Less than a week ago, in Atlanta, Vice President Kamala Harris stood in front of 10,000 people; I was told another 10,000 awaited outside the venue, unable to get in. The crowd was jubilant, filled with the kind of hope many Democrats thought had slipped through their fingers this election cycle. Megan Thee Stallion played a compilation of G-rated versions of her songs. A powerful and commanding Harris told the crowd, “Donald Trump is feeling it.” The crowd went wild. She paused for a beat and delivered the coup de grâce: “We are not going back.”
This is the first presidential election since the fall of Roe, since women in this country lost the constitutional right to privacy.
This is the first presidential election since the fall of Roe, since women in this country lost the constitutional right to privacy. That right, which we fought so hard to enshrine in the Constitution in 1973, is gone. This means that my daughter has fewer rights than my mother did.
This creates an unusual moment in American history. Namely, many people of color have lived through these kinds of rights reversals before — think of the fall of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow laws in the South or the internment of Japanese people during World War II or the historical treatment of Native Americans. White women, on the other hand, have largely been protected by the system. In 2016, 46% of white women in America who voted voted for Trump. And their protection ended in 2022 when the conservative majority Supreme Court, enabled by Trump, overturned Roe. Those women, at least the ones who live in red states, now have fewer rights than they did in 2016. They went back.
I’ve written about Harris and the difficulties she faces being the first female vice president, the second Black female senator ever, the first South Asian American to serve in the Senate, the first female African American and first South Asian to be California attorney general. Harris has had to kick down more than a few doors and shatter some glass ceilings. (In fact, the X account RNC Research used a video of her talking about kicking down doors from an AAPI event in May. Presumably the account intended to criticize and embarrass Harris, but the clip hasn’t exactly had that effect.)
Harris achieved things that simply weren’t available to her mother. Her life and career have all been about going forward. On the other hand, Trump’s “Make America great again, again” campaign is all about going backward. And that’s what we should be focusing on this election.
Harris’ Atlanta speech sparked a number of conversations with women in my own life.
Maryland Senate candidate Lisa Blunt Rochester emailed me about the slogan, writing, “The word WE stands out. WE — the women, communities of color, families, seniors, LGBTQ+ folks, the people of this country — have come so far. Our victories were hard won and well deserved. From protecting the Affordable Care Act to investing in our climate to creating good jobs and so much more. We have come so far, yet there is so much more we can do together, including fighting for our reproductive freedoms and right to vote. Our progress won’t be stopped — and WE will make sure of that when we cast our ballots for Kamala Harris in November.” If Rochester wins her election, she will be only the fourth Black woman to serve in the U.S. Senate and the first from Maryland, which means that she, too, will have had to kick down some doors.
Former White House communications director and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign director Jennifer Palmieri texted me, “The best campaigns — the ones that really capture and inspire voters — don’t have slogans, they have battle cries that catch on organically. That’s what ‘We will not go back’ is. A sentiment the vice president expressed, that she represents and the crowd chanted back to her. Those are the slogans that get you in the gut.”
Resisting going back is the only sane response to MAGA and its deeply regressive policies.
I think Palmieri’s idea of “We’re not going back” as a battle cry is salient. But it’s also more than that. Resisting going back is the only sane response to MAGA and its deeply regressive policies. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which Trump disavowed after poor polling but which was at one time thought of as the intellectual hub of Trumpism, would undo a lot of the federal government, including ending the Education Department, which would, at least at the federal level, actively take Americans back to a time when there was no social safety net, when Hoovervilles dotted the landscape.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, a former civil rights lawyer, texted me, “We’ve been under an ugly orange cloud that defines greatness as a time prior to the civil rights & liberties of all being recognized in this country, so when the VP says we won’t go back, this is what I take her to mean. She wants to move this country forward with Freedom for ALL OF US & I’m with her.”
Veteran campaign manager Stuart Stevens always tells me, “Campaigns are about the future.” And how better to message the future than to point out all the many ways Republicans want to take the country, and women’s rights specifically, back?
When Roe was overturned, we American women went back to a time when we didn’t have bodily autonomy, when we couldn’t get lifesaving treatment for ectopic pregnancies. Backward is the very core of this Republican Party right now: backward-facing, uninterested or unwilling to move on from a candidate who is very much stuck in the past. Trump wants America to go back to 2016 when it mistakenly made him president. Harris has given us the perfect response to that agenda.
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