NYT’s Bret Stephens explains why he’s backing Harris

New York Times conservative columnist Bret Stephens said he will cast his vote for Vice President Harris, in the latest iteration of “The Conversation” published Monday.

“Kicking and screaming, I’ll cast my ballot for Harris,” Stephens wrote in the Times column, which is formatted as a dialogue on politics between Stephens and liberal columnist Gail Collins.

“I really would rather have just sat out Election Day,” he continued. “But Jan. 6 and election denialism are unforgivable.”

Stephens, who has previously described himself as a “never-Trump” Republican, outlined his decision as “a 99.999 percent vote against Trump and a 0.001 percent vote for Harris.”

He said he would have voted for Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum or “probably even” Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.), had any of those onetime candidates led the GOP ticket, but he expressed concerns about Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), as well as for the future of the country.

“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,” Stephens said.

Stephens outlined the many concerns he has about Harris, from her performance on the world stage to the way she would deal with foreign adversaries, to whether she will “muster the political will” to curb mass migration, to whether she will “capitulate to easily to her party’s left flank, especially when it comes to identity politics, economic policy or polarizing cultural issues.”

“I fear that Harris is every bit as vacuous behind the scenes as she seems to be on the public stage. … 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. … And I fear that a failed Harris presidency will do more to turbocharge the far right in this country than to diminish it,” he wrote.

He said his decision to vote for her is based on what he does not fear about her in the White House.

“But I won’t fear that she’ll refuse to recognize the result of the next election should she lose it. And I won’t fear that Tim Walz is a cunning stooge who will always do the boss’s bidding no matter how unconstitutional it might be. And I won’t fear learning that an Arnold Palmer is now a reference to something other than lemonade and iced tea and a big golf swing,” he said.

“So I’d rather take my chances with a president whose competence I doubt and whose policies I dislike than one whose character I detest,” he said.