Friday, September 13, 2024

Here are my whys.

6.5-minute read)

MAGA Trolls often comment, “You say you’re voting for Harris but you don’t say why.”  Even though the trolls aren’t serious (they know why) and just want to argue why the creepy old rapist racist felon in obvious cognitive decline is better, I’m going to give you a few of my whys. 

Convergence

            The 2024 election is about many different concerns coming together.  What’s the most important?  Democracy? Immigration?  Government control over women’s bodies?  Christian Nationalism?  Abortion access?  Climate change?  The economy?  Health care?  Education?  People will have differing priorities. 

For me, the continuation of our democracy is the most important issue.  This issue is foundational to all the others.  Freeing our country of the fascists, crazies, Christian Nationalists and election deniers like Hawley, Boebert, Greene, Lake, Chip Roy, Jordan, Gaetz, Mace, Gohmert, Tuberville, Comer, etc.  Remember, 147 Republicans went along with Trump’s plan to overturn the will of the people and overthrow our form of government by NOT doing their jobs.  I covered that in this post.  

But you can pick your own most-important-issue.

Different strokes for different folks.[1]

Why vote for Kamala?

            First and foremost she is hands down the more qualified candidate.  Vice President Kamala Harris has 21 good years of experience in government.  She’s able to articulate that experience in governing into accomplishments.  In other words she gets shit done. 

            Here’s the thing about Harris.  She’s not perfect (spoiler alert – there is no perfect candidate).  But she is smart.  She will learn.  She will change her mind if presented with evidence that there’s a better way to go.  She will listen to her advisors.  She will hire advisors who know what the fuck they’re talking about.

            She isn’t an old rapist felon in obvious cognitive decline.  In the before times, Trump said being accused of committing a felony was cause for disqualifying a Presidential candidate let alone being a convicted felon.[2]  She represents order compared to Trump’s chaos.

            As Vice President Harris cast a historical record of 33 tie breaking votes on legislation, including the Inflation Reduction Act.[3]  The act continued support for reducing Affordable Care Act premiums, reduced drug prices for seniors, increased the corporate tax rate to 15%, and increased IRS funding to go after wealthy tax cheats, just to mention a few provisions of the act.[4] 

            Now I want to talk about the economy.  Are we as a nation better off than we were 4 years ago?  Absolutely!  We were coming off a pandemic that was horribly handled by then President Trump.  (The pandemic is the root cause of our current inflation and has also served to distort economic data.)  Supply chains were broken.  Store shelves were empty.  Basic necessities like toilet paper and flour were in short supply.  People were dying by the thousands. 

            I go to big box stores as well as different grocery stores.  They’re full.  They’re full of people buying stuff.  They’re full of goods.  Plenty of fresh produce.  Fully stocked shelves that are bought down and then restocked.  It’s this way all over the country.

            There are so many fake bullshit statistics out there being circulated.  I saw one yesterday shared by the MAGA cult that claimed inflation was 17%. 17%!  You know what the inflation rate is?  The actual inflation rate?  As of September it’s 2.5%.[5]  Prior to the pandemic the inflation rate for Trump was also around 2%.[6]  On our last tank of gas we paid $2.69.    

You know what has increased over 17% since the Biden Administration took over?  Wages.  Wages have risen 17.7%.[7]

Trump’s plan is to fix everything with tariffs.  Trump has yet to figure out what tariffs actually are.[8]  It sounds cool to say that the Chinese government will pay the tariffs.  News Flash!  They won’t.  Consumers will.  Tariffs are a regressive tax that impacts middle and lower income families disproportionately. 

            The Biden Administration has done an excellent job of digging us out of the hole that the pandemic put us in.[9]  Vice President Harris was and is a valuable and active part of the Administration that accomplished that.  Plus she has demonstrated that she has the foresight and flexibility to change if circumstances warrant the need. 

            On the world stage Kamala Harris is respected whereas Trump was laughed at and mocked for his boorish stupid behavior when he addressed the United Nations.[10]  She isn’t obsequious to dictators.  They aren’t her heroes.

            And Kamala Harris is who he is running against.

Trump keeps forgetting that.[11]

Why Vote Blue

            The Democratic Party Platform is available online.[12]  It is NOT a plan to overthrow our democracy and replace the President with a dictator like Trump’s Project 2025.  He has repeatedly tried to distance himself from Project 2025, in spite of the video of him talking about using it when he’s in office.[13] 

            VP Harris has said what she wants to do to bring down inflation even more.  Price gouging does contribute to inflation.  But it’s going to take laws and regulations to take care of that.  Guess what?  In addition to NOT being the party of law-and-order MAGA Republicans also oppose laws and regulations on business.  They want corporations unfettered so that they can gouge the public whenever they want. 

            Kamala Harris wants to continue giving tax breaks to average Americans just as she has done as a part of the Biden Administration.  MAGA Republicans call this Marxism but for some reason it wasn’t Marxist when Trump gave BILLIONS in tax breaks to the rich.[14]  Trump said he was smart when he didn’t pay any taxes.[15]  So he wants to keep sharing the “smart” with his rich friends by giving more tax breaks to the rich to make them even richer.[16]  .

MAGA Republicans currently control the House of Representatives and struggled to pass any meaningful legislation.  MAGA Congressman Chip Roy of the 118th Congress said it best in 2023 when he yelled at his Republican colleagues for not being able to pass one piece of significant legislation.[17]  The 118th Congress is on track to be one of the most unproductive in modern history.[18]  More on that in this post of mine. Marjorie Taylor Greene also talked about Republicans not doing their job.[19]  This may be the only sensible thing she’s ever said.  Some of us are kinda glad that MAGA hasn’t been able to pass any repressive legislation.  If re-elected the 147 MAGA Republicans in Congress that helped him when he tried to overthrow our democracy will help him implement those plans, so it’s important to vote Blue all the way down the ballot.

            If you support a woman having the right to control her own body without government interference, then why would you vote for current MAGA Republicans like Josh Hawley and wannabe Congress people like Kari Lake?  Hawley is a Christian Nationalist who has done everything in his power to oppose a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body.  He isn’t going to change.  None of the extremists are.  Hawley is also a coward, avoiding televised debates with his opponent, Lucas Kunce. 

            But let’s set aside all these really good reasons to vote for Kamala Harris and take a good hard look at her opponent.  Trump is old, in obvious cognitive decline (much worse than Biden, who was forced out of the race) and currently ranting about immigrants eating pets in Springfield, OH.  Not to mention his bat-shit crazy running mate, JD Vance, who is also doubling down on the pets thing.  Do you really want to take a chance (and there’s a good one) that we’ll end up with Vance in the White House?

Vote for democracy.  Vote blue.

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[1] https://medium.com/@matt.ryanallen/6-practical-reasons-to-vote-for-kamala-harris-26c224317772

[2] No felons, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEiTA3ALlhw&t=21s

[4] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/personal-finance/inflation-reduction-act/

[5] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/inflation-august-2024-economic-outlook-us-interest-rate-cuts-rcna170207

[6] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8xl5vnlzpwo

[7] https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2024/joe-biden-kamala-harris-worst-inflation-history-cost-families-28000-fact-check/

[8] https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/what-tariff-and-who-pays-it

[9] https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/mar/04/Biden-Trump-economy-who-did-better/

[10] Trump laughed at, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr0DA1eBYSc

[11] Harris not Biden, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bniYjRH2Joc

[12] https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/FINAL-MASTER-PLATFORM.pdf

[13] Trump talking about Project 2025, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Q-oBVEAAa1s

[14] https://www.propublica.org/article/secret-irs-files-reveal-how-much-the-ultrawealthy-gained-by-shaping-trumps-big-beautiful-tax-cut

[15] Trump paid no taxes, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qXjsMK_MnU

[16] https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/08/politics/trump-tax-cuts-tcja-wealthy-benefit/index.html

[17] Chip Roy, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZoC3d6S3jI

[18] https://www.axios.com/2023/12/19/118-congress-bills-least-unproductive-chart

[19] MTG, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/y4rNev03r_U

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