Opinion | Two coins or two faces?

We are less than one month away from one of the most important elections in American history, and yet, it somehow feels futile. We’ve somehow outdone ourselves from the 2020 election where two “evils” were on the ballot for president. This election posits itself as one of the most important of our time, and yet I feel electorally helpless.

In one corner is former President Donald Trump. A convicted felon, Trump is running again for the Republican party, leading the charge toward Project 2025 — a conservative project backed by the Heritage Foundation, a longtime think tank that opposes abortion and reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrants’ rights and racial equity, according to the ACLU. Trump infamously incited the 2021 Capitol insurrection, mishandled the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic and has a laundry list of explicit disregard for anyone other than himself and his cronies.

In the other corner, current Vice President Kamala Harris leads the Democrats. Despite positioning herself as a stalwart against Trump and his conservative agenda, she and the Democratic party have shifted rightward as well, no matter how she may paint herself. It’s funny to think ultra-right conservatives — like Trump — have called her a Marxist.

For years, Democrats campaigned on the omni-threatened abortion access and reproductive freedoms. Women and people with uteruses deserve the right to bodily autonomy, and Democrats understand this, but they instead use it as blackmail for votes — Democrats possessed a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority to codify Obama’s Freedom of Choice Act in 2009 when they elected to not do it, turning it into an evergreen party goal. 

In 2022, Trump’s Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, initiating a domino effect of state-level abortion bans. On Sep. 10, Trump said he would not enact a federal ban, saying he would leave it up to states to decide. In addition to abortion, trans rights are also on the ballot, but absent from Harris’ policy page. While Democratic candidates parrot conservative talking anti-trans rhetoric, Harris has stayed silent. This is a pivot from her initial full-fledged support of LGBTQIA+ issues — her 2020 website included pledges to cover “all medically necessary services, including hormone therapy and gender confirmation surgery.” It’s worth noting that this website is now defunct and fetches a 404 error — but these promises were made in her 2019  proposal to Congress during her time as senator.

This “404 error” is reflected on the 2024 campaign trail. During the debate, Harris maintained that she would grow the Affordable Care Act, yet also brought up her 2019 health policy — a private option — both of which stifle any hope of a federally-funded health care policy. Ultimately, these plans make gender-affirming care inaccessible to those who cannot pay out of pocket for namely Black, Indigenous and POC.

Additionally, Harris has been quiet in the face of L.W. v. Skrmetti, an upcoming Supreme Court case that challenges a Tennessee law “banning gender-affirming care for transgender people under the age of 18” and making it illegal for any adult — such as a parent or teacher — to “assist” during the minor’s transition.

Perhaps more pertinent is the Democratic Party’s policies on war, specifically Israel. While Trump declared himself Israel’s “protector,” it’s Biden’s Democratic administration supplying the bombs and funding Israel’s genocide of Palestine. It was Harris who said, “I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” and it is Harris who fearmongers a potential fascist America under Trump while students and protestors are beaten, assaulted, tear-gassed and arrested by police for protesting for Palestine. Isn’t fascism already here?

As filmmaker Ali Abbasi says in an interview, “As someone who grew up in [the] Middle East, one thing [about] our experience is there is not a huge difference between a Democratic president and a Republican president … We feel like the bombs are going to drop anyways.” 

If the Democrats had the interests of the people in mind, they would halt funding for Israel, given that 67% of Democratic voters want the U.S. to turn off the tap. On Oct. 17, the Uncommitted Movement of pro-Palestinian voters refused to endorse Harris, saying, “Vice President Harris’s unwillingness to shift on unconditional weapons policy or to even make a clear campaign statement in support of upholding existing U.S. and international human rights law has made it impossible for us to endorse her” to NBC. Oh — I forgot to mention, she’s backed by Dick Cheney.

The Democrats are known to prioritize the young vote, and yet twice as many voters under 30 want the U.S. to stop supporting Israel. Are they even listening? 

This summer, Biden and Harris did not deter or make an effort to fight the City of Grants Pass v. Johnson SCOTUS decision, one that granted cities the power to criminalize unhoused people. The Democrats, who build their platform on “affordable housing” per Harris’ website, have nothing to say when federal law criminalizes homelessness. 

While a nuanced issue with many long-standing material factors, many Democrats, like California Governor Gavin Newsom, are leaping at the opportunity to criminalize unhoused people in their cities instead of using evidence-based solutions to alleviate the issues that come with housing insecurity. Newsom even leveraged to withdraw funding from counties that do not reduce homelessness. While Newsom is not the entire Democratic party, as governor of the largest “ever-blue” Democratic state, his actions are indicative of the party’s rightward shift in general.

Since 2020, we’ve heard “Vote blue, it’s the lesser of two evils.” Trump is an open bigot, racist, misogynist and self-centered candidate, and it’s easy to see him for what he is. You know what he’s about in his oversized suit and firetruck red dunce hat — blasphemous, hatred-filled word salad lining our ears and media feeds for weeks to come, drowning us in outright ridiculous TV and media ads. 

Perhaps more dangerous are the Democrats, though. Harris perniciously pretends to care, balloting on issues like reproductive rights, deflecting questions about Palestine and affirming that the threat of the U.S. under Trump is somehow more important than hundreds of thousands of lives killed with our tax dollars. 

Voters who choose Harris because “she isn’t Trump” need to evaluate their morals. There is an order of magnitude when it comes to human suffering — American narcissism has voters believing otherwise.

Former first president of Tanzania Julius Nyerere aptly said, “The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.” 

Flip a coin, America. Your options are the same.

Jake Vasilias writes about the environment, politics and sports. Write to him at jpv25@pitt.edu