We need to talk about the 2024 presidential election.
I’ve mostly tried to keep politics out of this blog. I understand I have friends and followers of many different political orientations, and I certainly don’t want to offend people.
Donald Trump has always been a controversial political figure. He entered politics with the semi-racist birther conspiracy. His campaign announcement speech included arguably xenophobic comments about Mexican rapists. He’s always flirted with authoritarian tendencies.
But even if you admit those were bad, things have gotten worse this year.
In terms of foreign policy, he was friendly with Putin in 2016 (not because they had blackmail against him but because of a mistranslated comment from Putin calling Trump “bright”). But now he is openly supporting Putin in his genocidal war against Ukraine. And while he was initially hostile to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, after a few friendly letters they’ve “fell in love”. All this demonstrates that Trump will ally with the world’s worst people if they say nice things about him.
He’s openly praised the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol January 6th, 2021. No, they weren’t peaceful protestors on a guided tour, as some want you to believe. They violently broke into the Capitol building. Many police officers were injured. People died. And his pick for VP says that he wouldn’t have certified the election and that he believes Trump did not lose the 2020 election. He would have used the blatantly fraudulent fake electors as an excuse to nullify millions of legal votes. Which raises the question of what he would do in 2029 if he is the VP in charge of certifying an election he just lost.
In 2016 you could maybe make the argument his anti immigration rhetoric was limited to law breaking “illegal” immigrants. You can’t say that now. The Springfield Haitians that have been the focus of his current screeds (despite being long ago debunked) are here legally. Trump claims they are only here legally because Biden gave them TPS protections. But that is what it means to be here legally. They immigrated here under a valid US law that exists explicitly to help people in their circumstances.
Trump claims he will revoke their TPS protections. Not because conditions in Haiti no longer warrant them, but because of ridiculous racist rumors that Haitians kidnap and eat people’s pets (again, rumors that have been debunked by both the Republican governor and Republican mayor in Springfield who confirm they are law abiding tax paying citizens). Meaning this is no longer even a xenophobic policy but an outright racist one.
And recently he claimed he will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which was last used by FDR to arrest American citizens of Japanese heritage, to combat “migrant crime”. I cannot think of any interpretation of that other than he is calling for rounding up law abiding legal immigrants (if they are here illegally, they already can be deported) from countries he doesn’t approve of.
And again, we don’t have to listen to left wing journalists or Democratic politicians. We can look at the people who worked in the last Trump administration. From his former VP who has declined to endorse him to the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who called him “fascist to the core“. Trump can certainly argue they are just sore theybwere fired for being “incompetent”, but isn’t one of Trump’s big strengths being able to hire “the best people”?
There is no longer any doubt. Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign is rooted in racism, fascism, and authoritarianism.
But does that mean everyone who supports Trump is a fascist racist Nazi? Of course not.
Think back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that is taught to every intro to psychology student. Concepts such as self determination and morality are at the peak of the pyramid. Things like safety and physiological needs are at the base. It’s not only not unreasonable to prioritize the economy and law and order over democracy and tolerance, it’s downright the rational point of view. If you are struggling to feed your family and worried about being murdered, abstract concepts like democracy are less important.
But that then raises the question, are Trump’s economic and law and order policies improvements over Harris’s?
Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat things, the economy has been awful over the past four years. Yes, unemployment has been low. That’s expected when we have a labor shortage. Inflation has been at 40 year highs. And while inflation had many causes, the ill timed stimulus bill of 2021 was definitely one of those causes.
And Harris’s policy proposals as of late have been pretty bad. Going after grocery stores (that have razor thin margins) for price gouging and giving out subsidies for first time homebuyers (that will just cause home prices to jump) will have no impact in the best case. Except she won’t be able to pass any of those.
Under the US Constitution the president doesn’t pass laws, Congress does. The House has a decent chance at remaining under Republican control, and even if Dems take over, there is enough of a division between moderates and the far left to prevent the later from passing ridiculous price control legislation. And with Manchin retiring, the GOP is primed to take back the Senate. President Harris will govern from the middle, not because she is a centrist at heart but because she will have to.
Contrast that to Trump’s equally bad proposal to institute an across the board 10 (or 20!)% tariff. Best case scenario, such a policy will dramatically increase prices for Americans. Worst case scenario it will increase prices while launching a trade war. That he can (or at least can try to) enact without congress.
And when it comes to “law and order”, things aren’t much better for Trump, who is literally a convicted felon. Now you may argue that the charges were only brought because of political reasons, or that the campaign finance argument that let the state of New York bring the charges this late were a stretch. But that he illegally falsified business records is pretty much uncontested.
So if you are a philosophically conservative person who disagrees with Trump but still cannot support the Harris agenda, there is a an easy solution. Vote for Harris as president. Her policies might not be great, but Congress will draft the legislation, not her. She may be a mediocre politician but that’s better than an objectively bad one. And when it comes to Congress and governorships, vote for sane candidates.
And once Trump is gone, hopefully Republicans will go back to nominating sane candidates instead of sycophants like Herschel Walker and Mark Robinson.