Remembering Elijah: “We are so much better than this!”

In my column in today’s Baltimore Sun, I invoked the late Baltimore congressman, Elijah Cummings, and what he so often said: “We are better than this!” I hear his voice during this election, time and again, and especially after reading reports about Trump’s rally over the weekend at Madison Square Garden — the vile remarks about immigrants, Puerto Rico, Jewish people, Latino people and Kamala Harris. I hear Elijah’s voice often. I hear it when I hear Trump lie about immigrants and criminality, exaggerating border crossings as if they constitute the biggest problem facing the country — and as if Trump did not kill the congressional action to do something big about it just a few months ago. I hear Elijah’s voice every time I hear Trump and his followers speak of mass deportation of immigrants, every time Elon Musk or some other Trump supporter spews racist, misogynist invective at Harris. Have you read about the “Say No To The Hoe” T-shirts that Trump supporters are buying at his rallies? (“They love it,” said Craig Dumas, 47, who in Tucson sold shirts insulting Harris with a misspelling of a derogatory term for a sexually promiscuous woman. “I can’t keep up with the count.” — Washington Post)

In June 2019, during the Trump presidency, Elijah was chair of the House Oversight Commiittee when lawyer Michael Cohen testified about his sordid assignments for Trump. At the close of Cohen’s testimony, Elijah said: “We are better than this,” referring to the pile of depravity Cohen had just presented. “We really are. As a country, we are so much better than this.”

I understood what the congressman meant. His words were aspirational. He knew we were not “better than this” at the time. The country had elected Trump president, for one thing. We were, in 2019, a nation with 40,000 gun deaths a year, more than 70,000 drug overdose deaths a year, a declining life expectancy, income inequality at Great Depression levels, infrastructure failing and threatened by extreme weather, climate conditions worsening faster than scientists originally thought.

Things got worse on those front before they got a little better, but not before Elijah’s death the following October. If he could still be with us today, he would, as a Democrat, naturally reject Trump and endorse Harris. But, partisanship aside, that would be the better choice — so much better. Better for the country. Better for the future. Better for our children. This election is the greatest test of Elijah Cummings’ faith that we are “better than this.”