Kamala Harris makes it clear: "We are NOT going back!!”

The stakes are clear!

In the tsunami of inspiring news this week about Vice President Kamala Harris and her campaign –from setting a new fundraising record for a presidential campaign in first 24 hours to securing the delegates needed to be the presumptive nominee and more—one moment stood out to me.

That happened Tuesday at Harris’s first presidential campaign rally in Wisconsin where more than three thousand people packed the venue. That’s when Harris spoke to the cheering audience about the stark contrast between Donald Trump’s agenda and her own: “This campaign is about two different visions for our nation: one where we are focused on the future, the other focused on the past.”

She later added, “Donald Trump wants to take our country backwards.”  Then Harris—after laying out Trump’s regressive plans including portions of his oppressive Project 2025--made this powerful four word promise to the audience: “We are not going back…we are not going back.”

That’s when something both unexpected and inspiring occurred.  The packed audience spontaneously began chanting in unison, “We’re not going Back! Not Going back! Not Going back!”  You can watch the clip below.

Hearing thousands organically chanting that they will not allow Trump to take our nation backwards filled me with joy and emotion. They were channeling what we, too, understand are the stakes with this election.

We know that this campaign is about more than any one issue. Rather it’s a fight to determine if we move forward to further embrace a multicultural democracy or literally go back to being headed by Trump—a convicted felon and an adjudicated rapist—who leads a white supremacist, anti-democratic movement that seeks to impose their extreme beliefs as law. You don’t need a more vivid example of MAGA’s cruel, oppressive vision then the 14 GOP controlled states that now ban abortion at day one of conception—with no meaningful exceptions for rape or incest and where women literally need to being bleeding to death before qualifying for the “emergency” exception.

Wisconsin Democratic state chair Ben Wikler—who attended the Harris rally—was also moved by that chant. As he explained Wednesday on my SiriusXM radio show, the energy at the Harris rally was electrifying, noting it “was the biggest Democratic campaign event in Wisconsin since 2012.” (President Obama’s re-election campaign.)  Wikler then highlighted that it was the spontaneous chant by the crowd of “Not going back” that summed up the idea that “as a country, as a party, as a State. We've made a decision, and we're not going to go back.” He added, “It felt like a whoosh as they decided to move forward instead.”

This stands in stark contrast to just a week before in Wisconsin when the Republican National Convention was held in Milwaukee. The loudest chant by the MAGA faithful during  the Convention was, “Send them Back! “Send them Back!”  

This angry “Send them Back!”  chant is more than just the idea of “mass deportations” as the pre-made signs handed to RNC delegates read. It’s shorthand for moving America backwards by returning Trump to the throne. It’s the idea of preserving and expanding white power by literally ejecting Brown skinned people from our nation’s borders. It’s shorthand for MAGA’s white, Christian nationalist agenda as manifested by their abortion bans, barring teaching Black history, laws mandating The Ten Commandments being posted in public schools, bans on books that celebrate the LGBTQ community and delegitimizing the achievements of people of color as we see with their current “DEI” smear campaign.

Vice President Harris--after the audience’s chants of “not going back” subsided--declared, “And I’ll tell you why we are not going back. Ours is a fight for the future!” She then added what that fight is about, “It is a fight for freedom.”  (Harris’s first campaign ad features Beyonce’s song “Freedom” which the artist agreed Harris could use.)

She continued, “Generations of Americans before us led the fight for freedom.  And now, Wisconsin, the baton is in our hands.” The Vice President then delivered a litany of examples of what freedoms that she is fighting for, including the “freedom to vote,” the “freedom to live safe from the terror of gun violence,” and “restore reproductive freedoms.”

Finally, she posed this question that sums up well the options before us this election, “Do we want to live in a country of freedom, compassion, and rule of law or a country of chaos, fear, and hate?”

The answer to that question lies in our hands as Harris noted, “We each have the power to answer that question.  The power is with the people.”

Harris ended her rally with this exchange with the wildly cheering crowd:

“Today I ask you: Are you ready to get to work? 

Do we believe in freedom? 

Do we believe in opportunity? 

Do we believe in the promise of America? 

And are we ready to fight for it?!”

As the audience roared with approval, Harris closed with the line: “And when we fight…we win!!”

We are now just about 100 days until November 5, which I refer as “Judgement Day.” The contrast between the two visions for America could not be starker.  It’s time to “fight” by working harder than ever making calls, knocking on doors, talking to friends about the issues and voting in huge numbers to ensure we move forward, not back.  As the next President of the United States—Kamala Harris—correctly told us this week, “When we fight, we win!”  It’s now time to fight!

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