By Ben Johnson

Political campaigns all too often come down to one memorable moment: Nixon’s debate with JFK, Reagan asking if Americans are better off today than four years ago, Bush promising “no new taxes,” or Trump descending a golden escalator. Two rallies — and three events — over the last week presented a series of revelatory moments that should burn themselves into Christians’ minds, culminating with the way two of the most important figures in the election responded to the phrase, “Jesus is Lord.”

Kamala Harris presided over the first event at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse last Thursday. As she delved into a monologue castigating pro-life protections for the unborn, two university students declared, “Christ is King!” and “Jesus is Lord!”

“Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally,” replied the Democratic Party’s candidate for president of the United States.

The students — Grant Beth and Luke Polaske, two juniors at the university — said Harris singled them out during the speech. “She was actually waving to me. I took this cross off my neck that I wear, and as we were getting asked to leave, I held it up in the air and waved at her and pointed at her, and she looked directly in the eye, kind of gave me an evil smirk,” Polaske told “Fox and Friends Weekend.” Sadly, the liberal university crowd shared Harris’s disrespect for Christians and, allegedly, for Christ. The New York Post reports:

“I was pushed by an elderly woman. We were heckled at, we were cursed at, we were mocked, and that’s the biggest thing for me personally,” Beth said. “In reflection of the event, Jesus was mocked. You know, [H]is disciples were mocked, and that’s OK.”

Contrast that scene with a rally Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance held in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on Sunday. During a lull in his speech, someone in the audience cheered, “Jesus is king!”

“That’s right. Jesus is king,” Vance responded, as the Republican crowd erupted in approval.

One candidate signaled that the Name of Jesus Christ — the Name at which every knee shall bow and every tongue confess His eternal lordship — is unwelcome speech at any of her rallies. And if the Democratic nominee banishes Jesus’s Name from her campaign, when she’s trying to earn the votes of the largest share of U.S. citizens (and, alas, others), how much more will Jesus find disfavor once she’s comfortably ensconced in the Oval Office for the next four years?

On the other hand, J.D. Vance rhetorically affirmed, not merely empty praise for Jesus, but the notion that God’s sovereignty supersedes even his own. The phrase “Jesus is King!” recognizes the view that government, and those to whom it is temporarily entrusted, are subordinate to the will of God. Their will is circumscribed by the rights, priorities, privileges, and kingdom rights of Christ the King. Vance’s words pumped oxygen into the heart of the American experiment, that U.S. citizens enjoy certain unalienable rights which no government can ever take away.

Those two images should stand preeminent above all others. Yet in true, post-2020 fashion, the campaigns have given us an overabundance of definitive moments.

Another came at the 79th Annual Al Smith Dinner in New York, where former President Donald Trump highlighted the empty chair reserved for Vice President Kamala Harris. The two candidates’ remarks offered another enduring contrast.

First, Trump managed to come across as the more humble candidate. At one point, he declined to tell any self-deprecating jokes, saying, “I guess I just don’t see the point of taking shots at myself when other people have been shooting at me.” But he actually began with a self-effacing quip: “These days, it’s really a pleasure [to be] anywhere in New York without a subpoena for my appearance.” And he humbly admitted, “I went overboard” in attacking Hillary Clinton during his remarks at the 2016 event. 

Kamala Harris broke with tradition to send in a video featuring “Saturday Night Live” alumna Molly Shannon as Mary Katherine Gallagher. After a few stale references to her character (who debuted on SNL 29 years ago and has not been a regular recurring character since 2001), the very funny Shannon gave a laughless, identity-focused monologue about the importance of electing a woman, because women are smarter than men. She closed by calling the incumbent vice president “Momala,” as Drew Barrymore did recently. Secular leftists are looking for a matriarch. Christians bask in the love of the Father and seek no substitute.

The incumbent vice president’s celebrity video sent a subtle message to the Al Smith crowd: Kamala Harris would rather be praised on the accident of her birth by her Hollywood friends than tell self-deprecating jokes around Christians. As she has said, she is “not aspiring to be humble.” Donald Trump seeming humbler than anyone is a miracle potentially qualifying Al Smith for sainthood.

But Trump offered a second moment in the speech worth remembering. Highlighting the Democratic Party’s increasingly strident anti-Catholic record, Trump quipped, “Instead of attending tonight, she’s in Michigan receiving Communion from Gretchen Whitmer.” (Trump also joked that Governor Tim “Walz isn’t here himself, but don’t worry, he’ll say that he was.” That is, of course, a reference to Walz’s erroneous claims that he served in battle and had been in the Far East during the Tiananmen Square massacre, which Walz explained away by saying “my grammar’s not always correct” and calling himself a “knucklehead” — which would have made a good punchline at the Al Smith Dinner. As an explanation for stolen valor, not so much.)

Harris asked Shannon’s character for tips in addressing the Catholic crowd. “Maybe don’t say anything negative about Catholics,” Shannon/Gallagher advised.

“I would never do that, no matter where I was,” replied Harris.

But, of course, that could hardly be further from the truth, as Harris’s record proves:

• While in the Senate, Harris grilled nominee Brian Buescher, a nominee to the U.S. District Court in Nebraska, in 2018 over his membership in the Knights of Columbus, classifying it as an “all-male society” that “opposed a woman’s right to choose” and “marriage equality.”
• As California attorney general, Harris supported the misnamed “Reproductive FACT Act,” which compelled pro-life pregnancy resource centers to engage in self-defeating speech and refer mothers to abortion facilities. (The Supreme Court struck down the law in 2018’s NIFLA v. Becerra)
• As a senator, Harris sponsored the so-called “Do No Harm” act, which would deny Christians the right to live out their faithful convictions on the issues of abortion, LGBTQIA+ business practices, and transgender surgeries.
• The Biden-Harris administration’s FBI investigated alleged “violent extremists in radical-traditionalist Catholic” circles who attend the Traditional Latin Mass.

Of course, Harris’s animus extends beyond Roman Catholics. As California attorney general, she signed onto a brief in the Supreme Court’s Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case, attempting to force the evangelical Christian family-owned business to purchase potentially abortifacient birth control in violation of their Bible-based, pro-life beliefs.

The third moment Christians should remember comes from a Univision town hall. A Hispanic woman asked both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris to name three good things about their opponent. Trump answered that Harris “seems to have an ability to survive. … She seems to have some pretty long-time friendships … and she seems to have a nice way about her.” Harris stumbled before saying, “I think Donald Trump loves his family” — a fact as controversial as saying Trump breathes oxygen (or loves McDonald’s). “But,” she continued, “I don’t really know him. I only met him one time … so I don’t really have much more to offer you.”

Kamala Harris’s refusal to come up with a perfunctory list of good attributes signals the most concerning shift: the perpetual demonization of one’s political opponents. As Harris’s interview with Bret Baier showed, every issue eventually comes back to an anti-Trump screed. American political discourse has slipped from a search for comity to the stoking of perpetual hatred. In fact, Harris’s refusal to appear at the Al Smith Dinner was said to be based on fears that doing so might “humanize” President Trump — an odd phrase to use about a human being.

Roman Catholic commentators offered another explanation for her absence: “None of us like to go to a party where we feel out of place. This explains why Kamala Harris decided to stiff New York Archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan and skip the Al Smith Dinner,” said Bill Donohue of the Catholic League in an email sent to The Washington Stand.

But perhaps her video message to the dinner summed up the contrast best. At one point, she lectured Molly Shannon, “You should never let anyone tell you who you are: You tell them who you are.”

We’ve been told, loud and clear.

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.