Friday, February 14, 2025

A would-be voter sides with Kamala Harris

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It is hardly surprising that high school students today with even a modicum of compassion and empathy, who were approaching late elementary or middle school when President Donald Trump was inaugurated, don’t like the rise in bullying he brought to districts that voted for him in 2016.

(Gage Skidmore/Flickr Creative Commons)

But especially with Kamala Harris taking her position at the top of the Democratic ticket and JD Vance taking his as Mr Trump’s Number Two, there is a surge of youthful enthusiasm sweeping the nation, including that from Sophie Thill, a rising senior at Kaneland High School in Maple Park, Illinois, about an hour’s drive west of Chicago on The Ronald Reagan Memorial Tollway.

From her op-ed, published Sunday in the school’s student newspaper, it’s clear that her vote, if she were old enough to cast it on November 5, which she isn’t, would be more against Mr Trump than for Ms Harris.

“As a woman, I fear for my well-being and access to basic healthcare,” she writes. “As a bisexual, I fear for my ability to marry the love of my life if that person just so happens to be a woman. As a student, I fear for my future education and whether the important events of US history will be cut out of textbooks so that we are doomed to repeat ourselves. As a child of teachers, I fear for my parents’ well-being and financial situations. As a part of the younger generation, I fear that I will live to see the next mass extinction event because we are killing our planet. As a citizen of the United States, I fear that we are moving more towards 1940s Germany each day.”

Now, make no mistake: The Democratic presidential candidate was going to win Illinois anyway, but that’s my point. Before Ms Harris’s meteoric rise, there was very little enthusiasm about voting. But, in less than two weeks, the Election 2024 world turned upside down: A 20-year-old tried to shoot Mr Trump, President Joe Biden dropped his reelection campaign, Ms Harris got hundreds of millions in donations, Mr Trump named Mr Vance as his running mate (more on this later), and the Republicans hosted their convention.

As for Mr Vance, his selection seemed just as unnecessary as Ms Harris convincing Illinois voters to vote Democratic. Mr Trump already had Ohio, Mr Vance’s home state, locked up, and if Mr Trump was looking for a running mate who would add anything to his platform, he missed the boat. Mr Vance is just as backward-looking as Mr Trump. Three statements Mr Vance made a few years ago in his Senate race have come to light following his nomination for the vice presidency:

  • The US is being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”
  • “It’s just a basic fact: you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC. The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”
  • “When you go to the polls in this country, as a parent, you should have more power. You should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don’t have kids.”

As with the words and character of Mr Trump, someone who claims to love America sure hates a lot of Americans. Although national polling averages still favor Mr Trump over Ms Harris, she is polling stronger among younger voters, who say they are more enthusiastic about her than they were about Mr Biden.

Paul Katulahttps://news.schoolsdo.org
Paul Katula is the executive editor of the Voxitatis Research Foundation, which publishes this blog. For more information, see the About page.

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