With just four days until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have delivered their closing arguments to the American people, and the difference between those two competing visions couldn’t be wider.
Harris looks ahead, with her most enduring campaign slogans calling on Americans to “turn the page” and assuring them “we’re not going back.” She pledges to enshrine reproductive freedom into law, help first-time homeowners, put a check on corporations that see catastrophe as a chance to profit and ensure that people don’t face financial calamity when caring for their loved ones.
“America, for too long, we have been consumed with too much division, chaos and mutual distrust,” she said in a stirring address Tuesday at the National Mall. “It is time for a new generation of leadership in America, and I am ready to offer that leadership as the next president of the United States of America.”
Then there’s Trump, whose campaign looks to the past, whether it’s indulging in his long-held grudges or glamorizing some of the darkest days in American history. At his hate-filled Madison Square Garden rally this week, he doubled down on calling his fellow Americans the “enemy from within.”
“We’re running against something far bigger than Joe or Kamala and far more powerful than them, which is a massive, vicious, crooked, radical left machine that runs today’s Democrat Party,” Trump declared. “They are, indeed, the enemy from within. But this is who we’re fighting.”
Trump has vowed to use a law from 1798 to deport millions of people on a scale never seen in American history. He has sworn to arrest his political rivals and pardon those who tried to violently overthrow the peaceful transfer of power. He has fanned the flames of people’s basest instincts rather than call them to rise to a cause greater than revenge.
That darkness came into focus this week when comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, standing over a podium adorned with the Trump-Vance campaign logo at their MSG rally, described Puerto Rico — an American territory — as an “island of garbage.” Hinchcliffe also made asinine comments about the reproductive habits of Latinos and advanced racist stereotypes about Black Americans.
While the campaign has issued milquetoast condemnations of the so-called jokes, Trump himself has yet to explicitly apologize.
The comments led to a wave of endorsements for Harris from prominent Puerto Ricans, such as Ricky Martin, Bad Bunny and Jennifer Lopez (and, incredibly, the revocation of an endorsement for Trump by reggaeton star Nicky Jam). Republican candidates for office scrambled to separate Hinchcliffe’s remarks from the values of the Republican Party. It wasn’t long before the Harris campaign had the comments cut into an ad.
The hate isn’t limited to the rhetoric; it is mirrored in last-minute efforts by Republicans to box some Americans out of the electoral process.
As recently as Wednesday, the Supreme Court — including all three justices Trump appointed — vindicated this lie by allowing Virginia to continue its purge of more than a thousand voters on suspicion that they aren’t citizens.
Last week, the chair of the Lee County Republican Party instructed 1,800 volunteers with a so-called election protection group that “if you’ve got folks that you, that were registered, and they’re missing information … and they were registered in the last 90 days before the election and they’ve got Hispanic-sounding last names, that probably is, is a suspicious voter.”
In Texas, the League of United Latin American Citizens criticized pro-Trump Attorney General Ken Paxton for targeting Latino activists and public officials, even raiding their homes, as part of an investigation into noncitizen voting that they say is spurious.
Then there’s one of Trump’s most dastardly plans: deporting 11 million undocumented people in the U.S., a move that would rip families apart and destroy the U.S. economy.
In his closing argument, Trump has reminded us whom he considers American and whom he does not. His definition isn’t truly dictated by papers or legal status or place of birth. It’s amorphous, determined by what can propel him to power. Once he’s granted that power, it’s possible the voters of color he’s courting will fall outside his definition of who counts as an American.
Many elections offer voters competing visions for the future. But this one could determine which of two drastically different Americas we live in.
