Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are the Opposite of MAGA

We Have Never Faced a Starker Choice in U.S. Political History

The other day, in response to something I had written somewhere, I saw a comment that the Harris-Walz campaign is “the opposite of MAGA.” I don’t remember where I saw it. I went back onto the various social media platforms I visit and I couldn’t find it. So, I can’t give credit where it is due.

So, if you were the one who said it, thanks. You made me think.

The line resonated with me because it encapsulated well so many of the points I have been trying to make in my commentaries of the past couple weeks. More importantly, I liked it because it really gets to the reason why I think the campaign thus far has been so successful.

This is not to say that Democrats or the Biden campaign were not very different from Trump and MAGA all along. They were. But there was no getting around the fact that despite all his virtues and accomplishments, when Biden was running against Trump, that several of the core takeaways the average observer had when viewing the candidates side-by-side was that you had a race that pitted two old white men against one another. Both men were born in the 1940s. Both men represented different parts of the establishment of their parties. Their policies were very different but there was also a certain familiarity with what they were saying. So what differences there were, however stark, were harder to see.

That is clearly no longer the case.

• Kamala Harris is a woman. Trump is a man.

• Kamala Harris is a woman. Trump is a misogynist and an abuser of women.

• Kamala Harris a woman of color. Trump is a white man.

• Kamala Harris is a woman of color. Trump is a racist.

• Kamala Harris is a child of immigrants. Trump is an ethno-nationalist.

• Kamala Harris is of a different era from Trump, almost 20 years his junior. She is the future. He is the past.

• Kamala Harris and Tim Walz tell the truth. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance lie.

• Kamala Harris is an ex-prosecutor. He is a felon.

• Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have devoted their lives to public service. Trump and J.D. Vance have devoted their lives to serving themselves. (Trump had less public sector experience entering office than any president in history: Zero. Vance has had less public sector experience than any would be vice president in history.)

• Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are patriots. Trump and Vance celebrate foreign enemies like Putin and autocrats like Viktor Orban.

• Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have devoted their lives to defending democracy. Trump and Vance have dedicated themselves to Project 2025, a MAGA effort to gut our democracy.

• Harris and Walz have a positive agenda for tomorrow. Trump and Vance want to turn the clock back, strip away hard one rights, reimpose the dominatio of white men on women and people of color.

• Harris and Walz have worked throughout their lives for regular people. Their agenda is focused on helping Main Street America. Trump and Vance answer to and seek to benefit plutocrats.

• Walz was a soldier. Trump lied to dodge the draft.

• Walz was the highest ranking enlisted soldier to serve in the U.S. Congress. Trump is the man who called those who lost their lives fighting to defend American freedoms “suckers and losers.”

• Harris is a leading champion of guaranteeing the reproductive rights of women. Trump is responsible for packing the Supreme Court with extremists with the express objective of overturning Roe v. Wade.

• Harris and Walz have taken active steps to help defend and lift up members of the LGBTQ+ community. Trump and Vance have condemned members of that community and Trump’s court has indicated it will come after LGBTQ+ rights next.

• Harris and Walz want sound sensible gun control policies. Trump and Vance celebrate their fealty to the NRA and Trump when in office actively blocked efforts to make Americans safer.

• Harris and Walz want to support and celebrate our allies and alliance. Trump and Vance want to undermine and end them and shore up our enemies and rivals.

• Harris and Walz have sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Trump has said he wants to suspend it.

• Harris and Walz want to defend voting rights. Trump and Vance want to strip them away.

• Harris and Walz have condemned the January 6 coup attempt. Trump organized it, celebrates the criminals who attacked the Capitol as “patriots” and has promised to pardon them. And Vance, the mindless mini-me, is willing to go along with him.

• Harris and Walz are pro-family of every sort. Trump and Vance are trying to tell you who. you can love, who you can marry, what women can do with their bodies and Vance has said that if you don’t have children you should not have the vote.

Look at them and you can see they are different. Listen to them and you can see that they are different. Not just a little different. They are opposites.

Trump and Vance offer a message of hate and bitterness. Harris and Walz offer a message of hope and opportunity.

Trump and Vance appear to be just a re-run of past Trump efforts at the White House. Harris and Walz appear to be something entirely new tapping into new areas of support that are being manifested in an entirely new ways.

Their is a stench of corruption and danger rightly associated with Trump and Vance.

Harris and Walz offer actual joy.

In fact, Harris and Walz are not just obviously, clearly, undeniably the opposite of MAGA. They and their supporters are the antidote to Trump and MAGA. They are not just a campaign to stop Trump, they are a movement to go passed him, to stop letting him dominate American politics, to turn the page to a new kind of kind of conversation.

While Trump and Vance threaten our very future with their double-speak gaslit lie objective of “Making America Great Again” we know their intention is to do the opposite. In fact, Trump has embarrassed America, weakened us in the eyes of the world and filled us with shame.

Harris and Walz, by appealing to the better angels of our national nature and seeking to restore the focus of our politics to helping one another, to embracing and lifting each other up regardless of the color of our skin, our gender, our backgrounds or our beliefs, remind us of a sense of national purpose that their opponents threaten, that Trump and Vance seek to end.

Harris and Walz have generated such excitement because they are the polar opposites the threats posed by Trump and Vance.

Yes, while Harris and Walz are human, regular people, they are inherently good whereas what their opponents seek is, in the final analysis, if we are honest, inherently evil.

It is that stark.

Trump and Vance want to end America as we have known it. They taint the country and threaten our future by their very existence.

Harris and Walz want to defeat that by offering us a chance to be our best selves and by ending the talk of dictatorship and the cultivation of division and the end of our institutions and the rule of law…ultimately Harris and Walz want to enable America to be America again.