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I support Kamala Harris for president because there are two Americas.
There is the America that is rooted in democracy, in civil and human rights, in aspiring toward true equality, in fundamental decency. That is the America of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Liz Cheney, and Louis D. Brandeis. And yes, it is the America of Vice President Kamala Harris.
In a speech delivered in Boston on July 5, 1915, more than six months before President Woodrow Wilson nominated him to be an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Brandeis explained the essence of his America:
"America, dedicated to liberty and the brotherhood of man, rejected the aristocratic principle of the superman as applied to peoples as it rejected it as applied to individuals. America has believed that each race had something of peculiar value which it can contribute to the attainment of those high ideals for which it is striving. America has believed that we must not only give to the immigrant the best that we have, but must preserve for America the good that is in the immigrant and develop in him the best of which he is capable. America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief; it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered."
And then there is the America of white supremacism, of misogyny, of antisemitic and racist dog whistles designed to denigrate Jews, Black Americans, and members of other minorities. This is the mindset of the likes of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), now the Republican vice presidential candidate, who argued only two years ago that in the absence of a national abortion, the Jewish billionaire George Soros could send daily 747s to Ohio "to load up disproportionately black women to get them to go have abortions in California."
In the context of the anti-immigrant, autocratically-inclined, and far too often racist and misogynistic ideology and rhetoric propagated by the 2024 incarnation of what once was the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, Brandeis' words should remind us of who we, as a nation, must strive to be. I support Harris enthusiastically not only because she represents Brandeis' concept of and vision for America but also, in equal measure, because we cannot afford to give former President Donald Trump the opportunity to return us to that other America in which he will once again seek to undermine if not scuttle altogether our country's values and constitutional principles.
Harris stands for the rule of law. Full stop. Trump, by promising to pardon the perpetrators of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, stands for the opposite. That in and of itself is reason to vote for her in November.
Harris is also an unshakeable friend and ally of the American Jewish community. "When Jews are targeted because of their beliefs or their identity," she declared in November 2021, "when Israel is singled out because of anti-Jewish hatred, that is anti-Semitism. And that is unacceptable."
Over the course of her time in the U.S. Senate, she co-sponsored a number of resolutions condemning antisemitism and other bigotries. As a woman of color, she understands discrimination, including antisemitic discrimination, viscerally.
In addition, we must not lose sight of the fact that Harris and her husband, second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, have been the principal protagonists of the Biden Administration's broad-based efforts to combat surging antisemitism in this country.
Harris has been 100 percent on the same page as Biden in supporting Israel in the aftermath of Hamas' Oct. 7 terrorist pogrom on the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border. At the same time, she is in favor of at least pausing the Israel-Hamas war that has raged ever since, if that could result in the freeing of the surviving Israeli hostages held by Hamas for almost 10 months now.
In this respect, Harris' views are in line with the hundreds of thousands of Israeli demonstrators who believe that bringing home the hostages should be a greater priority for their government than remaining in power. That is a major point in her favor.
She has also been a stalwart advocate on behalf of the hostages and their families and has both highlighted and validated the rape and sexual abuse suffered by Israeli women at the hands of Hamas on Oct. 7, and subsequently, in their Gaza captivity. "On Oct. 7, Hamas committed horrific acts of sexual violence," she declared definitively on June 17. Describing in some detail the images of atrocities that occurred on Oct. 7, she said: "I saw images of bloody Israeli women abducted. Then it came to light that Hamas committed rape and gang rape at the Nova music festival. And women's bodies were found naked from the waist down, hands tied behind their back and shot in the head." Referring to the accounts of their ordeal by freed hostages, she added: "These testimonies, I fear, will only increase as more hostages are released. We cannot look away. And we will not be silent."
At the same time, Harris has not shied away from expressing empathy and compassion for Palestinian civilians killed, wounded and displaced in the Gaza war. This puts her in the position of becoming a facilitator for the resumption of a long-term Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Which brings us to the other dimensions of the two Americas represented by, respectively, Harris on one side and Trump and Vance on the other.
I am not an economist, so I do not propose to analyze here the respective economic platforms of the Trump-Vance ticket and the one that will in due course be headed by Harris. But I am the father of a daughter and the grandfather of a granddaughter, and as such, I find the Republican Party's evisceration of abortion rights, epitomized by the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, to be an abomination that not only turns back the clock on women's equality but threatens women's access to health care in this country. This must be one of the most important considerations in the 2024 presidential election. Harris has been a consistent champion of abortion rights, one of the pivotal issues in this year's election.
On the international level, the contrast could also not be clearer. We can retreat into the pro-Putin America-first isolationism of the 2017-2021 Trump presidency, or the United States can remain the leading force in protecting fragile democracies in Europe and elsewhere. In the 1930s, the U.S. did not succumb to the pro-Nazi Germany likes of Henry Ford, Father Charles Coughlin, and Charles Lindbergh. We must ensure that we rebuff the similar challenge presented by the MAGA forces in 2024. That can only be accomplished by electing Harris rather than Trump.
Speaking at a reception for Jewish leaders at the vice president's residence a few days before Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, last September, Harris said, "This is one of those times in the history of our country and the world, where we are being presented with a wake-up call—the blast of the shofar—to challenge ourselves, to ask, 'What are we doing? What can we do?' And know that we can do so much."
The 2024 presidential election will be one of the most important in the history of the United States, on a par with the 1860 election that set the course for Lincoln's emancipation of Black Americans and the subsequent tumultuous and still ongoing journey toward full equality of all who live in this country. Our choice is to either strive to bring people together or to opt for divisiveness and intolerance.
Kamala Harris represents the essential values that will allow the United States to be true to Brandeis' concept of America. Perhaps that is all we need to know.
Menachem Z. Rosensaft is adjunct professor of law at Cornell Law School and lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School. He is the author of the forthcoming Burning Psalms: Confronting Adonai After Auschwitz (Ben Yehuda Press, 2025).
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
