Let's Go: Our Chance to Heal the Wounds of 2016

This is our chance to right the wrong of 2016, when even though she won the popular vote by 3 million, Hillary Clinton lost the election to a con artist.

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We are two election cycles from 2016, and in the interim, Donald Trump has become an adjudicated rapist and con artist, as well as a convicted felon. He is also a clear threat to our national security, something I’ve been warning about since he took office.

Trump is everything Hillary said he was, and now everyone knows it. So when President Joe Biden endorsed Kamala Harris as he stood down from his party’s nomination, it seemed just and right. After all, the primary voters had already voted for the Biden-Harris team, even if only Biden’s name was on the ticket. Voters knew they were getting the team. As the shock wore off, the excitement of a tough as nails Black woman former prosecutor running against the racist rapist grew.

We can all picture Kamala telling Trump off during a debate, and it seems so could Trump, because he’s trying to get out of the second debate now. No matter, she called out Trump as a sexual abuser in her first campaign speech.

Kamala Harris makes history

Team Harris actually made history already.

Vice President Kamala Harris brought in $81 million across her campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and joint fundraising committees in the first 24 hours of her campaign. To say this is a sign of enthusiasm is an understatement.

The campaign pointed out in an email sent to PoliticusUSA, “Team Harris’ 24-hour raise is the highest 24-hour raise of any candidate in history.”

And over 60% of them made their first contribution of the 2024 cycle. There was also a a call hosted by Win with Black Women on Sunday evening that raised “approximately $1.6 million in grassroots contributions alone.”

All of that got added to the existing Biden-Harris war chest of near a quarter-of-a-billion dollars. Yeah, baby.

All the while, endorsements rolled in from significant advocacy groups and Democrats.

Donald Trump Wants a Refund

The Republicans are freaking out. Donald Trump is demanding a refund for the ads he cut, and presumably for the tax dollars Republicans wasted using the House of Representatives as a campaign operation for Trump via bogus “investigations” into the Biden family that mostly resulted in Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene obsessively sharing Hunter Biden revenge porn to the point where a restraining order seems in order for Mr. Biden.

Though, to be fair, Trump is not known for paying his debts so there’s very little chance he ever considered repaying the taxpayers, let alone whoever is making his ads for him.

They’re also regretting choosing JD Vance for their VP nominee, but their convention is over and it’s too late for them to change it up now, or else Democrats could sue them the way Republicans are threatening to sue Democrats for changing their nominee, except of course, Democrats haven’t had their convention to formalize the nomination.

Racism and Sexism

Immediately after Biden endorsed Kamala Harris, conservatives began lobbing ugly racist and sexist attacks at her that reveal a lot more about the Republican Party than they do Kamala Harris.

It's not like we weren't familiar with how they work. We saw them under former President Barack Obama, with elected officials sending cards with watermelons on the White House front lawn and putting posters of Obama in a turban on their official government websites. These people are not good, decent people and they don't have much to offer besides hate, because people who have something to offer want to discuss that instead of pointing fingers of blame at someone else for the color of their skin and their gender.

It's stale, it's boring, and it's actually a re-do of previous fights. In fact, the lies lobbed at Harris were debunked already in 2020 by the Washington Post:

That is false. Harris dated Brown, and he appointed her to two state boards, which may have been ethically questionable. But their relationship had been over for about eight years by the time Harris ran for her first elective office. During that campaign for district attorney in 2003, her past with Brown, who had by then become mayor of San Francisco, was used against her by her opponents. Harris described Brown as “an albatross hanging around my neck.”

As it turned out, the attacks against her backfired. Harris won in a runoff with 56 percent of the vote, beginning a political rise that would see her elected three times statewide in the most populous state in the country.

The Lie

I try to share the debunking of the lie first, because studies show that unless you do that, the lie sticks. So. The lie.

“President” Trump August 28, 2020 speaking about Harris: “I don’t want to see a woman president get in to that position the way she’d do it, and she is not competent.”

Wanna guess how the lies spread back then? Mainstream conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh and of course, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), that bastion of sexual integrity, spread the lie that Harris moved up in California politics because she was dating Willie Brown.

For most normal people, lies like this about women are so predictable it’s not even worth addressing, but it does matter that Donald Trump himself, Mr. Sexual Abuser, also spread this lie trying to impugn Harris over her sex life when his own is based on sexual assault, a rape accusation from his ex-wife who then recanted it when he ran for president, and an affair with a porn star while his wife was recovering from giving birth. He’s not exactly a stand up “family values” guy.

Also, Donald Trump’s presidency was the opposite of competent. But this is exactly the kind of person who relies upon for racism and sexism - someone so weak and bad at what they do that they have to divide people and step on them in order to feel okay.

It’s important to address the lie with you all, because we need to be better and stronger this time around. We need to be prepared for what’s coming.

It doesn’t matter, but Kamala Harris did not get ahead in her political career in California because of who she was dating. Her relationship with Willie Brown was over for 8 years before she ran for office. This is a dumb, desperate and cheap lie.