25 Reasons Why You Should Vote for Biden Oh Wait I Mean Harris Anyway

1.      You don’t want to live under fascism.  If Trump gets elected, this country is going to become more and more fascistic.  If you don’t believe me, google “Project 2025,” and look at the kinds of people who Trump surrounds himself with.  We’re talking no abortions, no same sex marriage, military in the streets rounding up everyone who looks like they might be an “illegal.”  A lot of people will get hurt, will die, or will go to jail.  Possibly you.  Seriously, we don’t want this.

2.     No matter how much you hate the system, or capitalism, or politicians, one of them is going to be president and it’s going to impact your life.  Maybe you think the Democrats and the Republicans are both horrible, and you don’t want to vote for any of them.  Maybe you think that the whole damn political system sucks and that we need an entirely new one.  Maybe we do, but let’s face facts – no one has a strategy to achieve this.  So, while you’re waiting for someone to come up with a plan to achieve the socialist or communist or libertarian or whatever revolution, you could vote for the presidential candidate who will do less harm, and possibly some good, and then there will be less suffering in the world.  And while the Democrats suck in oh so many ways; at least they’re not fascists like Trump and his Project 2025 buddies.  Many of them respond to pressure, and it’s your responsibility to keep putting pressure on them to improve people’s lives, rather than ruin them the way Trump will. 

3.     You’re not punishing the Democrats if you don’t vote for them, you’re punishing yourself and the rest of the us.  Seriously, it’s not like anyone’s going to take your non-vote personally and feel sad or rethink their priorities.  And we’ll wind up with Trump and we’ll all be screwed – not just people in the U.S. but also the people of Gaza, and Ukraine, and far too many other places.

4.     A vote for a third party is a vote for Trump. Well, except if you live in a solid blue or red state, which case go ahead and vote for Jill Stein, or write-in John McCain or Mickey Mouse or whoever floats your boat.  I don’t see the point, but you do you.  But if you live in Pennsylvania, or anywhere that’s even vaguely in contention, consider that Kamala Harris needs every last vote she can scrape up in your battleground state, and if she doesn’t get them, Trump wins and we all lose, including you. (See “You don’t want to live under fascism,” above).  If you’re not voting for Harris because you want to remain true to your ideals or beliefs or morals, you are allowing your ego to be more important than other people’s suffering.  Voting is not a purity test or a moral stance – it’s a strategic move.  And if you’re voting for a third party because you believe the U.S. truly needs an alternative, you’re going about it the wrong way – they’re called “third parties” for a reason, and the reason is that the current system is structured so that they will always come in third.  Yes, the system sucks, but no, your protest vote won’t change it.  Think of another strategy, and while you're thinking, hold your nose and vote for the Democrats.

5.   We need change for the better, not change to something worse.  A lot of people see Trump as a complete change from the status quo, someone who will shake up the system, be completely different.  It’s true, he will change things – he will make all our lives worse.  (See “You don’t want to live under fascism,” above).  What did Trump change when he was president?  Did he drain the swamp?  Did he build a wall?  Did Mexico pay for it?  Did he pass any new legislation (other than tax cuts for rich people)? I know a lot of people feel that a vote for Harris is a vote for the same old shitty status quo, but how does making things worse make any sense?

6.   The Republicans really want you to feel defeated and alienated from the political process.  Yes, politics suck and the system is rigged and the world is a mess.  Yes, both Biden and Harris and just about all the other Democrats have at some point supported really bad laws or policies that you hate.  Yes, sometimes it seems that the world is going to hell and there’s nothing we can do about it. But that’s not actually true.  A lot of people have done something about it, and that’s why women can vote and slavery is illegal, and we have things like weekends and dental insurance, and you don't get arrested if you go to a gay bar.  The Republicans would prefer that people like you, whose brain cells are actually functioning, continue to believe that it’s not even worth bothering to vote.  Your alienation is part of their plan.  And if you’re one of those Bernie bros who won’t vote because “Bernie or Bust,” maybe actually listen to Bernie, who says “Despair is not an option….You’ve got to look at the world as it is and do the best that you can.”

7.    Your one lonely little vote counts more than you think it does.  Yes, you have just one vote, but if you can be convinced to vote, whatever convinced you could convince millions of others.  Biden won in 2020 by 40,000 votes in a few battleground states.  The 2024 election will also be decided by a small number of people in a few states, so depending on where you live, your vote could be extremely important.  For example, in 2020 Biden beat Trump in Wisconsin by two votes per precinct, and this election is likely to be just as close.  Even if you live in a solid blue or red state, your vote in state elections, and especially in local elections, can make a big difference.  You know all those crazy, book-banning so-called Christian fascists who’ve been successful at banning thousands of books schools all over the U.S.?  Most of them were elected to local school boards by a small margin in elections where a tiny percentage of the eligible voters actually voted, and now your kid’s kindergarten teacher has to worry about getting arrested for reading “And Tango Makes Three.”

8.   The Biden/Harris administration has accomplished more than you think – Achieving major improvements in peoples’ lives is a difficult thing to accomplish.  Some revolutionary societies have, arguably, achieved that (although those gains are often temporary), but more often those improvements come about through a long, slow, slog of millions of small public policy advances.  The president can champion those advances but is reliant on both the courts and Congress to implement most of them.  The president’s power is limited also by worldwide macroeconomic realities and the political power wielded by individuals, organizations, and corporations representing extreme wealth. Hence, blaming the Biden/Harris administration for inflation, high grocery and gasoline prices, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and a whole host of other problems is, at best, a misunderstanding of how the world works.  Don’t get me wrong – the U.S. president can have a huge impact on world events, but Biden cannot just wave a magic want and change gasoline prices.  If he could, don’t you think he would have?  

       In our system, it’s the job of government for both parties to work together to hammer out new public policies to improve our collective well-being.  Sometimes a major advance happens (e.g., the Affordable Care Act).  Very, very few of those advances happened while Trump was president (e.g., COVID vaccines, maybe).  The current administration has made some important strides towards improving our lives.  While Republican courts have stopped most efforts to forgive student loans, the current Department of Education is now enforcing its own rules (which Trump basically told them not to do) and granting many student loan forgiveness applications.  The Inflation Reduction Act has resulted in lower drug prices, and investments of more than $270 billion in U.S.-based clean energy projects, giving a huge boost to industries such as electric cars, solar installations, hydrogen, clean manufacturing, wind, and energy efficiency.  The CHIPS act resulted in huge investments in U.S.-based semiconductor manufacturing.  

       The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have instituted antitrust investigations against Ticketmaster, Apple, Amazon, Google, VISA, large grocery chains Kroger and Albertson’s, Exxon, Real Page (the software that large landlords use to set rental prices), and health insurer United Health, among other.  This is incredibly important – monopolies wield tremendous market power to control prices (i.e., raise them) and wages (i.e., not raise them), which doesn’t happen (at least not as much) in competitive markets.  

       Some small improvements in holding the police accountable for their racism and excessive violence have been made through an executive order, ordering the Department of Justice to collect data, revise “use of force” standards, limiting the use of no-knock entries and the militarization of police, and other measures that the ACLU says offers a starting place on police reform, even though it does not go far enough. 

       In addition, the Biden administration has tried to pass many progressive measures that the Republicans (and a couple of shitty Democrats) in the Senate have blocked:  voting rights, assault rifle ban and other gun controls, universal pre-kindergartens, raising the minimum wage to $15/hour, and free community college, among others.

9.     Trump is profoundly unsuited to be president.  Trump is a horrible person – even many of his supporters understand this.  He’s a rapist, a convicted criminal, a bigot, a liar, and a cheat.  He doesn’t seem to know or care about the difference between truth and lies.  He’s not even a good businessman – his “deals” have mostly been disasters, and many of his companies have made little profit or gone bankrupt, including his casinos.  He would be richer if he had simply taken the millions his father left him and invested it.  He runs his companies as “family” businesses, just like the Mafia does, without shareholders, without any oversight, and without paying his bills or his taxes.  He’s been indicted for almost 100 crimes, convicted of 34 counts related to election interference, and more indictments are likely to come. HE SENT AN ARMED MOB TO THE CAPITOL TO KILL HIS OWN VICE PRESIDENT.  

       Trump has never earned an honest dollar in his life – rather, his life has been a trail of lawsuits, bankruptcy, abused women, and financial ruin.  He is a profoundly stupid man who cares about no one but himself, and thrives on the adulation of ignorant, bigoted, gaslit, violent people whose lives are filled with rage, bitterness and anger.  And more recently, he is in clear cognitive decline – just watch his recent speeches, prattling about Hannibal Lecter, mispronouncing and forgetting words, confusing Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi, complaining about sharks and electric boats, people who eat pets, windmills that give you cancer.  He freezes in the middle of a sentence and blames his inabilities on the teleprompter.   He hangs out with gangsters, white supremacists, and Nazis.  Trump is under severe financial pressure as a result of his crimes, so the country will be for sale if he wins.  He’s already changed his policy on TikTok, offered to get rid of all environmental regulation in return for a $1 billion contribution from the oil industry, and made a similar deal with the cryptocurrency bros.  No matter how little you like anyone running against him, why would you do anything to allow this man anywhere near the nuclear codes? 

10.   A second Trump term would be a worldwide disaster.  Trump is enamored of some of the world’s worst dictators.  He’s praised Vladimir Putin of Russia, who invaded the sovereign nation of Ukraine; Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte, whose “war on drugs” has resulted in tens of thousands of extra-judicial murders of anyone supposedly involved with drug dealing (including many journalists); Xi Jinping, the Chinese president who jails journalists, political opponents, practitioners of non-state sponsored religions (including Jews and Moslems), and activists for any cause not supported by the Chinese Communist Party; Kim Jong Un, leader of North Korea, where the United Nations Commission of Inquiry says abuses are without parallel in the contemporary world (including extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions, and other sexual violence); and Turkish President Erdogan, who jails anyone who says anything negative about him.  

       Trump loves dictators because he likes the idea of being one himself. However, he is so ignorant and full of himself that he doesn’t see the extent to which these dictators are manipulating him. For example, in 2017 Trump met with two top Russian officials in the Oval Office and revealed highly classified information to them. Trump's re-election would essentially make Vladimir Putin the most powerful person in the world.   Journalist Anne Applebaum says that “Dictators are betting that Trump will be the person who destroys the United States, whether he makes it ungovernable, whether he assaults the institutions so that they no longer function, whether he creates so much division and chaos that the U.S. can’t have a foreign policy anymore.  Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton (who is a right-wing warmonger himself) says “He thinks international relations are about personal relations, which is a line and approach that I can tell you, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are eagerly looking forward to.”  While the U.S. has a horrible record when it comes to vicious dictators, for the last few decades U.S. Presidents have been moving away from outright support for leaders of authoritarian regimes (with some notable and inexcusable exceptions, like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman).  This is not something we need to go backwards on.  

        When he was president, Trump pulled the U.S. out of a deal with Iran that limited their nuclear weapons program, withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord, the United Nations Human Rights Council, and the World Health Organization.  The world is in bad enough shape without isolating the U.S. from any and all attempts to deal with health and environmental catastrophes, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

11.     Trump’s Middle East policies would be even worse than Biden’s – I get it.  You’re pissed off at the Biden Administration’s unreasonable level support for Israel and seeming indifference to the horrible death, destruction and famine in Gaza.  You don’t trust that Kamala will be any better than Joe.  It’s truly awful that the U.S. continues to prop up Netanyahu, who is pure evil.  But Trump would be EVEN WORSE.  Trump say Netanyahu should “finish the job,” and that he would not allow anyone from Gaza to enter U.S.  His buddy, Lindsay Graham, said Israel should “level the place,” and Jared Kushner thinks Israel should “clean it out” and sell waterfront property.  When Biden made a faint gesture of disapproval and “paused” giving 2000-pound bombs to Israel, Trump claimed Biden was cutting off aid.  Trump has called for the arrest of pro-Palestinian protestors and has always adamantly and unconditionally supported Israel.  Netanyahu is just Trump’s kind of guy – a criminal, a racist, and a man desperate to stay in office to keep himself out of jail.  You’re not doing the Palestinians any favors by allowing Trump to win – quite the opposite, in fact.

12.  Trump has already declared war on immigrants.  Do you have any friends or family members who are immigrants, either documented or undocumented?  Trump says he’ll send the national guard to round up “illegals” and “send them back to their countries.”  If he does that, anyone who looks like they might be an immigrant will be in danger of arrest, and thousands, maybe millions of people, will be sent to what is basically a concentration camp.  Trump will go back to separating children at the border, and children who were born in the U.S (and are therefore citizens) will be separated from their undocumented parents.  Meanwhile, the construction, landscaping, childcare, and agricultural industries, which depend on immigrant labor, will grind to a halt.  If you think groceries are expensive now, just wait until there’s no one to pick your apples.

13.   Women are losing the right to control their bodies.  In 2022, Trump’s Supreme Court appointees repealed Roe v. Wade, the 1973 law which allowed women to get legal abortions.  While Trump probably appreciates (and has paid for) abortions, he is beholden to the right-wing religious fanatics who think abortion should be totally outlawed under any circumstances.  Abortion is now illegal, even in cases of rape and incest, in 13 states, and limited to between 6 and 18 weeks in 8 other states.  In many states, OB/GYN doctors are leaving, and medical students are not applying for residencies, because of concerns that they could be fined or even imprisoned for providing a woman with needed medical treatment.  This means that all women in those states, whether they are seeking an abortion or not, are at risk because they aren’t enough doctors or clinics to provide routine obstetric and gynecological care or breast cancer exams.  

        A study by the Commonwealth Fund found that maternal death rates in states with abortion restrictions or bans were 62% higher than in states where abortion was more readily available.  Since the repeal of Roe v. Wade, the rate of women traveling out of state to receive an abortion has doubled. Scientific American reports that a recent study “estimates that more than 64,000 pregnancies resulted from rape between July 1, 2022, and January 1, 2024, in states where abortion has been banned throughout pregnancy in all or most cases. Of these, just more than 5,500 are estimated to have occurred in states with rape exceptions—and nearly 59,000 are estimated for states without exceptions. The authors calculate that more than 26,000 rape-caused pregnancies may have taken place in Texas alone.”  The lack of access to abortion disproportionally affects people of color and poor people, who are less likely to have access to, or be able to afford, reliable contraception.  When Texas banned abortions in 2021, there was a 13% increase in infant mortality, likely due to women being forced to give birth to babies with fatal congenital diseases.  Women can die when abortion isn’t unavailable.  Recently, two women in Georgia – Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller – died because they had medical conditions that required abortions. 

        The right to access birth control is also being threatened.  Senate Republicans have refused to allow the Right to Conception Act, which would establish everyone’ right to have access to all methods of contraception and prohibit local or state governments from denying access. to come to a vote.  Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has suggested that the court should reconsider the 1965 law which made contraceptives legal.  In addition, the right to infertility treatment is under attack.  Because right-wing religious extremists believe that life begins at concept, they have argued that in vitro fertilization (IVF) should be illegal, since unviable and unneeded embryos are sometimes disposed of during that process.  Alabama has made IVF illegal, and it is likely that other states will follow, unless the federal government passes a law to ensure access, but again Senate Republicans are blocking that effort.

14.   Climate Change will make the Earth unlivable. Unless we (all countries, not just the U.S.) take more decisive and concrete action to stop climate change NOW, we may well make our planet unlivable for humans.  But Trump thinks climate change is a hoax, and when he was President, he pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords, as well as rolling back more than one hundred climate and other environmental protections.  Trump has promised the oil companies that he’ll stop enforcing environmental laws if they’ll contribute to his campaign, and he’s stated at his rallies that he will scale back investment in renewable energy, increase fossil fuel production, removed appliance energy efficient standards, and remove federal support for electric vehicles.  The U.S. has 5% of the world’s population, but produces 25% of the world’s carbon emissions, so what we do has a huge impact, and we need to do more soon.  Do you think our energy future will be safe in the hands of a man who thinks wind energy causes cancer?  What kind of planet do you want to leave for your kids?

15.    Trump will allow Russia to take over Ukraine.  In 2022, Russia invaded the sovereign nation of Ukraine, in an attempt to take over the country and steal its resources, and as punishment for Ukraine’s increasing ties with Western Europe.  This is the largest military conflict in Europe since World War II.  Since that time tens of thousands of civilians and hundreds of thousands of soldiers have died.  The rest of Europe, the U.S., and many other countries have expressed support for Ukraine, and sent them billions in military and humanitarian aid.  So far, the Ukrainians have put up a strong defense, although Russia has taken over a about 25% of Ukraine.  Continuing aid, especially from the U.S. and Western Europe, is crucial to Ukraine’s sovereignty.  If Russia does defeat and take over Ukraine, there will likely be a massive humanitarian crisis – millions of refuges, continuing violence, human rights abuses, and political repression.   

        Trump is a big fan of Russian President Putin, and likely to cut off aid to Ukraine if re-elected.  Trump is still angry that Ukrainian president Zelenskyy refused to help him during the 2020 election by investigating Hunter Biden’s supposed illegal activities in Ukraine (which there is no evidence of).  This was the issue behind the first Trump impeachment, that he threatened to withhold the aid to Ukraine the U.S. Congress had authorized unless Zelenskyy did his bidding.  Trump blames Zelensky for the war, saying that Ukraine should have “given up a little bit” to appease Moscow.  Trump complains that, “We continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal, Zelenskyy.”  It’s unclear why a sovereign nation should have to give up part of their country just because someone like Putin wants it.  If Canada decided they wanted part of the U.S., should we give up a few states to appease them?

16.   Even more people will be victims of gun violence.  The U.S. has a lot of gun violence, as we all know.  The only other nations with as much gun violence are places where drug cartels essentially run the government.  School shootings are out of control – from January 2009 to May 2018 there were 288 school shootings in the U.S.  The country with the second highest number, Mexico, had 8.  Trump has paid lip service to improving background checks for guns, but during his administration, every time there was a specific law in Congress, he said he’d veto it.  (None of them passed anyway, thanks to the Republicans.)  Trump is backed by the NRA and would likely continue their agenda.  The only hope we have of increasing background checks, banning assault weapons, or any sort of meaningful gun control at all is if the Democrats are in charge.

17.    LGBT+ people are likely to lose their rights.  When Trump was in office, he opposed the Equality Act, which would have included sexual orientation and gender identity in the federal civil rights protections that currently exist based on race, disability, and other factors.  His administration also blocked job protections for LGBT+ people and eliminated the nondiscrimination protections for LGBT+ people in the Affordable Care Act. Trump's Supreme Court would like to "revisit" the question of same-sex marriage. While Trump himself probably couldn’t care less, the right-wing evangelicals he’s beholden to really hate all queer folk, especially if you’re trans.  So, Trump is likely to come down hard on all trans people, eliminating anti-discrimination protections, denying medical care, banning transgender students’ participation in school sports, denying funding to schools that provide support services to trans kids, and anything else the sicko, anti-sex, homophobic nutcase evangelicals want.  

18.    Trump is legitimizing and normalizing dangerous behavior, violence, and bullying.  Trump has insulted disabled people, immigrants, Muslims, transgender people, veterans and prisoners of war, and called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries.  He’s dined with and complimented neo-Nazis, advocated violence (including police violence), and of course he’s an adjudicated rapist, who’s been accuse of sexual harassment and assault by dozens of women.  In 2020, the Washington Post reported on the hundreds of incidents in schools where Trump’s exact words were used by bullies to harass classmates.  A 2016 survey of 10,000 educators by the Southern Poverty Law Center found more than 2,500 “described specific incidents of bigotry and harassment that can be directly traced to election rhetoric,” although the overwhelming majority never made the news. In 476 cases, offenders used the phrase “build the wall.” In 672, they mentioned deportation.  Is this the kind of society you want to live in, and that you want your children to grow up in?

19.   Trump will abolish Obamacare, and weaken both Medicare and Social Security.  Republicans have been trying to repeal Obamacare practically since the second it was signed into law in December 2009.  From then until 2017, Congressional Republicans made more than 70 attempts at weakening or repealing Obamacare, with very little success.  The day Trump took office on January 21, 2017, he signed an executive order saying, “It is the policy of my Administration to seek the prompt repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.”  Congress came close to eliminating it in July 2017, failing only because Senator John McCain decided to vote against repeal.  While he was in office, Trump not only encouraged Congress to repeal Obamacare, but tried also to destroy it through lawsuits and executive orders.  Trump did all he could to weaken it by doing things like reducing the advertising budget by 90%, resulting in a sharp drop in signups.  Trump has recently reiterated his intent to replace Obamacare with another plan, which he admits doesn’t exist (he said during the September debate with Harris that he has “concepts of a plan”).  Repealing Obamacare would take away healthcare coverage for 45 million Americans – 13% of the population. 

During each year of Trump’s presidency, the budgets his administration proposed included cuts to Social Security and Medicare, but fortunately Congress did not enact those cuts.  Trump has publicly said that “there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting,” but he’s also walked back that statement, claiming that he was just talking about eliminating “waste” and “theft” from those programs (without offering any evidence of waste or theft).  The 2024 Republican platform states that “President Trump has made absolutely clear that he will not cut one penny from Medicare or Social Security.”  However, this claim is likely there only to calm voters, especially older people.  Given that Trump has promised to enact billions of dollars of tax cuts for the rich, which there is simply no way to do without cutting social programs – and Medicaid and Social Security are the largest and most costly of those programs – and given that Trump repeatedly tried to cut those programs during his presidency, there’s a strong likelihood that cuts are coming if Trump wins.  It’s a good bet he’ll at least try to do things like decreasing the dollar amount of Social Security benefits, raising the retirement age, cutting disability benefits, and reducing the services that Medicare provides.  So, if you plan on getting old someday, you might want to consider if you want to let this guy make you into one of those old people who lives on cat food because that’s all you can afford.

20.   The judicial system will get even worse and the rule of law will continue to diminish.  One of the worst problems in this country is our two-tiered “justice” system, where rich people who can afford expensive lawyers are far less likely to be punished for the exact same crimes as poor people, where white people are far less likely to be punished for the exact same crimes as black and brown people, and where people of color are far more likely to go to jail for crimes they did not commit.  This will only get worse if Trump’s in office.  Trump has already stacked the Supreme Court with right-wing loonies (Including Brett Kavanaugh, a man accused of sexual assault by multiple women, whose FBI’s investigation was blocked by Trump’s White House), and with the help of Senator Mitch McConnell he appointed thousands of right-wing, mostly unqualified federal judges.  If he’s in office he’ll appoint more loonies to the Supreme Court, and they will completely throw the Constitution out the window.  Trump’s Department of Justice will not intervene when states do things that are blatantly illegal.  (For example, Biden’s Department of Justice just sued the state of Alabama, which had illegally removed thousands of voters who were naturalized U.S. citizens from the voter rolls, forcing them to reinstate those voters.  Think Trump would do that?)  Imagine if Hillary Clinton had appointed three Supreme Court justices – you might not have been in love with who she appointed, but we’d still have the right to abortion, among other things.  I’d like to live in a country where there’s at least a chance that we might find some justice in the justice system.

21.   There wasn’t less crime when Trump was president, and another Trump presidency is far more likely to increase, not decrease, crime.  Trump’s claims about crime are ridiculous.  He says that immigrants cause crime, but all evidence is that native-born U.S. citizens commit crimes at a much higher rate than immigrants, whether they’re documented or undocumented.  He says that crime has surged under Biden, but the statistics say that crime’s decreased in the last few years.  (In fact, Trump presided over the largest-ever single-year increase in homicides in 2020, although to be fair that had a lot to do with the pandemic.)  He says that the FBI statistics are wrong, but they come straight from police departments across the country.  Trump’s just trying to make you feel scared, make you hate and blame immigrants, and find a justification for his plan to send the national guard into cities where there are a lot of people who don’t like him.  Don’t be fooled by his racist nonsense.  Another Trump presidency will result in a lot more violence, as he unleashes his crazy supporters, loosens gun laws even further, and institutes economic policies that will result in a lot more destitute and desperate people.

22.  Trump’s economic and tax policies will make you poorer unless you’re already rich.  A lot of Trump supporters say he’ll be good for the economy because he’s a businessman (whose businesses, financed with inherited money, mostly went bankrupt). They remember that prices were lower when he was president, and conclude that because he’s a billionaire he can somehow make them lower again.  If you believe this, then I don’t think you know exactly what economics means, other than that it has something to do with money or prices or something.  The reason why prices are so high, and inflation was so high (it’s back to normal levels as of the last few months), has nothing to do with Biden or Trump.  For one thing, post-pandemic inflation was worldwide.  There’s a lot of controversy about why there was so much inflation – corporations say they were just reacting to supply-chain issues (it took a while to gear up to pre-pandemic levels of production) and higher labor costs (workers had more choice because so many jobs opened up and they received government stimulus money).  Liberal economists say that while that had some truth to it, that many companies were price-gouging – raising prices as high as possible – far greater than were justified by increased costs – knowing that since so many people were returning to work they’d be able to pay them.  And once inflation starts to rise, consumers expect prices to keep rising, so they keep paying them without too much protest, especially since there is less and less competition in many markets.  For example, four companies own 85% of all U.S. meatpacking facilities.  (Meat prices have risen higher than most other food prices.)  According to University of California Berkeley public policy professor Robert Reich (who was President Clinton’s Secretary of Labor), “Most [industries] are now dominated by a handful of corporations that coordinate prices and production. This is true of banks, broadband pharmaceutical companies, airlines, meat-packers.”  Biden has actually done a pretty good job at bringing inflation down, but of course many consumer goods are still more expensive than they were before the pandemic.  But if Trump had been re-elected in 2020, things would be even worse.  He would not have wanted to do anything to reign in the profits of his rich friends, and his administration would not have opened any anti-trust investigations, as Biden’s has (see #8 above).

Another thing Trump would have done that would have made the situation worse is continue to insist on tax cuts for the rich.  Again, according to Robert Reich: “Under Trump, the national debt increased by about 40% — more than in any other four-year presidential term — largely because of his tax cuts for the rich and big corporations….Trump promised that the average American family would see a $4,000 pay raise because of his tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations. How’d that work out? Did you get a $4,000 raise? Of course not! Nobody did!”

Trump has no real economic policies other than tax cuts for his rich friends, putting tariffs on all imported consumer goods (which you are going to have to pay), and making huge personal profits off the presidency.  While he was president, he made an estimated $160 million from foreign countries who stayed at his hotels and otherwise patronized his businesses.  He continues to bill the Secret Service millions of dollars for staying at his golf clubs and other properties while they protect him.  He steals our tax money any way he can.

23.   If Trump is elected, say goodbye to your right to protest and freedom of speech.  Trump hates it when people protest or say anything negative about him.  Trump’s Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper says that Trump was so angry at the protests against George Floyd’s murder that he asked, “Can't you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?”  In June 2020, Trump sent the U.S. Park Police to tear gas Black Lives Matter protestors outside the White House, so that he could walk across Lafayette Park and pose with a Bible in front of St. John’s Church.  Trump’s been particularly virulent about the pro-Palestinian protestors on college campuses.  He said, “One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave.”  He’s called them “raging lunatics” and claimed they were “hired” to draw attention away from the surge of migrants at the border.  Trump praised the cops who came in with riot gear to arrest pro-Palestinian students at Columbia University.

More recently, Trump’s been threatening to send the military after people who disagree with him.  “I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within, not even the people who've come in, and, destroying our country, and by the way totally destroying our country, the towns and the villages, they're being inundated, but I don't think they're the problem in terms of election day, I think the bigger problem are the, people from within, we have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left, lunatics, and, uh, I think they're, and it, it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military. Ah, I, because they can't let that happen.”

On the other hand, if you protest in support of Trump, or something he likes, he’s ok with that.  When the Ku Klux Klan and other well-armed white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups marched through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia chanting “Jews will not replace us,” and one of them drove a car into a crowd of unarmed counter-protestors, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others, Trump said there were “fine people on both sides.”  And, of course, on January 6, 2021, he invited his supporters to protest the supposedly stolen election, by tweeting “be there, it will be wild.”   When Trump was told that members of the crowd were carrying deadly weapons, he ordered security metal detectors to be taken down, and then – even though he knew his supporters were armed – he told them to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell.”  Despite phone calls from Democrats and Republicans alike who were inside the besieged Capital, Trump did  nothing except watch for TV for hours  instead of trying to stop the violence – he refused to call for more law enforcement, refused to tell his supporters to go home, and when he was told that his Vice President Mike Pence’s life was in danger, he said, “So what?”

24.  Democrats create far more jobs than Republicans do, and are far more supportive of worker’s rights, fair wages, and unions.  As former President Bill Clinton pointed out during the Democratic National Convention in August 2024, of the 51 million jobs created in the U.S. since 1989, Democrats were in the White House for 50 million of them.  While job creation is not entirely due to Presidential action, a President’s economic policies can encourage job creation by both small and large businesses.  In particular, government assistance to small businesses often results in substantial job creation, since small businesses produce more jobs per dollar invested than large ones.  Of course, job creation in and of itself isn’t enough – we need to have jobs that provide fair wages, advancement opportunities, protect worker’s safety and health on the job, pay overtime, include sick and vacation time, etc.  While all of those things could be a lot better in the U.S., overall, the Democrats have a far better record than the Republicans on these issues.

For example, Trump and Biden’s approach to labor has been extremely different.  Trump’s Secretary of Labor was Eugene Scalia, son of the (deceased) extremely conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.  (Actually, to be totally accurate, he was Trump’s second Secretary of Labor.  His first Secretary of Labor, Alex Acosta, resigned when it came out that when he was a U.S. Attorney in Miami in 2008 he’d arranged a lenient plea deal for Jeffrey Epstein.)  Scalia’s “qualifications” for the job were that he’d spent his career helping large corporations avoid worker protections and other government regulations.  He continued this practice as Labor Secretary. During the pandemic, his Office of Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued only weak, voluntary guidelines for industries where essential workers were risking their lives daily at their jobs.  When the president of the AFL-CIO asked Scalia to impose emergency temporary standards to  require companies to follow specific rules to slow the spread of COVID, such as providing employees with personal protective equipment and adhering to social-distancing guidelines established by the Centers for Disease Control, Scalia replied that those protections were unnecessary.  OSHA received more than ten thousand complaints alleging unsafe working conditions related to the COVID, and in response issued just two citations.  (This is one of the reasons why the death rates due to COVID in the U.S. were relatively high compared to most other countries.)  The Trump administration argued in a Supreme Court case that employers should be able to prevent workers from bringing class action lawsuits, proposed a 40% funding cut for research on workplace hazards, cut the budget for workplace safety programs, tried to eliminate an educational program to teach workers on how to avoid injury and illness.  Trump’s Deputy Secretary of Labor, Patrick Pizzella, previously worked as a lobbyist for the Northern Mariana Islands (which are a commonwealth of the United States) to ensure that Congress did not impose federal minimum wage and immigration laws in a place where some workers earned less than $1 an hour.  Trump’s attitude towards unions can be summed up by his recent comments in a discussion with Elon Musk, where he said, “You’re the greatest cutter. I look at what you do. You walk in and say, ‘You want to quit?’ I won’t mention the name of the company but they go on strike and you say, ’That’s OK. You’re all gone.'”

Biden, on the other hand, has enacted many pro-labor and pro-union policies.  There are 7 million more jobs now than before the pandemic, and the unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been in 50 years.  Biden was the first president to walk a picket line, in support of striking auto workers.  He appointed Julie Su, who is probably the most progressive and pro-union person in politics, to be Secretary of Labor (although since the Senate refuses to confirm her, she is Acting Secretary), whose background was helping immigrant workers fight wage theft and protecting enslaved sweatshop workers.  The Biden/Harris administration has increased the number of workers eligible for overtime pay, required prevailing wages for Inflation Reduction Act contracts, banned companies from requiring workers to sign noncompete clauses (which prohibits them from working in another company in the same industry) and encouraged workers to join unions.

Biden and Harris both support the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which Democrats have been trying to pass since 2019.  The PRO act would impose significant financial penalties on companies that illegally interfere with their employees’ union rights, speed up the collective bargaining process after workers win a union election, and weaken the “right to work” laws that exist in 27 states.  So, if you work for a living and you want to be paid decent wages and treated fairly by your employer, you definitely don’t want Trump to be president.

25. Trump’s position on just about any other issue you can name is horrible.  He praised the Supreme Court ruling eliminating affirmative action programs in higher education. He has criticized Biden’s efforts to cancel student loan debt for millions of borrowers.  He’s threatened to eliminate the Department of Education, and to withhold disaster aid to states whose governors he doesn’t like.  He wants to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport millions of immigrants.  (That law was created by the Founding Fathers to prevent foreign espionage and sabotage in wartime, but it has a sordid history – it’s been used against immigrants who have done nothing wrong, such as the Japanese-American citizens who were interned during WWII.)

And you’d better hope we don’t have another pandemic, since Trump didn’t deal with the last one too well.  His administration discarded the pandemic response playbook that had been assembled by the Obama administration, disbanded the National Security Council’s pandemic response team, and repeatedly lied about the danger of COVID.  And Trump caused the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, solely because Congress didn’t want to fund the border wall. (Remember the border wall, the one that Trump said Mexico was going to pay for?)  He’ll probably shut down the government again if Congress does anything at all he doesn’t like, so you’d better hope that you don’t need a passport or to get a Social Security check when it happens.

And do I even need to tell you about election denial?  Stealing classified documents?  The fact that the majority of people who worked in his administration were either convicted of crimes, or denounced him?  That he’s completely senile, which means that the people actually running the government would be complete right-wing nutcases who nobody elected?  Seriously, people, we don’t want this.  You’ve gotta vote, and you’ve gotta vote for Harris whether you like her or not, because there’s no other sensible alternative.