Raise your right hand: We are all jurors now

Well, the Democratic Party’s prosecutor-in-chief gave her closing argument last night, urging the jury to find the defendant, Donald Trump, guilty as charged.  The whole time Vice President Kamala Harris was speaking last night, I was thinking how glad I am that I was never on the receiving end of one of her prosecutorial orations.  This is a woman who has been in the legal trenches for decades, and as she reminded us last night, she has dealt with child abusers and murderers and the worst kind of criminals anyone could imagine.  She didn’t have to say “I know his type” about Trump in her acceptance speech.  It was so evident that she knows exactly who she’s running against and how guilty he is that it practically rose off her like steam.

Her speech was more than a case against Trump – a lot more:  it was an invitation to people other than her fellow Democrats to join the joyful revolution she is leading; a warning of what the stakes in this election are; and a triumphant call to arms to the women and minorities in the Democratic coalition that “we are not going back.”  That is what resonated most for me, and I think for my wife Tracy, as we sat side-by-side and watched the first Black woman and the first woman of South Asian descent not just rise to the occasion of her nomination for president but stand astride it like a colossus.  To hear those powerful words coming out of the mouth of Kamala Harris as she held the entire Democratic National Convention in what can only be described as rapture was an experience neither of us will ever forget.

The blazing success of the DNC this week made it hard to remember what a trough of despair we were all supping from only a month ago.  That Kamala Harris and her campaign organization were able to re-make the party in her image in less than 30 days is nothing short of miraculous.  Watching it happen was an education not only in how a modern political campaign should work, but in the power of women when they are unleashed from the bonds of conventional politics and gender roles of the past.   

If you are a Republican, and especially if you are a man named Donald Trump, you had better start looking for shelter, because a storm is headed your way.  Any doubts that the Harris-Walz campaign can maintain the momentum they built before and during the convention were dashed as the balloons dropped and the Harris and Walz families flooded the stage. 

Kamala Harris, who reminded us that her client has always been “the people,” is in the biggest courtroom of her life, the defendant she faces admits his guilt every time he opens his mouth, and he will take the stand to face her brilliance and wrath when they debate next month.  If I were Donald Trump, I would start looking for beachfront property in Brazil.  Not even his Supreme Court can save him this time, because the jury box is filled with the American people, and they have the biggest cannon of them all in their arsenal:  their votes.