Voters across the country are casting their ballots in what has become election month, voting not only for themselves, but for the children.
They are making a choice for a future that will be, in myriad ways, influenced by the election of Donald Trump or Kamala Harris to the presidency of the United States.
The former president, frankly, disqualified himself on Jan. 6, 2021, when he helped unleash a mob that assaulted the U.S. Capitol to try to overturn the 2020 election results and keep him in power, the culmination of an election interference effort for which Trump has been criminally charged.
Found civilly liable for sexual assault, he has also been convicted of 34 felonies stemming from hush money payments to silence a porn star during the 2016 election — which, in any normal election, would have kept him off the ballot. Trump, therefore, is not fit in character to hold the highest office in the land.
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Moreover, Trump, in the words of Gens. Mark Milley and John Kelly, his former chief of staff, is a fascist, aiming at assuming unchecked power and threatening to use the Justice Department and, extremely troubling, the military against his enemies and the immigrants who he says are poisoning the blood of the country.
And, he would do so in the fashion of “strong men” dictators, China’s Xi Jinping, Hungary’s Victor Orban, North Korea’s Kim Jung Un and Russia's Vladimir Putin, who he admires and has befriended — with Putin raising the likelihood that Trump would end U.S. support for Ukraine, effectively unraveling post-World War II foreign policy and military alliances.
One of the negative effects of Trump’s major policy proposal — massive increases in tariffs on foreign-made goods — has already been demonstrated in 2018 by the tariffs he imposed aimed at China that devastated the agricultural export market and required government payments of more than $27 billion to farmers.
At 78, the oldest major party candidate to seek the presidency, Trump, from his public appearances, appears to be increasingly unstable and incoherent, raising questions of cognitive decline like those that forced 81-year-old President Joe Biden out of the race.
Harris has, as vice president, obtained foreign policy expertise and dealt with leaders, and the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel and Gaza, preparing her to operate a foreign policy rooted in the tradition that partisanship ends at the country’s borders.
And she has demonstrated that she would serve as a strong commander in chief, using America’s military for its intended purpose of protecting and defending the country’s interests rather than for vengeance and personal gain.
For those reasons, the Journal Star Editorial Board strongly endorses Vice President Kamala Harris and Nebraska native son Tim Walz for president and vice president.
About our endorsements
As with all of our editorial board opinions, our election endorsements don’t necessarily reflect the unanimous opinions of our members but rather a consensus. We arrive at them after reviewing news stories and research. While we consider the board an advocate for the community, our endorsements, and all our opinions, are intended to initiate discussion.
