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A Harris voter’s warning for LGBTQ voters.
It was five words from Vice President Kamala Harris’s 19-minute speech that excited the country when she declared her intention to seek the Democratic Party’s nomination for president of the United States. Five words that encapsulated everything her campaign represents: “We are not going back.”
These five words became a rallying cry for many of Harris’s supporters. Her opponent Donald Trump is a former president and a convicted felon who has consistently voiced his admiration for infamous fascist dictators and targeted LGBTQ+ people with hateful rhetoric. A Trump victory would mean his return to power.
“We are not going back” means we will not go back to a Trump presidency. But we must not assume it also means we will continue forward. Harris is committed to not going back, but she has not shown this writer that she will move forward on civil rights or economic justice.
Trump must be stopped. MSNBC and many other outlets have reported on Trump referring to his opponents as “scum” and openly talking about using the military against them. On Oct. 12, when Trump advisor (and former Middletown, RI resident) Michael Flynn – who pled guilty to lying to the FBI in 2018 and was pardoned by Trump in 2020 – was asked about the possibility of executing Trump’s political opponents, he stated that if Trump wins, his new administration would unleash “the gates of hell.” By Oct. 22, NPR had documented over 100 times Trump threatened to punish or prosecute his political opponents.
If Trump returns to the White House, with the majority of the Supreme Court and at least one of the two major parties blindly backing him, there would be no guardrails against authoritarianism. Project 2025 is a blueprint for an authoritarian state, and it is also a promise by the far right to ensure Trump has an extremist right-wing staff intent on putting an end to the civil service and the nonpartisan military leadership.
Everyone must make their own choice this election, be it to vote for one of the major two party candidates, vote for a third party candidate, or leave the ballot blank. This writer already mailed in his ballot. I was moved by the lion of the left, Noam Chomsky, who has advocated to support Harris in order to “vote against this malignancy [Trump] and move on.”
Chomsky also reminded us, "For the traditional left, elections are kind of an interlude. There’s something that takes a couple minutes away from real political activity. Real political activities, constant activism, doesn’t have to do with elections.”
Defeating Trump isn’t the end of politics. It is the beginning of what comes next.
Harris must be resisted. Yes, Harris has many admirable qualities. At the only debate between Harris and Trump on Sept. 10, she showed true compassion when discussing women’s rights, racism, abortion, and the ability to prosecute a bad actor such as Trump. When she wants to, she can humanize an issue in a way few politicians can. Yet, she has also shown she plans to govern in a much more rightward – and less LGBTQ-friendly – manner than progressive voters might expect.
Harris has been eager to embrace the Republican Party over her own base. She touts having the endorsement of former Vice President – and notorious war criminal – Dick Cheney. She has even been touring with his daughter, former GOP Congresswoman Liz Cheney. On Oct. 18, American Enterprise Institute’s Matthew Continetti wrote in the right-wing news outlet The Washington Free Beacon about the success the right has had converting Harris: “Five years ago, as a candidate for the Democratic nomination, Harris catered to the social justice Left. Now she tells Oprah she’ll shoot intruders with her Glock. That’s what I call progress.”
There have been signs of the Democratic Party’s rightward tilt since Harris became the presumptive nominee. While both the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions had Transgender speakers, Trans voices were noticeably absent from the 2024 convention. The Advocate Magazine has reported that multiple Democratic candidates have backtracked on Transgender rights. Congressman Colin Allred, who is running against Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and endorsed by the Human Rights Campaign, released an ad on National Coming Out Day where he stated “let me be clear, I don’t want boys playing girls’ sports.”
Harris’s record up until this election was rather progressive and LGBTQ-friendly. For the 2019 - 2021 congressional sessions, GovTrack.US ranked her the second most liberal U.S. Senator after Bernie Sanders. In the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, she even ran supporting a version of Medicare-for-all. Yet, she is now running away from that record, including running away from LGBTQ rights.
When NBC News’ Hallie Jackson asked Harris last week, “Do you believe that Transgender Americans should have access to gender-affirming care in this country?” Harris responded, “I believe we should follow the law.”
Harris then pointed to Trump’s campaign attacking her on the issue. Jackson responded by saying, “They’re trying to define you on this, I am asking you to define yourself.” Harris claimed, “I am not going to put myself in the position of a doctor.”
Harris’s decision to refrain from clearly stating that she supports Trans youth has drawn criticism. In Teen Vogue, Transgender writer Alessandra Kahn asked “Why Won't Democrats Like Kamala Harris Embrace Trans Rights This Election?”
On Oct. 15, former Washington Post reporter David Weigel wrote for Semafor about the Democratic Party and Harris’s rightward shift, including the party backing away from LGBTQ rights. He opened the piece by reporting how after one Nevada town hall attendee described through tears how their mother had died without any legal status in this country, Harris responded by telling the teary-eyed voter that she would add “1,500 more border agents.”
Wiegel argues that because of campaign necessity, “Democrats are making rhetorical and policy concessions that they didn’t want to, or [didn’t] think they needed to, in 2016 and 2020.” Weigel isn’t alone in observing this rightward slant: Vox, The Nation, and Jacobin have all published similar articles on this shift in the Democratic Party apparatus.
I’ve met Weigel a few times and find him to be a smart writer and a responsible journalist. Yet, as someone who has been a senior Democratic Party staffer in a swing state, there are some things I have been privy to that Weigel likely has not. This is why I disagree with the statement that this rightward shift runs against the wishes of Democratic party leadership.
The Democratic party was dragged leftward kicking and screaming. In 2016, the party was taken by surprise by the success of the Sanders presidential campaign. In 2018, a twenty-something socialist who went by her initials, AOC, unseated one of the highest-ranking Democrats in Congress.
By 2020, with groups including Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Socialists of America growing in influence, Harris and most candidates had to sound more progressive than they – and their donors – actually were to have any chance at the nomination. Even President Joe Biden, who spent the 1970s up until 2019 being one of the strongest advocates for centrist Democratic politics, jumped on the progressive bandwagon when it was time to hit the campaign trail.
Many will claim the Democrats are doing this to win over voters. Yet if recent polls are to be believed – which is a complicated question this election cycle – Harris isn’t gaining ground with this rightward shift. On Oct. 25, Jay Caspian Kang wrote in The New Yorker about how young men’s voter registrations have swung 14 points from the Democrats to the Republicans. The New York Times reported earlier this month that Harris may be underperforming with Black voters – Black men in particular.
Trump must be stopped, but we must understand that the best-case scenario for this election's outcome is the most right-wing Democratic administration of the 21st century. If we care about LGBTQ rights, and if we want to live in a society that treats its citizens and the world abroad with basic dignity, we must build a new movement to resist a future Harris administration’s agenda. Madam Vice President, we are not going back.
Alex Morash is the former editor-in-chief of Options Magazine. He also wrote a monthly column, Chattering Classes, which discussed the queer happenings in politics, Queer talk around town, and called out bad actors – regardless of political party – that seek to harm LGBTQ people. You can catch Alex on television anchoring Queer News Tonight nearly every week.
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