Hard to believe we are days from the end of one of the most consequential and unpredictable election cycles of the past 50 years or so.
The Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump, has been running for president since he was ousted from office by the American people in November 2020, a loss he still refuses to accept. If reelected, he promises to avenge his loss with an enemies list and to install the architects of Project 2025 into his administration. Worse, he has allegedly pledged to put Robert F. Kennedy Jr. an anti-vaccine extremist, in charge of all U.S. health agencies.
Credit: handout
Credit: handout
This week, Trump likely riled up millions of women voters with his paternalistic pledge to “protect women, whether they like it or not.”
The Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, is someone we never saw coming. We started the Democratic primaries with President Biden as the clear nominee. But in July, Biden stepped aside after a disastrous debate performance on CNN. It was a debate Biden asked for, the earliest we had seen in a presidential cycle, clearing the way for Harris’ literal 90-day sprint to the election. Harris raised more than $1 billion and built a bipartisan, multiracial coalition like nothing we have seen in modern American politics.
And now here we are, days from answering a question that I think plagues us all: What kind of country are we going to be as we head into 2026 and our nation’s 250th birthday?
I think the answer to that question is best demonstrated by the two candidates themselves. There can be no starker contrast than Harris’ closing on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., and Trump’s massive rally in New York City. The Vice President focused on unity and unifying the country and being the president of all Americans, regardless of their party or whether they voted for her. Trump has doubled down on stoking anti-immigration and antimigrant fears, calling America a “garbage can” and driving, clad in an orange safety vest, a garbage truck.
As we attorneys like to say, the closing argument is everything. People tend to focus on the last moment and pay attention just before they cast their ballot, particularly when the two candidates are so very different. I am not sure how anyone could still be undecided. To me and other “never Trumpers,” including those who Republicans who have backed the Harris campaign, Trump is simply not an option. His coarse language; his vile attacks on racial minorities, including, recently Puerto Ricans and his attacks on women’s health and reproductive rights are anathema to most Americans. And his regressive tariff policies and tax cuts for the billionaire class offer nothing to middle- and working-class Americans.
So, let’s do a summation of each candidate’s closing arguments.
Harris, speaking Tuesday to a crowd of about 75,000 people at the same spot where Trump spoke before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, said this directly to the American people:
“America: this is not a candidate for president who is thinking about how to make your life better. This is someone unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power.... Look, we know who Donald Trump is. He is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election — an election that he knew he lost.”
She continued, “Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy.... He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at the table.”
Days before, Trump spoke to a crowd of about 20,000 people at Madison Square Garden, and he offered this vision for America. Trump offered a very dark assessment of Harris’ leadership, saying that “Harris obliterated the nation’s borders,” “decimated the middle class,” brought “bloodshed and squalor” to major cities, and “unleashed war and chaos all over the world.”
Worse, Trump said, “No person who has caused so much destruction and death at home and abroad should ever be allowed to be the president of the United States.” Beyond this type of rhetoric, Trump has made it personal, calling his opponent “a train wreck who has destroyed everything in her path.” At the New York event, his supporters labeled Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage” and made a baseless claim that Harris, a former prosecutor and senator who is trying to become the first woman to be elected president, had begun her career as a prostitute. Trump has yet to condemn or distance himself from such remarks.
And there you have it, folks. Two nights, two massive events, hundreds of miles apart, and the candidates’ dueling closing arguments outlined in stark terms the choice U.S. voters face on Nov. 5 when they will finish weighing two very different visions of leadership and America’s future.
