When Vice President Harris entered the race, she was met with a level of excitement and momentum unseen in Presidential politics since Obama’s initial run nearly twenty years ago.

The shifts were immediate and strong.

Going her way were the national polls as well as significant 5 to 8 point swings in her direction in key Battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina and more.

This wave sustained through the DNC National Convention before leveling off.  And though Harris saw a small bump following her nearly flawless debate performance, after that, something clearly changed.

The wave of excitement she had seen at the top of her Presidential run was now seemingly reduced to a trickle and polling averages began to detect a discernible shift in momentum, with Trump’s numbers now beginning to rise in those same swing states that only a few weeks prior were decidedly trending towards Harris.

So what happened?

What caused this shift?

A recent review of Trump speeches performed by Politico found that Trump implemented a sharp change in messaging since his humiliating debate loss.  This shift saw him lean even more deeply and graphically into the type of racist rhetoric that launched his political career.

He clearly understood that he lacks the intellectual capacity to go toe-to-toe with Harris, and fails to have popular support for the platform laid out for him via Project 2025.  

So what does he do?

He appeals to the lowest common denominator, the intersection of race and hate, a toxic brew that has haunted this nation from the beginning.

We should know how that story ends because we’ve seen it before.

Let us not forget that immediately after Trump’s initial Presidential run and victory, America experienced the largest uptick in hate crimes this nation had seen in 25 years.  In fact, that spike was the second largest recorded in modern history, coming in second only to the increase in Islamophobic hate crimes experienced immediately following 9/11.

That uptick not only occurred generally, the spikes actually took place specifically in those counties that experienced the largest margin of victory in that election. Also, those counties that hosted Trump rallies leading up to his previous electoral victory saw a 225% increase in hate crimes in comparison to other nearby counties where no such rallies occurred.

And then what did he do once he got in office?

One of his first acts was to cut federal funding specifically meant to fight hate groups and curtail right-wing violence.

Instead, he made-up a new term, “Black Identity Extremist” as a way to label Black activists as a “terrorists threat” and pointed the FBI in the direction of targeting and surveilling activists engaged in protesting police violence.

All the while, the number of hate groups in this nation continued to surge to over 1,000 under his tenure—at that time, the highest number ever recorded.  And as those groups grew, so too did violent acts motivated by the ideology of white nationalism.

We should never forget the tragedies of Mother Emmanual, of Charlottesville, of the Tree of Life Synagogue, and the El Paso massacre, just to name a few that occurred on his watch.

His hateful rhetoric brings with it a price none of us should be willing to pay.  But here’s the thing, hate doesn’t stop, it metastasizes.  It grows.

In that sense, no one should have been surprised with the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, the events of January 6th, or even the current rhetoric around “the enemy within” that puts all of his political foes at the center of proverbial crosshairs.

It’s natural to have the passage of time dim one’s memory. 

But there are some things we would be fools to forget.

What’s at stake in this election is numerous—from right wing policy shifts, to Supreme Court decisions that could continue to tear down rights that it took centuries to build.

But we can’t afford to forget that what’s also at stake is yet another stark rise in hate, violence, and death like that which was ushered in and allowed to grow within the previous Trump Administration.

We can’t afford to get distracted.

We can’t afford to loose focus.

We can’t afford to opt-out of the electoral process all together.

This isn’t about bowing to rhetoric about “an enemy within.” 

It’s about acknowledging the very real “hate within” and doing everything in our power now to work towards bringing that hate to an end—while we still can.