8/5/24

WITH 3 MONTHS LEFT, THE ELECTION IS A STARK CHOICE – GOOD OR EVIL

KAMALA HARRIS CREDIT: Harris Instagram

DONALD TRUMP CREDIT: Frank Gerardi

I WAS DOING ONE of those really disagreeable political chores last week:  telephoning people at suppertime.
     I was part of a phone bank where volunteers were calling on behalf of a Democratic candidate, who happens to be well liked for his diligent, often brilliant hard work on critical issues.
     Even so, I couldn’t imagine people answering their phone at this most important, precious hour of the day – when personally, I go berserk every time the phone rings, no matter who’s calling.
     But the knockout surprise was not hat some people did answer, but they were more than civil: they were excited to hear from a fellow Democrat. In some cases, they were over-the-top ecstatic and eager to talk, at length.
     It was the Kamala Harris effect.
     By now, this isn’t news to you.
     Ever since the vice president replaced Joe Biden as the Democrats’ nominee, Harris has had a phenomenal impact. She raised a huge amount of money in a short time – over $300 million – had thousands of people volunteer for her campaign and drawn big, energized crowds.
     Harris has measured up.
     She turns out to be a true Happy Warrior. She’s  confident, sure-footed, well-spoken, quick-moving and adroit.
     As if it were the most natural thing in politics to instantly move from second banana in the Biden administration to the top campaign spot, with a mission of rescuing not just White House, but the entire Democrat Party’s election prospects.
     Which is not a bad place to be today, Aug. 5: exactly three months to go until the Nov. 5 election.

 THERE ARE TWO WAYS of thinking about the next three months:

• There’s no-time-at-all until Nov. 5.
• There’s too-much-time left before Election day.

     It will turn out to be No-Time-At-All if Harris actually needed many more months to establish herself as a widely known, trusted, dominant presence on the American political landscape.
     Sure she’s holding the spotlight – hogging most of the news coverage, largely positive; receiving spontaneous social media raves; and benefiting from the best sort of recommendations: neighbors chatting up neighbors.
     But how many people actually know who she is?
     I’m thinking of people who don’t do well in the kind of quizzes that ask them to list the three branches of government, point to California on the map and name the current vice president of the United States.
     It’s quite possible that the Harris voice, the Harris image, the Harris presence will not have broken through to the kind of voters who may matter the most on Nov. 5: citizens who could care less.
     Political analysts try to be polite about these folks, giving them pseudo technical names like “low-information,” “disengaged,” and  “distracted” voters.
     In actuality, they are lazy, selfish and negligent slouches, whom I personally think should be stripped of their right to vote. Which is why I’m glad I’m not in charge of anything, because in a democracy, everyone counts, including people who don’t care that they do count.
     Simply put, is there enough time for Harris to reach enough of us?

THE OTHER SIDE of the three-month mark is the question of whether there’s Too-Much-Time between where we are now, broiling at height of summer and suffering the chill of late fall?
     Imagine all the things that can go wrong, and understand that some of them really will.
     Just this morning, for example, the stock market fell sharply as investor/lemmings panicked about a recession.
      Other events could easily overtake her, just like Biden’s disastrous performance in his June 27 debate with Trump; or Trump’s truly miraculous escape from an assassin’s bullet.
     Harris is sure to say something wrong, to stumble, to disappoint.
     The Middle East war could turn nuclear; China could invade Taiwan; gas stations could suddenly billboard astronomical prices as voters stop to fill up on their way to the polls.
     Trump, now seeming desperate to find just the right cruel, racist, misogynistic label to slap on Harris, will, in fact, find a nickname that will resonate with his base and beyond.
     Maybe, people won’t like the person she selects as her vice president, which is expected today or tomorrow.
     Worst of all, maybe Harris will be unable to keep her initial momentum going, and the excitement will go out of the race like a punctured campaign balloon.
     Such are the dangers facing a country whose future has been brought unfairly to a cliff’s edge by Donald Trump, a treacherous, malevolent, criminal and cruel presence in American politics, whose enduring appeal baffles both friend and foe.

WHAT IS FOR SURE about the sudden arrival of Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee is that she has sharpened the choices in this race in a way that we’ve never seen, at least in my lifetime.
     Ralph Nader, the consumer hero turned political spoiler, once mocked the differences between Republican and Democratic candidates as that between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
     No longer.
     The contrast between Harris and Trump couldn’t be starker.    

 With three months to go, will voters take the country backward, repeating some of the worst chapters of our history; or will they choose to try, once again, to achieve the vision of the founders?
     Will the country finally acknowledge that women are 50 percent ore more of the population and deserve a chance to lead the country? Or will we regress into the machismo of a woman-hater, woman-abuser determined to create a second-class cast of breeders and cooks?
     Will the country, which becomes more diverse every day, choose a biracial exemplar, or a white bigot?
     Will the country choose someone whose career has included enforcing the law and upholding Constitutional values, or  a traitor and dictator-in-waiting who tried to overturn an election?
     Will the country choose a leader well aware of the country’s and the world’s perils, such as climate change and economic inequality; or will we choose a psychopath unconcerned that our grandchildren will inherit a planet on fire?
     In the next three months, voters have a choice far simpler and more drastic than they’ve ever been: between democracy and dictatorship, and between good and evil.