This is an Election About What We Want FOR Our Country, Not Just What is Wrong

Voting with our neighbors in mind

In less than one week, Americans will decide whether we are more swayed by the problems WITH America or the questions of what we should do FOR America.

There is no shortage of candidates, pundits, social media posters and others telling anyone who will listen what’s wrong with the country today. Some have solutions, most simply wallow in their grievances. It’s the Old Guy “get off my lawn” syndrome.

Yes, the United States has its shortcomings. But as I have said before, one of the great strengths of the USA is that we always are a country in the making. There never has been a time in our history when we have said, “This is it. This is as good as a country can be.” No, we always strive to be better. Progress sometimes takes longer than it should, it may take a few detours along the way and there are times we come up short. But we never stop working to improve, to deliver on the promises of our founding.

Today, as we think about the future charted by Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, our focus should be on which offers a better agenda FOR our country and our future. On that point, there is clarity. A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote to work with our neighbors to find solutions that are fair and effective, that respect the role of the individual and the marketplace, and that recognize that government has a role to play, one that rarely is more important than at those times of our lives when we are most vulnerable.

Republicans certainly embrace this critical government role when natural disasters strike Florida or Texas. Why are so many so opposed to lending a helping hand when the closing of a factory throws people out of work or an illness becomes an economic catastrophe for those without access to health insurance? These events often are no more the fault of an individual than the person who’s home is destroyed by a hurricane.

Yet, the philosophy of Donald Trump and some of his supporters is based on an America that government is an oppressive force. They see government as the “Deep State” undermining individualism and capitalism.

Nonsense. A vote for Harris is a vote for a commitment to an America that is in the making of a country better for all.

Don’t read this as an indictment of Trump voters as mean-spirited or selfish. I know many, many Republican voters who walk the talk of building stronger communities and lending a hand to those in need. They give generously of their time and resources.

I also agree that government sometimes overreaches. There is merit to the criticism of a far-left agenda that conflates the guarantee of equal opportunity with the expectation of equal outcomes. Individual responsibility is as vital to a vibrant and fair society as individual rights.

But good government and effective policy change with the times. In the early 20th century, exposing the horrors of the meatpacking industry ushered in an era of worker safety and child labor laws. In the Great Depression, workers who found that living longer often meant an old age of crushing poverty; they were helped by Social Security. The increasing unaffordability of health care paved the way for Medicare in the 1960s. Who today would say these programs weren’t necessary and appropriate government responses to a marketplace that had left too many too vulnerable?

The challenges posed by the economy in the 21st Century are no less urgent. Caring for children and the elderly has become too expensive for too many. Health care remains unaffordable for many of those who aren’t employed by larger companies. The cost of housing has priced too many out of the traditional path of building economic security. To everyone who today says without a hint of irony, “Keep the government’s hands off my Social Security and Medicare,” what makes your demand on society’s resources more important than addressing these modern-day challenges?

Certainly, government alone can’t and shouldn’t be the only answer. But the worst solution is to exacerbate challenges by making government more unfair especially when it comes at great expense. Take housing. Harris proposes a new tax subsidy for first-time homebuyers. Trump’s housing plan is to eliminate the cap on the tax deductibility of the interest on home mortgages. Harris’s plan would cost an estimated $32 billion in Fiscal Year 2026, with most of the benefit going to younger, moderate-income families. Trump’s proposal would add $50 billion to the federal deficit in FY 26, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, with about three-quarters of the benefit going to households with annual incomes of $100,000 or more.

The respective policies have pluses and minuses beyond cost, but Harris’s approach tries to address an economic inequity that undermines the ability of young families to gain the security and stability of home ownership. Trump’s subsidizes the better-off who already own homes and ignores traditional conservative principles of fiscal responsibility and tax fairness.

And so it goes. Voting for our neighbor puts collective action on climate change, health reform, racial and gender equity and other critical issues on the agenda for the next four years. It is a message that voters care at least as much about what we will do FOR our country as we do about what is wrong WITH our country.

This isn’t an election about socialism or communism. We can and should continue to discuss the appropriate balance among individual rights and responsibilities, marketplace solutions, and the role of government in addressing challenges and opportunities.

When it’s all said and done, though, a vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for our neighbor. I am good with that.