Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
As Vice President Kamala Harris explained in a powerful speech outside the White House on Tuesday attended by tens of thousands of supporters, including me, the personal stakes for each of us are incredibly high in the 2024 election.
We all have a great deal to gain by electing Harris president. We have everything to lose if former President Donald Trump wins. This is especially true for Black folks.
What’s at stake?
Preserving our democracy and freedoms. Holding down prices of food and other goods. Protecting reproductive rights and voting rights. Expanding educational and homeownership opportunities. Making health care more affordable. On these and other issues, Harris would make our lives better, while Trump would make them worse.
As for Black folks specifically, Harris — who, if elected, would become our second Black and first female president — understands from personal experience the destructive impact of systemic racism against us. She wants to open the doors of the American Dream to all.
Harris has pledged to not raise taxes on anyone making under $400,000 a year. But she would require the rich and big corporations to pay their fair share of taxes to fund programs benefitting millions of us, creating an opportunity economy that would enable people to not just get by, but get ahead.
Lifestyle
Trump is advocating policies that would make life worse not just for Black Americans, but for most Americans. He would cut taxes on corporations and millionaires and billionaires like himself, forcing cuts to programs benefitting millions of Americans and increasing the national debt. Other tax cuts he has proposed would leave the Social Security trust fund without enough money to pay full benefits to senior citizens and others, forcing a 33% cut in benefits in 2031.
Harris would hold down the inflation rate by cracking down on price gouging on groceries, by preserving our trading relationships with other nations and by taking other actions. She would lower taxes for the vast majority of Americans.
Harris has said she would sign compromise bipartisan legislation to fix our broken immigration system, improve border security and create a pathway to citizenship for some immigrants. Trump commanded GOP lawmakers to reject the bipartisan legislation because he wanted to use unauthorized immigration as a campaign issue rather than fixing the problem. They obeyed.
Harris has said she would work with Congress to enact legislation protecting reproductive rights nationwide. But Trump boasts that he appointed three Supreme Court justices who joined with conservatives already on the court to overturn the 1973 decision legalizing abortion nationwide. And now, 25 million women live under Trump’s abortion bans and restrictions.
The vice president has proposed policies to make child care and health care more affordable, including increasing tax credits that go to parents of minor children. Trump has nonsensically said his tariffs would make child care more affordable and claims to have “concepts of a plan” to replace the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.
Harris has pledged to protect and expand voting rights. Trump wants to make voting harder by imposing new restrictions. He has refused to accept election results when he loses.
The vice president would take actions to stimulate the construction of three million new homes and apartments and would give first-time homebuyers a $25,000 tax credit to help them make down payments. She would create a $40 billion fund to help local governments build affordable housing. Trump claims deporting millions of unauthorized immigrants will free up their homes for new occupants, but economists disagree that this will solve the shortage of affordable housing because up to a third of workers who build affordable homes are unauthorized immigrants. Without their labor, there will be no new homes.
Harris wants to reduce some of the $1.6 trillion in federal college student debt that over 40 million Americans owe. Trump does not. Harris wants to increase aid to K-12 education. Trump has said he wants to abolish the U.S. Education Department, which provides much of that aid.
Harris would help Americans start small businesses by increasing the deduction for startup expenses from the current $5,000 to $50,000. Trump is focused on helping big corporations.
Harris wants to protect us from worsening hurricanes, tornadoes and droughts caused by climate change that is accelerating due to fossil fuel emissions. She wants to reduce fossil fuel emissions and increase clean energy production. Trump wants to increase fossil fuel emissions by increasing the production of oil, natural gas and coal.
Black Americans, like everyone else, want an America that is just and fair and gives us all a chance to succeed. Harris will give this to all Americans because she cares about us and loves our country. Donald Trump will not because he cares only about himself, making as much money as possible, staying out of prison and weaponizing government to punish all who dare criticize him.
For all these reasons, we need Kamala Harris to become our next president. She wants to spend the next four years working to improve our lives, but she will only be able to do so if we spend a short time voting to put her in the Oval Office and make her our public servant in chief.
Donna Brazile is a veteran political strategist, Senior Advisor at Purple Strategies, New York Times bestselling author, Chair of the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, and sought-after Emmy- and Peabody-award-winning media contributor to such outlets as ABC News, USA Today and TheGrio. She previously served as interim Chair of the Democratic National Committee and of the DNC’s Voting Rights Institute. Donna was the first Black American to serve as the manager of a major-party presidential campaign, running the campaign of Vice President Al Gore in 2000. She serves as an adjunct professor in the Women and Gender Studies Department at Georgetown University and served as the King Endowed Chair in Public Policy at Howard University and as a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School. She has lectured at nearly 250 colleges and universities on diversity, equity and inclusion; women in leadership; and restoring civility in American politics.
