Why I voted for Kamala Harris

I cast my first vote in Arkansas yesterday and I cast it for Kamala Harris.

It really wasn’t a vote for Kamala as much as it was a vote against Donald Trump.  If I’m really going to be honest here, if I were to make a list of people I would like to serve in the White House, Kamala probably wouldn’t make the top ten on my list.  So why am I voting for her instead of Trump?  Well, let me tell you.

I’ll start by putting aside the fact that he’s a convicted felon.  I’ll follow that by ignoring the fact that he doesn’t qualify for security clearance and wouldn’t get it if he ran for any other office except for the presidency.  I’ll even set aside, and put in the corner, the fact that he’s been found liable for sexual assault and fraud, and bankrupted a number of companies (including a casino!) and stole from a charity that was advertised as being for children with cancer.  I’m just going to pretend none of those facts exist in my decision not to vote for Trump.  Also in the corner, not being considered here, is the fact that he has stated that he will be a dictator on day one (I know he said it would only be for one day but anyone that has been paying attention knows it won’t end on day one!) or that he intends to do away with the constitution, or at least parts of it that don’t serve his selfish purposes.  Nor am I considering that he believes he is immune from any accountability for any crimes he’s ever committed, regardless if it was before, during or after his presidency.  His obvious cognitive decline?  Not in consideration here either.  Also off limits in this decision is the fact that Trump benefitted financially from his time in office – at taxpayer expense.

What else is there to consider you might ask.  Well let me tell you.

During the debate between Trump and Harris, Trump was asked a question and he went off topic and started yelling about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, saying they were stealing and eating the pets of American citizens.  He was told that the City Manager had been contacted and told ABC reporters that there was no credible evidence to support those allegations.  Trump’s response was that that was probably a nice thing for the City Manager to say but that he had seen reports of it on television.  The moderator again pointed out that there was no credible evidence to support those claims and said he wasn’t basing it on something shown on television but by officials in the city.

Since then, the Mayor of Springfield and the governor of the state have also publicly stated that the claims are unfounded.

Also since then, Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, admitted that he “created” the story to get the media talking about the issue of immigration.  He’s also said that whether or not it’s true isn’t important, even though the claims resulted in bomb threats being made in Springfield and schools and businesses had to be evacuated as a result.  Neither Trump nor Vance has apologized for their deliberate false claims about Haitians in Springfield, who, by the way, are there legally.  Instead, Trump has vowed to revoke their protected status and deport them, if he gets re-elected and continues to say they are eating people’s pets.

When Trump was in office, he lied to the American people about covid and it cost hundreds of thousands of American lives unnecessarily.  He knew it was serious but he deliberately downplayed it because he thought it would be bad for him politically.  At one point he suggested injecting or drinking bleach could kill the virus.  When he was called out on it, he said he was “joking” and trying to get a rise out of the media.  One of his former aides said that Trump downplayed the benefits of wearing a mask because one time when he wore a mask, his orange makeup came off on the mask and he didn’t want the public to see that so he demonized the wearing of masks from that point forward.  He actively put American lives in jeopardy for vanity and political reasons having nothing to do with what was in the best interests of the American people.

Something else he did while in office related to the pandemic is he had dismantled the team Obama put together to help combat a potential future pandemic after ebola hit while Obama was in office.  He also withheld aid from states that he felt weren’t sufficiently “grateful” to him.  I remember one state ordering masks from another country.  They had made the White House aware of it and Kushner intercepted the delivery – even though the state had paid for it – and then tried to sell the supplies back to the state again.  Another state ordered supplies but didn’t tell the White House – Trump called them ungrateful and disgraceful for having done that, despite what Trump had previously done to other states.

But the bottom line here is that facts matter.  Trump lied to Americans during covid because he thought the truth would hurt him politically and American citizens died because of his lies.  He was embarrassed by his ridiculous claim about injecting bleach so he said he was joking.  Do Americans really want / need a president who would “joke” about something so serious?  No!  We need someone who will take such things seriously and who will listen to the experts and be willing to admit when they’ve made a mistake.

He also spreads lies that he thinks will help him politically – like saying Haitians are eating people’s pets and saying it’s true because he saw it on television.  Shouldn’t an American president be willing to get at the truth of things before stating things as facts?  Shouldn’t they take the word of a City Manager, a City Mayor and a state governor over something he sees on television?  Do we really want a president who will just state things that are false when he makes clear he doesn’t have – and is not interested in having – all the facts?  Or a president who withholds the truth – at the American public’s expense – because he thinks the truth will hurt him politically?  America needs a leader who is willing to admit they are wrong and are willing to lose their “job” because they’ve done the right thing – not someone who is only self serving and wants to hold office to line his own pockets at taxpayer expense.

So, that’s why I voted for Kamala Harris, even though she isn’t in my top ten of choices of people I would want to hold the office of the President of the United States.  And, for what it’s worth, I feel it’s worth noting that even though Kamala is not in the top ten of my choices, Trump doesn’t even make the list –period.  As I keep saying, I wouldn’t vote for Trump if he was running unopposed and a gun was being held to my head.

Here’s to hoping Kamala wins in a landslide on election day and that Trump disappears into oblivion!

VOTE!