107 Days

by Kamala Harris

The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it. —ALBERTO BRANDOLINI

Trump’s ravings had been getting progressively crazier as the campaign went on.

I want to keep people safe and help them thrive.

“Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So, hear me when I say… I know Donald Trump’s type.”

Trump wanted to take us back to failed trickle-down economics that had never done a thing to lift the middle class and instead brought only more inequity. He romanticized a time when freedom and rights were limited and denied to so many Americans.

The freedom not just to get by but to get ahead. And the freedom to simply be.

Meanwhile, Trump got handed $413 million from his daddy—and then his companies went bankrupt four times.)

Many people want to spin up a narrative of some big conspiracy at the White House to hide Joe Biden’s infirmity. Here is the truth as I lived it. Joe Biden was a smart guy with long experience and deep conviction, able to discharge the duties of president. On his worst day, he was more deeply knowledgeable, more capable of exercising judgment, and far more compassionate than Donald Trump on his best.

In my life I’ve seen over and over that it is often the people with the least who give the most.

I could hear my mother’s stern voice: “Kamala, don’t ever let anyone tell you who you are. You tell them who you are.”

I’m especially sensitive to this because, as a child, I saw how my mother, a small brown woman with a foreign accent, would be treated in a fancy department store and other public places: as if she didn’t belong or couldn’t afford to be there. She was a distinguished scientist doing groundbreaking research, but often I saw her encounter derision and disrespect.

What followed, eventually, was the usual litany of insults and lies—at least twenty false claims, according to CNN fact-checkers—as the two edgelords stroked each other’s egos.

so he embarked on his “eating the pets” rant. I could not believe he was saying it. The cameras caught my look of incredulity.

“We may vote for different people, but the people who attacked us on 9/11 couldn’t care less who we voted for. We were all Americans that day. As we are today. And I hope we can remember that.”

He called it “the weave.” I call it nonsense.

There is a bleak and tragic history in this country of demonizing immigrants: the Jewish refugees who were denied entry when fleeing annihilation in Nazi Germany; the Chinese, Italians, and Irish who were hated, vilified, and slandered in almost the same terms as the Right uses about today’s migrants; the Japanese who were interned, denied freedom and due process solely on the basis of their race.

More than 230 people had died in the worst hurricane since Katrina, but instead of consoling and helping, Trump was stoking rage with falsehoods and making it harder for FEMA workers to do their jobs.

But J. D. Vance is a shape-shifter.

I wondered how many Native veterans could have used the test kits Trump sent to Putin, as their communities were ravaged by the virus.

Transgender people are Americans, with the same rights we all have, to liberty, equality, the pursuit of happiness, and equal protection under the law.

And our democracy shouldn’t belong to the world’s richest man.

Since Trump enabled the overthrow of Roe, the consequences have gone beyond denial of basic rights to the denial of care and the loss of health and life.

I pushed back on how irresponsible it would be to give such a role to someone who had promoted junk science, opposed vaccines, embraced conspiracy theories, and vacillated on abortion rights.

“We are not defeated,” I said softly. “Our spirit is not defeated. There’s so much in your future, so much to fight for.”

Two of the trending searches after the election: What is a tariff? Can I change my vote?