The Necessity of Harris’ Victory and Trump’s Resounding Defeat

Repairing the body politic any time soon depends not just on the vice president winning, but the scale of her opponent's loss

(Photo by Andrew. Harnik via Getty Images)

We all know that real repair of the toxic divisiveness, degradation of our democratic institutions and demonization of immigrants and other marginalized populations is going to take a long time. But that work only begins with a win by Kamala Harris, indeed a large and resounding one.

In another time, talk of being president for all Americans would be a throw-away line, just an obvious nod to the assumption that this is part of the job. But in this moment, the Harris campaign has understood that the idea of being president for all Americans is a unifying promise of great meaning. (Trump even said it when accepting his party’s nomination, but we know how false and unserious that was.) In fact, it’s the closing line in her final ad completed just in time to air during yesterday’s NFL football games. “I pledge to be a president for all Americans” was delivered as part of her closing message before a crowd of 75,000 this week from the Ellipse—with the White House as her backdrop.

It’s a message that will connect and inspire because most Americans have grown terribly weary of Donald Trump’s hateful rhetoric, stochastic terrorism-inducing claims about migrants, and so many other mad, sick slurs and lies. We have endured—and seek the closing of—the repetitive playbook of this felonious, fascistic, increasingly incoherent and whining demagogue who suffers from malignant narcissism, lacks impulse control, prefers dictators, cannot tolerate criticism, promises retribution, despises democracy, abhors the people’s will and yearns to be a dictator.

Just yesterday, looking and sounding exhausted, Trump trotted out his sad insistence that America is “a failed country,” that a Harris win will lead to an economic depression like 1929 (the same thing he said would transpire four years ago if Biden won), that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House in 2020 and that unnamed “crooked people” are “fighting so hard to steal this damn thing.” He also fantasized about “the fake news” being shot. This followed a week in which his closing argument has included a parade of bigotry and hate at Madison Square Garden, a pathetic stunt dressed as a garbage man inside a garbage truck, and violent fantasizing on stage with Tucker Carlson about the killing of Liz Cheney with nine rifles aimed at her face.

Does this look to you like a winning campaign? I don’t think so.

A joyful and energized Harris, meanwhile, was a surprise guest on Saturday Night Live, showcasing her timing, comedy chops, capacity for self-deprecation and comfort with human interaction. The studio audience was exuberant. Last night at a rally in East Lansing, Michigan, a smiling Harris declared, “We have momentum. It is on our side. Can you feel it?”

The contrast with Trump’s tired, self-absorbed whining could not be more vivid. The dwindling audiences at Trump’s rallies underscore that this “petty tyrant”—as Harris aptly described him this week—is losing his appeal even among his own followers.

I’m increasingly confident about Kamala Harris’ victory, buoyed yesterday by the release of a respected new poll in traditionally Republican Iowa that tallied an unexpected three-point lead (47 to 44 percent ) for Harris. Whatever may be the eventual outcome in a state that Trump has won twice, this data point provides fresh reason—in addition to the remarkable 53 to 44 percent women-over-men gender gap in early voting—to believe that America can escape Trump’s plans for an angry, retribution-filled second term.

But let’s be clear: Were Trump to permanently exit the stage this week, never to be seen again, we’d still be dealing for a long time with the poison he’s injected into the bloodstream of our body politic. Even as over a thousand high-profile Republicans have asserted Trump’s dangerous unfitness for office and endorsed Harris, plenty of weak-minded, unprincipled men and women will try to emulate their dear leader and pursue—with or without him—his ruthless plan to consolidate wealth and power by ending the American democratic experiment.

That project, that grim vision to advance a post-democratic, white nationalist America, will not disappear no matter who wins the White House this year. The battle lines of this decades-in-the-making enterprise are being drawn and the devolution and demolition of our democratic project is underway with the backing  of billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel (who’s funded the rise of JD Vance), right-wing organizations like the Heritage Foundation (which has crafted Project 2025) and Leonard Leo’s Federalist Society, foreign disrupters like Russia and China, as well as once-venerable democratic institutions like the U.S. Supreme Court, which Trump has packed with oligarchic extremists.

Sadly, it would be an overstatement to say that the victory of VP Harris will be a sufficient antidote to these dark forces and the metastasized cancer that’s already spread in our political system and society. But the remarkable variety and number of Americans from across the political spectrum who have witnessed Trump’s dangerous unfitness to hold power—in some cases at extremely close range—does provide the promise that motivated Americans will participate in repairing the corrosion and criminality that has weakened our democratic nation domestically and globally.

The effort to repair includes the question of how to deprogram the millions of Americans who have severed their commitment to democracy and factual reality and are hostile toward the effort to build a more just, equitable society. But that hard work only becomes fully possible with an overwhelming, unmistakable defeat of Trump; this is necessary to begin to convince these untethered individuals that they are part of a minority of losers.

Yes, Trump and his enablers will continue to do whatever they can to deny the reality of a Harris victory and convince them to stay on board their broken, sinking ship. But the greater the scale of their faction’s defeat, the harder it will be for them to deny they are in trouble. The bigger the win, the more likely that some percentage will agree to jump on the lifeboat that a President-elect Harris may offer them. If they are not utterly irredeemable and permanently lost to the democratic project, they might even discover that America’s joyful leader really does mean it when she says she wants to be the president for all Americans, including those who aggressively opposed her.

That said, we also know that in the coming weeks, Trump and his angry, aggrieved acolytes will not go quietly. They will not suddenly discover that the peaceful transfer of power is in fact a sacred tradition and duty. They will do everything they can to deny factual reality, cry fraud and sow conflict and chaos in the courts and among state legislators committed to Trump’s cause.

Dealing with them will take stamina and legal skill. We will soon learn whether there is sufficient planning and people in place—as the Harris campaign insists—to thwart their attempt of a hostile takeover and ensure that the peoples’ will is fulfilled.

That may sound like a hard slog, especially if the election outcome remains in doubt by the end of Tuesday night or in the few days that follow. But let’s hold fast to optimism.

“I’ve seen the best of Americans—and what is holding you back and weighing you down,” the vice president calmly assures in her final ad. “We see in our fellow Americans neighbors, not enemies.” She promises to confront high costs, fundamental rights taken away, “politics that are driven by fear and division” and to “seek real common-sense solutions to make your life better.”

Now who doesn’t want that? So, let’s do the hard work to get out the vote today and tomorrow and not let the inevitable, understandable anxiety overwhelm us. Or, as Kamala and her SNL double Maya Rudolph put it Saturday night, “Keep Calm-ala and Carry On-ala.”

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