POINT/COUNTERPOINT: Congrats to Kamala for uniting one-third of a divided nation

My August 2024 column for Colorado Politics and the Gazettes

Photo by Gage Skidmore

Below is an excerpt from my August column. If you’d like to read the full version, please click here. If you’d like to read my counterpoint’s argument on the same topic, please click here.

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Vice President Kamala Harris has undoubtedly united the Democratic Party behind her candidacy, dutifully protecting her left-flank with the selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her vice-presidential candidate. Unfortunately for her, and for the rest of us, she is nowhere close to uniting our country.

I ask you not interpret such a comment as an endorsement of former President Donald Trump’s ability to unite. I find very few politicians at the national level capable — either politically or morally — to say and do the things necessary to bring our nation together. With great dismay, the daycare is without guardian. There are no adults in the room.

Politics has never been so chock-full of jokes and jabs yet so humorless and vile. A parodic post on X about J.D. Vance having sexual relations with a couch has convinced large swaths of the electorate Ohio’s senator — and now aspirant to the vice presidency — is indeed unable to control his sectional urges. The supposed quotations from his best-selling book, "Hillbilly Elegy," are entirely fake, yet that didn’t stop Walz from mentioning it in his first appearance as Harris’s running mate.

Humor in politics used to be funny because it was in good faith. Have you seen good faith anywhere recently? Asking for an entire nation.

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