Kamala Harris Needs to Meet the Moment and Reframe Our Poisonous Immigration Debate

This is a dreadful moment in American politics—a crude juncture in the history of the nation. We’ve gotten to the point where the former president of the United States and his running mate on the Republican Party’s national ticket are spreading wild lies about immigrants eating pets in order to drive wedges of division into communities and the nation as a whole. 

Yet this is not the first such dreadful moment in this country. We are a land with a painful history of political demagoguery. A century ago, the Ku Klux Klan gained a foothold in both major parties and was rapidly expanding its reach from the Jim Crow South into Northern states. Seven decades ago, Joe McCarthy was arguably the most influential figure in Washington, spreading a Red Scare that was shaking not just the politics but the culture of the country. Five decades ago, antigay hysteria was sweeping American cities and states, as referendums to overturn antidiscrimination laws and ban LGBTQ+ people from teaching were placed on ballots from Florida to California.

In each of those previous moments, there were fears that the United States was degenerating into such extremism and division that there was no way for a sane voice to be heard—let alone to prevail. But, eventually, in each case, the fever broke, in part because of courageous political figures who called America to its higher values.

Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette, a presidential contender, mounted a 1924 campaign that decried the race hatred of the 1920s, and welcomed the support of the Black people, Jews, and Catholics who were targeted by the Klan. Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a future presidential contender, delivered her “Declaration of Conscience” and challenged the McCarthyism of the 1950s. Just two years before he was elected president, Ronald Reagan, then the country’s most prominent conservative, became the most high-profile foe of a 1978 California initiative that proposed to fire openly gay and lesbian teachers, warning in widely circulated public statements that the measure threatened to infringe “on basic rights of privacy and perhaps even constitutional rights.”

None of those moves were made casually, or easily. In each circumstance, supposed “leaders” in the two major parties had looked the other way. Political counselors and strategists urged candidates to keep silent in order to preserve their electoral viability. Sometimes there were penalties for doing the right thing. But, more often than not, these acts of courage came to be seen as both morally sound and politically smart.

Today, Vice President Kamala Harris has a chance to break the fever of our latest demagogic moment, a moment in which anti-immigrant hatred—grounded in lies about Springfield, Ohio, but amplified as part of a national campaign—is being whipped up by Senator JD Vance (R-OH) and Donald Trump on a level that rivals the insanities, the bigotries, and the threats of some of the ugliest periods of American history.

Harris, as both the sitting vice president and her party’s presidential nominee, should seize the opening to reframe the debate about immigration with a speech—perhaps one delivered in a community with a large immigrant population; perhaps in an academic or religious setting; certainly with an eye toward capturing the attention of voters of every background, region, ideology and partisanship.

Harris has already established herself as 2024’s adult in the room, the serious contender who tries to keep the campaign discussion focused on facts, figures, and policies while her Republican rivals go off the rails. That’s one of the reasons Harris was widely seen as the winner of last week’s presidential debate with Trump, and why she now leads in most polls. With that said, she is still engaged in a highly competitive race. And she clearly recognizes that the Trump-Vance ticket’s wide-eyed xenophobia is not an issue she can let go unaddressed. So the Democrat has begun to respond forcefully to the falsehoods that Trump and Vance are spewing.

In her compelling interview Tuesday with members of the National Association of Black Journalists, Harris was asked about the racist conspiracy theories that top Republicans have peddled about Haitian immigrants in Springfield.

“It’s a crying shame, literally, what’s happening to those families, those children in that community,” Harris said, referencing the Springfield elementary school students who had to be evacuated on the day when school pictures were supposed to be taken.

Harris spoke eloquently about how she learned early in her political career that she had “a public trust…to be responsible in the way that you use your words, much less how you conduct yourself.” She decried Trump’s refusal to accept that responsibility as a former president seeking a new term. She warned against “these serious threats that are being issued against a community that was living a productive good life before this happened,” and said that people are stirring anti-immigrant sentiment in Springfield by “spewing lies that are grounded in tropes that are age-old.”

“This is not new. This is not new in terms of these tropes. This is not new in terms of where it’s coming from,” Harris explained, before detailing Trump’s record of promoting racist untruths for personal and political purposes—including his calls for the execution of the Central Park Five and his peddling of “birther lies” about former President Barack Obama.

“The American people deserve and, I do believe, want better than that,” said Harris. “I know, the vast majority of Americans know, we have so much more in common than what separates us. I know that. I know that regardless of someone’s background, their race, their gender, their geographic location, I know that people are deeply troubled by what is happening to that community in Springfield, Ohio. You cannot be entrusted with standing behind the seal of the president of the United States of America, engaging in that hateful rhetoric that, as usual [with Trump], is designed to divide us as a country—is designed to have people pointing fingers at each other. It’s designed to do that. And I think that most people in this country, regardless of their race, are starting to see through this nonsense, and to say, ‘Let’s turn the page on this. It’s exhausting and it’s harmful.’”

Harris is right.

More importantly, she is establishing a strong, and necessary counter to Trump’s immigration demagoguery.

This is a message she should build out.

Yes, of course, a case may be made that what Harris said on Tuesday was sufficient, and that she does not need to add anything more to her sharp rebuke of the madness that Trump and Vance have unleashed. But America needs more.

This is less about traditional campaigning tactics than it is about doing something rare—yet very important—in a perilous election season when the polls are still too close for Democrats to feel comfortable. This is a point where Harris can lead, and help get some of the poison out of our immigration politics. If she were to deliver a high-profile address that cuts through the Republican lies, puts the truth forward, defends immigrants and communities that are threatened, outlines a real plan for humane and forward-looking immigration reform, and calls the country to embrace the highest ideals of what Democratic President John F. Kennedy celebrated as “a nation of immigrants,” she could elevate the national debate at a point in which it is descending into the maelstrom.