Once again, the idea of America lies in our hands this election | Opinion

Donald Trump, the Republican nominee in the most consequential presidential election since 1860, has doubled down on democratic and constitutional rejectionism. His running mate, JD Vance, abandoned earlier descriptions of Trump as “America’s Hitler,” in favor of characterizations of him as a heroic, even messianic, “once and future president of the United States.”

Amazingly, Trump is unapologetic about having attempted to overthrow the duly elected government of the world’s greatest democracy. Republicans now join, enthusiastically, in his demanded sedition. A Trump-dominated U.S. Supreme Court offers the shield of immunity to his crimes. He prepares to pardon his co-conspirators and lay waste to the constitutional guardrails found inconvenient during his first go-round.

Abraham Lincoln claimed that “As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.” Donald Trump readies to put Lincoln’s prediction to the test.

The Republican agenda is replete. According to Project 2025 and speakers at the RNC, millions of “undesirables” are to be rounded up, placed in detention centers and deported. Women are to forfeit control of their bodies and health in favor of a patriarchy and a religion embraced by a prideful, power-hungry minority.

Black Americans are to be further burdened in the exercise of their electoral, dignitary and opportunity-based rights. Lesbian, gay and transgender folks are seeing progress dialed back. And low-income citizens will face bold cuts to meager support programs while subsidies for millionaires and billionaires again explode.

Our slow, grudging steps toward a pluralistic, multiracial democracy will be permanently halted in favor of an un-American, white, Christian nationalism. So much for government of, by and for the people.

Despite all this, it’s hard for supporters of a nation-defining democracy not to feel a surge of optimism. National Democrats seem to have shaken off their perennial sense of learned helplessness. President Biden has, after much, and apparently much-needed shoving, stepped aside with a grace worthy of George Washington.

Vice President Kamala Harris may not prove to be a perfect candidate. But the country’s enthusiasm is palpable. And it is impossible to think she won’t be better than an 81-year-old Biden, or, beyond obviously, a rambling, truthless, hate-infused Trump. A near certain Democratic defeat is (shockingly) avoided.

Democracy has received a blessed, possible, reprieve. And it is hard to imagine a more glorious victory, in the long annals of the American struggle for freedom, than Trump and his white nationalists being vanquished by a brilliant and fearless Black woman. History beckons.

I can’t help but love that Biden closed out his Oval Office address Wednesday night by saying “The idea of America lies in your hands.” It reminded me of Barack Obama’s claim that America is a place where you don’t have to look a certain way, it’s fealty to a creed that matters.

It’s no surprise that JD Vance took issue in his GOP acceptance speech with the notion that America is an idea. For Vance, we’re more of a tribe, a lineage, a pedigree. He thinks, apparently, that Lincoln and Martin Luther King, as well as Obama, got it wrong. Imagine, if you can, an argument with Lincoln, King and Obama on one side and Trump and Vance on the other. That pretty much sums it up.

So now we’re ready, at long last, for our great fight as a people. Republicans, on cue, have opened with racist and sexist taunts against the new Democratic presidential candidate. As Winston Churchill put it in a decidedly different, but equally vital, context: “You do your worst and we will do our best. Perhaps it may be our turn soon; perhaps it may be our turn now.”