Harris looks ahead as Trump dwells on the past in closing arguments ahead of Election Day

With just four days until Election Day, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have delivered their closing arguments to the American people, and the difference between these two competing visions could not be greater.

Harris looks ahead with her most enduring campaign slogans urging Americans to “turn the page” and insure them “we’re not going back.” She promises to enshrine reproductive freedom in the law, help first time home owners, put a check on companies that see disaster as a chance to profit and ensure that people do not face financial misfortune when caring for their loved ones.

“America, for too long we have been consumed by too much division, chaos and mutual distrust,” she said in a moving speech Tuesday on the National Mall. “It is time for a new generation of leadership in America, and I am ready to offer that leadership as the next President of the United States.”

Then there’s Trump, whose campaign is looking to the past, whether it’s indulging his long-held grudges or glamorizing some of the darkest days in American history. At his hate-filled Madison Square Garden rally this week, he doubled down on calling his fellow Americans “the enemy from within.”

“We’re running against something far bigger than Joe or Kamala and far more powerful than them, which is a massive, vicious, crooked, radical left-wing machine that runs today’s Democratic Party,” Trump declared. “They are indeed the enemy from within. But it is he we fight against.”

Trump has promised use a law from 1798 deporting millions of people on a scale never seen in American history. He has sworn to it arrest his political rivals and excuse them who tried to violently overthrow the peaceful transfer of power. He has fanned the flames of people’s worst instincts instead of calling them to rise to a cause greater than revenge.

That darkness came into focus this week when comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, standing above a podium emblazoned with the Trump-Vance campaign logo at their MSG rally, described Puerto Rico – a US territory – as an “island of garbage”. Hinchcliffe also made light-hearted comments about the reproductive habits of Latinos and advanced racist stereotypes about black Americans.

While the campaign has issued milquetoast condemnations of the so-called jokes, Trump himself has yet to explicitly apologize.

The comments led to a wave of endorsements for Harris from prominent Puerto Ricans such as Ricky Martin, Bad Bunny and Jennifer Lopez (and, incredibly, the retraction of an endorsement of Trump from reggaeton star Nicky Jam). Republican candidates for office struggled to separate Hinchcliffe’s remarks from the values ​​of the Republican Party. It wasn’t long before the Harris campaign had the comments cut into an ad.

The hatred is not limited to the rhetoric; it is reflected in last-minute efforts by Republicans to exclude some Americans from the electoral process.

As recently as Wednesday, the Supreme Court — including all three justices Trump appointed — confirmed that lie by allowing Virginia to continue its purge of more than a thousand voters on suspicion of not being citizens.

Last week was the chairman of the Lee County Republican Party instructed 1,800 volunteers with a so-called election protection group that “if you have people like you who were registered and they’re missing information … and they were registered within the last 90 days before the election and they’ve been given Hispanic-sounding last names, it is likely to say, is a suspicious voter.”

In Texas, the League of United Latin American Citizens criticized pro-Trump Attorney General Ken Paxton to attack Latino activists and public officials, even raiding their homes, as part of an investigation into noncitizen voting they say is fraudulent.

Then there is one of Trump’s most despicable plans: to deport 11 million undocumented people in the United States, a move that would tear families apart and destroy the American economy.

In his closing argument, Trump has reminded us who he considers American and who he does not. His definition is not really dictated by papers or legal status or place of birth. It is amorphous, determined by what can propel him to power. Once he’s given that power, it’s possible that the voters of color he’s courting fall outside his definition of who counts as an American.

Many elections present voters with competing visions of the future. But this one could decide which of two drastically different Americas we live in.