The One Week Closing Message:
The Closing Message on the 2024 Elections (And Damn the Polls; As Simon Rosenberg Says, Do More and Worry Less).
Feel free to check the entire blog archives from “Political Pulse” & “Salzillo Report” on the 2024 primary cycle, rural outreach, redistricting litigation, base dynamics, campaign organization, the current media landscape, the issues at stake, Project 2025, Build Back Better, the progressive movement, the true story about former 2024 VP contender Gina Raimondo, and much more.
If you don’t face a paywall, do look at an underappreciated issue of racial and gender disparities in our society and how Vice President Kamala Harris has been combatting them in healthcare, in lending, lead pipe removal, in capital access, in education, and more via the NY Times.
Well, we are slightly more than one week from the 2024 elections, which means it will be soon enough that I will share a voters guide for how to vote, where to vote, and what to know about the vote counting on Election Day (not that people don’t know already, but certainly a good refresher for the DC 2020 election deniers next week).
I do want to ask and answer questions given by Republicans, sometimes to myself. In a democracy, we should be able to debate the issues, hear different viewpoints, and make our cases from there. Unfortunately, the pattern of debate skipping this year again is a disturbing one for our democratic experiment (which includes Trump missing out on at least one last presidential debate the public deserved), which is why everyone needs to take responsibility and hold both parties accountable when that happens too.
But alas. A lot of people talk about why the Vice President didn’t do more on the issues she talked about now when she was in office. As the other side does say, Kamala Harris was Vice President for 4 years (vice being the most important word).
They have an intriguing question that comes with a very intriguing answer. Look at the Congressional Republicans in their own words. Mitch McConnell said in 2021 he was 100% focused on stopping the Biden-Harris Administration at each and every turn. Imagine if you had a teacher, or professor, who said he or she was 100% focused on failing every single student in class. Or an ex-husband who said he was 100% focused on ruining your new relationship with another spouse. No one thinks that would be okay in a classroom or at home, so should we really accept it from a GOP Senate Leader, Mitch McConnell or otherwise? Think of that for a moment with a GOP Senate, with Trump likely to anoint McConnell’s eventual successor.
Kevin McCarthy delivered on that McConnell promise, whether in the minority or in the majority. Everything that would be on the table, he would say no to. He did it as the minority leader in 2021 and 2022. He did it in his historically short tenure as House Speaker in 2023, pursuing debt defaults and foolhardy impeachments. His successor Mike Johnson later struggled to keep the government open, while feuding took place in the House GOP caucus. Visit the Congressional GOP conferences and you will see they represent the heart of political dysfunction and gridlock in this country. It would almost be funny—if the stakes weren’t so high for the welfare of all Americans.
Consider this as well: in the 2022 midterms, the Republican Party campaigned to take on inflation, reign in crime, and stem the flow of immigration. Yet since 2022, Republicans have failed to do a single thing on any of these issues. Name one bill beyond the PR theatrics that has passed any one of the chambers to do anything for regular Americans. Name one bill that displays the commitment to tackling those issues on the campaign trail that were kept once in office. You’ll likely not be able to think of three bills in total, if you can even get to 1 or 2.
Plus, they don’t have a plan. They never actually do. Still waiting for what the repeal-and-replace plan on Obamacare is. Still waiting on something outside of a slogan for how to address inflation or the border issue (the latter they decided to self-sabotage). The Republican Party is the Party of No. Someone should really ask them what they stand for outside of kneeling down to the will of one man.
They couldn’t even do proper government oversight (even on matters of great concern like Gina Raimondo’s management of the US Commerce Department).
Which also means a Harris-Walz agenda can’t pass in a Republican Congress come 2025, if they even certify the 2024 elections.
What about Harris’s “flip-flopping?” I get it. We should not normalize the “shift to the center,” which has happened a lot of times in presidential campaigns, whether it is Mitt Romney, John McCain, Barack Obama, John Kerry, George W. Bush, Bob Dole, George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, or even Jimmy Carter, though it does happen quite a lot.
Harris ran a different presidential campaign in 2019. No need to deny that. Being the Vice President for 4 years changes your outlook on things, especially if you were Vice President during the one of the most consequential times in our history. You see more of America. You learn more from average voters and the people they represent. That is why Harris’s campaign positions this year—whether you agree with them or not—on fracking, on immigration, on healthcare, or otherwise, are almost the exact same ones from her tenure as Vice President, reflecting what she learned from her new experiences.
So to go around the circle one last time, maybe her approach has changed, but her values are not that different. The environmental protection advocacy as California Attorney General still embodies her values as Vice President, and as a presidential candidate. The defense of the Affordable Care Act as AG reflects a continued commitment to universal healthcare as a human right today. The prosecution of for-profit colleges and predatory lenders reflects a consistent take on the side of public education and consumer safety. The labor advocacy as US Senator reflects a shared admiration and respect for the union movement. Tinkering around the edges on legislative approach is not the same as the Clinton shuffle. For example, once supporting NAFTA and PNTR when it was in vogue, then opposing a version of it in TPP. Or, calling African Americans “super-predators,” and then asking for their votes, all while clinging to the popularity of ex-rival and then-President Barack Obama.
Nor is it the same thing as being a Democrat and then becoming a Republican (after running for President in the Reform Party in the time in between). Or being pro-choice and pro-gun safety in the private sector before embracing culture wars as the 45th President of the United States and as a 2024 GOP presidential nominee. Or promising to drain the swamp, only to fill it in with political cronies of his own. Or agreeing with Democratic Party kitchen table values before selling out to the Republican Party for personal gain and financial support, especially from pending legal cases. That is a true flip-flopper.
And for those curious, that flip-flopper’s name is Donald Trump.
It’s also worth addressing the GOP fear-mongering calling all Democrats radical leftist Communists and Marxists. “Beware of their socialist ideology,” the conservative elites might say. What they don’t say is how they called Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson Communists too. We know now today that things like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Head Start, FDIC, FEMA, and more are not only common sense government-run programs, but also very popular ones. Do not let the men who cried wolf on the New Deal and Great Society scare you now.
Which goes to the last point. The Harris-Walz ticket and Congressional Democrats are focused on the issues that matter to you. Why are Build Back Better provisions and pieces of legislation so popular in the polls? It is because they are normal solutions to problems that face American voters. That is the focus of at least one side. Very commonly, the more people hear about that vision, the more they support it.
As for Trump-Vance and down ballot Republicans? They seem more focused on who controls the weather, or who are eating the dogs and the cats and the pets, or what children are identifying as kittens, who has a larger johnson, or who is deciding to not have children. Just to ask, who cares about any of this nonsense?
(If there are differing opinions, feel free to respond in the comments below, but I don’t truly believe these are the issues that matter to people).
And on Project 2025, we all know what Trump is saying about it. He is distancing himself from it, much like Richard Nixon tried distancing himself from Watergate. But don’t believe him. He praised the Heritage Foundation’s work back in 2022, so don’t take him at his word when he pretends to be oblivious to their widely known 900-page manifesto. If Trump knows people like Ben Carson and Ken Cuccinelli, and Russell Vought, he sure as hell has heard of Project 2025, even if he can’t understand or read the sophisticated radical antidemocratic language of it. If JD Vance wrote the Foreword to another book by one of the Project 2025 co-authors, Vance surely knows about the blueprint—which Vance admitted publicly to support at least in part.
Our nation deserves better than a President who calls fellow Americans “the enemy from within,” or a President who says any election he doesn’t win is “stolen” or “rigged,” or a President who promotes the use of violence against our institutions, or a President who admires Hitler. We should normalize such radical antidemocratic behavior with another Trump election.
Will everything be pitch perfect under a Harris presidency? No. Of course not. There is more work to be done even after the election, but the task will be even more daunting under the oligarchic system Donald Trump and Elon Musk have in mind if they win.
Friends, don’t take much stock in the red wave pollsters, or the American elite-tilted betting circles. But do take it seriously enough to vote this November, wherever you are, and spread the word to your friends and family. And if you can, share this post around as well for the rest of the public to read.
Absolutely fantastic, Mike!