UPDATE, Sept. 9, 2:00 p.m.: Some readers have pointed out that as of Monday, Sept. 9, the Kamala Harris for President website does, in fact, include an “issues” page, contrary to one thesis in this article. This is an important update to acknowledge, but it also does not invalidate the thesis presented in the article. Over the weekend, the Harris website was updated and the menu was changed to include an “issues” section. In other words, at the time this article was finished and slated for publication Sunday evening, it was still true that the Harris website’s front page did not point viewers to an “issues” link. Please see our full explanation at the bottom of this article.

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It is likely that the presidential election will be decided in Pennsylvania, and I am part of the demographic that may tip the scales in either direction. As a white, suburban, middle-class professional and mom residing in Chester County, Pennsylvania, Democrats and Republicans are courting and counting on my vote. 

This is a multi-part series that will focus on my insights about Kamala Harris and the policies that she has embraced as Vice President and the policies she will likely bring as President. I will explore topics such as abortion, the economy, Title IX, education, energy, and immigration.

Part One – Harris’s Hopes Hinge on Guilt, But I’m Voting on Policy

I am voting against Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. I don’t know yet who I am voting for, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am not voting for Harris and Walz. 

My ballot will be cast as a vote against Harris, and not for anyone.

Maybe I have Harris Derangement Syndrome. Maybe I simply see her for the fraud she is.

Before I explain why, a quick recap of my history is warranted.

Until 2020, I was a lifelong Democrat. I voted almost exclusively for Democratic candidates in every election since I was eighteen years old. I voted for Obama twice, and I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. I was shocked and dismayed that Trump won that year.

That all changed in 2020 when schools were shuttered due to the failed Covid policies enacted and perpetuated primarily by Democrats.

While my belief that the Democratic party left me is no longer novel, I was one of the first to articulate it. I am proud to be joined by the likes of Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Jennifer Sey, and many others who have now expressed similar sentiments.

It only took me a few weeks into the lockdowns, specifically on April 15, 2020, to write my first of many letters to then-Governor Wolf, a Democrat, telling him what would happen if he did not reopen schools. All of my predictions about significant academic losses, exponential mental health issues, and staggering child abuse were right — unfortunately.

And every elected Democrat that I contacted ignored me. The party that claims to care about the most vulnerable people only cared about control and towing the party line.

Since 2020, the situation has only worsened. The Democrats in Pennsylvania and elsewhere in the country are on a mission to systematically destroy our constitutional republic. And yes, I fully understand the strength of those words — it is not hyperbole. I wish that it was.

I fully support and believe in a meritocracy, and I hope to see the day when a woman becomes president of our country because she is the best candidate. Kamala Harris, regardless of her gender, is the worst possible person for the job.

I will not vote for her just because she is a woman, even though I did vote for Hillary for that exact reason.

There are women who will do just that — vote for her just because she is a woman. They will not look at her policies or her past decisions as Vice President. 

Here is a glimpse into the psyche of the modern, white, suburban woman — from someone who thought exactly like one — because I was one of them.

There are women, particularly white women of my demographic, that will vote for her because she is a minority. (Her father is Jamaican and her mother is Indian.)

Similar to being a woman, being of mixed race checks a lot of identify boxes for the white, suburban, middle-to-upper class women.

What is most interesting about this phenomenon is that I know a lot of these women, and they are smart, educated professionals who work hard at the office and at home. Many are the super soccer moms who work full-time, volunteer at school, and invest countless hours raising their children.

And even though they have worked hard for their professional positions and maybe harder in their role as mom, they feel guilty for being so fortunate. So many of these women have a dirty little secret that somehow they don’t deserve what they have or what they earned.

I know this because I once experienced this guilt.

And don’t get me wrong — I am appreciative of the many opportunities I have been afforded. Certainly my background and experiences contributed to my success, but it is not the sum total of why I am successful. If that were the case, no one would rise from poverty or bad circumstances.

I worked in the human services field for over thirty years with at-risk youth and families, and we worked on developing resilience rather than focusing on bad circumstances. Everyone has a choice about the direction they take and the way they view the world, and the kids I worked with who were successful and overcame adversity learned that.

I finally came to understand that working hard and achieving success is nothing to feel guilty about. I can still help others who are not as fortunate as myself, and I will always be appreciative of my circumstances.

But appreciation is very different from guilt. There are many suburban women I know who have not yet learned the difference, and they assuage their guilt by voting for the best identity politics.

These women will set aside the fact that Kamala is a person of means, not some downtrodden, financially struggling minority woman. Her combined net worth with her husband is estimated at $8 million. But these suburbanites cling to the hope that voting for a minority woman, regardless of her financial situation or elite status, will prove that they are enlightened and ultimately makes them feel better about themselves.

And Kamala Harris is betting on the guilt of these women to push her over the finish line.

With this series, I hope to inspire some to think differently about the factors they consider — in order of magnitude for our country — when they cast a ballot, for or against, whatever is important to them. 

Policy concerns should drive the decision-making process for voters, but far too often, they succumb to tribal-like identity politics.

Kamala’s policies will be discerned from her current experience as Vice President and comments she has made while on the campaign trail. Unfortunately, her campaign website does not include a policy section, so there is no way to know definitively what she believes.

And this seems to be a pattern of her behavior. Other than “joy,” what does she stand for? What will she actually do if elected? And why hasn’t she done anything the last three and a half years?

Reason one to vote against Kamala is that she doesn’t list a single policy statement on her website. 

Reason two to vote against her is the fact that she covered up President Biden’s cognitive decline. Both Jill Biden and Harris should be charged with elder abuse for pushing him to stay in the race, then to stay in office. They both knew he was ill-equipped to continue to govern, and rather than doing something about it, they hid it from the American people.

Reason three to vote against Harris and the Democratic machine is because their ethics and values are anything but democratic. Joe Biden won the primary. Harris did not receive a single vote at the polls, and yet, the party anointed her virtually even in advance of the convention. If Kamala had an ethical core, she would have insisted that there be some process for the convention in which there was at least the semblance of democratic participation.

My journey over the past four years has been turbulent, ranging from moments of great clarity to times of profound sadness and despair. For these reasons, I am writing this series. For all my fellow suburban moms out there, I understand intuitively the allure of identity politics. I voted that way for 35 years: I get it.

I don’t expect everyone to follow my path because each person’s journey is different. What I do hope is for this powerful demographic of suburban women to send a strong message to the political parties that we are a force to be reckoned with and we will reject reductive politics. We are smart enough to see through the platitudes from both sides and focus on the substantive aspects of what each candidate means to the future of our country — if for no other reason than for our children.

I am asking each of you to consider this series and at its conclusion, cast an informed ballot, not based on superfluous issues or fashionable ideologies, but rather on what truly matters — policy. Women before us fought hard for the right to vote, and we just celebrated the 100th anniversary of that victory. We owe it to those brave women, our children, and the future of our country to take this journey. And if at the conclusion of this series, you determine that Harris’s plan for governing has earned your support and will result in the kind of America that you want for your children and theirs, then by all means, vote for her — but for that reason, and no other.

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Update: Some readers have pointed out that as of Monday, Sept. 9, the Kamala Harris for President website does, in fact, include an “issues” page, contrary to the thesis of this article. This is an important update to acknowledge, but it also does not invalidate the thesis presented in the article.

To discuss this, it is first important to understand the Internet Archive, a nonprofit organization that saves millions of webpages across the internet every day. The Internet Archive also catalogs these page “captures” so that a viewer can go see exactly what a webpage looked like on a specific day, provided that the Internet Archive made a capture of the site that day.

First, it should be noted that all of the captures of the front page of the KamalaHarris.com website — captures from July 22 up until the afternoon of September 9 — all of those captures show a front page that does not point or link people to an “issues” page. In other words, even if the “issues” page existed, the most important page of the Harris website was not actively advertising that option to its visitors — which would all but make having an “issues” page meaningless.

However, also using the Internet Archive, it is clear that an “issues” page did exist as far back as July 22, the day Biden dropped out of the race, but even this acknowledgement deserves more context. 

The last capture of the url “https://kamalaharris.com/issues/” by the Internet Archive prior to the publication of this article was on Aug. 10, 2024. At that time, the issues page was showing a “404” error — which essentially means that the page could not be located. 

Because the Internet Archive did not make any other captures of this “issues” URL until Sept. 9 leads us to believe that the “issues” page had become dormant for most of August and September until this morning.

Given those circumstances, we are keeping the body of this article in place without edits, and have added this update to explain our position regarding this apparent new information.

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Beth Ann Rosica resides in West Chester, has a Ph.D. in Education, and has dedicated her career to advocating on behalf of at-risk children and families. She covers education issues for Broad + Liberty. Contact her at barosica@broadandliberty.com.