This election should be easy. There is really only one responsible position
to take. It’s what makes this election
so unusual. There certainly has been no
other election in my lifetime where I would make that statement. Depending on your ideology and issues that
matter to you there have been reasonable arguments to make to support each
major party candidate the last 3 decades.
Trump is unfit for the presidency in every respect. He’s a vindictive narcissist, running a
campaign by trying to appeal to the worst in all of us.
I wish this campaign was about more than stopping
Trump. I think Hillary offers plenty to
be hopeful of despite her flaws and I’ll spend some time talking about those
things, but the reality is it doesn’t matter.
Trump is a risk we cannot take.
With Hillary as president the country will be fine. With Trump, we have no idea what could
possibly happen, but we know he is an unprecedented risk to American democracy,
one that responsible voters simply cannot take.
It is telling that every living United States president
opposes Donald Trump. This includes 2
former republican presidents. Those who
have done the job, have the clearest understanding of why Trump could be such a
disaster for this country. I think the
first thing that stands out with Trump is how much his ego drives everything he
says and does. If you say anything
negative about him or anything he says he will come at you. He’ll spend days ripping on the family of a
deceased war hero, he’ll mercilessly mock a disabled reporter, he’ll make up
inane nicknames for his political rivals (“Lying Ted”, “Little Marco Rubio,”)
while defending dictators provided they say good things about him, he’ll mock women who accuse him of sexual
harassment for not being attractive enough for him to harass.
Just go back and review the amount of lawsuits Trump has
threated and then dream about what he would do to anyone who criticized him in
any way if he had the power of the presidency behind him. In an article about the message discipline
recently added to the Trump campaign the author notes that Trump still
privately muses about how he will destroy his enemies after the election even
discussing a super-PAC with vengeance as its mission. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/07/us/politics/donald-trump-presidential-race.html?_r=0
Imagine someone like that with the full power of the presidency behind
him. When Hillary Clinton mused that any
man who can be bated with a tweet should not have the nuclear codes, this is
what she meant. Trump is about Trump and
if you are against Trump he will use whatever means he can to destroy you. As president, those means at his disposal
will be extraordinary.
Trump’s willingness to lie about anything and everything is
also historically unprecedented.
Politicians are often creative with truth, spinning numbers and facts to
fit their political purpose. Trump does
not even worry about any aspect of the truth, he literally makes things up or
says the exact opposite of what is true.
Throughout this campaign Trump has said crime is at all-time highs (it’s
near 30 year lows), he’s said immigrants are flooding our borders (we’ve seen a
net decline in illegal immigration),
lied about the number of people at some of his rallies, lied about the
NFL writing him a letter complaining about the debate schedule and the list
goes on. Politifact ranks 17% of what he
has said as Pants of Fire lies, 34% as false and 19% as mostly false. That’s over 70% of what he says as some sort
of lie. It’s absolutely insane (For
comparison Hillary’s numbers are in line with most politicians somewhere in the
20-30 range).
Two recent stories illustrate Trump’s just utter disregard
for the truth. Recently at a rally for
Hillary Clinton a Trump Supporter was protesting while President Obama was
speaking. The President told the Hillary
Supporters that they need to respect the man’s right to free speech and his
right to protest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PA6vPYfbk8 He went out of his way to defend what the man
was doing repeatedly yelling at the crowd to stop. At a rally describing the incident Trump said
that Obama spent so much time yelling at the protester it was a disgrace. It was literally the exact opposite of what
happened and it is the kind of bold faced lie that Trump has no care about
making. He trusts that his supporters
will believe anything he says and he makes up stuff time after time never
caring to correct himself and with seemingly no shame.
Another outright whopper lie Trump made recently was saying
that if Hillary is elected we could have 600 million people pouring into our
country. This is the kind of bold faced
lie that is impossible to be true and yet Trump didn’t back track, he even
expanded on it later saying 650 million people.
That would triple the size of the United States and he’s saying this in
an environment where the US has actually seen a decline in illegal
immigration. Trump has understood that
we live in a partisan environment where even facts are a political tool. He understands that most of his supporters
will believe something just because he says it.
It has emboldened his lying to unprecedented degrees.
Trump has run an anti-establishment campaign by allowing
people scared of shifting demographics to blame minorities and women for any
issues we have in this country. He’s ran
trying to build a wall for a non-existent Mexican immigration problem. He was the lead birther for years, a baseless
conspiracy theory appealing to those who were threatened by an African American
president. He has called Mexicans rapist
and murderers. He’s gotten in trouble
for tweeting anti-sematic memes and even one of his big closing political ads
is full of anti-Semitism. He has called
for a ban on immigration based on one’s religion. He has taken fears of the unknown, lied about
numbers and consequences and made it the center of his campaign.
On the issues he’s the combination of the worst positions of
both political parties. He has got far
left views on trade asking for historic level tariffs, and far right views on
immigration. He’s not suggested one area
where he will cuts spending and in fact talks about different things the
government will do and yet he’s advocating historic tax cuts for the wealthiest
(while his policies would increase taxes on single families http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/nov/06/hillary-clinton/would-51-single-parents-see-taxes-rise-under-donal/). He promises the world with no plan to give
it. When asked about his plan on health
care his answer is Repeal Obamacare and replace it with ‘something terrific.’ In fact this general “something terrific” is
pretty much his answer to everything over the course of the campaign. He’s not conservative, he’s not liberal. He’s running as a demagogue with
authoritarian dictatorial tendencies.
Amazingly I’ve managed to write 1100 words on the insanity
of Trump without mentioning his propensity for shipping jobs overseas, his
hiring of illegals at his own properties, his scam university, his foundation
buying paintings of himself and giving very little to charity, his potential
ties to Russia and his refusal to release his tax returns. The number of utterly disqualifying offenses
uncovered about Trump are staggering, but I do want to spend some time on
Hillary. I know 30 years and billions of
dollars (often taxpayer dollars) of far right attacks and investigations into
Hillary Clinton have people worried about her.
I will point out with that amount of time and money and people claiming
her to be a criminal they’ve achieved frighteningly little. Either she’s the most competent criminal of
all time, everyone coming after her are complete idiots or maybe, just maybe
she’s a politician with some baggage but nothing at the disqualifying
level. Certainly nothing criminal.
When she was in the senate many republicans talked about how
she was someone they could work across the aisle with and get things done. Her political pragmatism (often self-interest
driven) moves her towards the center and a desire to find common ground in
moving forward. We’ve had 8 years of
governing from the economic center under President Obama and we’ve seen a
record period of sustained job growth, unemployment drop to 4.9%, continued GDP
growth and even have seen recent wage growth in all demographic groups. Hillary will likely be a continuation of
those policies. While I understand there
are people that may want other policies, these have achieved solid results and
are by no means a risk to the American people.
For those wanting to vote 3rd party to send a
message I get and respect your choice, and in most elections I wouldn’t fault
you for it. There were clear differences
between McCain/Romney and Barack Obama and tangible effects depending on who
was elected, but ultimately all of them would like keep America going forward
and allow the country to continue to thrive.
If McCain/Romney won we probably don’t see the repeal of don’t ask don’t
tell and don’t get the justices that ultimately enforced the Constitutional
Right to Gay Marriage yet, though I think it was inevitable long term. That would have been a real cost, but I’d
argue the danger of a Trump presidency is far worse. Trump has shown open hostility to our
democracy. He’s threatened to jail
political rivals, banned press from covering his campaign, threatened removal
forces to take out illegals. He’s given
strong indication he’d take unprecedented executive power and given his track
record of wanting to destroy opposition for any personal slight, his hand on
the powers of the presidency could have disastrous consequences.
I’ve been incredibly pleased to see the many who have put partisanship
aside in this election and withheld their support for this dangerous man. I’ve mentioned the former presidents, but we’ve
also seen the last Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, oppose Trump from the
beginning. Governor Kasich of my own
state has done the same. We’ve seen
McCain announce he cannot support him, we’ve seen McMullen launch a
conservative campaign in response to the direction Trump is taking the party
away from conservative and towards his populist white nationalist
positions. We’ve seen former republican
advisors and operatives like Stewart Stevens and Tim Miller vocally opposing
Trump and we’ve even seen some far right media acknowledge Trump is a bridge to
far.
Before you vote tomorrow ask yourself if what Trump is
offering at all is consistent with what this country should be. Do we want a country where it is ok to attack
women and minorities or do we want a country that stands up for everyone? Do we want to stifle free trade and
potentially cripple the economy or do we want to continue to advancements we’ve
seen as the country has continued to grow?
Do we want a vindictive man with no impulse control with his hand on the
nuclear weapons? A man whose campaign
literally had to take his phone from him so that he wouldn’t keep sending out
insane tweets, a man who picked a fight with a deceased war hero’s parents,
mocked a disabled reporter, has had multiple women come forth with sexual harassment
allegations, lies unapologetically and in the most blatant possible manner, ran
a scam university and the many other examples of his complete inability to do
this job.
This election should be easy. There is no conservative candidate on the top
of the republican ticket. There is a
demagogue with no respect for the rule of law or American democracy. A man completely about himself who could do
real damage to our country. This should
be above petty partisanship. Too much is
at stake and Donald Trump is an unprecedented risk to American Democracy. A risk we simply cannot take.
No comments:
Post a Comment