(CNN)It's not only the future of the United States that is starkly on the ballot next Tuesday -- it is also all of the progress we have made in this country during the recent past.
The great Texas journalist Molly Ivins and our current First Lady Michelle Obama have each offered a perfect summary of what is at stake in this election. Several years before her death in 2007, Ivins wrote, "It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America."
For sixty years, the decent people of these United States have fought against all forms of public prejudice based on race, gender and sexual orientation. In 15 months, Donald Trump has done more to undo all of that progress than any other major party presidential candidate of modern times. His violent rhetoric against Muslims, his consistent denigration of the lives of black Americans and his choice as a running mate of one of the most virulently homophobic politicians in America have given his supporters permission to act as badly as they want to.
Because of his vicious rhetoric, many Americans have been empowered to harass Muslims and blacks in public, to engage in horrific anti-Semitic Twitter storms against Trump's opponents and to expect him to undo all of the progress toward equal rights gay people have achieved since the Stonewall uprising of 1969.
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"Fairness is on the ballot," said the President. "Decency is on the ballot. Justice is on the ballot. Progress is on the ballot. Our democracy is on the ballot." If you believe in fairness, decency and justice, you will never cast a more important vote than the one that belongs to Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday.
Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/06/opinions/election-closing-argumentskaiser/index.html
The only decent vote you can cast
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