America’s choice: democracy, decency, and reason or divisiveness, rumors, and resentment

We’ve seen it all in the campaign’s closing days.

Kamala Harris spoke during a campaign rally on the Ellipse on Oct. 29 in Washington, D.C.Kent Nishimura/Getty

Kamala Harris went to the site of Donald Trump’s most infamous speech on Tuesday, for an address that ably framed the choice Americans face in this election.

That is, a contest between a vengeful would-be autocrat who views his critics as enemies from within and talks of imprisoning them and who has threatened our democracy’s underpinning in his disgraceful effort to stay in power and an affable, even-tempered candidate who views disagreement as part of democracy and promises she will try to end the fear-mongering and divisiveness and search for consensus if elected.

But though Harris revisited Trump’s shameful behavior on Jan. 6, 2021, the day he sent his MAGA mob to the Capitol, she didn’t devote all or even most of her own speech on the Ellipse to that subject. She also offered her own proposals to bolster the middle class, lower child-care costs, boost small businesses, and promote homeownership.

It was a strong night for her — until President Biden lit a tumbleweed on fire and sent it rolling through the hyperpartisan campaign tinder by calling Trump supporters “garbage.” The White House quickly tried to douse the fire, and Harris distanced herself from the comment, but it has given Trump and Fox News a way to change a closing-days narrative that was going badly for the Republican nominee.

Seizing on Biden’s gaffe, Trump donned an orange safety vest and went for a ride in a garbage truck. It was an attention-getting move. But it also serves as an apt metaphor for his own election effort. Political garbage, after all, is what Trump has trafficked in for much of this long campaign.

His message purposefully stokes fears, animosities, and grievances as he plays on America’s oscillating authoritarian impulse. Trump himself is practiced at taking his dark rhetoric right to the edge, without quite cascading into the canyon of obvious-to-all odiousness. His MAGA movement, however, is less skilled at striking that balance, and so it was that his Sunday Madison Square Garden rally was a hothouse for the kind of bitterness, bias, and vituperation that underlies so much of Trumpism.

Faced with a backlash, Trump initially tried to dismiss the rancid event as both “beautiful” and a “love fest.” Alas, that claim was so utterly at odds with what people saw that it was hard even for sycophants to repeat. And so Trump tried to have it both ways, suggesting to Fox News enabler Sean Hannity that he didn’t consider comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s feed-the-bros jokes “a big deal,” while adding at Hannity’s prompting that it might have been better if the afternoon of love hadn’t included among its many felicitous offerings racist gibes about Puerto Rico and Latinos.

“I don’t want anybody making nasty jokes or stupid jokes,” he said. (Physician, heal thyself!)

Trump said nothing about the other ugliness that bubbled up from Madison Square Garden. Rather than cleaning up his own act, the man who describes his opponent as “vermin” and “scum” now hopes to nurture a Biden-called-you-garbage grievance among MAGA.

But let’s keep perspective. If this election were based on character, or concern about the preservation of democracy, or sound fiscal and economic plans, it wouldn’t be close. If it were based on doing common-sense things about gun violence or staying involved with the world on the battle against climate change, it wouldn’t be close.

Trump, however, has made this a toss-up race by exploiting the concerns about the Biden administration’s failure to toughen its border policy in a timely way and by emphasizing the deep discontent over higher prices, though the latter malady is hardly unique to America.

What I’ve found most remarkable in my interactions with them is the way Trump supporters have rationalized his assault on democracy even while contending that it’s the Democrats who represent the real threat to the nation.

Some of it is the regular, ridiculous charge that Democrats are communist or socialists who will end the country as we know it. When you point out that since World War II, the economy has done significantly better under Democratic presidents than under Republican ones, those who proffer that argument dismiss the well-documented record or abandon their keyboards.

Others justify their contention that despite Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Democrats are worse, by invoking the great replacement conspiracy theory. That far-right fantasy holds, in essence, that Democrats are purposefully allowing large numbers of undocumented immigrants into the country so they can add them to the voting rolls as a way to dominate future elections. Call that what it is: a swamp fire fantasy.

Put it all together, and this election is a test of democratic decision-making in an era of acrimony: Are we a country concerned with character and guided by rationality rooted in reality — or will rumors, resentments, and ridiculousness carry the day?