Ahead of the presidential debate tonight between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, I wanted to hit a few points across hopefully a few quick blog posts. This is the primary point I want to make, though: Policy does not matter and has not mattered since 2016. That seems audacious, of course, because there is all manner of important policy issues salient in the last eight years and to think ahead for the next four years: reproductive rights, immigration, everything associated with the economy, foreign policy, education, guns, and so on.
But Donald Trump is so manifestly unfit for the office of the presidency — he was in 2016, he was in 2020, despite running as an incumbent, and he is again in 2024, even more so after the events of Jan. 6 when he incited a riot to overturn the 2020 election — and that unfitness overrides any discussion of policy. I could sift through Harris’ stated policy goals going back to her initial run for president in 2020, through her vice presidency, to what she’s recently put on her campaign website, and find some to agree with, but by and large, mostly a lot to disagree with. But it does not matter.
Trump’s unfitness for office overrides any policy disagreements I may have with Harris, as it did with Biden, as it did with Clinton (although then, I went third party). To put it another way, I do not have any interest in having those policy discussions when one of the major presidential candidates — Trump — doesn’t even agree or adhere to the basic fundamentals of American democracy and the U.S. Constitution. Again, he sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election leading to the insurrection on Jan. 6 and thus disrupting the peaceful transfer of power (and intends to pardon those involved, no less), continues to relitigate that issue, and is currently sowing doubt about the legitimacy of the 2024 presidential election. He will not accept the outcome, if he loses. (Even when he won in 2016, he doubted the outcome of the popular vote since he lost to Clinton on that front.) There are a variety of additional reasons he manifestly unfit for the office of president (he’s an adjudicated rapist, rightly twice impeached, convicted of fraud, among many other issues, and also, he’s terribly dumb, lazy, and unprepared and unwilling to be prepared (see: lazy)), but for the purposes of this article, I’m pointing out why his hostility to American democracy overrides policy concerns.
What Trump and Harris think about tax policy or housing or whatever the case is irrelevant in the face of that break down in the fundamentals on the part of Trump. I was listening to a political podcast where the prompt was to propose a question for Trump and Harris at tonight’s debate; their proposal was to ask about budget deficits. It doesn’t matter what Trump thinks about budget deficits! It feels absurd to even wade into that question and answer. When the two major presidential candidates are within the bounds of democratic norms, then I’m happy to get as wonky as the next guy about policy, as granular as needed. With Trump, that’s unnecessary because his policies (or that of Harris) are far distant second to Trump’s hostile, would-be violent contempt for American democracy and the Constitution.
Such hostility cannot be allowed to stand by allowing him to hold the highest office in the land again. The only response, at least as far as the ballot box is concerned, is a complete and comprehensive repudiation, which includes repudiation of all those who have enabled his conduct, including, for example, Senator Ted Cruz from Texas. He ought to lose his race, too.
When Trump and his sycophants in power are repudiated fully at the ballot box, then we can start talking about policies. I’ll be as vociferously critical of a Harris presidency as the next person, but as long as Trump remains a threat to democracy and the constitutional order, that will remain my primary focus and duty as an American citizen to say, “No, I reject you and what you’re offering.” Anything else would be a dereliction of my minimum duty as a citizen. As a country, we can weather a president bad on policy, like Harris, if you’re worried she’ll be bad on policy. However, weathering a president who has contempt for the system itself, its guardrails, and has ambitions to push past those guardrails, well, we get into much more troubling waters as a country. Enabling another four years of someone so positioned is not a prospect I want to remotely entertain, particularly by wasting time discussing tax policy.
Milam's Musings 