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One would think it wouldn’t matter who the Democratic presidential candidate was; the Republican candidate is Donald Trump.

Biden/Harris have handled issues of war and peace — respected by NATO leaders — as well as climate change, income inequality (growing the economy and making the rich pay their fair share), supporting women’s right to choose, voting rights and protecting Social Security and Medicare — none of which Donald Trump has any interest in positively addressing. The ideological and policy differences between the parties and candidates are just too glaringly stark. And, as if inciting insurrection and being a convicted criminal dozens of times over isn’t disqualifying enough, Trump and the MAGA Republicans have put together this coalition of the bigoted and the privileged while suggesting they’re the ones being persecuted — for what? Insisting on their being entitled to this privilege they’re so determined to protect? It’s whites against colored, men against women, rich against poor, straights against “others,” even Christians against non-Christians to an extent.

With the exposure of the Heritage Foundation’s formulated authoritarian Trump administration agenda, the unpopular Roe decision (time to abort the elephant in the womb), and Chevron and presidential immunity decisions in the courts, and the epidemic of gun violence and need for sensible gun control that the recent attempts on Donald Trump dramatically emphasizes once again, the candidates running will be less important than the stakes. People will be voting for freedom and democracy via the Democrats or autocracy and neo-fascism via the Republicans.

And, I think the polls are wrong, showing a close race (remember the “red wave”). I think the Democrats will win the House, the Senate and the presidency, and more convincingly than expected. We all have Trumpite friends that we worry about because we see how they have been deluded and sucked into this dangerous MAGA cult. I can see thinking people massively mobilizing and showing up to vote as a kind of “intervention” to save their MAGA friends from themselves.

Mike Kelly
Albert Lea