One day showed us what America could have been – and could yet be
I am certain there has not been a time in my life that has stretched out any longer than the three decades that passed between July 23, 2024 and July 23, 2025.
Just a year ago, Vice President Kamala Harris made her first public appearance after taking the baton from President Joe Biden to begin her historic sprint to the White House, while shattering glass ceilings and trying to save America from itself along the way ...
If successful, it would be the most audacious political Hail Mary in American history, during a time we never needed a good woman more.
Wisconsinites had traveled from all parts of the state with little notice to gather in this out-sized high school gymnasium tucked hard in the middle of a brawny suburb that helped wall off Milwaukee to the east.
One by one, Wisconsin’s Democratic royalty sauntered into the place … Gov. Tony Evers, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, and state Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler led a cast of dozens who wanted the teeming crowd in West Allis to know that despite all the recent tumult in the party they were firmly planting their flag with her.
Only 18 days earlier, off a terrible debate performance, Joe Biden had been in the state capitol of Madison in yet another high school auditorium in this battleground state where he literally begged for his political life, before mustering with George Stephanopoulos in a classroom onsite to make the same case to a national audience that evening.
Biden’s speech drew a mostly sympathetic reception from the partisans in attendance, but it was clear as day he was not in the kind of good trouble the great John Lewis would have advocated this late in the campaign.
Outside in the neighborhoods surrounding the school, the atmosphere was surreal. Hundreds of people, who couldn’t get in to watch the speech were turning on their best “Midwestern nice,” politely pleading with Biden to drop out. Others were there to show their support. Still others were there because when the president has traveled to your blue-collar neighborhood, the respectful thing to do is just shut up, and hear him out.
Then there were the pro-Palestinian protestors — always the pro-Palestinian protestors — who brought plenty of noise and heat to the somber event. They were kept at a distance by law enforcement which had descended from everywhere, but with their drums and kazoos nonetheless could be heard 10 blocks over.
I sympathized with their cause, just as I sympathized with the Israeli families who had been brutally terrorized, but all of them simply had to know that Biden would be miles better dealing with this sizzling issue than Bibi’s orange baby, who these days has given Israel’s disgusting, corrupt “leader” a spare room in the White House to help burp Stephen Miller.
That was the day I knew for sure these protesters were clearly prepared to burn it all down for their cause, even if it meant setting that cause back for a decade, by installing a complete madman in the White House. I wonder if they have learned yet that Trump not only couldn’t care less about them, but has it directly out for them?
I’ll leave this sore subject here for now, certain I have somehow insulted both sides …
We know now, that try as he might, Biden couldn’t convince the Big Money, the Big Media, and the Big Mouths in the Democratic Party that he was worth their time, entertainment value, and riches, so the show moved onto Milwaukee 18 days later without him, and with her.
Turns out, she was better than good. She was great.
If her job that day one year ago was to instill calm and confidence, while lighting a fire that would show us the way, she accomplished all three.
There was a real degree of difficulty here, because she was breaking away fast from a boss who had given her a chance, and could not afford to stumble even once getting out of the starting block.
Biden got only a brief mention in West Allis that day, which seemed both cold, and politically necessary. If Biden really was as bad as so many in the party said he was, it would do no good to spend much time appeasing him with platitudes, especially with but three months until the most important election in U.S. history.
Harris looked sensational, as always, in her smart, navy blue ensemble — such a contrast to her obese, orange opponent — and deftly hammered home all her talking points. Women would be protected, Project 2025 was a roadmap for destruction, and there would be more and more jobs coming from her administration.
I left the auditorium that day hopeful, but wondered if beating up on our own so late in the campaign had done more harm than all its intended good …
Despite what I am reading now from the Monday Morning Quarterbacks, who form the scattershot political elite, she ran a damn fine campaign. While her opponent was being given free rein to say and do literally anything without consequence, she plowed ahead and tried to do the most difficult thing in America politics: knock down centuries of misogyny and bigotry, while keeping people focused on character and substance.
She absolutely wiped the deck with Trump in their one and only debate. He wanted no part of a second beating, and stayed as far away as possible while screaming people were eating his supporters’ cats and dogs.
Seriously.
The patriarchy in America weren’t about to give her the respect she earned by standing up to the lewd, woman-abusing cretin that night, much the same way Hillary Clinton never got the credit she deserved for publicly smashing him three times in their debates just eight years earlier.
After all this I wonder if this screwed-up country will ever be ready for a woman to lead us. There is no way we deserve it …
This much is fact: Trump is a physically and mentally diminished monster, which makes him the most dangerous thing in American history. He knew all about Project 2025 just like she said he did, and is using it as a roadmap to dismantle our environment, our healthcare system, our safety nets, our economy, and common decency.
He’s a fascist, mostly because it’s easier ruling with an army than it is doing the necessary hard work it takes to govern all of America. He is a small-timer who has never had that in him.
Human beings have been rounded up and dumped in cages flanked by alligator-infested swamps. The convicted felon is now being hounded for his friendship with a man who rounded up children and raped them.
Billionaires are being rewarded for their loyalty, and working folk are being thrashed simply for their situation in life.
One year ago today, Kamala Harris took the stage in a Milwaukee suburb, and offered us all a chance at a far better way forward.
I’ll never forget that day, or the woman who selflessly accepted the baton from her fractured party, and ran like hell in an effort to preserve our democracy, and protect us from ourselves …
(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)