On Oct. 29, I had the chance to join 75,000 of my closest friends on the Ellipse to hear Kamala Harris’s closing argument in her campaign for the presidency. It moved me on many levels: as a progressive advocate, a civil rights activist, a person of color, the father of a new daughter and, most profoundly, as an American.
I can’t compete with Harris’s own summation of the case for her candidacy. But as a leader of an organization that frames its work as the defense of truth, justice and democracy, I see a strong closing argument for Harris built around those three pillars.
And I believe that if those values matter to you, there is only one choice for president.
There’s a reason that polls show many more Americans call Harris honest than would say that about Trump. Truth was one of the first casualties of the 2016-2020 Trump administration.
It would be the same in a second Trump term.
We’d be back to “alternative facts,” silencing scientists and claims that are not just absurd but life-threatening. Remember hydroxychloroquine and bleach touted as cures for COVID-19?
If Trump is elected and imposes an agenda that’s anything like Project 2025, which was written in part by some of his former staffers, willful ignorance and deception would be entrenched on an industrial scale.
We would have a government rooted in lies: denial that climate change is real, denial that LGBTQ people exist, denial that our history is complex and not always praiseworthy, denial that systemic racism is real.
Denial that Trump actually lost in 2020.
Trump’s elimination of the Department of Education would see to it that millions of American kids are taught lessons subject to the whims of local school boards, with accuracy and truthfulness as an afterthought.
And Trump intends to criminalize dissent. His threats may already be having a chilling effect; that’s one way to interpret Jeff Bezos’s last-minute decision to spike a Washington Post endorsement of Harris.
Justice is also on the line in this election, because we have two candidates with profoundly differing views of what justice means.
Harris built her career in the justice system, as a reformer who cared about safety for communities as well as accountability and fairness for those charged. This is integral to her vision of public service. Trump has built his life around evading justice for himself and has promised to turn the courts into a tool for personal vengeance if he wins.
His federal judges, exemplified by the trio he placed on the Supreme Court, are partisan and pro-corporate to the core. The Supreme Court has undermined affirmative action, reproductive freedom, environmental protection and laws that support equity and justice for LGBTQ Americans while giving Trump a “blank check to break the law” in office. He would give us more like them — or even worse.
Meanwhile, the current administration has been working to remake the courts. They have nominated and secured the confirmation of outstanding jurists like Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Biden-Harris judges have ruled to protect reproductive freedom, gun safety, workers’ rights and the environment; Harris would give us more like them.
And we know our democracy is on the ballot. Only one candidate wants to rule like a “dictator” and to unleash federal military forces on civilians. Only one has endless praise for authoritarians like Putin, Orban and Xi.
Only one tried to overturn our last presidential election.
Harris has a vision of democracy that is inclusive and rooted in the core American value of freedom, the “liberty” in “liberty and justice for all.” That means freedom to control our own bodies, for sure. It also means freedom to love whom we choose, freedom to vote and have a vote that counts, to learn our true history, start a business, live where we choose and work where we choose.
Her view of what it means to enjoy the blessings of democracy is the antithesis of Trump’s vision, which insists that only some people get full humanity and autonomy. That only some people are full Americans.
Harris stands for values and ideas that I have spent my career fighting for and want my children to grow up with. These ideas are big, sweeping and inspiring. And Harris cares deeply about people.
One of the most resonant moments in her Ellipse speech came when she spoke about stepping in when others suffer: “There’s something about people being treated unfairly or overlooked that, frankly, just gets to me — I don’t like it.”
It stuck with me. It rang true. And it spoke directly to her character and leadership.
That is the caliber of person we all hope for in the Oval Office. I believe that tomorrow our hopes will be fulfilled.
Svante Myrick is president of People for the American Way.
