,300 events are planned in battleground states, mobilizing a wide coalition that is—as the campaign announcement describes—”leveraging the historic grassroots enthusiasm we’ve seen for our campaign.” That includes phone banks and canvass launches, “Kamala coffee hours” and “soul food potlucks,” Pride trivia nights and more national organizing calls with young people, women, LGBTQ+ and union members. There will also be watch parties this weekend for the candidate herself appearing on RuPaul’s Drag Race and public events involving her growing collection of high-profile surrogates, including potential VP picks. In addition, the campaign notes, “While Donald Trump still has little to no infrastructure in the battlegrounds, the Vice President inherits more than 250 coordinated battleground offices and 1,300 staff who have been building strong relationships and volunteer bases on the ground for months.”
Count me among those with rising confidence that this is no flash-in-the-pan moment, but rather the beginning of an increasingly energized force that recognizes there are just 100 days to elect Harris and defeat the danger that is Trump.
How does it look to you? Will the people save democracy in November? Does the existential scale of my question make sense to you? Do you agree that Trump means what he says? In turn, are you worried that the Trump/Vance attacks may begin to chip away at the enthusiasm as the campaign unfolds? Perhaps Trump’s sick promise to his Christian followers that “we’ll have it fixed so good” makes you doubt the outcome in November? And, lastly, do you see your own efforts making a difference?
As always, I look forward to reading your observations and for this community to hear from each other. Please do be respectful in your comments. Trolling will not be tolerated.
*Photo by Jim Vondruska via Getty Images during a Harris campaign rally in West Allis, Wisconsin, on Tuesday this week.
