Before I begin, please keep in mind that I am not seeking to sway votes, but rather I am sharing the reasons behind my ultimate decision, which I think you will find interesting. I do not seek to say: "If you disagree with me then you're a murderer and our civilization will die if you seriously vote for that other guy," as this is exactly what I hear from a lot of my social media friends from BOTH sides of the aisle! I can only conclude that if this were true, I'm screwed either way I vote.
I fully understand why Trumpers want Trump, and why Bideners (and anti-Trumpers) want Biden, and I fully respect your reasons. There is good in both candidates, and there is also bad. I do have strong opinions, a lot of which are molded by my specific set of experiences. And I also understand a lot of independents are in the middle trying to decide which way to go.
So, here goes nothing ... starting with a review of our incumbent candidate. Along the way I'll link to other political posts I've made in the past so you can more fully understand my position in life, and also give you much more information than you'd probably care to know.
Trump: The Good
If you look closely at Trump, you'll see what I see: two totally different individuals.
One is the more visual: the Tweeter in Chief, the Name Caller, the Alternative Fact-er, the Fake News Pointer, the Hothead, the Downplayer, and so on.
But there is another Trump who comes out rarely, whom I've seen several times ... the Trump that most of his base see. He's much more sincere, more compassionate -- the Trump that can enter a room, walk up to a perfect stranger, put his arms around him, and make him feel that everything is right in the world. Yeah ... I know my liberal friends are thinking: What are you smoking, Mel?
Just bear with me. I do think that he believes he's sincere. He thinks he's doing all the right things. There are areas where he excels, such as making deals -- of which he's already brokered several that benefit the US than before. He has also been able to broker some surprising peace accords between antagonistic parties.
It may be worth looking back to early 2016 when I described my Like Trump experiment. I was able to come to a better understanding of what his base see in him. And I still see some of those same good traits in him today. If anything, he has been consistent, and I don't think much of his base has left him over the past four years.
In early January 2017, I thought I saw more of the humble Trump in his preparation of being one of the most powerful people in the world. So, I actually had some hope that Trump would realize the seriousness of his new position and be more humble.
As a fiscally conservative type of guy, I've been very supportive of most of his economic policies. I love the corporate tax reduction -- a major step in the right direction. I also love that my middle class self has benefited from a $1000 credit the first year under the new tax cut. That is ... I did my taxes old way and new way to compare, and Trump's tax cuts gave me back $1000 more. In fact, the vast majority of people received more taxes back, despite that to this day some liberals still tell their base that they've paid more in taxes due to a confusion between weekly tax payments and the year-end true-up.
Though, I'm not too happy about the state deduction cap and what I like to call the "large family" tax. Also, I think it did cut a little too much on the rich side ... they could definitely afford to pay more in taxes. And this cut was not met with any compensating tax increases or reduction in government expenses, which helped to increase the annual deficit each year -- though we're not quite at Obama levels yet.
But wait -- I need to stick to good stuff this section. I'm also happy with the two conservative judicial picks under Trump. I prefer a balanced bench, and I think we have a good set of judges with 4 conservatives, 4 liberals, and one swing vote (slightly conservative leaning).
I do appreciate some of the recent rulings that reinforce the freedom of religion -- though I have to be a little careful here, as I'm not exactly happy with all the rulings ... I mainly like the idea of people not being forced to do what they don't want to do, as long as that doesn't infringe on the rights of others.
I do think Trump's economic policies have indeed helped jobs to come back to the US, though maybe not as much as he might have hoped.
But then again, I would think just about any conservative president would accomplish these same exact tasks. I would much rather have someone like Romney in his place right now.
Trump: The Ugly
Next comes all the ugly bits about Trump, and he has a lot.
I already mentioned Twitter in Chief. Never before has any president used social media to speak off script. Toward the beginning of his presidency when I was happy with most of what he was achieving, I mentioned several times: if Trump were to simply stop tweeting, he could be a decent president.
His tweets are usually on the idiotic side, usually divisive in nature, and sometimes indecipherable. Sometimes it even sounds like a kid accidentally logged into Trump's account. And there have even been several times that his tweets reveal too much information that really shouldn't be available to the general public. In a couple of instances, the information he had revealed even put agents' lives in danger. (Though one of those instances wasn't a tweet, but rather during a meeting with other foreign dignitaries.)
Trump often talks big about himself, even if he has to resort to stretching the truth, or as Kellyanne Conway called it: alternative facts.
After narrowly winning the needed electoral votes and having lost the popular vote, Trump claimed that he had won in a landslide, and most of his base believe that even today. However, by any mathematical analysis, it's very easy to see that Trump's win was narrow. I submitted such an analysis back in 2017.
If anything, this picture I prepared should explain all you need to know to see that his win was not a landslide.
Trump also stated that he had more people attend his inauguration than did Obama, and he said the following picture was fake:
In this blog post, I show an analysis from an independent photograph that proves that this picture was not fake. (Though it really is possible that more people watched Trump's inauguration on TV than they did for Obama. After all, who would want to miss that?)
One of the reason I didn't like Obama was because he was such a divisive leader. Right from the start he said to his opponents: I won, you didn't, and you will listen to me. And that pretty much began the gridlock that would ensue. He also attacked Rush Limbaugh and Fox News on several occasions, saying they were not real news.
But whatever Obama did in his eight years in office, Trump outdid it all in just a couple of months. Starting from his inaugural speech when he made it clear that he was not going to be that humble president I was hoping for, Trump has been alienating his opponents this whole time. Instead of attacking Fox News, Trump instead attacks practically everyone else, calling them all FAKE NEWS. Always in all-caps. Very non-productive and borderline unconstitutional -- though I should point out here and now that saying it is different than actually taking action -- on this issue Trump has made sure to stay on the constitutional side of things in a letter-of-the-law sense.
These are all symptoms of the same issue: Trump just isn't a diplomat. He doesn't exhibit the minimum amount of decorum that all presidents in my lifetime had exhibited -- the way that you show respect to everyone, not call them childish nicknames, not mock people with childish gestures, and all-around listening to people.
Though, a part of me has always admired his "my way" approach to things. His unconventional ways may have helped him get away with certain accomplishments -- similar to Nixon in China. But other than those achievements, I think his unique way of handling things in the states has been much more negative than positive.
Also, I think he has done a terrible job responding to the BLM-related riots currently going on. At first, he did mention that what had happened to George Floyd was "sad and tragic," but these days he hardly brings it up anymore. Rather he talks about how he needs to use "law and order" to quell the riots, entirely ignoring the underlying issues causing the riots to happen in the first place.
This is the Trump most everyone is used to seeing. Sometimes he embarrasses me in front of the world. Sometimes I enjoy laughing at our Comedian in Chief.
And I've heard several people say, especially now that we're getting ready to vote again, that: "You're voting for a leader, not a best-friend -- he doesn't have to be perfect and refined like you want him to be. You need to look at his policies, which will last longer than Trump himself. If you like his policies, and not his opponent's then it should be clear who you need to vote for."
To this, my first thought is ... but I am choosing a leader. And BTW, most of my friends are imperfect, and I love them in their imperfections, and I wouldn't change them.
Then again, I must be honest. If everything up to now were the only things wrong with Trump, I would most likely vote for him come November. Because he would be the "evil that I know" and would be happy to have him carry out four more years if only to get a few more conservative fiscal policies passed to help the economy more.
But everything I've written up to now is not the whole story of Trump. What comes next are the real reasons I will NOT be voting for Trump. These are actual policies that I just cannot in good consciousness support going forward.
Trump: The Bad
As far as immigration is concerned, I've always been of the mindset: "Help them become legal, make them pay taxes." If someone really wants to be here, then let them. After all, that's what makes America so great -- so many cultures merging together so we can benefit from the best of all worlds. None of us wouldn't be here if we didn't have an ancestor who left their motherland to come here.
I've always thought that Democrats were historically the ones against immigration ... gotta protect our jobs. And maybe the 9/11 attacks curtailed our desire to accept immigrants, but one thing's for sure ... Trump helped to introduce and lock in xenophobia into the Republican Party -- possibly a holdover from when Trump used to be Democrat -- maybe?
Whatever the case, at the end of 2015, Trump made it clear that he hated Mexicans and Muslims. At the time I didn't think he had a chance to win the Republican nomination because of his blatant racism and/or xenophobia toward those two groups. In December 2015 when Trump proposed his Muslim ban, it shocked practically everyone. Even my church made a statement. For a few days the world was united against Trump and his racist ideas. Every other Republican candidate condemned his thoughts. Why would Trump suggest anything so clearly against the 1st Amendment concerning religious freedoms?
And then they didn't. As Trump quickly increased in popularity, the most prominent Republican candidates became more afraid to challenge Trump, fearing that it would look bad and cause themselves to lose votes in the quickly approaching primaries. Rather, they started speaking up in SUPPORT of said Muslim ban. Only Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio stood against Trump. I really wanted Jeb Bush to be the Republican candidate.
So, in January 2016, I made a decision for myself. Seeing that if the Republican Party were to support such an unconstitutional idea, then maybe it wasn't the party for me. If they weren't going to condemn Trump and stop him from becoming the nominee, then I didn't want any part of it. So, I officially switched my party affiliation to Unaffiliated.
Now Trump is the President, and he's had his chance to enact policies that has made it harder to come into the country legally, and has caused a lot of pain to many people ... all in the name of border security. He has started building an expensive wall that is more of a symbol than it is an effective way of keeping people out. And he has chosen to vilify one of the strangest groups to choose from ... our neighbors, who really are the least we should be worried about. What exactly is Trump protecting us from? Taco trucks at every street corner?
Immediately after going into office, Trump got to work on the first version of his Muslim ban. Here are my thoughts on that first ban. He got the list of predominantly Muslim nations from Obama's time in office, but he included in the language a religious test -- where prioritization would be given to those belonging to a "minority religion." And what religion is minority in those areas? Christianity, for one.
Judges jumped on that clearly unconstitutional clause. I believe Trump's lawyers argued that the Constitution doesn't apply to people outside of our country. My response: if it doesn't, then what good is our Constitution?
Trump put an end to it by instituting Version #2, which basically removed that paragraph. So, the letter of the law was stricken down, but the spirit of the law was maintained.
There's more to the story, of which I haven't been paying attention, but this ACLU website gives more details in further developments which have been happening quietly in the background.
By far, this bothered me because it seemed to target the Syrian refugees who were fleeing death and persecutions. The great country of the USA was going to refuse help to these people in need, under the guise of possibly allowing terrorists unknowingly inside our borders. (As if we don't do any kind of vetting.)
And then came the crackdown on the Mexicans and Central Americans trying to come through our southern borders. Trying to keep the story short, Trump had instituted an asylum ban when it was getting bad. And most people here in the states seem to have no idea how devastating this was to many families fleeing death and persecutions from antagonistic gangs. There are many reports of illegally-crossing asylum seekers who were deported back to Mexico only to be immediately picked up by awaiting gang members, tortured, and killed.
In addition, Trump famously had families separated at the borders, supposedly due to a law that came into effect during Obama's presidency. The idea is this: if you cross our borders illegally, then you are a criminal. Thus you need to be thrown into jail. But we have this law that says we can't throw children into jail, so we have no choice but to separate you.
Some say that Obama also separated children, but by count, Trump's administration did it far more than Obama's did. The "zero-tolerance" stance was what really led to the conflict with the Obama-era law, which caused at least 2,800 children to be separated under Trump. There was no "zero-tolerance" stance under Obama, so it happened far less frequently -- perhaps under 100, and only in cases where the children seemed to be in danger.
These actions against Syria, Mexico, and Central America violate the Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which states that countries should not do the following:
- impose penalties on refugees who entered illegally in search of asylum if they present themselves without delay (Article 31), which is commonly interpreted to mean that their unlawful entry and presence ought not to be prosecuted at all;
- take exceptional measures against a refugee solely on account of his or her nationality (Article 8);
- forcibly return or "refoul" refugees to the country they have fled from (Article 33). It is widely accepted that the prohibition of forcible return is part of customary international law.
I totally get wanting to increase enforcement at our borders, and to have even better vetting, but I can't think of any angle that makes it okay to refuse refugees, to send them back into dangerous territory and not care when they are killed in the process.
I also get the desire to have people enter the gates legally. I share in that desire. I have many legal immigrant friends who did things the right way.
But what a lot of people don't seem to understand is that Trump has intentionally made it harder to enter at the gate legally. In 2017, the limit for incoming refugees had been set by the Obama administration at 110,000. In 2018, Trump had this reduced to 45,000. And then 30,000 for 2019. And 18,000 for 2020.
At the Mexican border, those trying to enter legally have reported receiving the run-around, and many of them in desperation decided to chance crossing illegally.
As you may remember in late 2018 a caravan of migrants tried to cross illegally at the same time. In response, Trump sent an army of 5,000 troops to join 2,000 National Guard to secure the borders. It appears that the US (behind the scenes) was making an attempt to process asylum requests, but the slowness caused several of the migrants to storm the border, resulting in a big commotion (though I think no one died).
At the time it may have been prudent to send troops to increase security, but I've pointed out several times that Trump's usual answer to these type of things is to send troops instead of social workers. Had he done the latter and had workers be able to process claims much more quickly, and make the good ones legal, then it wouldn't have come down to needing troops.
Trump's priorities in regards to Mexico are clear, and I do not agree with these policies.
Then enters Ken Cuccinelli, who may be one of the most racist people I've ever seen to be appointed as the Director of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Shortly after being appointed in June 2019, he instituted a new means-testing requirement for those with green cards. If a family is determined not to be sufficiently self-supporting, then they could lose their green card. In other words, it is now harder for legal immigrants to remain legal, and that bothers me.
In an interview, Cuccinelli was asked about the new regulation: "What do you think about what it says at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty?" Cuccinelli responded: "Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge."
Cuccinelli was then subsequently named as some kind of Deputy of Homeland Security where he had influence in deploying armies in Portland against BLM protests, and also the failed recent decision to require international students to attend in-class instruction in order to remain in the country (during the coronavirus pandemic).
All of these immigration policies alone are enough to stop me from voting for Trump, but sadly that isn't all.
I just mentioned the troops in Portland, but backing up a little bit, the real shoe fell when Trump gave his Law and Order speech on 6/1/2020. He said:
If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.
He also invoked the second amendment, which at first seemed strange, as it really has nothing to do with the riots and the George Floyd protests. (How are the right to bear arms in jeopardy?) He said:
I am mobilizing all available federal resources — civilian and military — to stop the rioting and looting, to end the destruction and arson, and to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans, including your Second Amendment rights.
But the effect was immediate. The images of storm troops on domestic soil sent an instant shiver down my spine. And sure enough, we got to see some of that play out -- first as self-proclaimed militia (some of which consisted of white supremacists) started patrolling the streets. And then the whole Portland thing of Cucinelli troops illegally carrying away people in vans. And also the unfortunate incident in Wisconsin when a teenager involved in a militia ended up killing two people. All of which could have been avoided if Trump had not invoked his usual troops-on-the-ground solutions when so many other more effective solutions exist.
If this all wasn't enough, we can add to this Trump's response to the coronavirus disaster. I've already written about that last week in this blog with much detail, so I won't repeat it all again. In a nutshell, with his record, I seriously would doubt his ability to protect us from another outbreak, such as Ebola -- from which Obama protected us in 2014 and surrounding years.
As part of this whole coronavirus pandemic and the mail-in voting movement, I should also mention briefly Trump's intentional sabotage (to which he has admitted) of the US Postal Service. And I should also mention his repeated instruction to his base to vote twice (once by mail and once in person) in order to ensure votes get counted. I see all of this as a clear attempt to sabotage the whole system in his favor for this coming November.
I'll end this section with something that may seem small to you, but I evidently find this one somewhat upsetting, and that is Trump's continual insistence of forcing people to stand for the National Anthem.
Don't get me wrong. I love the National Anthem. I always stand, and when appropriate, I'll sing loudly and proudly. Some of my favorite memories include the couple of times I got to sing the Anthem from the mike at sports events.
But this country was built on the idea of freedoms and non-coercion, so I find "you better stand or else" to be somewhat ironic and non-constitutional. You can read my full thoughts here. It's really subtle, but I present this as well as some of the other items above as evidence that Trump may be the most out of recent presidents to seriously jeopardize the Constitution.
I don't think that Trump is evil. I still don't think he's Hitler, and if elected, I don't believe he's going to send in his storm troops and ensure himself a third term. Rather, I think he's just incompetent and doesn't know how to handle all these items that I've listed above. I don't think he realizes he's being unconstitutional when he threatens people who don't stand for the flag. He's just pushing his heavily-held opinion that people should stand for the flag and the anthem. I don't think he knows how to handle the BLM protests and say the right things to diffuse the riots. He doesn't know how to handle pandemics, and would much rather ignore them and hope the virus magically goes away (still waiting for that to happen). And his xenophobic ideals are causing pain and death.
We've already seen what has happened under his watch, and in my opinion, his record speaks for itself. He's just the wrong man for the job, and he does not have my vote in 2020.
What About Biden?
To be honest, I was very happy that Biden was chosen as the Democratic nominee. I know in the past I've called him an idiot. I've even said he's one of the few people who looks like his own party mascot. So, past Mel is very surprised to discover that current Mel is actually considering voting for Biden.
Out of all the Democratic candidates, I found Biden to be the closest to what I believe. He was the most moderate of the bunch. In early 2020, it looked as if Bernie Sanders was going to win the nomination, and that concerned me -- such that my fear of him destroying our way of life would be worse than what Trump could accomplish in the next 4 years.
So, with my unaffiliated status in North Carolina, I chose to vote in the Democratic Party so that I could help choose Biden over Sanders. And the strategy paid off. After that Super Tuesday I watched Biden's "Joementum" speech. You may remember this as the speech where Biden pretended to confuse his wife and his sister. Funny guy!
He had a lot of energy in that speech, and I thought he had a lot of good things to say. It was the first time he caught my attention and the very first time I seriously considered giving him my vote.
I would much rather prefer another conservative candidate, but the existence of Trump destroys that hope. If for any reason, Trump were to stand down in the next couple of weeks, and Pence were to be the next candidate, I'd give him some serious consideration.
And in 2016, I didn't care which of Hilary vs. Trump won. I remarked a couple of weeks before the election: If Hilary wins, we can lose our economy. If Trump wins, we can lose our soul. I couldn't bring myself to vote for either one, so I ended up voting for the Libertarian Johnson. I'll write more about this in a couple of weeks in a much shorter article.
This time around, there is another Libertarian candidate available: Jo Jo. I've yet to seriously look at her and see what she has to offer. But I'm still thinking it has to be Biden.
What I didn't like about Hilary was big enough for me not to vote for her. She wanted to punish businesses and go after religious freedoms -- make churches change their beliefs to be consistent with recent political movements.
What I don't like about Biden is much smaller. He's not a socialist like Trump and my conservative friends keep telling me. He doesn't want to punish businesses and rich people -- so no wealth tax. He does want to raise taxes on those making more than $400,000, but that higher tax brackets won't be more than 40% tax, which I'm actually okay with. So, thankfully we're not going back to 90% brackets any time soon.
There are some items I disagree with -- such as trying to reinstate Obamacare. But there is no truth to Trump's claim that Biden will usher in sweeping socialistic agendas that will destroy our economy forever.
What really resonates with me is Biden's message of healing. He claims to be a unifier, and that's what our nation desperately needs right now. I'm not sure if we can handle 4 more years of this separation without resorting to the weirdest civil war we've ever seen. I can see King George looking over us right now -- he's probably very happy. ("You'll be back!")
I would love it if Biden were to become president and then we would go days without hearing about him and what he's doing ... you know ... like how life used to be before Trump? Then we might all be able to heal and start working together on things and actually start making the world a better place for our children ... learning how to respect each other ... even those with whom we disagree.
So, for now, that's where I stand. Biden currently has my vote.
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