As the Democratic nominee for president, Kamala Harris brings to a race shrouded in negativity a wreath of positivity and hope for the future that should appeal to independent fence-sitters as well as never-Trumpers on the GOP side.
One might even call it “Kamalot” (a term recently and aptly used by cleveland.com guest columnist Barry Gordon). It’s the 59-year-old vice president and ex-prosecutor’s own version of the brightness — that “brief shining moment,” to quote from the musical “Camelot” — that John F. Kennedy brought to the White House in 1961.
JFK’s Camelot and his inspiring inauguration speech ignited something singularly American — a “can-do” patriotism that induced thousands to sign up for military service and other national service efforts. It didn’t hurt that JFK was himself a decorated World War II veteran, but that’s not all he was. Through brash positivity and unfailing optimism, he induced Americans of all political stripes and vintages to believe in the future again, to see America as an oasis of reason, fairness, equity and hope in a dangerous world. A world he believed America could help not just through strength and reasoned diplomacy but also through the Peace Corps that JFK himself began with a stroke of the pen as one of his first acts in office.
Today, the world is arguably even more dangerous than it was in the early 1960s when the nation faced the Cuban Missile Crisis and other Cold War threats. Of even more concern, Americans are deeply divided over seminal aspects of our nation’s future direction.
But that’s where a smiling, strong-minded, smart, experienced politician and prosecutor comes in who understands the need for law and order but also looks for solutions, not scare tactics, race-baiting and making nice with the war-mongering dictators who wish America ill.
The California-born Harris, a former U.S. senator, California attorney general and San Francisco prosecutor, is the daughter of the late Shyamala Gopalan, a pioneering Indian-born biomedical scientist at the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory in California whose genetic research led to key advances in the understanding of breast cancer, and Donald J. Harris, an Afro-Jamaican immigrant who became the first Black scholar awarded tenure in Stanford University’s economics department, where he is now an emeritus professor.
Harris will bring to the presidency that same incisive mind and grasp of detail — and knowledge of how to unsettle adversaries — that was on display during her Sept. 10 debate with Trump.
The challenges for the next U.S. president are many, but Harris, unlike Trump, has realistic and practical plans for how to address them.
* How fast and broadly to address climate change that’s adding to the destructive power and reach of hurricanes.
Harris understands the urgency, calling climate change an “existential threat,” but also looking to market forces to help mitigate it. As vice president, Harris helped craft through the Inflation Reduction Act and other measures what The Washington Post describes as “the largest government investment into climate and clean energy initiatives, and grants to states to help [them] recover from extreme weather events.”
Trump, by contrast, “told The Washington Post’s editorial board in 2016 that he is ‘not a great believer in man-made climate change,’” The Post reported, adding that Trump has at times called global warming a “hoax.”
* Whether to continue to welcome immigrants, who’ve traditionally kept the proverbial American melting pot bubbling with new cultures, new energy, new taxes and new economic hands-on-deck — both as seasonal farm labor and in high-paying, high-tech fields.
Harris, perhaps reading the national mood, has been talking tough on illegal immigration, “pledging to sign into law ‘the toughest bipartisan border security bill in decades,’ one without any route to citizenship,” The Washington Post reports.
Trump, as in prior campaigns, has made immigration a centerpiece of his scaremongering, including his repeated lies about legally present Haitians in Springfield stealing and eating pets. He’s threatened mass deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants living in this country — and legal immigrants, too, saying he would take away the Haitians’ temporary protected immigration status (a tactic the courts blocked when he tried to use it as president in 2017). Critics warn deportations on this scale could lead to widespread violence and economic upheavals — and potentially engage the U.S. military in risky domestic operations.
Trump says that Harris, once elected, is liable to return to her former stance calling for more humane treatment of immigrants “and it will be the end of our country” – but conveniently skips over his own role in killing a recent bipartisan immigration bill in Congress just because he wanted to campaign for president on this issue.
* How to address the persistent and widening income gap and inflationary pressures hitting home at the grocery store and in housing costs that particularly impact low- and middle-class Americans.
Our editorial board applauds Harris as the only candidate who’s offered a detailed plan for middle-class family relief that emphasizes both tax and anti-price-inflation policies. The economic plan she released this summer is sketchy on some details, such as how she’d ban price-gouging by grocery stores and corporations, but ABC News reports it presumably would be modeled on “price-gouging bans in 37 states, which prohibit a sudden spike in prices for scarce goods.” To help middle-class families afford housing, Harris’ plan also includes tax incentives for builders of affordable starter homes and rental homes, and a $25,000 downpayment subsidy for qualifying first-time home buyers.
Trump has bragged that in a second Trump presidency “inflation will vanish completely,” but a recent Associated Press analysis of his economic plans found that “most mainstream economists” believe his proposals to levy huge tariffs on imported goods, deport millions of migrants and big-foot the Federal Reserve on interest-rate policy “would likely send prices surging.” In other words, make inflation far worse than it is now.
AP pointed to a recent analysis from the Peterson Institute for International Economics that “concluded that inflation, which would otherwise register 1.9% in 2026, would instead jump to between 6% and 9.3% if Trump’s economic proposals were adopted.”
AP also found that while economists aren’t wild about Harris’ price-gouging plan, they’ve concluded her policies won’t have an inflationary effect.
On housing, Trump has pledged to open federal land to housing construction and to reduce red tape, while banning undocumented immigrants from owning homes, maintaining that his deportations would free up housing for others, an idea housing experts have disparaged.
* How to handle the growing strain of conspiracy-inflamed extremism that has the potential to fuel political violence.
This manifested itself most recently in Ohio after former President Donald Trump’s lies about Springfield immigrants eating pets during his debate with Kamala Harris — lies accelerated by running mate JD Vance — led to bomb threats against schools and government buildings (most from overseas, Ohio officials concluded) and helped draw white extremist groups to the city.
Trump has also promoted lies and conspiracy theories about Kamala Harris herself, suggesting (in an echo of his birther lies about Barack Obama) that Harris is not a U.S. citizen, and blatantly lying that she only recently started referring to herself as Black, despite her attending an historically Black college and joining the nation’s oldest Black sorority.
Moreover, Trump’s lies continue to include his completely unfounded contention that he won the 2020 election. He recently told a skeptical former Trump voter at a town hall that the violent Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol to stop the counting of 2020 ballots was “a day of love” — raising concerns, again, about what will happen if Trump loses Nov. 5.
The bottom line for our editorial board: We hope that Trump does lose on Nov. 5. His proposals would further divide and destabilize an already divided and demoralized nation confused and concerned about America’s future direction.
Kamala Harris offers solutions and concrete ideas rooted in reality, not lies, and a rational, nuanced understanding of the dangers facing the United States in the ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East amid rising tensions in Asia.
Keep America great — and safe — by voting for Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election. Early voting in Ohio has begun.
About our editorials: Editorials express the view of the editorial board of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer — the senior leadership and editorial-writing staff. As is traditional, editorials are unsigned and intended to be seen as the voice of the news organization.
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Other resources for voters:
League of Women Voters vote411.org voters’ guide.