Column: The Top 10 reasons to vote for Kamala Harris for president

Last week, I listed the top 10 reasons to vote against Donald Trump. Here’s a companion list of arguments for elevating Vice President Kamala Harris to the presidency. Again, drum roll, and the countdown to No. 1:

10. She’s got a good resume for the job.

Harris has had experience and a solid record of public service at every level of government over two decades: local, as a prosecutor and San Francisco district attorney; state, as California attorney general; and federal, as U.S. senator and vice president. In California, she won fights against transnational criminals, for-profit colleges, home foreclosures and corporate polluters. Nationally, she’s been a champion for reproductive rights and for policies that actually help the working class, as opposed to paying them lip service, a la Trump.

Opinion Columnist

Jackie Calmes

Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.

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All told, Harris has more government experience, including in national security (as a Senate Intelligence Committee member as well as vice president), than Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama and Trump had when they took office.

9. She’s a consensus-oriented pragmatist.

Forget Trump’s blather about Harris being a Marxist; he’s the extremist — a “fascist,� as his former chief of staff John F. Kelly warns. Harris is “a strong, committed public servant … running to put people together,� Republican former Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan said last week, in joining more than 30 former party colleagues in condemning Trump.

Harris’ lurch leftward five years ago for her short-lived presidential campaign, including on healthcare, the environment and policing, was a pander to party liberals; she wasn’t true to herself, hence her poor performance. But she learned from her comeuppance and from her service as veep to the compromise-seeking President Biden. As Democratic elder James Carville noted Wednesday in the New York Times, Harris’ support stretches from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Democrats’ left to Dick and Liz Cheney on the right, making her coalition “the broadest we have seen in modern political history.�

8. She would choose public servants for her administration.

That Harris (or any president) would assemble a competent Cabinet and sub-Cabinet appointees should not be notable. But it is, when the alternative is a Trump administration without the purported “adults in the room� who worked for him before. As Trump recently warned, when it comes to picking advisors, “I now know the game a little better.� His goal, as spelled out in Project 2025, is to gut the nonpartisan civil service and fill jobs with sycophants loyal to him, not the Constitution.

7. She’d allow the Trump trials to play out.

Harris wouldn’t treat the Justice Department as her personal law firm, as Trump did and would do again, to fulfill his threats of “retribution.� Assisted by flunkies (see above), he’d dump the criminal cases against himself and initiate new ones against his enemies. He told right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday that he’d fire special counsel Jack Smith “within two seconds.�

More than 40 former Justice Department officials of both parties have endorsed Harris, saying she’d respect the department’s prosecutorial independence, like every president but Trump since Watergate. Justice, and justice, would proceed, because the charges against Trump for Jan. 6 and taking classified documents are deserved. They are not, as Trump lies, a result of Democrats’ “weaponization� of government.

6. She’d be a better fiscal and economic steward.

Neither Harris nor Trump has plans for tackling the unsustainable growth of the federal debt; both would add to it. But Harris’ agenda of tax and spending policies would cost about half as much as Trump’s, according to nonpartisan analyses, and provide a better return on public investment. And in a Wall Street Journal survey, most economists predicted that inflation, interest rates and deficits would be much higher under Trump.

Though he and many voters blame Biden and Harris for the inflation of recent years, price increases were inevitable given post-pandemic demand. But inflation has fallen and inflation-adjusted wages have risen to pre-pandemic levels. Also, Harris would respect the independence of the Federal Reserve; as president, Trump did not.

5. She would build on Biden’s climate change initiatives.

Trump not only doesn’t recognize the existential threat, he mocks it and vows to repeal the landmark Biden-Harris investments in clean energy. Instead he’d “drill, baby, drill.� (Again contrary to Trump’s lies, U.S. energy production under Biden has set world records.) Harris calls for continuing a hybrid approach, supporting existing fossil fuel projects but emphasizing clean-energy subsidies.

4. She’d signal to the world that the United States remains dedicated to democracy and its multilateral alliances.

Harris would maintain U.S. leadership in NATO and other global institutions, respect existing international accords, including on climate, and support Ukraine against Russia’s aggression. More than Biden, she has indicated she’d stand up to Israel’s right-wing government. None of that would be true of a reelected Trump. Foreign allies are petrified that he’ll return to power; simply by electing Harris, Americans would reassure the free world.

3. She would choose diverse, mainstream nominees for the federal courts.

Harris would continue Biden’s practice of picking esteemed, mainstream judicial nominees who are diverse in professional backgrounds, gender and race. She’d likely choose relative moderates, as opposed to Trump’s right-wing ideologues, especially if the Senate has, as predicted, a Republican majority eager for any excuse to block her choices. Expect far-right Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, 76, and Samuel A. Alito Jr., 74, to delay retiring rather than let her choose their successors. But that’s preferable to Trump picking younger clones to serve for decades.

2. She has character.

Harris is not a habitual liar, shows no penchant for personal power and self-aggrandizement and is untouched by scandal. Unlike Trump, she would be “a president for all Americans� and “put country above party and self,� as she said at the Democratic National Convention.

1. She’s not Trump.

Enough said.

@jackiekcalmes