#if u don’t vote. that’s a vote for trump

[mickeym4ndy]

watchng a US election from outside of the states is so insane bc HOW is it this close

[nappingpaperclip]

get called a queer/fag more often, eat less because you can’t afford it, have your house fall apart, can’t save up for anything because if you do your bf will be kicked off of Medicare, can’t afford vaccines, can’t afford hrt, can’t afford drs appointments, see post after post of trans people murdered every day, post after post of battered children’s bodies, but 30 something year old homeowners on the internet keep responding to my criticisms telling me it can get worse. like how, what is worse than genocide? than my brothers and sisters being killed and put out on the streets every day? little kids being beat to death in the bathrooms, being buried under rubble. white supremacist caravans driving through my city to go crush immigrants drowning trying to get across the border cause they got deported while their kids are in cages. please tell me. how can it get any worse?

[pocketsizedquasar-3]

you know. white liberals would be far less annoying (still deeply annoying) and far less difficult to take seriously (still deeply difficult) if they stopped lying to themselves and everyone else about what they were doing. ‘cause y’all either sound completely stupid and removed from reality at best or violently callous at worst.

(and before anyone fails their reading comprehension here, i am not telling anyone to vote or not vote or who to vote or not vote for. get off my dick.)

but no, you’re not doing “real leftism” by voting for kamala (something i have actually seen countless people say. “real leftists” would vote for kamala!!1!!1!! if you don’t vote for her ur not a “real leftist!!!!”). that’s not what that is. words mean things. you’re actually engaging in pretty textbook liberalism. it’s not “real leftism” to vote for a genocidal fascist who is actively employing genocidal fascistic policies both overseas and domestically, and who has pledged gladly to continue doing so. (again, bc this is the bad reading comprehension website, i’m not telling you if you vote for kkkamala ur not a “real leftist” (mostly because that’s meaningless); i’m saying that that act itself is not a """leftist""" action). if you feel the need to justify what you’re doing to yourself by pretending you’re doing ~real leftism~, stop.

you’re not protecting palestinians by voting for kamala. you’re not making their chances better or being better for them or improving their conditions. you’re not “more likely” to sway kamala on palestine; you can’t even threaten to withhold your support for her because of her wanton slaughtering of palestinians. 13 months of ongoing genocide and ongoing mass protest movements and multiple polls showing that she would literally guarantee the win in key swing states if she would just call for an arms embargo / ceasefire as part of her platform have not swayed her. she constantly, constantly reaffirms her willful, enthusiastic support of this genocide. she has said over and over again that she will not end her support for israel, that she would not have done anything differently than biden, that she has no intentions to stop sending israel arms and money so they can keep slaughtering palestinians and now lebanese. you are not “protecting” or helping palestinians by voting for her. keep their names out of your mouths.

you’re not protecting """minorities""" or """poc""" either. not when the candidate is a cop whose administration has already funneled billions of dollars into the police and the military, who is priding herself on wanting to create the most lethal military, on being tougher on the border&immigration than trump, who is happily continuing to perpetuate racist atrocity propaganda to justify the mass slaughter of palestinians, who continues to reaffirm and support the escalation of imperialism and war even elsewhere in the so-called middle east, who is gladly seeking (and securing) endorsements by racist white supremacist republicans (like dick fucking cheney. come on), whose administration has been for four years enthusiastically accelerating the climate crisis, whose campaign has been littered with examples of both their supporters and the politicians themselves being virulently racist. you’re not protecting us. you’re not helping us.

your candidate wants us dead. your candidate wants me dead. your candidate wants my people in iran dead. your candidate wants my sister people in palestine dead. your candidate is actively orchestrating their slaughter.

kamala might be better for you, white liberal american. fine. vote for her if you wish. no one is stopping you. but stop white knighting about it. stop pretending you’re doing this for anyone but yourself. stop lying to yourself and everyone else about what you’re doing. stop speaking over us the with fucking audacity that you’re somehow doing us a favor, and stop talking down to us, palestinians especially, like they are children who need to be ~explained~ the right way to save them. stick your white savior complex up your ass.

vote however you want, but stop lying about what you’re doing and who you’re protecting.

and if you want my vote too? fucking earn it.

[nonbinary-strawberry]

don’t forget to vote tomorrow, tumblrinas

[matoitech]

the “land acknowledgement” they did still makes me want to fucking die

[night-triumphantt]

Saw another ‘vote for Biden bc trump is worse post’ have u guys been paying attention to Biden, the border has been worse, they mobilized the national guard on citizens in NYC, theyve passed surveillance laws, they voted to ban tik tok,(which he said he would sign even if it WASNT attached to a budget bill) he has gone around congress MULTIPLE times to support isreal. If trump did these things everyone would be up in arms but under the blue tie it’s ok. I don’t think yall understand how much he supports isreal, he’s willing to lose over it. He is saying he’s not being swayed by public opinion. I will be voting in other parts of the ballot but I will not be voting for him for president and you cannot convince me to do so. I am from the levant, I have friends from Palestine who have lost people and you want me to vote to continue to kill them and endanger my own family. I won’t do it. I will vote in other parts of the ballot but I will not vote for Biden and no it is not bc I want trump to win. How is it my fault that he wants to commit a genocide so bad that he’s willing to lose, the people have SHOWN him he will lose and he doesn’t care. Anyways rant over.

[calamitydaze]

Someone wrote a whole essay on the flag? Bruh. How many notes did it get there’s no way people are serious

like 200 i think? people are…. very serious 😬

[starlooove]

Ok final thing forreal this is definitely not hypocrisy bc I DID vote but it’s also like. U don’t get to tell people going through a genuine crisis, the one you’re so scared of happening to you, how to react when someone who spews the same rhetoric as everyone who got them there is being called the lesser evil. Like we have the privileges to break shit down policy by policy but people actively dying don’t get that luxury and they have the right to react accordingly when the ppl who claimed to be on their side and doing everything possible suddenly decide mommala is their savior, all these fundraisers are scams, and that they’re all going to die anyways so we might as well save ourselves

[psyshockdeoxys]

it is really unfortunate to see blogs i have enjoyed following for a long time become those kinds of blue MAGA liberal harris voters who demonize leftists for not wanting to vote for a genocide (jill stein is leading with muslim-american voters in every single swing state for a reason btw!)

so here is an announcement to the few followers & mutuals my dumbass main blog has: if you’re also a blue MAGA liberal like this please fucking block me and do not ever interact with me ever again

[angel-derangement]

not an american so not my bizz but I keep seeing people saying they should put the nominees through some kind of endurance test or challenge to see who gets it, as if donald trump isn’t fifty times more durable than biden, if you through them both through a window biden would shatter before the glass does. don’t get me wrong they’d both die on impact but trump is undoubtably more robust “they should do hot ones” biden would die from smelling the wings. trump wouldn’t die until the second sauce. what u guys actually need is political assassination attempts, ranked choice, and compulsory voting. and a lot of other things. actually now I think about it yeah get them on hot ones and just poison the wings. anyway sorry that u are all going through this and it is very bad in every way imaginable :( in these trying times pls remember your roots and invite both of these old men to a top down motorcade through dallas

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 10, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 11, 2024

Former president Trump has always approached debates as professional wrestling events in which the key is not to explain policies or answer questions, but rather to demonstrate dominance over your opponent. In 2016 the Democratic nominee, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, had a hard time countering this strategy effectively because of the many expectations of what was appropriate behavior for a female presidential candidate. In 2020 and then again in the June 2024 “debate,” Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s stutter made it difficult to counter Trump’s scattershot attacks.

The question for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in tonight’s presidential debate was not how to answer policy questions, but how to counter Trump’s dominance displays while also appealing to the American people.  

She and her team figured it out, and today they played the former president brilliantly. He took the bait, and tonight he self-destructed. In a live debate, on national television. 

The Harris campaign began the day trolling Trump with a new campaign ad featuring the pieces of former president Barack Obama’s speech at the August Democratic National Convention that concerned Trump. “Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire”—the ad cuts to a photo of Trump in a golf cart—“who has not stopped whining about his problems.” Then a clip of Trump shows him complaining about Harris’s crowds, before Obama notes Trump’s “weird obsession with crowd sizes,” complete with Obama’s hand motion suggesting Trump’s sizes were small. “It just goes on, and on, and on,” Obama says, before the ad shows empty seats and people yawning at Trump’s rallies.

“America’s ready for a new chapter,” Obama says to the overflow crowd cheering at Chicago’s United Center during the Democratic National Convention. “We are ready for a President Kamala Harris!” At the end, even Harris’s standard statement, “I’m Kamala Harris and I approved this message,” sounds like a challenge.

This morning, the Harris campaign began running the ad on the Fox News Channel. 

At the same time, they began running Philadelphia-themed ads across the city on billboards, in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and on food trucks and taxi cabs, sidewalk art, and digital projections making fun of Trump’s fascination with crowd sizes. They showed, for example, a full-sized Philadelphia pretzel labeled “Harris” alongside a piece of one that looked like an upside down U labeled “Trump.”

The taunting might have been behind Trump’s demand for loyalty from Republican lawmakers this afternoon, telling them to shut down the government if he doesn’t get his way on the inclusion of a voter suppression measure in the bill to fund the government. The right has often relied on threats of government shutdowns to try to get their way, but such shutdowns are never popular, and even moderate Republicans are leery of launching one just before an election.

Nonetheless, Trump tried to lock them into such a shutdown, reiterating in a post this afternoon the lie that undocumented immigrants are voting in presidential elections. “If Republicans in the House, and Senate, don’t get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET. THE DEMOCRATS ARE TRYING TO ‘STUFF’ VOTER REGISTRATIONS WITH ILLEGAL ALIENS. DON’T LET IT HAPPEN—CLOSE IT DOWN.” 

Throughout the day, the Harris campaign placed posts on social media showing Harris looking crisp and presidential and Trump looking old and unkempt. And then, for ten minutes in the hour before the debate, the Harris campaign held a drone show over the Philadelphia Museum of Art showing campaign slogans and then turning the words “MADAM VICE PRESIDENT” into “MADAM PRESIDENT.” 

Hugo Lowell of The Guardian reported today that Trump’s advisors were concerned ahead of the debate about whether they would get “happy Trump” or “angry Trump,” worrying that a frustrated Trump would engage in the vicious personal attacks that turn voters off. They expressed relief that having the microphones muted when it was not a candidate’s turn to speak would prevent Harris from irritating him with fact checks and snark of her own. Conservative lawyer George Conway noted that it was “[i]nteresting how one campaign is extremely concerned about the emotional stability of its candidate, and how the other is not.”

Harris’s attacks on Trump, including her campaign’s subtle digs at his masculinity, appeared to have accomplished what they set out to. When the two came out on stage, he went straight to his podium, while she strode across the stage, moved into his space, held out her hand, introduced herself and wished him well: “Kamala Harris. Have a good debate.” He muttered in response, “Nice to see you.” Then she took her own spot at the podium. When the debate opened, it was clear that Harris was the dominant figure and that her opponent was “angry Trump.” He would not look at her during the debate.

In her first answer, Harris tried to set out both her own story as a child of the middle class and how she intended to build an opportunity economy for others, lowering food and housing costs and opening the way for more small businesses. It was a lot, quickly, and she looked a little nervous.

Then Trump spoke and it was clear he was going off the rails. His first comment was to suggest Harris was lying, and then to insist that his proposed tariffs will solve everything, although he has the way tariffs work entirely backward: they are paid by the consumer, not by foreign countries. As he followed with a long list of his rally lies, Harris started to smile.  

From then on, he continued to produce rally stories full of wild exaggerations and attack Harris with lies in what CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale called “a staggeringly dishonest debate performance from former president Trump.” "No major presidential candidate before Donald Trump has ever lied with this kind of frequency,” Dale said. “A remarkably large chunk of what he said tonight was just not true. This wasn't little exaggerations, political spin. A lot of his false claims were untethered to reality." As Harris spoke directly to the American people, growing stronger and stronger, Trump got wilder and angrier and told more and more crazy stories. 

And then, about ten minutes into the debate, Harris baited him. She invited the American people to go to one of his rallies, where “he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter, he will talk about ‘windmills cause cancer.’ And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.” 

Trump lost it. He defended his rallies, said Harris couldn’t get anyone to attend hers and has to bus in attendees (in reality, her rallies are packed and he is the one who reportedly hires attendees), and then, in his fury, repeated the lie about immigrants eating pets. When a moderator fact-checked that story, he fought back, saying he heard it on television.

And from then on, Harris kept baiting him while explaining her own policies directly to the camera, and he took the bait every single time. He ran down every rabbit hole and appeared unable to finish a thought. Notably, he refused to say he would not sign a national abortion ban and admitted that after nine years of promising one, he had no health care plan (he has, he said, “concepts of a plan,” and if they pan out, he’ll let us know in the “not too distant future”). 

He threatened World War III and repeated that the U.S. is “a failing nation.” He told a long story about threatening “Abdul,” the leader of the Taliban; in fact, the leader of the Taliban since 2016 is Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada. In response to Harris’s statement that foreign leaders thought he was a disgrace, Trump answered that Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who destroyed his country’s democracy and replaced it with a dictatorship, says he’s a good leader. New York Times columnist David French wrote: “It's like she's debating MAGA Twitter come to life.”

The debate moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis of ABC, asked solid questions and corrected the most egregious of Trump’s lies. But as he continued to interrupt and yell at Harris, they increasingly gave him leeway to do so. This meant he spoke more often and for more time than Harris; MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle reported that he spoke 39 times for a total of 41.9 minutes, to her 23 times for a total of 37.1 minutes. But the extra time did him no favors.

By the end of the evening, Harris had delivered a clear message about her hopes to move the country forward beyond years of using race to divide people who have far more in common than they have differences. She promised to develop an economy that will build small businesses and support a growing middle class, while protecting rights, including the right to make reproductive decisions without the intrusion of the state. And she showed the nation that Trump can be baited, that he lies freely and incoherently, and—perhaps crucially—that he is no longer the dominant politician in America.  

Immediately after the debate, the Harris campaign continued their demonstration of dominance. Harris-Walz campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon released a statement recapping Harris’s strength and Trump’s angry incoherence. She concluded: “Vice President Harris is ready for a second debate. Is Donald Trump?”

Then things got even worse for Trump. 

Music phenomenon Taylor Swift endorsed Harris, telling her 283 million Instagram followers that she felt she had to because of Trump’s earlier reposting of an AI image of her seeming to endorse him. That, she said, “brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth. I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election.”

After explaining why she was supporting Harris and Walz and urging her fans to do their own research, Swift signed off: “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[nappingpaperclip]

it’s so joever y’all. genocide Joe has no chance of winning when he called Putin the “president of Ukraine” and the “bravest man he knew” on accident and then the next week his rival has a failed assassination attempt it’s never been more clear than this that it’s joever

[neotrances]

and that behavior in of itself is racism, you’d never go against your racist ass white peers, but you’d argue and fight like hell against brown people for opinions that protect them, u only have that anger for us bc u see us as lesser, u see us as less intelligent, u see us as a hindrance to your perfect world, u somehow find the strength and courage to say things like “if you don’t vote for biden you deserve the things that’ll come with trump” to brown people but you are too chickenshit to tell your uncle to stop calling people illegals during thanksgiving dinner, you want us to be under your control while still feeling as though you’re doing US a favor

[simply-ivanka]

Trump’s Best Lies Weren’t Trump’s

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

May 8, 2024

In an act of editorial cowardice, the Economist devotes a leading editorial plus an entire special section to the problem of disinformation yet never mentions the Steele dossier and Hunter Biden laptop lie.

Its package is timely for all the reasons I’ve written about: Disinformation is likely to flow in even greater abundance to influence the 2024 vote. But it also botches the most important insight. The anonymous AI-generated disinformation on the web that preoccupies the magazine’s editors is trivial in effect next to official disinformation from government sources circulated by mainstream media.

The Economist details a surreptitious Russian plot to blame America for dengue fever in Africa. It ignores a story of open disinformation of gobsmacking continuing influence, which has half of America watching as the other half (and most of our political class) lie about what happened after 2016. If the magazine thinks these voters aren’t drawing conclusions that will shape the 2024 outcome, it needs its medication adjusted.

Let’s step back: Political causes may be good or bad, but few or nonexistent are those campaigns or campaigners who have been unwilling to lie in their causes.

Eisenhower lied about the U-2 program in one of the best causes ever, keeping a check on Soviet ICBM development.

Sam Harris, the popular podcaster and neuroscientist, exhibited his essential adulthood when he recognized and approved the laptop lie because of the importance he attached to defeating Trump.

Knowing when you lied and why you lied is psychologically healthy. Do I think Leon Panetta, the longtime respected congressman and Obama CIA chief, is of healthy mind? Yes. He and colleagues saw that it would help Joe Biden to associate Hunter’s laptop with Russia and left unspoken between them that it was a lie.

The Economist, in contrast, gives us a blaring, billboard-like exhibition of the psychological disorder known as splitting. See if you recognize the pattern:

Splitting means claims and assertions hostile to Mr. Trump should be repeated and emphasized; any that aren’t should be suppressed.

The Steele dossier should be trumpeted until it stops being useful for discrediting Mr. Trump and starts to discredit his enemies—in which case it should never be mentioned again.

If a statement is true and favorable to Mr. Trump, the only motive for voicing it is pro-Trumpism. (This will create problems for weather reporters if Mr. Trump says it’s raining and it’s actually raining.)

Russian meddling can’t both have happened and have been trivial—because the first part sounds anti-Trump but the second doesn’t. This is unacceptable to the splitting mind.

I know it would be unthinkable at this late date for our media and political elites to come clean. It would amount to abdicating the election to Mr. Trump.

Telling the truth, unfortunately, needed to start long ago before it could change the moment we’ve reached today.

And yet the perverse consequences ought to be beating us over the head. As David Brooks of the New York Times tweeted after Mr. Trump won 11 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016: “Our job in the media is to capture reality so that when reality voices itself, like last night, people aren’t surprised. Pretty massive failure.”

In 2015 Donald Trump was a noisy celebrity ranting about illegal immigration. Nine years later, he and his legions have an epic narrative to tell themselves, true in many particulars, about the U.S. government and media thwarting them with lies and fabricated evidence.

Most of all, in bold letters, our current fix should recall the wisdom of the media’s former motto: “Without fear or favor.” Or as Walter Lippmann put it a century ago, “In his professional activity it is no business of [the reporter’s] to care whose ox is gored.”

We tell the truth and let the chips fall because we don’t know where the chips will finally land even if we think we do. Moreover, once we allow ourselves to start lying to the public for its own good, inevitably our reasons for doing so become more corrupt and self-seeking over time. Whatever his demerits, the press now paints Mr. Trump in impossibly lurid colors to justify its past behavior. Witness also the “Trump bump” in paid subscriptions and TV ratings. Lying about Mr. Trump works commercially for media owners even as it benefits Mr. Trump too. In fact, nothing has been more profitable, even salvational, for many mainstream media companies than MAGA.

But the ultimate exploiter is Joe Biden, cynically using Mr. Trump’s antichrist image as a lever to shove his unwanted self down his own party’s throat despite age and poor polls.

If Mr. Trump now wins—he would only have to draw a middling hand in November—the recriminations against Mr. Biden deservedly will be scalding and eviscerating. The blame game might wreck the Democratic Party for a generation.

[icedhotcocoa]

You, like nearly everyone else who tries to shame people into voting “blue no matter who,” will most likely not do anything to try to make change if Biden gets re-elected. You will sit back in your relative comfort and find another excuse for why it’s not the “right time” to make any sort of stand, as has happened for years on end now.

Meanwhile, those of us who are most affected, most ignored under the current administration will continue to suffer, continue to be ignored, except to be told that we’re unreasonable for asking you to put your weight behind politicians who will actually help us, when it most matters.

. okay. you’re right. you win. maybe biden will win and everything will be the same and the status quo will never change and it’s all my fault for making a Tumblr Post

but to stop joking for a sec im honestly so exhausted of fighting with people who are fundamentally like me and agree with me and are affected by the same policies and discriminations i am! i agree that the right time to fight and take a stand is NOW! but voting blue seems to be the only actionable way i can do that within the context of the 2024 election. i do not feel safe enough voting third party and/or encouraging others to and risking increasing the odds of trump winning.

i genuinely am sorry if i came off as judge mental or shame-y. i understand people who don’t wanna vote for biden. fuck, man, i don’t wanna vote for biden!! but just like you im doing my best with the means i have until we fix our democracy and actually make it democratic with voter reform

on a personal level, i am 19. it’s my first presidential election year and my second year voting. im figuring shit out and learning how to be a more involved citizen and more effective activist, as im sure u are too, yk? And i am always open to actionable suggestions (so, not like that one person who called me a spineless genocide supporter, not hurt by that at all)

TLDR im not a political influencer im a tf2 blogger and im trying my best 😭😭😭

[mariacallous]

The 2024 presidential election may be one of the closest in modern U.S. history, so it should come as no surprise that both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are looking to gain the attention and support of a multigenerational Central and East European electorate—especially Americans of Polish descent living in Rust Belt swing states.

The Democrats were first to address Polish Americans when Harris challenged Trump during their September debate to explain to 800,000 Polish American voters in Pennsylvania what his position would be in the event that Russia’s war in Ukraine expands into countries like Poland. Democrats followed up with an organizing call that highlighted, “If Trump returns to power, he will sell out Ukraine and put the rest of Europe, starting with Poland, at risk.”

But Trump is making a comeback that could cost Harris votes in several battleground counties. In mid-October, he called to tell attendees gathered at the 80th anniversary event of the Polish American Congress (PAC) that Poles are courageous people and “Poland will always be safe as long as I’m president, that I can tell you. And Russia never would have invaded Ukraine if I was president.” He’s also appealing to important conservative values, saying that he will defend God, religion, family, and freedom from Harris policies that his campaign is billing as “socialist” or “communist.”

Simply alleging that Trump would abandon Poland and Ukraine, as Harris has argued, will not be enough. In order to convince voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania, she needs to address several of the Biden administration’s flawed policies, which have cost thousands of Ukrainian lives, and provide a compelling case that she will act differently.

Michigan’s Macomb County, north of Detroit, has long been seen as a barometer of U.S. elections due to its historically white working-class population with strong union membership stemming from the area’s ties to the auto industry. Based on 2023 estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 113,181 people living in the county claim Polish heritage, which is about 15 percent of Michigan’s total Polish population; some even still speak Polish at home. In November 2020, Donald Trump beat Joe Biden in Macomb by 39,911 votes, but lost Michigan by 154,188 votes.

By focusing on foreign policy and security issues with these voters, Democrats are looking to shift attention away from key domestic issues, including the economy and immigration, as well as controversial progressive policies like abortion rights—a sound strategy given several findings from a recent study on Polish Americans.

According to a 2020 survey from the Piast Institute, more Polish Americans identify as conservative than liberal; they overwhelmingly state that religion is important in their lives (most are Roman Catholic); and a majority of them are in favor of abortion but only under certain circumstances. This voter profile may seem perfect for Trump, who, in 2016, carried the Polish American electorate in places like Macomb County. But the same survey showed that for 72 percent of respondents, U.S. involvement in NATO is either extremely or very important. That means the vote in counties like Macomb may be decided less by domestic issues than by foreign-policy ones—and Democrats must press their advantage if they don’t want to lose this key demographic.

Both Republicans and Democrats know what messages resonate with Polish American voters based on initiatives that mobilized the community in the past. For Polish Americans, World War I marked their arrival on the electoral scene, when they lobbied the Woodrow Wilson administration for the interests of their ancestral homeland. During World War II, they shifted their focus from humanitarian relief efforts to political lobbying under the auspices of large umbrella organizations such as the PAC, which was created in 1944. The PAC became an advocate of Polish war refugees. The Displaced Persons Act of 1948 resulted in the admission of 395,000 immigrants to the United States, of which more than 200,000 were Poles. Of these, around 38,000 settled in Michigan, including in areas in Macomb County.

These émigrés brought with them a deep distrust of communists and a hatred for the Soviet Union and Russian imperialism. The GOP painted Democrats as the “party of Yalta,” and Dwight D. Eisenhower lured them by promising a policy of liberation and rollback—checking Soviet influence and communism in Europe. To their dismay, the next few decades were marked by containment and detente.

Polish American votes helped Jimmy Carter when the Georgia governor snatched the East European ethnic narrative from President Gerald Ford during their 1976 debate, following Ford’s gaffe, which contributed to the Democrats securing the White House. “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,” Ford said during the debate. “I don’t believe that the Poles consider themselves to be dominated by the Soviet Union.” Although most Poles voted for Nixon in 1972, they switched to Carter by a 60-40 margin. Key states with Polish American populations flipped from red to blue by small margins—0.2 percent in Ohio, 1.6 percent in Wisconsin, and 2.6 percent in Pennsylvania. Later, many of these immigrants became Reagan Democrats.

Today, over 8.2 million people in the United States claim Polish ancestry. While election analysis tends, at times, to not separate some voter categories (including “white”), how white ethnic groups vote is often key. Although the Polish American community is not as cohesive as it was in the past, its strength should not be underestimated as merely being a mirage.

According to American Community Survey estimates, the largest concentrations of Polish Americans are in Illinois (761,948) and New York (740,795), but there are almost as many in Michigan (720,372), Pennsylvania (695,604), and Wisconsin (441,057). Whereas Illinois and New York are not swing states, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are up for grabs. All 3 have been won by margins significantly smaller than the ethnic Polish population in recent years. If the Democratic Party wants to win in November, it cannot neglect the white ethnic vote.

Harris was first to target the Polish Americans and got off to a good start. She referenced the threat from Russia as she appealed to the Polish Americans voters in Pennsylvania during the debate, then, a super PAC-funded spot referenced the trumpeter of Krakow and invaders from the east, with a headline that read: “Putin & Trump: Threat to Freedom.” For some time, it seemed that the Trump campaign may have missed its chance to seize the Central and East European narrative and gain their favor.

The former president was scheduled to visit the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa, where Ronald Reagan stopped during his 1984 campaign. After Trump didn’t appear at the September event, it was suggested that he canceled his visit to instead meet with Qatari leaders at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. In Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where the shrine is located, Trump lost to Biden in 2020 by a small marging of 17,345 votes (4.37 percent), while the difference in the state overall was just 1.17 percent.

Although Trump missed an opportunity to appear before those Polish American constituents, in October—which happens to be Polish American Heritage Month in the United States—he has been making up lost ground. In his greeting to Polish Americans on the occasion of the Pulaski Day Parade, Trump stated, “We love the Polish people, and there’s nobody better. They’re great, they’re strong, they’re smart.”

He also gave an interview to a conservative television station in Poland, which enumerated the achievements of his last term, including being tough on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, increasing the number of U.S. troops stationed in Poland, helping Poland diversify its energy with American LNG, and forcing NATO countries to spend more on defense. The former president repeated that Putin would not have initiated the full-scale invasion of Ukraine if he was in the White House and that the war “threatens Poland because as the expression goes, ‘You’re next.’ You can’t have that.”

To many Polish Americans, this is a solid track record, and it has left many doubting whether Trump would really abandon Ukraine if elected in November. In an interview for the Washington Post, Trump stated that he’ll give Ukraine more aid than they have ever received if Putin does not agree to a peace deal. Even the foreign minister of Poland’s current liberal government pointed out that before the invasion began, Trump provided Ukraine with Javelin missiles that might have saved Kyiv. This was a policy that the Obama administration opposed.

So where does this leave Kamala Harris? As she struggles with convincing Arab American voters, who have abandoned the Democrats due to Biden administration’s Gaza policy, in states like Michigan, outreach to Polish Americans could counterbalance this loss.

However, if campaign strategists want to win the Polish American vote, they need to provide a plan for lasting peace in Eastern Europe, which will only happen if Russia is severely exhausted economically and militarily. This means that the vice president has to go beyond criticizing Trump and look at her administration’s mistakes.

The Biden team was slow to provide Ukraine with critical military aid, such as ATACMS long-range missiles, F-16 fighter jets, M1 Abrams tanks, Patriot missile defense systems, Gray Eagle and Reaper drones, and cluster munitions. The administration’s approach can be best described as not letting Ukraine lose but also not giving it enough to win.

While Russia systematically destroyed civilian targets, including children’s hospitals, the Biden administration denied Kyiv’s requests to use U.S.-made long-range missiles to strike military infrastructure in Russia. The White House has also been slow on the issue of transferring frozen Russian assets to Ukraine, which could have been used for reconstruction and war efforts.

It is true that Biden kept Ukraine afloat, but now Harris needs to go beyond policies of damage control. She’s started by saying that, under her watch, no peace talks would be handled without Ukraine at the table. While providing more military aid may be tricky, maintaining sanctions and levying additional ones would continue to raise Russia’s war costs. Harris also needs to make it clear that Putin apologists like Tucker Carlson or isolationists like Tulsi Gabbard may influence Trump administration policy decisions, especially when it comes to future relations with Russia and European partners.

While Trump focuses on the past and repeats that the invasion would not have started on his watch, Harris needs to focus on the future by saying how the United States will help Ukraine end the war on terms acceptable to its people. If Harris wants Polish Americans who question her positions on important everyday issues like the economy and abortion to focus on foreign policy and elect her instead of Trump, then she needs to present a clear vision for Ukraine’s victory that will keep Poland from becoming the next target on Russia’s list.