Washington, DC – Below is a column by Maribel Hastings from America’s Voice en Español translated to English from Spanish. It ran in several Spanish-language media outlets earlier this week:
With his difficult decision to end his re-election bid, President Joe Biden demonstrated patriotism and humility, something few politicians can attest to — beginning with the Republican nominee who is only looking out for his own benefit and cannot even admit that he lost to Biden in 2020.
Following an impressive political career, Biden sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019 out of a “sense of duty” in the face of the chaotic and dangerous Trump presidency. He won the presidential contest at 77 years old, in November 2020, in the middle of a global pandemic, overcoming Trump, who did not recognize his defeat and incited a bloody takeover of the US Capitol to impede the certification of Biden’s win.
Since then, Trump and his MAGA movement in the majority-Republican House of Representatives have dedicated themselves to torpedoing Biden and the Democrats’ legislative agenda.
Biden has fought Trump for most of this year, but his performance in the first CNN debate provoked calls for him to leave the 2024 presidential race. That happened this Sunday, July 21, when Biden himself supported the nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris, the daughter of immigrants, to head the Democratic ticket.
By dropping out this way, Biden protected his legacy and offered a lesson in unselfishness and courage that only some people possess: those who, like him, have been challenged with difficult life experiences, like his stuttering, the tragic death of his first wife and his daughter in a traffic accident, undergoing surgery for two brain aneurysms, the death of his son Beau due to a brain tumor, his son Hunter’s personal and legal problems, and now the Democratic chorus asking him to leave the contest.
Through his gesture, I hope that voters understand all that is in play in this election.
The contrasts between the two parties continue to be clear.
The Trump-Vance ticket offers a pessimistic, dark, and isolationist vision with extremist and retrograde proposals over the rights of women, minorities, immigrants, and democracy itself, as Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation, a road map for the potential second Trump administration, proposes.
On immigration, the central plank of the Trump-Vance plan is raids and mass deportations, as well as enormous detention camps for immigrants detained by show me your papers military and police squads. The deportations would include, among others, Dreamers and undocumented people who have lived, worked, and paid taxes in this country for decades and who have citizen children and relatives.
But the Republicans are also trying to eliminate legal immigration and asylum and impose a series of draconian measures that were stopped in the courts during the first Trump term, like the Muslim ban.
The Republicans, moreover, falsely blame Harris for the border crisis that the Biden administration has faced. Although Biden appointed Harris to create a long-term plan to address the root causes of migration in Central American countries, the Republicans began to call her the “Border Czar” in a mocking tone and hold her responsible for the crossings that occur. But the crossings and control of the border were not Harris’ responsibility.
In March of this year, the White House announced that Harris had gotten private companies to agree to direct more than $5 billion to the Northern Triangle in Central America since May 2021, promoting economic opportunities that generate jobs and security and will prevent people from emigrating. The crossings overshadowed this announcement.
In her political career as Attorney General of California and as the U.S. senator of that state, Harris always supported a pro-immigrant agenda of reform with a path to citizenship, defended the DACA program, and was the first legislator to ask for an investigation into the horrendous separation of children from their parents at the border under the Trump administration’s “Zero Tolerance” policy. As Vice President, she is part of an administration that, with the lack of immigration reform due to Republican obstructionism, has supported programs for family reunification like the recently announced order to legalize a half million spouses and 50,000 undocumented children of U.S. citizens.
In a panoply of topics that range from the right to abortion, civil rights and workers’ rights, health, education, housing, and immigration, the differences between Harris and the Democrats and the Trump-Vance ticket are abysmal. The former is attempting to extend and defend rights on all of those issues, while the Republicans are trying to undo progress that has already been achieved.
The voters will decide between these two visions. The countdown begins.
The original Spanish version is here.
