The Conversation
By Gail Collins and Bret Stephens
Bret Stephens: Please don’t tell me you’re going to ask how I’m going to vote.
Gail Collins: Well, Bret, why would you imagine such a thing? Just because I keep getting stopped by people on the street, demanding to know whether you’re going to support Kamala Harris. I am not making this up.
Come on. Give us a hint.
Bret: You really want to know?
Gail: Um, yeah.
Bret: Kicking and screaming, I’ll cast my ballot for Harris.
I really would rather have just sat out Election Day. But Jan. 6 and election denialism are unforgivable. And as my friend Richard North Patterson likes to say, “Donald Trump is literally bleeping crazy.” And what crazy brings in its wake is JD Vance, whom I find worse than Trump, because he’s just as cynical but twice as bright. And what it also brings in its wake is Tucker Carlson and the Hitler defenders he likes to platform.
Gail: OK, gonna take a little time to run up to the roof and toot a horn. Be right back.
Bret: Well …
Gail: Hear that, don’t-like-anyone people? Really, if Bret can bring himself to vote for Kamala, you can.
Bret: It’s a 99.999 percent vote against Trump and a 0.001 percent vote for Harris.
Gail: And to bolster the argument, how about a short list of the things that bother you most about your new choice for president of the United States?
Bret: If the G.O.P. had nominated Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis or Doug Burgum, I’d be voting Republican. Probably even Tim Scott: That’s how reluctant I was to vote for her.
I fear that Harris is every bit as vacuous behind the scenes as she seems to be on the public stage. I fear she will be tested early by a foreign adversary and stumble badly, whether it’s in stopping Iran from building a nuclear weapon or China from blockading Taiwan or Russia from seizing a portion of a Baltic country. I fear she will capitulate too easily to her party’s left flank, especially when it comes to identity politics, economic policy or polarizing cultural issues. I fear she’ll have no domestic policy ideas that don’t involve mindlessly expanding the role of government. I fear she’ll surround herself with mediocre advisers, like her embarrassingly bad veep pick. I fear she won’t muster the political will to curb mass migration. And I fear that a failed Harris presidency will do more to turbocharge the far-right in this country than to diminish it.
Gail: That does cover a lot …
Bret: But I won’t fear that she’ll refuse to recognize the result of the……..