The 2024 election is already underway. Mail-in and early in-person voting have started in many states, with more open each week. In three weeks, we will have elected our next president — and set the course for our nation’s future.

Like many Americans, I am pessimistic about that future, regardless of who wins. In this election, many voters once again feel compelled to decide which presidential candidate they consider to be not quite as bad as the other. It’s no wonder enthusiasm remains in the cellar.

We’ve all seen the various lists of election issues that presumably will dictate the election outcome. Concerns about the economy and inflation are in the lead, followed closely by illegal immigration. The next is often reproductive health (e.g., abortion), followed in varying order by foreign policy, climate change, crime, democracy, racial justice, LGBTQ+, and others.

However, the issue lists invariably include one glaring omission: Donald Trump. I firmly believe that voters’ personal views of Trump — whether fierce hatred or undying support — will be the decisive factor in this election.

It’s pretty obvious. The wall-to-wall Harris-supporting TV and media coverage is all about the evils of Trump. Trump’s signature rallies are Trump love fests. Democrats who ignored or disparaged Kamala Harris for three and a half years now idolize her as the heroine who will rid us of Trump once and for all. Harris’s recent interview remark that “I’m not Donald Trump” was the evening’s biggest applause line.

Among conservatives, the nagging question that regularly creeps into the conversation is why anyone would vote for Kamala Harris. Who believes that she is capable or qualified for the job? It’s not a political smear, it’s an honest question.

Searching for insights on that, I ventured across enemy lines and came across an online Atlantic Monthly article that might provide some answers: The Case for Kamala Harris — The Atlantic’s endorsement. So, I gritted my teeth and read it — every word. Then I made a copy, read it again, and highlighted key points.

The Atlantic is a venerable, well-written, and widely-read journal of political and cultural topics — and it is famously left-leaning. This piece did not disappoint.

The Atlantic’s Harris endorsement opens with the qualifier that such endorsements are exceedingly rare, reserved only for the most critically important elections. In fact, over their entire 167-year history, they have endorsed only five presidential candidates: Abraham Lincoln, Lyndon B. Johnson, and — you guessed it — Donald Trump’s opponents in 2016, 2020, and now 2024. The article then proceeds to hit Trump with every insult in their thesaurus. He is, in their estimation, manifestly unstable, incompetent, personally malignant, vicious, erratic, a purveyor of cruelties, corrupt dealings, crimes, etc. A really bad guy.

No surprise there, but what did get my attention is that the Atlantic’s 1,193-word endorsement does not even mention Kamala Harris until the 498-word mark — nearly halfway through. And even then, their editors are surprisingly stingy with their praise of Harris, expressing vague generalities such as “she believes in democracy” and she “respects the Constitution.” Rather, they acknowledge, with surprising candor, that Harris’s ideology, policy positions — and, by implication, even her executive capability — don’t really matter. She must be elected, they explain, because that is “the only way to release us from the political nightmare in which we are trapped.”

In effect, The Atlantic isn’t making a case for Kamala Harris; it’s making a case for anyone not named Donald Trump.

As an American citizen living in these perilous times, I am astonished that a prestigious and influential publication would so casually conclude that our nation’s safest course of action is to hand the keys to whoever comes along, just as long as it’s not Donald Trump. And yet, I suspect that in taking that position, The Atlantic is reflecting the views of its readers — and probably many Americans.

It is beyond nonsensical to base one’s choice for president on fanciful, partisan conjecture — either that in his second term, Donald Trump will turn into a democracy-destroying dictator or that Kamala Harris will undergo a magical transformation into a savvy, competent chief executive. Neither is plausible. We’ve seen them both in action. Rather than conjecture, why not base our voting decision on their actual records?

The first term Trump years were chaotic, due both to his abrasive demeanor (e.g., mean tweets) and the constant resistance (the Russia collusion hoax) thrown up by his political opponents. But in the main, his term was rock solid. Who can forget Nancy Pelosi ripping up her copy of Trump’s 2020 State of the Union address in frustration at news that was just too good for her to stomach?

The good times came to a screeching halt with the pandemic, as they did all over the world. In his presidential campaign, Joe Biden capitalized on Trump’s COVID troubles — but under his leadership, there were more than twice as many U.S. COVID fatalities as under Trump.

And except for those willing to swallow the Biden-Harris revisionist history spin, we all know that this administration has been a train wreck: crippling inflation, declining real income, swarms of unvetted illegal immigrants, rising crime at home, and progressively deteriorating world stability.

It may not be fair to blame the whole mess on Kamala Harris, but she is the vice president; she had a hand in it, and she evidently did little to fix it. More importantly, she has offered not a clue about how a Harris administration would differ from the current one or why we should expect her performance in office to be any better than what we’ve witnessed firsthand.

Satisfied with the Biden-Harris record (as some are)? Vote for Kamala Harris. Yearn for a return to the Trump years? He’s your man. It’s that simple.