can you be specific? like… i read ur comments, even the precedent ones and is like “i liked trump for all the things he did” but u never actually say what he did that u liked… and then “i don’t like biden and the left for all the things they did and would do” but u never actually say what is so bad that they did or would do… is like an extremely long word salad of nothingness.… i have a few questions to try to force you to take a real position:
- what would it take you to regret voting for Trump and admit that he is a disaster as a president? (be realistic no zombie apocalypse scenario allowed) - what are 10 good things that Trump did in his previews 4 years? (i am talking the creme de la creme the best you got the reason why you believe he is so great, be specific no stuff like “less taxes” that alone means nothing i want you to say what exactly he did) - what are 10 things you voted Trump to do in this new term? (again the best you got the reason you voted him and you need to be specific stuff like “less regulation” makes my brain boils since it has no meaning… what regulation are we talking about? do we want lead in bread? i don’t understand be specific...) - what are 10 bad things that the Biden administration did? (you said there were a lot so i am looking forward to hear the 10 worst they surely must be so awful if they steared you to the right… again be specific no stuff like “i didn’t like how they handled this thing”, i want to know exactly what they did that you deem as so incredibly wrong to go on pair with the Trump administration) - what are 10 bad things that the Kamala administration would have done that were gonna be so incredibly bad to go in pair with what we got… before you said there were a lot of them but you didn’t actually said any specifically… which is frustrating imo
btw wring long things is fine and cool but only if in the end it helps conveying what you have to say and you can actually get to the point… otherwise i may as well use ChatGPT and ask it to “stretch this comment in 3 pages without changing anything”… which i am sure we agree would be counterproductive to comunication…
I am willing to be more specific, but you aren’t even engaging with what I’ve written at all; and there is no way I can deliver something that is true in the exact format you are requesting. Also, if you read my initial postings, I was stating a position to help others understand what it is (they asked for understanding of Trump supporters), not trying to write a persuasive essay. This quote from the end of my first thing is very important “I would prefer to talk in general, rather get bogged down in details that are not actually important to how people actually view the situation.” I am still only trying to help my interlocutor understand the though process, not make an argument. I am not trying to be persuasive.
(Do people appreciate me doing this? Hard to tell. My overall karma is slightly positive on these comments as a whole but the comment you are replying to seems to only have ‘disagreement’ votes. I’m not sure whether that means they think I shouldn’t make the comments.)(Yes, all of my asides seem necessary to me.)
Distilling a gestalt down to a list is very lossy and not very good. I wrote long because I had to so that I could get across the extremely many points inherent in honestly answering the question (and didn’t have the many hours necessary to produce a high quality essay). If I have to choose between honesty and brevity, I have to choose honesty. I very much would like to be able to get across all of my many points in fewer words, but your comment about ChatGPT was completely unhelpful. If you think I didn’t make any points you are simply wrong, and if you think I belabored them, perhaps you are right, but they were as brief as my skill could manage. This post again turned out long, because it had to be. Perhaps if I was a more gifted writer it could be shorter, but I am not.
A presidency cannot be judged based off 10 exact actions unless someone starts World War III. Summary is often necessary, and things like ‘less regulation’ are the only reasonable level to do it at. (A very large portion of the information involved in anything is stored in summary form even within the person themself.)
I can’t possibly have the reasons exactly sorted out in the format you want. I can give you 10 details, but they won’t be the best details that are possible, because that would require many, many hours to put all of the reasons into words, and think through exactly what order reasons should be in. The posts you found unsatisfyingly general already took at least a few hours each to lay it out in detail. I provided so many details at only a moderate level of abstraction (with some being quite concrete), and a lot of summary with it, along with a great deal of my reasoning. You need to engage more fully with the gestalt if you actually want to understand. I am willing to answer your questions, but I cannot follow exactly what you asked in making them the ’10 best’. Now to answering the questions.
There is only one thing that would make me regret voting for Trump: The feeling that America is worse off because of Trump being president than if he hadn’t been. Yes, a feeling. It’s vague for a reason. I can and do compare general factors for goodness and badness multiplied by his responsibility for them versus counterfactuals, but after that, it is all intuitive. All analyses I do on any subject are heavily dependent on intuition. Comparing a gestalt to a counterfactual gestalt is hard to put into small details. I don’t stare at the trees to discover the broader trends of the forest.
Some good things Trump did in his first term: *You mentioned hated my mentioning ‘lowering regulation’ but he clearly did (I forget the numbers, but he genuinely reduced them). I liked the method through which he did it, and the fact that it happened, not based on individual regulations. He implemented a simple rule with two factors. The factors were that the agencies had to get rid of more regulations than you formed anew, and that the estimated financial impact of compliance needed to be equal or less than the current rules. I thought that was brilliant and every president should do it until we get down to a reasonable amount of regulation. *Kept inflation low *Kept unemployment low *No new foreign wars *Reduced taxes on business (lower marginal rates), reduced taxes on individuals (increased standard deduction) *Spoke directly to the populace frequently on the theme of America and Americans being great *Did not support anything I find especially bad (obviously this is important, no matter the vagueness!) (Whatever you find outrageous, I obviously don’t agree it happened, who is responsible, and/or the interpretation thereof) *Worked within the structure of our government (also vague but important) *Was clearly the person actually doing the job *He picked judges for the supreme court that support textualism and originalism (which are the only schools of jurisprudence I can support)(I strongly favor textualism if there is any conflict)
Some things I voted for Trump to do in his new term: *Most importantly, continue his governance from the first term since I think it went well. (Only as vague as it has to be.) Try to make America stay great. Protect America from its enemies. Etc. *Enforce the border, preventing as much illegal immigration as reasonably possible while also preventing smuggling of things like drugs or weapons or whatever, and more generally, enforce the laws the left doesn’t (vague for obvious reasons, but obviously including things like deporting illegal aliens, keeping public order, and prosecuting rioters). Most laws are enforced by states of course, so I don’t and didn’t expect him to have much effect on most crime, but still. *Prevent his tax cuts from expiring *Be willing to confront China to prevent their bad actions from having the effects they desire. (Vague because those actions are chosen by China, and I object to the leadership’s choices but don’t know in advance what they will be. I also don’t know the ideal way to confront China.) China cannot be allowed to become a great power under current leadership (which I believe is evil). *Prevent Kamala Harris from becoming president *Prevent the Democrats from accruing more power in general *Make deals with foreign powers but walk away from bad ones *Support Israel against terrorist governments (including Hamas and Iran’s government) rather than hamstringing them *Prevent rogue nations like Iran from getting nukes (whether by peaceful means or not) *Prevent lawfare against Trump from making the party guilty of it win
Some reasons Biden was a terrible president: *He was mentally incompetent for at least a large stretch of his presidency! We don’t even know which parts he was competent during. He was completely unwilling to admit this and remove himself from the presidency. I despise Kamala Harris, but he should have made her acting president after voluntarily stepping down, especially after it became clear to the world that we had a mentally incompetent president. (Luckily there were none of our foes used that fact to their fullest advantage.) He presumably never realized how incompetent he was, which means he certainly couldn’t have planned for his own lack of capability in planning things. *Border enforcement was a complete and utter joke. A country that has no border is incredibly vulnerable. (See what Israel just did to Iran.) *He never achieved anything positive of which I am aware. *Inflation was the highest since Carter! (Also a one term president for obvious reasons.) His policies of pumping way too much money through the government are the likely cause (including the absurdly misnamed ‘Inflation Reduction Act’). *The selection of egregiously incompetent people for his administration, like Kamala Harris. He selected both her and supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson based on what appears to be demographics / DEI. He selected people in general based on demographics. (This is both super racist and super sexist.) *The feeling that politics got a lot more divisive during his term (which also occurred during the Trump and Obama presidencies, to be fair) *He supported lawfare against Trump (I believe that none of it was justified), severely damaging our traditions against it (and inviting retaliation). *Clearly extreme corruption involving enriching himself and his family through his son Hunter’s accepting money to put people into contact with, and get favorable treatment from Joe Biden *Unprecedentedly pardoning people (especially his son) for things they did over an extremely long period of time and not even in a restricted category! (Obviously after the election) *I feel that he had absolutely no respect for the constitution, laws of the land, or the importance of faithfully executing his duties as president. *The world became a more dangerous place under his watch (including Hamas’s actions, Russia’s invasion, China getting a more advantageous position, etc) I think all of that easily qualifies as Biden being a terrible president, but I won’t say they are necessarily the best reasons. They are just what I could think of now.
Some reasons I believe Kamala Harris would have been a terrible president: *I am Californian, and she literally never did anything I heard of in state politics that was positive. When I compared her to her (also a Democrat) opposition in statewide office, I very clearly knew I should vote for her opponent. *Even Democrats generally said she was incompetent before they ran her *She had no vision for America that made any sense. I can’t even say what she might have claimed it would be. *She failed to do her duty to the country and invoke the 25th amendment to remove Biden from the presidency when he was mentally and physically incompetent, putting her ambitions ahead of her loyalty to the country, and leaving the US in a vulnerable state without leadership if something drastic happened. (Even Kamala Harris would have been a better choice for that interim than Biden.)
Some terrible things Kamala would do as president: *Continue her wretched performance in border control (and likely worsen it) *Continue to promote DEI in her administration and the country / not select for merit *Wealth taxes (the worst likely tax) *Price controls (the worst likely economic policy) / anti-‘price gouging’ laws (ensuring you get shortages instead) *Continue and escalate lawfare against opponents since it would have worked against Trump in this scenario *Raise tax rates in general (marginal, corporate, and miscellaneous) / let the Trump tax cuts expire (even with the Trump tax cuts, rates were still too high) *Fail to reform the government at all *Egg on rioters and support law breakers from the office of the presidency / fail to faithfully follow the constitution and faithful execute our laws *Serve as an example that parties can simply decided who our next president will be *Be extremely weak in foreign policy / lead from behind *Fail to prioritize the needs of the country to have a functioning market, cheap prices, abundant surplus of goods, physical safety, and equal enforcement of laws because she believes that would inhibit ‘green energy’ and DEI
Far less likely but still too high a likelihood: *Some chance (I don’t know how likely) she would side with the genocidal antisemitic strain of her party (I think few Democrats support that, but a disturbingly high percentage of their activists do, and I don’t remember her pushing back against said activists.) She seemed much more likely than Biden to support them (and Trump obviously supports the Jews).
There are also some minor positives for Biden/Harris and some serious negatives for Trump, but you didn’t ask for those.
it sounds like you haven’t actually thought this throw and so you cannot actually come up with anything at all… you are trying to say that you not being able to come up with anything is justified by the impossibility of it? that to me sounds unreasonable and irrational… but let’s look at the points that you did write down since that is the only thing i can actually address because “vibes” are meaningless...
Some good things Trump did in his first term: *You mentioned hated my mentioning ‘lowering regulation’ but he clearly did (I forget the numbers, but he genuinely reduced them). I liked the method through which he did it, and the fact that it happened, not based on individual regulations. He implemented a simple rule with two factors. The factors were that the agencies had to get rid of more regulations than you formed anew, and that the estimated financial impact of compliance needed to be equal or less than the current rules. I thought that was brilliant and every president should do it until we get down to a reasonable amount of regulation.
what method? like… you wrote 10 sentences on how great he lowered regulation but you have not mentioned a single regulation… a single law he passed a single thing he did specifically… you see how frustrating this is? it sounds like a movie phrase like “they defeated the evil” but reality is not a movie we need specific things are not black and white… so this point is out
*Kept inflation low
this point also invalid since Trump administration didn’t implement any policy to actually make inflation low… so it could be argue that the economic climate of his presidency was just good and it did not need any tampering… if anthything Trump policies added a staggering $7.8 trillion in national debt even in a time of economic prosperity making those cuts unnecessary someone could argue...
*Kept unemployment low
American unemployment has been “low” for the past 12 years as far as i am aware it was low even during the Biden administration which had to deal with a pandemic… so unless you can mention something Trump actually did to lower unemployment this point also goes… again i asked for things the Trump administration DID not a description of American economy as it always was… this is your top? the best of the best you could come up?
*No new foreign wars
again… what did Trump do that was somehow preventing foreign wars druign that time? this point is so irrational i find myself at a loss of words to see it wrote on a community such as this… if the sun rise tomorrow is it thanks to Donald Trump? the fact that a metorite didn’t strike earth between 2016 and 2018 was it thanks to Donald Trump?
*Reduced taxes on business (lower marginal rates), reduced taxes on individuals (increased standard deduction)
what taxes? be specific? how was it good? these general statement of “he defeated the evil taxes” is what i don’t like…
*Spoke directly to the populace frequently on the theme of America and Americans being great
every single president did that… so… like… is this the BEST of Trump? 4 years administration and the top of the top someone can say about him is that he did some speeches where he said america good? what president hasn’t said so in the past 200+ years? lol
*Did not support anything I find especially bad (obviously this is important, no matter the vagueness!) (Whatever you find outrageous, I obviously don’t agree it happened, who is responsible, and/or the interpretation thereof)
the most subjective point there can be… i could write an entire book about things Trump supported in 4 years that are horrendous… i am not sure how someone can say he didn’t support anything “bad”… but again this is so vague it feels like you are unwilling to mention what you actually want to mention are you afraid?
*Worked within the structure of our government (also vague but important)
is interesting how you recognize the vagueness of such statement… why write it at all? what president didn’t “work within the structure of our government”? lmao… Trump spent his last year saying the election was stolen and orchestreting a way to delay the certification of the vote with false electors… his lawyers were disbarded and his speech fomented a moab to the capitol… how more away you can go from the structure of the government then that?
*Was clearly the person actually doing the job
”the job”? what is “the job” he did? are there president that weren’t doing their job?
*He picked judges for the supreme court that support textualism and originalism (which are the only schools of jurisprudence I can support)(I strongly favor textualism if there is any conflict)
so… supreme judges are basically the lottery for a president so i am not sure what to do with this point either… also what is the source for this statement? to me it seems he just choose the judges most loyal to the republican party… like it is reported in numerous media format so your interpretation that he picked them because of “textualism”… like i am not entirely sure Trump would know what “textualism” is or mean...
Some things I voted for Trump to do in his new term: *Most importantly, continue his governance from the first term since I think it went well. (Only as vague as it has to be.) Try to make America stay great. Protect America from its enemies. Etc.
point means nothing so i will jump it
*Enforce the border, preventing as much illegal immigration as reasonably possible while also preventing smuggling of things like drugs or weapons or whatever, and more generally, enforce the laws the left doesn’t (vague for obvious reasons, but obviously including things like deporting illegal aliens, keeping public order, and prosecuting rioters). Most laws are enforced by states of course, so I don’t and didn’t expect him to have much effect on most crime, but still.
any source for the claim that he would do such thing? just because he says so? this point is very opinionated and tries to insult the left as people that don’t enforce laws for some reasons i fail to understand… anyhow… during his first term the numbers of deported were not any higher then before… as of now Obama still stands as the president who deported the most illegals and despite the irrational mainstream belief that Biden administration didn’t enforce the laws on immigration they actually DID do just that… they also tried to pass a bipartisan law which would have finally put a stop to the loopholes used by immigrants the law was about to be approved and pass senate but Trump with a now reported call to republican senators stroke the law down because otherwise he would have not been able to use the immigration issue in his presidential campaign
*Prevent his tax cuts from expiring
what tax cuts? what benefits do they have? again with “the evil taxes”
*Be willing to confront China to prevent their bad actions from having the effects they desire. (Vague because those actions are chosen by China, and I object to the leadership’s choices but don’t know in advance what they will be. I also don’t know the ideal way to confront China.) China cannot be allowed to become a great power under current leadership (which I believe is evil).
we are beyond vague at this point… i will just ignore this “point” and move on...
*Prevent Kamala Harris from becoming president
this the BEST reason to elect Trump? without any actual explenation just “kamala bad trump good” what even is the argument?
*Prevent the Democrats from accruing more power in general
eh… didn’t you say you were a “long independent” lol… also this is not an argument without a reason again… let’s move on…
*Make deals with foreign powers but walk away from bad ones
what powers? what deals? like… seriously… is this a bot? am i speaking to a bot that cannot mention specific stuff cause is not in the tokens so it cannot grab it or something?
*Support Israel against terrorist governments (including Hamas and Iran’s government) rather than hamstringing them
no president has ever supported terrorists let alone hamas lol didn’t you say you didn’t want foreign wars interventions? lol
*Prevent rogue nations like Iran from getting nukes (whether by peaceful means or not)
so… you want war? like actual war with iran? for what doing something that they are already doing? it feels like is not war you are against is just that you want your personal war...
*Prevent lawfare against Trump from making the party guilty of it win
source? evidence that this was a thing ever? to me sounds like he just got away with crimes he did commit… you are free to post evidence tho...
Some reasons Biden was a terrible president: *He was mentally incompetent for at least a large stretch of his presidency! We don’t even know which parts he was competent during. He was completely unwilling to admit this and remove himself from the presidency. I despise Kamala Harris, but he should have made her acting president after voluntarily stepping down, especially after it became clear to the world that we had a mentally incompetent president. (Luckily there were none of our foes used that fact to their fullest advantage.) He presumably never realized how incompetent he was, which means he certainly couldn’t have planned for his own lack of capability in planning things.
this is your opinions you don’t have any evidence to prove he was incompetent at all… awkward video clips on the internet are not evidence of mental incompetence lmao… if that were the case Trump would be classifiable as a mentally disabled too so you can either show evidence of this or agree that is not a point at all… from my prespective Biden seems pretty fine i detatch myself from using memes and random clips as a way to define someone persona let alone mental capacity… i don’t think is rational to do so… people really liked this gossiping and the for profit media run with it… as simple as that… the only reason we don’t speak about Trump mental incapacity every single day is because he show it so much that is not even newsworthy… imagine having a mentally handicapped firend, the first time you meet them maybe you uknowledge the situation but the 300th time? nobody would click such articles cause everyone already knows it...
*Border enforcement was a complete and utter joke. A country that has no border is incredibly vulnerable. (See what Israel just did to Iran.)
source? evidence? what do we define as “joke”? what policies are we talking about? very vague random irrational statement to make imo… let’s stick with factual points
*He never achieved anything positive of which I am aware.
sounds like you have ignored a lot then… just at the top of my head the Biden Administration passed an historical bipartisan infrastructure bill which benefits are still in the work to this day, anything from rebuilding over 200,000 miles of roads, repaired 12,000+ bridges, and funded 72,000 infrastructure projects nationwide you can see each project in the bill itself on google… so this already invalidate your point which was “he did nothing”… as a cherry on top some republicans from the current Trump administration are even posting multiple projects pictures on twitter boosting about how great they are without realizing that in said pictures you can actually see the Biden signature on the project paper itself which is usually outside of each project construction place… i can give you link if you want i find it funny...
*Inflation was the highest since Carter! (Also a one term president for obvious reasons.) His policies of pumping way too much money through the government are the likely cause (including the absurdly misnamed ‘Inflation Reduction Act’).
we had a pandemic… what money do you deem unnecessary? again vagueness makes this point invalid… it just has no meaning unless you can tell me what is wrong with what was done and why… anyone can say “inflation bad” but is not a real point
*The selection of egregiously incompetent people for his administration, like Kamala Harris. He selected both her and supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson based on what appears to be demographics / DEI. He selected people in general based on demographics. (This is both super racist and super sexist.)
evidence that they were selected on those basis? why would we say they are incompetent? from my perspective seeing you saying this without any evidence makes it look like you are the “super racist and super sexist” here...
*The feeling that politics got a lot more divisive during his term (which also occurred during the Trump and Obama presidencies, to be fair)
why would we say this? can you point me to something Biden did? cause otherwise there is no point here… but thanks for unknowledging that Trump a president that tried to overturn an election which he lost can at least be classified as “divisive” lol
*He supported lawfare against Trump (I believe that none of it was justified), severely damaging our traditions against it (and inviting retaliation).
evidence? source? just your opinion? let’s move on...
*Clearly extreme corruption involving enriching himself and his family through his son Hunter’s accepting money to put people into contact with, and get favorable treatment from Joe Biden
evidence? source? what he did do exactly? was it the same as Trump appointing each of his family members as government employees or using his president position to promote a crypto scam? or getting other countries to invest in his social network company? or getting gifted airplanes? if you have anything anything at all pls share… otherwise… again… let’s move on...
*Unprecedentedly pardoning people (especially his son) for things they did over an extremely long period of time and not even in a restricted category! (Obviously after the election)
his son pardoning was due to the fact that during the presidential campaign Trump and some Trump followers (like the now appointed president of the FBI) promised to utilize the DOJ to go after Biden’s family for no other reason other then political reason… this is why he had to pardon every member of his family… btw you say “especially his son” what other pardon do you disagree with? pls either mention them specifically or non at all since is not useful otherwise… frankly i would have done the same… it surely is not the same as pardoning convicted criminals that assaulted multiple police agents for no reason during a ridicolous assault to the capitol...
*I feel that he had absolutely no respect for the constitution, laws of the land, or the importance of faithfully executing his duties as president.
like… what did he do? either tell what he did against any of this things you mention and why is bad or you may as well not be saying anything at all...
*The world became a more dangerous place under his watch (including Hamas’s actions, Russia’s invasion, China getting a more advantageous position, etc)
what did he do that made hamas worse or the world a less safe place? you didn’t say what he did… like… i literally asked you for specifical things that was done not vague general nonsense… please be rational...
Some reasons I believe Kamala Harris would have been a terrible president: *I am Californian, and she literally never did anything I heard of in state politics that was positive. When I compared her to her (also a Democrat) opposition in statewide office, I very clearly knew I should vote for her opponent.
just at a first glanceKamala Harris espablished the California’s Bureau of Children’s Justice in 2015, while serving as Attorney General of California. do you deem that as nothing positive? interesting...
*Even Democrats generally said she was incompetent before they ran her
source? like who? do we care? when we say “democrat” who are we talking about? like… any democrat? any person on twitter saying something bad about kamala? is this a rational thought to have? there were republican saying bad things about Trump… hell there is an entire community called “republicans against trump”
*She had no vision for America that made any sense. I can’t even say what she might have claimed it would be.
so you don’t know what her vision is but you deemed it terrible? did you read like… her political agenda on her websites? was pretty clear to me… do you need a link?
*She failed to do her duty to the country and invoke the 25th amendment to remove Biden from the presidency when he was mentally and physically incompetent, putting her ambitions ahead of her loyalty to the country, and leaving the US in a vulnerable state without leadership if something drastic happened. (Even Kamala Harris would have been a better choice for that interim than Biden.)
evidence that this was the case? some funny video clips on youtube of an old man falling down some stairs? lol
Some terrible things Kamala would do as president: *Continue her wretched performance in border control (and likely worsen it)
you still have not mentioned what was that is “wretched” you just say it is without saying why what did she do… very irrational imo
*Continue to promote DEI in her administration and the country / not select for merit
unless you can pinpoint to instances of this happening and explaing why and how it was wrong and bad this is not a real point done in good faith...
*Wealth taxes (the worst likely tax)
”oh no the evil taxes” is not a real argument… what taxes are we talking about? wealth taxes were not even in the campaign agenda at all… why would they be implemented? why are they bad? as far as i am aware the only tax mentioned in her campaign was a capital gain tax for people with income above something like 500k a year (around that you can google actual numbers) which althow she mentioned in a few speeches this had no chance what so ever of actually passing anyway… so what is the problem? but again… no wealth tax was mentioned… i just thought maybe you are confusing the 2
*Price controls (the worst likely economic policy) / anti-‘price gouging’ laws (ensuring you get shortages instead)
what price controls are we talking about? what laws was proposed? “price control bad” is not a rational argument...
*Continue and escalate lawfare against opponents since it would have worked against Trump in this scenario
evidence that this was the case at all?
*Raise tax rates in general (marginal, corporate, and miscellaneous) / let the Trump tax cuts expire (even with the Trump tax cuts, rates were still too high)
”evil taxes” meaningless point let’s move on...
*Fail to reform the government at all
i don’t think we can get more meaningless then this… you are basically doing ad hominem attacks at this point we are beyond all that is rational
*Egg on rioters and support law breakers from the office of the presidency / fail to faithfully follow the constitution and faithful execute our laws
source? evidence? why do we think that? random words?
*Serve as an example that parties can simply decided who our next president will be
we vote the president
*Be extremely weak in foreign policy / lead from behind
saying things without any reason is very irrational… unless you can quote anything that would justify thinking this to me it sounds just sexist tbh
*Fail to prioritize the needs of the country to have a functioning market, cheap prices, abundant surplus of goods, physical safety, and equal enforcement of laws because she believes that would inhibit ‘green energy’ and DEI
random words basically…
oof that was painful to read… i don’t see any actual point being made unfortunatley i only see irrationality in you words which failed to actually say anything besides showing a lot of bad faith… btw you still missed a question
- what would it take you to regret voting for Trump and admit that he is a disaster as a president? (be realistic no zombie apocalypse scenario allowed)
I seem to be frustrating you with my answers, but I am doing what I can to be helpful. That is genuinely my goal here. Simple understanding is what the original question was about, since not too many people here understood why people supported Trump, and understanding, not political fighting is my entire point in engaging. I don’t actually feel any need (or even desire) to defend Trump or bash Biden/Harris. If you wanted to have a conversation on specific scenarios, you may need to suggest them yourself. ‘If <scenario A> happened’, what would you think?′ I would answer, though I might also explain why I think it doesn’t apply if that seems pointed. You might also want to read my responses to Pazzaz if you want to understand how I engage with a more limited question in greater depth. We had a lot of fundamental disagreements, but I think we understood each other’s points well and recovered from misunderstanding each other.
I listed why getting exactly the best 10 on short notice was impossible, and then I answered all of your questions as you asked them other than them not literally being the best possible reasons. You can not like the reasons (it may even be reasonable), but I answered your questions. You wanted to know details about why, and I gave them to you. If you are trying to understand them, try not to assume things are irrational when you don’t understand at first. I believe the frustration you express throughout your responses is making you miss what I am actually saying. You seemed to pattern match what I am saying to things you haven’t liked in the past about kinds of answers, rather than considering them as pieces. I think that a lot of the time you don’t realize that I am saying I want a certain approach to solving problems. If you want a more specific conversation, you may need to reduce the scope of what you are asking considerably.
I mentioned an exact mechanism for lowering regulation, and explicitly told you it was about the mechanism rather than an individual regulation. That is an exact answer.
Inflation was much lower than with Biden, who had literally the worst in my lifetime, which is why I wrote ‘Kept inflation low’ rather than ‘Made inflation low’. He didn’t make it explode, while Biden did, and we could directly compare their results. I make it clear in the Biden part that Biden is at fault for inflation, not that there was necessarily any special policy during the Trump years.
I wrote ‘Kept unemployment low’ because unemployment was low. Things going well doesn’t have to be a change, but it is still valuable. I evaluated his entire presidency, not just what he changed. A good president doesn’t ruin things their predecessor had at a decent level.
Some presidents start new wars. Some don’t. It isn’t entirely up to them either way, but it isn’t irrational to think a president that doesn’t start new wars is better than one that does, all else equal.
I explicitly told you how he lowered taxes. He lowered the marginal rates in corporate taxes, and increased the standard deduction for normal citizens. Those are exact details. I could have added the numbers, (for instance, marginal corporate tax rates went from about 35% to 21% if I recall correctly,) but you don’t really seem to care about them.
Donald Trump spoke more to the populace than other presidents, and his theme was more often the greatness of America. Neither Obama nor Biden spoke frequently of that subject from what I saw.
Vague reasons can be important too, and saying that, as far as I know, he didn’t support anything I find egregious is completely clear. If he’d done things I thought were terrible I obviously would lessen my support or eliminate it. I also acknowledged that we were unlikely to agree on the interpretation of any of the events you find egregious.
‘Worked within the structure of the government’ means I think his actions were all completely legal, and not overly disruptive of the functioning of the government. It’s an important part to note when his foes constantly claim he didn’t. His actions in regards to disputing the election followed precedent, and it had been previously ruled by courts that disputes must involve an alternate slate of electors or they are moot; claims otherwise were clearly just meant for outrage. His speech did not foment a mob to the capital, as I explain at length in a reply to someone else; it was not physically possible for someone to listen to his speech to the end and be there for the early stages of the capital riot (and it was just a riot, not some kind of insurrection). He also didn’t ever support the riot. Additionally, the left supports a lot of riots.
‘Was the person actually doing the job’ is a clear contrast to Biden, who was mentally unfit for much or perhaps all of his term. It also means he was making the decisions, not just letting bureaucrats and underlings determine things.
Supreme court justices that rule against him (as happened many times) are hardly evidence of Trump selecting purely for loyalty to him or the party. His judicial choices are roughly as moderate as the people they replaced, except for one of them being slightly center-right (Amy Coney Barett) instead of left. I never said why he selected them either; I only said he did a good job, and that he selected textualist and originalist judges. Results matter for judging the process.
There is an obvious meaning to saying I selected Trump to keep doing what he was doing. Past results aren’t proof of future ones, but they are a good place to start. When you select a president, you are selecting the system.
‘Enforcing the border’ was clearly about keeping out new illegal crossers and the things they bring with them, which Biden did abysmally and Trump did much better. This is a security concern. The “more generally, enforce the laws that the left doesn’t” is a simple statement of fact, but also a pointer to which crimes I want enforced more. Rioting was supported by Democrats throughout both Trump’s and Biden’s terms. Many Democrat run cities and states also refuse to prosecute many crimes, for example, California for a long time refusing to prosecute theft in many jurisdictions. I clearly acknowledged that federal law enforcement will only have a small effect on most of them because most crimes are state level crimes. I never said that Democrats don’t enforce any laws; I only said that I want the ones they don’t enforce to be enforced. I didn’t even say that they enforce fewer laws than the Republicans.
You keep claiming ‘evil taxes’ as if that is somehow related to my points. I never called taxes in general ‘evil’ at all. This is a clear misrepresentation. I also already said which taxes I wanted to not expire; corportate marginal rates that were lowered, and a higher deduction for individuals.
You keep ignoring points you don’t like. Being willing to confront China is an obvious foreign policy objective that many people share. Foreign policy is one of the primary responsibilities of the presidency. I explicitly state that I don’t know what China will do, but that I believe they will need to be confronted.
I clearly explain later why preventing Kamala Harris from becoming president is a good thing from my perspective. It is okay to write your response in order, but you should acknowledge when I have addressed your point. Additionally, in a two party system, it is normal to vote against a candidate you dislike as well as for the one you like.
These points aren’t arguments. They are reasons, as I directly state. If you want to understand, you need to understand the reasons, not simply the arguments. I am not here to argue. And, as I explain later, I want the Democrats to avoid accruing more power because I believe they are more powerful than the Republicans, as well as because the platform the Democrats subscribe to is worse.
We should only make good deals with foreign powers, and that means all of them. I can’t see the future spotlessly, so I obviously don’t know which deals he should take and which he should walk away from before they have been offered. Again, you asked for what I voted for him to do, and that is not some specific deal, but an approach.
Presidents often don’t support Israel. Many times presidents have urged Israel to not use means at their disposal to protect themselves. There is no use pretending that there is never a president that supports Israel less than others. Also, when I am selecting someone to do something, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I know the other candidates won’t do it. I could even believe that they will. As I write later, I had more faith in Biden supporting Israel than Harris, and Trump more than Biden.
I very clearly never said I wanted war with Iran. I said I wanted them to not get nukes Those are two separate things. Who wants rogue powers to get nukes? I also don’t like war, and explicitly stated that one of the things I liked about Trump’s first term was ‘no new wars’. A well followed deal would obviously be preferable, and Trump prefers that as well. Even now he is attempting to negotiate with Iran despite his ally (Israel) thinking it is pointless. I definitely would prefer a workable nuclear deal to war with Iran.
Biden literally dropped out of the presidential race because of his inability to keep doing it mentally was noticed by the country at large, including the Democrats who forced his replacement, and perhaps physically. We later learned he has advanced cancer which also takes a toll, especially if they were treating it aggressively (which we don’t know).
Trump, on the other hand, gave countless demanding long speeches where he improvised to the satisfaction of the crowds and seemed physically well during them. He is an old man, but one in much better physical and mental condition than Biden.
Your claim that we should ‘stick with facts’ seems difficult when you refuse to engage with the facts I provided.
Calling border enforcement ‘a joke’ is obviously a statement of values, but also clearly true if you consider a massive influx of illegal immigrants a problem. The Biden administration clearly kept a very porous border.
I don’t consider promises of future infrastructure to be an accomplishment of Biden’s. Likewise, I don’t think all of the promises of future infrastructure people have given Trump after his tariffs to be an accomplishment until they come true. Our infrastructure did not suddenly become great. See also ‘bipartisan’. The money spent here also leads into the next point...
Raining money from the sky led to very high inflation during the Biden administration. His administration kept pouring government money into these giveaways extremely far into his term, after the inflation was already roaring. Again, inflation was literally the highest since Carter. It did come down toward the very end of his term, but the damage was already done. And extremely high inflation is obviously a point against him.
You like to claim that I ‘stated without evidence’ things when you asked for reasons, not ten paragraphs on each item. You asked many questions, and this isn’t a research paper. Your calling me ‘super racist and super sexist’ is mere ad hominem sneering. It was stated at the time (and no, I didn’t memorize exactly when) that Biden was looking for a black female vice president and a black female supreme court justice. When he found them, that means that it appeared to be based on those things, regardless of what their personal merits may or may not be. If a business said ‘only women may apply’, then you know they are selecting on the basis of whether the people are women or not. This is true even if they end up hiring the person who would have been single best candidate even if they didn’t have that rule. I also later state exactly why I am against Kamala Harris, it is an entire section. When I was reading about Ketanji as a nominee, there seemed to be very little support for her, and I haven’t heard any since. It is fair to call what Biden did racist and sexist when he stated it was about that. (And no, I don’t have the time to find that again.)
I definitely believe that Trump was and is divisive, which I noted explicitly! It is still a negative for Biden who was equally divisive. You never asked what I thought was negative about Trump (which I explicitly stated were serious), or positive about Biden/Harris, which I noted at the end of the comment. I very much had a number of them, but you were already objecting to the length. You could have simply asked for my positives regarding Biden and negatives regarding Trump.
Anyone who thinks Biden didn’t support the legal attacks on Trump was clearly not paying attention. And as I clearly state, I believe the legal attacks on Trump were meritless. I never attempted to make an argument on that point in this subthread.
Biden’s corruption is well known, but again, I was answering your questions about my reasons, not trying to prove anything.
Trump didn’t get an airplane, the United States of America did. This is entirely normal. Stop twisting things. I also don’t believe the other things you stated.
An ‘unprecedented pardon’ is unprecedented regardless of if you think it was okay. The length, generality, and preemptiveness were all unprecedented. He did it for Hunter and Fauci over a long period of time, and Hunter’s was literally unrestricted! I don’t remember the other names, but looking at an article, he also pardoned several other family members. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8r5g5dezk4o “In the final minutes of his presidency, Joe Biden pre-emptively pardoned several family members, including his brothers James and Frank Biden, and sister Valerie Biden Owens.” (The excerpt is the first paragraph.)
Then you again dismiss anything you don’t want to hear. You asked for reasons why I was against Biden, and that I felt he didn’t respect “the constitution, laws of the land, or the importance of faithfully executing his duties as president.” is obviously one of my more important reasons. You are objecting to my being honest.
As we get to Kamala Harris, you again simply sneer rather than wanting to know what my reasons are. “I don’t know” of her accomplishing things is extremely specific. You could try to make an argument that she accomplished things, rather than simply implying I don’t like justice for children. Also, a name is not an accomplishment. How did it actually improve justice for children?
Kamala Harris dropped out of the primary because she had no support among Democrats. It was during said primary and after that I heard many Democrats (not just a few) say such things. I don’t have links. Why would I have saved them?
Kamala campaigned and did not put forth an overarching vision in a way that reached people, which is perhaps why she lost. An unexpressed vision is not a vision that makes sense to voters. I read many things relating to her campaign, but it is literally on Kamala for needing to get her vision out there, if indeed she had one. What exactly did she think that America should be like. If you like, you could state what you believe her vision was (though you don’t need to). (Trump’s was literally his slogan ‘Make America Great Again’, which he then constantly expanded with specifics.)
You are seriously out of step if you think Biden being so incapable that he couldn’t run a campaign would leave him capable for the much more difficult job of being president. They replaced him as candidate for a reason. Running for president is hard, but it is still the easy part. If, in fact, he was perfectly capable and they forced him out to run Kamala that is also bad! And if that were the case, she should have said so.
Everyone knows there were a massive number of illegal immigrants during Biden’s term. Stop pretending otherwise.
You shouldn’t accuse me of bad faith when you refuse to understand or engage with so many of the things I am saying. Everyone know that the Democrats, including Kamala Harris, supported DEI.
How does calling a wealth tax ‘the worst tax’ mean that I think taxes are evil? Also, a reason, not an argument. If you really wanted to know why I am against wealth taxes, you could have just asked that. Wealth taxes fundamentally force people to stop having goods or other items and convert them to money, regardless of whether or not that makes sense, since wealth is not usually in the form of money. For instance, if a stock doubles in value, you now have to sell either that stock or other stocks if there is a wealth tax on stocks, regardless of if that makes sense. If I recall correctly, she and her proxies supported a tax on ‘unrealized’ capital gains, which is a wealth tax on stocks. Also, capital gains taxes are themselves bad even on already sold stocks, but I don’t think you want to go over that too much.
Sneering at me is also not a rational argument. She was clearly against what she and her proxies claimed was ‘price gouging’ and laws against price gouging are literally a form of price controls.
It is simple logic that if you can prevent someone from becoming president by simply claiming that they are a criminal, that people will claim there opponents are criminals. As already mentioned, I believe the charges were all baseless, and thus lawfare, as do a very large number of other people. Everyone already has their position on this matter, so there is little point discussing it further.
Why do you constantly mock the idea of taxes mattering? And I even say which ones.
I think you shouldn’t accuse me of ad hominems just because you don’t like my statements. It isn’t an ad hominem to state that she wouldn’t reform the government, it is a simple statement about her counterfactual actions as president. I obviously wouldn’t be able to prove what Kamala would have done even if she was trying to, since she never became president. But she made few or no statements that I interpreted as wanting to reform the government, while the opposition made a great many (whether you chose to believe Trump or not).
I don’t have links for her doing so right now, but have you read the news lately? About the anti federal government riots/ The Democrats are very clearly favoring ‘protestors’ that are doing quite a bit of rioting, and have done so in many other cases over the years.
We do vote for president. This is why we could reject the Democrats switching out their candidate without consulting the country. It would obviously be a precedent if the voters had simply gone with what the party did.
You seem fixated on the idea of calling me irrational. It is an entirely rational to not want the president to lead from behind. You could say that you believe the premise that she would is wrong, but you didn’t.
Then you claim the next point is somehow ‘random words’. It is very clear they are not. I am stating that those things (cheap prices, functional markets, abundant goods, physical safety, and equal enforcement of laws) seem to be in conflict with DEI and green energy, and that she would choose the latter. Again, you could disagree that it is true, but nothing about it is random. (And all of those things obviously go together.)
Then you accuse me of irrationality and a lot of bad faith when you simply refused to engage meaningfully with what I said. Should I believe that you are operating in good faith? I hope that you are and we can turn this conversation around.
I can assure you that literally everything I wrote was in good faith, as an attempt to answer your questions honestly. I am still willing to respond if you engage with what I wrote in the areas you respond to, or if you ask genuine questions in an attempt to understand, not fight. Limiting your questions might get more focused answers if that is what you object to.
Your final claim that I missed a question is untrue. “what would it take you to regret voting for Trump and admit that he is a disaster as a president? (be realistic no zombie apocalypse scenario allowed)”. I answered it in the sixth paragraph. ”There is only one thing that would make me regret voting for Trump: The feeling that America is worse off because of Trump being president than if he hadn’t been. Yes, a feeling. It’s vague for a reason. I can and do compare general factors for goodness and badness multiplied by his responsibility for them versus counterfactuals, but after that, it is all intuitive. All analyses I do on any subject are heavily dependent on intuition. Comparing a gestalt to a counterfactual gestalt is hard to put into small details. I don’t stare at the trees to discover the broader trends of the forest.” There is no way I could give a more precise response to a completely open counterfactual, and still be telling the truth. Once again, you can object to my answer for various reasons, and claim it is a bad answer, possibly including that you don’t like to base evaluations off of feelings, but the claim I didn’t answer is false. (It might be quite reasonable to accidentally skip it, but I did answer.)
To briefly defend feelings, I see feelings as a shorthand for the entire situation. It is not possible to keep infinite details in mind, but you can aggregate them together (in a somewhat unreliable way) subconsciously, and then use those to determine how your conscious mind reacts to the number of things it can process in more depth. The conscious mind is much better at logic, but much worse at using all of the information you get. You can train your mind by carefully evaluating it before adding it to the pile, but you still add it to the pile in the end. And be careful in using it of course, because feelings are often wrongly applied.
A lot of people have bad feelings about engaging with political opponents from many unproductive engagements, and this makes everything look worse when you know an opponent is making the statements and /or questions (including to me). This is reasonable, but I don’t think it is serving you well when you meet someone who is engaging in good faith (which again, I assure you I am, even though I find your responses very frustrating as well).
can you be specific? like… i read ur comments, even the precedent ones and is like “i liked trump for all the things he did” but u never actually say what he did that u liked… and then “i don’t like biden and the left for all the things they did and would do” but u never actually say what is so bad that they did or would do… is like an extremely long word salad of nothingness.… i have a few questions to try to force you to take a real position:
- what would it take you to regret voting for Trump and admit that he is a disaster as a president? (be realistic no zombie apocalypse scenario allowed)
- what are 10 good things that Trump did in his previews 4 years? (i am talking the creme de la creme the best you got the reason why you believe he is so great, be specific no stuff like “less taxes” that alone means nothing i want you to say what exactly he did)
- what are 10 things you voted Trump to do in this new term? (again the best you got the reason you voted him and you need to be specific stuff like “less regulation” makes my brain boils since it has no meaning… what regulation are we talking about? do we want lead in bread? i don’t understand be specific...)
- what are 10 bad things that the Biden administration did? (you said there were a lot so i am looking forward to hear the 10 worst they surely must be so awful if they steared you to the right… again be specific no stuff like “i didn’t like how they handled this thing”, i want to know exactly what they did that you deem as so incredibly wrong to go on pair with the Trump administration)
- what are 10 bad things that the Kamala administration would have done that were gonna be so incredibly bad to go in pair with what we got… before you said there were a lot of them but you didn’t actually said any specifically… which is frustrating imo
btw wring long things is fine and cool but only if in the end it helps conveying what you have to say and you can actually get to the point… otherwise i may as well use ChatGPT and ask it to “stretch this comment in 3 pages without changing anything”… which i am sure we agree would be counterproductive to comunication…
I am willing to be more specific, but you aren’t even engaging with what I’ve written at all; and there is no way I can deliver something that is true in the exact format you are requesting. Also, if you read my initial postings, I was stating a position to help others understand what it is (they asked for understanding of Trump supporters), not trying to write a persuasive essay. This quote from the end of my first thing is very important “I would prefer to talk in general, rather get bogged down in details that are not actually important to how people actually view the situation.” I am still only trying to help my interlocutor understand the though process, not make an argument. I am not trying to be persuasive.
(Do people appreciate me doing this? Hard to tell. My overall karma is slightly positive on these comments as a whole but the comment you are replying to seems to only have ‘disagreement’ votes. I’m not sure whether that means they think I shouldn’t make the comments.)(Yes, all of my asides seem necessary to me.)
Distilling a gestalt down to a list is very lossy and not very good. I wrote long because I had to so that I could get across the extremely many points inherent in honestly answering the question (and didn’t have the many hours necessary to produce a high quality essay). If I have to choose between honesty and brevity, I have to choose honesty. I very much would like to be able to get across all of my many points in fewer words, but your comment about ChatGPT was completely unhelpful. If you think I didn’t make any points you are simply wrong, and if you think I belabored them, perhaps you are right, but they were as brief as my skill could manage. This post again turned out long, because it had to be. Perhaps if I was a more gifted writer it could be shorter, but I am not.
A presidency cannot be judged based off 10 exact actions unless someone starts World War III. Summary is often necessary, and things like ‘less regulation’ are the only reasonable level to do it at. (A very large portion of the information involved in anything is stored in summary form even within the person themself.)
I can’t possibly have the reasons exactly sorted out in the format you want. I can give you 10 details, but they won’t be the best details that are possible, because that would require many, many hours to put all of the reasons into words, and think through exactly what order reasons should be in. The posts you found unsatisfyingly general already took at least a few hours each to lay it out in detail. I provided so many details at only a moderate level of abstraction (with some being quite concrete), and a lot of summary with it, along with a great deal of my reasoning. You need to engage more fully with the gestalt if you actually want to understand.
I am willing to answer your questions, but I cannot follow exactly what you asked in making them the ’10 best’. Now to answering the questions.
There is only one thing that would make me regret voting for Trump: The feeling that America is worse off because of Trump being president than if he hadn’t been. Yes, a feeling. It’s vague for a reason. I can and do compare general factors for goodness and badness multiplied by his responsibility for them versus counterfactuals, but after that, it is all intuitive. All analyses I do on any subject are heavily dependent on intuition. Comparing a gestalt to a counterfactual gestalt is hard to put into small details. I don’t stare at the trees to discover the broader trends of the forest.
Some good things Trump did in his first term:
*You mentioned hated my mentioning ‘lowering regulation’ but he clearly did (I forget the numbers, but he genuinely reduced them). I liked the method through which he did it, and the fact that it happened, not based on individual regulations. He implemented a simple rule with two factors. The factors were that the agencies had to get rid of more regulations than you formed anew, and that the estimated financial impact of compliance needed to be equal or less than the current rules. I thought that was brilliant and every president should do it until we get down to a reasonable amount of regulation.
*Kept inflation low
*Kept unemployment low
*No new foreign wars
*Reduced taxes on business (lower marginal rates), reduced taxes on individuals (increased standard deduction)
*Spoke directly to the populace frequently on the theme of America and Americans being great
*Did not support anything I find especially bad (obviously this is important, no matter the vagueness!) (Whatever you find outrageous, I obviously don’t agree it happened, who is responsible, and/or the interpretation thereof)
*Worked within the structure of our government (also vague but important)
*Was clearly the person actually doing the job
*He picked judges for the supreme court that support textualism and originalism (which are the only schools of jurisprudence I can support)(I strongly favor textualism if there is any conflict)
Some things I voted for Trump to do in his new term:
*Most importantly, continue his governance from the first term since I think it went well. (Only as vague as it has to be.) Try to make America stay great. Protect America from its enemies. Etc.
*Enforce the border, preventing as much illegal immigration as reasonably possible while also preventing smuggling of things like drugs or weapons or whatever, and more generally, enforce the laws the left doesn’t (vague for obvious reasons, but obviously including things like deporting illegal aliens, keeping public order, and prosecuting rioters). Most laws are enforced by states of course, so I don’t and didn’t expect him to have much effect on most crime, but still.
*Prevent his tax cuts from expiring
*Be willing to confront China to prevent their bad actions from having the effects they desire. (Vague because those actions are chosen by China, and I object to the leadership’s choices but don’t know in advance what they will be. I also don’t know the ideal way to confront China.) China cannot be allowed to become a great power under current leadership (which I believe is evil).
*Prevent Kamala Harris from becoming president
*Prevent the Democrats from accruing more power in general
*Make deals with foreign powers but walk away from bad ones
*Support Israel against terrorist governments (including Hamas and Iran’s government) rather than hamstringing them
*Prevent rogue nations like Iran from getting nukes (whether by peaceful means or not)
*Prevent lawfare against Trump from making the party guilty of it win
Some reasons Biden was a terrible president:
*He was mentally incompetent for at least a large stretch of his presidency! We don’t even know which parts he was competent during. He was completely unwilling to admit this and remove himself from the presidency. I despise Kamala Harris, but he should have made her acting president after voluntarily stepping down, especially after it became clear to the world that we had a mentally incompetent president. (Luckily there were none of our foes used that fact to their fullest advantage.) He presumably never realized how incompetent he was, which means he certainly couldn’t have planned for his own lack of capability in planning things.
*Border enforcement was a complete and utter joke. A country that has no border is incredibly vulnerable. (See what Israel just did to Iran.)
*He never achieved anything positive of which I am aware.
*Inflation was the highest since Carter! (Also a one term president for obvious reasons.) His policies of pumping way too much money through the government are the likely cause (including the absurdly misnamed ‘Inflation Reduction Act’).
*The selection of egregiously incompetent people for his administration, like Kamala Harris. He selected both her and supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson based on what appears to be demographics / DEI. He selected people in general based on demographics. (This is both super racist and super sexist.)
*The feeling that politics got a lot more divisive during his term (which also occurred during the Trump and Obama presidencies, to be fair)
*He supported lawfare against Trump (I believe that none of it was justified), severely damaging our traditions against it (and inviting retaliation).
*Clearly extreme corruption involving enriching himself and his family through his son Hunter’s accepting money to put people into contact with, and get favorable treatment from Joe Biden
*Unprecedentedly pardoning people (especially his son) for things they did over an extremely long period of time and not even in a restricted category! (Obviously after the election)
*I feel that he had absolutely no respect for the constitution, laws of the land, or the importance of faithfully executing his duties as president.
*The world became a more dangerous place under his watch (including Hamas’s actions, Russia’s invasion, China getting a more advantageous position, etc)
I think all of that easily qualifies as Biden being a terrible president, but I won’t say they are necessarily the best reasons. They are just what I could think of now.
Some reasons I believe Kamala Harris would have been a terrible president:
*I am Californian, and she literally never did anything I heard of in state politics that was positive. When I compared her to her (also a Democrat) opposition in statewide office, I very clearly knew I should vote for her opponent.
*Even Democrats generally said she was incompetent before they ran her
*She had no vision for America that made any sense. I can’t even say what she might have claimed it would be.
*She failed to do her duty to the country and invoke the 25th amendment to remove Biden from the presidency when he was mentally and physically incompetent, putting her ambitions ahead of her loyalty to the country, and leaving the US in a vulnerable state without leadership if something drastic happened. (Even Kamala Harris would have been a better choice for that interim than Biden.)
Some terrible things Kamala would do as president:
*Continue her wretched performance in border control (and likely worsen it)
*Continue to promote DEI in her administration and the country / not select for merit
*Wealth taxes (the worst likely tax)
*Price controls (the worst likely economic policy) / anti-‘price gouging’ laws (ensuring you get shortages instead)
*Continue and escalate lawfare against opponents since it would have worked against Trump in this scenario
*Raise tax rates in general (marginal, corporate, and miscellaneous) / let the Trump tax cuts expire (even with the Trump tax cuts, rates were still too high)
*Fail to reform the government at all
*Egg on rioters and support law breakers from the office of the presidency / fail to faithfully follow the constitution and faithful execute our laws
*Serve as an example that parties can simply decided who our next president will be
*Be extremely weak in foreign policy / lead from behind
*Fail to prioritize the needs of the country to have a functioning market, cheap prices, abundant surplus of goods, physical safety, and equal enforcement of laws because she believes that would inhibit ‘green energy’ and DEI
Far less likely but still too high a likelihood:
*Some chance (I don’t know how likely) she would side with the genocidal antisemitic strain of her party (I think few Democrats support that, but a disturbingly high percentage of their activists do, and I don’t remember her pushing back against said activists.) She seemed much more likely than Biden to support them (and Trump obviously supports the Jews).
There are also some minor positives for Biden/Harris and some serious negatives for Trump, but you didn’t ask for those.
it sounds like you haven’t actually thought this throw and so you cannot actually come up with anything at all… you are trying to say that you not being able to come up with anything is justified by the impossibility of it? that to me sounds unreasonable and irrational… but let’s look at the points that you did write down since that is the only thing i can actually address because “vibes” are meaningless...
Some good things Trump did in his first term:
*You mentioned hated my mentioning ‘lowering regulation’ but he clearly did (I forget the numbers, but he genuinely reduced them). I liked the method through which he did it, and the fact that it happened, not based on individual regulations. He implemented a simple rule with two factors. The factors were that the agencies had to get rid of more regulations than you formed anew, and that the estimated financial impact of compliance needed to be equal or less than the current rules. I thought that was brilliant and every president should do it until we get down to a reasonable amount of regulation.
what method? like… you wrote 10 sentences on how great he lowered regulation but you have not mentioned a single regulation… a single law he passed a single thing he did specifically… you see how frustrating this is? it sounds like a movie phrase like “they defeated the evil” but reality is not a movie we need specific things are not black and white… so this point is out
*Kept inflation low
this point also invalid since Trump administration didn’t implement any policy to actually make inflation low… so it could be argue that the economic climate of his presidency was just good and it did not need any tampering… if anthything Trump policies added a staggering $7.8 trillion in national debt even in a time of economic prosperity making those cuts unnecessary someone could argue...
*Kept unemployment low
American unemployment has been “low” for the past 12 years as far as i am aware it was low even during the Biden administration which had to deal with a pandemic… so unless you can mention something Trump actually did to lower unemployment this point also goes… again i asked for things the Trump administration DID not a description of American economy as it always was… this is your top? the best of the best you could come up?
*No new foreign wars
again… what did Trump do that was somehow preventing foreign wars druign that time? this point is so irrational i find myself at a loss of words to see it wrote on a community such as this… if the sun rise tomorrow is it thanks to Donald Trump? the fact that a metorite didn’t strike earth between 2016 and 2018 was it thanks to Donald Trump?
*Reduced taxes on business (lower marginal rates), reduced taxes on individuals (increased standard deduction)
what taxes? be specific? how was it good? these general statement of “he defeated the evil taxes” is what i don’t like…
*Spoke directly to the populace frequently on the theme of America and Americans being great
every single president did that… so… like… is this the BEST of Trump? 4 years administration and the top of the top someone can say about him is that he did some speeches where he said america good? what president hasn’t said so in the past 200+ years? lol
*Did not support anything I find especially bad (obviously this is important, no matter the vagueness!) (Whatever you find outrageous, I obviously don’t agree it happened, who is responsible, and/or the interpretation thereof)
the most subjective point there can be… i could write an entire book about things Trump supported in 4 years that are horrendous… i am not sure how someone can say he didn’t support anything “bad”… but again this is so vague it feels like you are unwilling to mention what you actually want to mention are you afraid?
*Worked within the structure of our government (also vague but important)
is interesting how you recognize the vagueness of such statement… why write it at all? what president didn’t “work within the structure of our government”? lmao… Trump spent his last year saying the election was stolen and orchestreting a way to delay the certification of the vote with false electors… his lawyers were disbarded and his speech fomented a moab to the capitol… how more away you can go from the structure of the government then that?
*Was clearly the person actually doing the job
”the job”? what is “the job” he did? are there president that weren’t doing their job?
*He picked judges for the supreme court that support textualism and originalism (which are the only schools of jurisprudence I can support)(I strongly favor textualism if there is any conflict)
so… supreme judges are basically the lottery for a president so i am not sure what to do with this point either… also what is the source for this statement? to me it seems he just choose the judges most loyal to the republican party… like it is reported in numerous media format so your interpretation that he picked them because of “textualism”… like i am not entirely sure Trump would know what “textualism” is or mean...
Some things I voted for Trump to do in his new term:
*Most importantly, continue his governance from the first term since I think it went well. (Only as vague as it has to be.) Try to make America stay great. Protect America from its enemies. Etc.
point means nothing so i will jump it
*Enforce the border, preventing as much illegal immigration as reasonably possible while also preventing smuggling of things like drugs or weapons or whatever, and more generally, enforce the laws the left doesn’t (vague for obvious reasons, but obviously including things like deporting illegal aliens, keeping public order, and prosecuting rioters). Most laws are enforced by states of course, so I don’t and didn’t expect him to have much effect on most crime, but still.
any source for the claim that he would do such thing? just because he says so? this point is very opinionated and tries to insult the left as people that don’t enforce laws for some reasons i fail to understand… anyhow… during his first term the numbers of deported were not any higher then before… as of now Obama still stands as the president who deported the most illegals and despite the irrational mainstream belief that Biden administration didn’t enforce the laws on immigration they actually DID do just that… they also tried to pass a bipartisan law which would have finally put a stop to the loopholes used by immigrants the law was about to be approved and pass senate but Trump with a now reported call to republican senators stroke the law down because otherwise he would have not been able to use the immigration issue in his presidential campaign
*Prevent his tax cuts from expiring
what tax cuts? what benefits do they have? again with “the evil taxes”
*Be willing to confront China to prevent their bad actions from having the effects they desire. (Vague because those actions are chosen by China, and I object to the leadership’s choices but don’t know in advance what they will be. I also don’t know the ideal way to confront China.) China cannot be allowed to become a great power under current leadership (which I believe is evil).
we are beyond vague at this point… i will just ignore this “point” and move on...
*Prevent Kamala Harris from becoming president
this the BEST reason to elect Trump? without any actual explenation just “kamala bad trump good” what even is the argument?
*Prevent the Democrats from accruing more power in general
eh… didn’t you say you were a “long independent” lol… also this is not an argument without a reason again… let’s move on…
*Make deals with foreign powers but walk away from bad ones
what powers? what deals? like… seriously… is this a bot? am i speaking to a bot that cannot mention specific stuff cause is not in the tokens so it cannot grab it or something?
*Support Israel against terrorist governments (including Hamas and Iran’s government) rather than hamstringing them
no president has ever supported terrorists let alone hamas lol didn’t you say you didn’t want foreign wars interventions? lol
*Prevent rogue nations like Iran from getting nukes (whether by peaceful means or not)
so… you want war? like actual war with iran? for what doing something that they are already doing? it feels like is not war you are against is just that you want your personal war...
*Prevent lawfare against Trump from making the party guilty of it win
source? evidence that this was a thing ever? to me sounds like he just got away with crimes he did commit… you are free to post evidence tho...
Some reasons Biden was a terrible president:
*He was mentally incompetent for at least a large stretch of his presidency! We don’t even know which parts he was competent during. He was completely unwilling to admit this and remove himself from the presidency. I despise Kamala Harris, but he should have made her acting president after voluntarily stepping down, especially after it became clear to the world that we had a mentally incompetent president. (Luckily there were none of our foes used that fact to their fullest advantage.) He presumably never realized how incompetent he was, which means he certainly couldn’t have planned for his own lack of capability in planning things.
this is your opinions you don’t have any evidence to prove he was incompetent at all… awkward video clips on the internet are not evidence of mental incompetence lmao… if that were the case Trump would be classifiable as a mentally disabled too so you can either show evidence of this or agree that is not a point at all… from my prespective Biden seems pretty fine i detatch myself from using memes and random clips as a way to define someone persona let alone mental capacity… i don’t think is rational to do so… people really liked this gossiping and the for profit media run with it… as simple as that… the only reason we don’t speak about Trump mental incapacity every single day is because he show it so much that is not even newsworthy… imagine having a mentally handicapped firend, the first time you meet them maybe you uknowledge the situation but the 300th time? nobody would click such articles cause everyone already knows it...
*Border enforcement was a complete and utter joke. A country that has no border is incredibly vulnerable. (See what Israel just did to Iran.)
source? evidence? what do we define as “joke”? what policies are we talking about? very vague random irrational statement to make imo… let’s stick with factual points
*He never achieved anything positive of which I am aware.
sounds like you have ignored a lot then… just at the top of my head the Biden Administration passed an historical bipartisan infrastructure bill which benefits are still in the work to this day, anything from rebuilding over 200,000 miles of roads, repaired 12,000+ bridges, and funded 72,000 infrastructure projects nationwide you can see each project in the bill itself on google… so this already invalidate your point which was “he did nothing”… as a cherry on top some republicans from the current Trump administration are even posting multiple projects pictures on twitter boosting about how great they are without realizing that in said pictures you can actually see the Biden signature on the project paper itself which is usually outside of each project construction place… i can give you link if you want i find it funny...
*Inflation was the highest since Carter! (Also a one term president for obvious reasons.) His policies of pumping way too much money through the government are the likely cause (including the absurdly misnamed ‘Inflation Reduction Act’).
we had a pandemic… what money do you deem unnecessary? again vagueness makes this point invalid… it just has no meaning unless you can tell me what is wrong with what was done and why… anyone can say “inflation bad” but is not a real point
*The selection of egregiously incompetent people for his administration, like Kamala Harris. He selected both her and supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson based on what appears to be demographics / DEI. He selected people in general based on demographics. (This is both super racist and super sexist.)
evidence that they were selected on those basis? why would we say they are incompetent? from my perspective seeing you saying this without any evidence makes it look like you are the “super racist and super sexist” here...
*The feeling that politics got a lot more divisive during his term (which also occurred during the Trump and Obama presidencies, to be fair)
why would we say this? can you point me to something Biden did? cause otherwise there is no point here… but thanks for unknowledging that Trump a president that tried to overturn an election which he lost can at least be classified as “divisive” lol
*He supported lawfare against Trump (I believe that none of it was justified), severely damaging our traditions against it (and inviting retaliation).
evidence? source? just your opinion? let’s move on...
*Clearly extreme corruption involving enriching himself and his family through his son Hunter’s accepting money to put people into contact with, and get favorable treatment from Joe Biden
evidence? source? what he did do exactly? was it the same as Trump appointing each of his family members as government employees or using his president position to promote a crypto scam? or getting other countries to invest in his social network company? or getting gifted airplanes? if you have anything anything at all pls share… otherwise… again… let’s move on...
*Unprecedentedly pardoning people (especially his son) for things they did over an extremely long period of time and not even in a restricted category! (Obviously after the election)
his son pardoning was due to the fact that during the presidential campaign Trump and some Trump followers (like the now appointed president of the FBI) promised to utilize the DOJ to go after Biden’s family for no other reason other then political reason… this is why he had to pardon every member of his family… btw you say “especially his son” what other pardon do you disagree with? pls either mention them specifically or non at all since is not useful otherwise… frankly i would have done the same… it surely is not the same as pardoning convicted criminals that assaulted multiple police agents for no reason during a ridicolous assault to the capitol...
*I feel that he had absolutely no respect for the constitution, laws of the land, or the importance of faithfully executing his duties as president.
like… what did he do? either tell what he did against any of this things you mention and why is bad or you may as well not be saying anything at all...
*The world became a more dangerous place under his watch (including Hamas’s actions, Russia’s invasion, China getting a more advantageous position, etc)
what did he do that made hamas worse or the world a less safe place? you didn’t say what he did… like… i literally asked you for specifical things that was done not vague general nonsense… please be rational...
Some reasons I believe Kamala Harris would have been a terrible president:
*I am Californian, and she literally never did anything I heard of in state politics that was positive. When I compared her to her (also a Democrat) opposition in statewide office, I very clearly knew I should vote for her opponent.
just at a first glance Kamala Harris espablished the California’s Bureau of Children’s Justice in 2015, while serving as Attorney General of California. do you deem that as nothing positive? interesting...
*Even Democrats generally said she was incompetent before they ran her
source? like who? do we care? when we say “democrat” who are we talking about? like… any democrat? any person on twitter saying something bad about kamala? is this a rational thought to have? there were republican saying bad things about Trump… hell there is an entire community called “republicans against trump”
*She had no vision for America that made any sense. I can’t even say what she might have claimed it would be.
so you don’t know what her vision is but you deemed it terrible? did you read like… her political agenda on her websites? was pretty clear to me… do you need a link?
*She failed to do her duty to the country and invoke the 25th amendment to remove Biden from the presidency when he was mentally and physically incompetent, putting her ambitions ahead of her loyalty to the country, and leaving the US in a vulnerable state without leadership if something drastic happened. (Even Kamala Harris would have been a better choice for that interim than Biden.)
evidence that this was the case? some funny video clips on youtube of an old man falling down some stairs? lol
Some terrible things Kamala would do as president:
*Continue her wretched performance in border control (and likely worsen it)
you still have not mentioned what was that is “wretched” you just say it is without saying why what did she do… very irrational imo
*Continue to promote DEI in her administration and the country / not select for merit
unless you can pinpoint to instances of this happening and explaing why and how it was wrong and bad this is not a real point done in good faith...
*Wealth taxes (the worst likely tax)
”oh no the evil taxes” is not a real argument… what taxes are we talking about? wealth taxes were not even in the campaign agenda at all… why would they be implemented? why are they bad? as far as i am aware the only tax mentioned in her campaign was a capital gain tax for people with income above something like 500k a year (around that you can google actual numbers) which althow she mentioned in a few speeches this had no chance what so ever of actually passing anyway… so what is the problem? but again… no wealth tax was mentioned… i just thought maybe you are confusing the 2
*Price controls (the worst likely economic policy) / anti-‘price gouging’ laws (ensuring you get shortages instead)
what price controls are we talking about? what laws was proposed? “price control bad” is not a rational argument...
*Continue and escalate lawfare against opponents since it would have worked against Trump in this scenario
evidence that this was the case at all?
*Raise tax rates in general (marginal, corporate, and miscellaneous) / let the Trump tax cuts expire (even with the Trump tax cuts, rates were still too high)
”evil taxes” meaningless point let’s move on...
*Fail to reform the government at all
i don’t think we can get more meaningless then this… you are basically doing ad hominem attacks at this point we are beyond all that is rational
*Egg on rioters and support law breakers from the office of the presidency / fail to faithfully follow the constitution and faithful execute our laws
source? evidence? why do we think that? random words?
*Serve as an example that parties can simply decided who our next president will be
we vote the president
*Be extremely weak in foreign policy / lead from behind
saying things without any reason is very irrational… unless you can quote anything that would justify thinking this to me it sounds just sexist tbh
*Fail to prioritize the needs of the country to have a functioning market, cheap prices, abundant surplus of goods, physical safety, and equal enforcement of laws because she believes that would inhibit ‘green energy’ and DEI
random words basically…
oof that was painful to read… i don’t see any actual point being made unfortunatley i only see irrationality in you words which failed to actually say anything besides showing a lot of bad faith… btw you still missed a question
- what would it take you to regret voting for Trump and admit that he is a disaster as a president? (be realistic no zombie apocalypse scenario allowed)
I seem to be frustrating you with my answers, but I am doing what I can to be helpful. That is genuinely my goal here. Simple understanding is what the original question was about, since not too many people here understood why people supported Trump, and understanding, not political fighting is my entire point in engaging. I don’t actually feel any need (or even desire) to defend Trump or bash Biden/Harris. If you wanted to have a conversation on specific scenarios, you may need to suggest them yourself. ‘If <scenario A> happened’, what would you think?′ I would answer, though I might also explain why I think it doesn’t apply if that seems pointed. You might also want to read my responses to Pazzaz if you want to understand how I engage with a more limited question in greater depth. We had a lot of fundamental disagreements, but I think we understood each other’s points well and recovered from misunderstanding each other.
I listed why getting exactly the best 10 on short notice was impossible, and then I answered all of your questions as you asked them other than them not literally being the best possible reasons. You can not like the reasons (it may even be reasonable), but I answered your questions. You wanted to know details about why, and I gave them to you. If you are trying to understand them, try not to assume things are irrational when you don’t understand at first. I believe the frustration you express throughout your responses is making you miss what I am actually saying. You seemed to pattern match what I am saying to things you haven’t liked in the past about kinds of answers, rather than considering them as pieces. I think that a lot of the time you don’t realize that I am saying I want a certain approach to solving problems. If you want a more specific conversation, you may need to reduce the scope of what you are asking considerably.
I mentioned an exact mechanism for lowering regulation, and explicitly told you it was about the mechanism rather than an individual regulation. That is an exact answer.
Inflation was much lower than with Biden, who had literally the worst in my lifetime, which is why I wrote ‘Kept inflation low’ rather than ‘Made inflation low’. He didn’t make it explode, while Biden did, and we could directly compare their results. I make it clear in the Biden part that Biden is at fault for inflation, not that there was necessarily any special policy during the Trump years.
I wrote ‘Kept unemployment low’ because unemployment was low. Things going well doesn’t have to be a change, but it is still valuable. I evaluated his entire presidency, not just what he changed. A good president doesn’t ruin things their predecessor had at a decent level.
Some presidents start new wars. Some don’t. It isn’t entirely up to them either way, but it isn’t irrational to think a president that doesn’t start new wars is better than one that does, all else equal.
I explicitly told you how he lowered taxes. He lowered the marginal rates in corporate taxes, and increased the standard deduction for normal citizens. Those are exact details. I could have added the numbers, (for instance, marginal corporate tax rates went from about 35% to 21% if I recall correctly,) but you don’t really seem to care about them.
Donald Trump spoke more to the populace than other presidents, and his theme was more often the greatness of America. Neither Obama nor Biden spoke frequently of that subject from what I saw.
Vague reasons can be important too, and saying that, as far as I know, he didn’t support anything I find egregious is completely clear. If he’d done things I thought were terrible I obviously would lessen my support or eliminate it. I also acknowledged that we were unlikely to agree on the interpretation of any of the events you find egregious.
‘Worked within the structure of the government’ means I think his actions were all completely legal, and not overly disruptive of the functioning of the government. It’s an important part to note when his foes constantly claim he didn’t. His actions in regards to disputing the election followed precedent, and it had been previously ruled by courts that disputes must involve an alternate slate of electors or they are moot; claims otherwise were clearly just meant for outrage. His speech did not foment a mob to the capital, as I explain at length in a reply to someone else; it was not physically possible for someone to listen to his speech to the end and be there for the early stages of the capital riot (and it was just a riot, not some kind of insurrection). He also didn’t ever support the riot. Additionally, the left supports a lot of riots.
‘Was the person actually doing the job’ is a clear contrast to Biden, who was mentally unfit for much or perhaps all of his term. It also means he was making the decisions, not just letting bureaucrats and underlings determine things.
Supreme court justices that rule against him (as happened many times) are hardly evidence of Trump selecting purely for loyalty to him or the party. His judicial choices are roughly as moderate as the people they replaced, except for one of them being slightly center-right (Amy Coney Barett) instead of left. I never said why he selected them either; I only said he did a good job, and that he selected textualist and originalist judges. Results matter for judging the process.
There is an obvious meaning to saying I selected Trump to keep doing what he was doing. Past results aren’t proof of future ones, but they are a good place to start. When you select a president, you are selecting the system.
‘Enforcing the border’ was clearly about keeping out new illegal crossers and the things they bring with them, which Biden did abysmally and Trump did much better. This is a security concern. The “more generally, enforce the laws that the left doesn’t” is a simple statement of fact, but also a pointer to which crimes I want enforced more. Rioting was supported by Democrats throughout both Trump’s and Biden’s terms. Many Democrat run cities and states also refuse to prosecute many crimes, for example, California for a long time refusing to prosecute theft in many jurisdictions. I clearly acknowledged that federal law enforcement will only have a small effect on most of them because most crimes are state level crimes. I never said that Democrats don’t enforce any laws; I only said that I want the ones they don’t enforce to be enforced. I didn’t even say that they enforce fewer laws than the Republicans.
You keep claiming ‘evil taxes’ as if that is somehow related to my points. I never called taxes in general ‘evil’ at all. This is a clear misrepresentation. I also already said which taxes I wanted to not expire; corportate marginal rates that were lowered, and a higher deduction for individuals.
You keep ignoring points you don’t like. Being willing to confront China is an obvious foreign policy objective that many people share. Foreign policy is one of the primary responsibilities of the presidency. I explicitly state that I don’t know what China will do, but that I believe they will need to be confronted.
I clearly explain later why preventing Kamala Harris from becoming president is a good thing from my perspective. It is okay to write your response in order, but you should acknowledge when I have addressed your point. Additionally, in a two party system, it is normal to vote against a candidate you dislike as well as for the one you like.
These points aren’t arguments. They are reasons, as I directly state. If you want to understand, you need to understand the reasons, not simply the arguments. I am not here to argue. And, as I explain later, I want the Democrats to avoid accruing more power because I believe they are more powerful than the Republicans, as well as because the platform the Democrats subscribe to is worse.
We should only make good deals with foreign powers, and that means all of them. I can’t see the future spotlessly, so I obviously don’t know which deals he should take and which he should walk away from before they have been offered. Again, you asked for what I voted for him to do, and that is not some specific deal, but an approach.
Presidents often don’t support Israel. Many times presidents have urged Israel to not use means at their disposal to protect themselves. There is no use pretending that there is never a president that supports Israel less than others. Also, when I am selecting someone to do something, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I know the other candidates won’t do it. I could even believe that they will. As I write later, I had more faith in Biden supporting Israel than Harris, and Trump more than Biden.
I very clearly never said I wanted war with Iran. I said I wanted them to not get nukes Those are two separate things. Who wants rogue powers to get nukes? I also don’t like war, and explicitly stated that one of the things I liked about Trump’s first term was ‘no new wars’. A well followed deal would obviously be preferable, and Trump prefers that as well. Even now he is attempting to negotiate with Iran despite his ally (Israel) thinking it is pointless. I definitely would prefer a workable nuclear deal to war with Iran.
Biden literally dropped out of the presidential race because of his inability to keep doing it mentally was noticed by the country at large, including the Democrats who forced his replacement, and perhaps physically. We later learned he has advanced cancer which also takes a toll, especially if they were treating it aggressively (which we don’t know).
Trump, on the other hand, gave countless demanding long speeches where he improvised to the satisfaction of the crowds and seemed physically well during them. He is an old man, but one in much better physical and mental condition than Biden.
Your claim that we should ‘stick with facts’ seems difficult when you refuse to engage with the facts I provided.
Calling border enforcement ‘a joke’ is obviously a statement of values, but also clearly true if you consider a massive influx of illegal immigrants a problem. The Biden administration clearly kept a very porous border.
I don’t consider promises of future infrastructure to be an accomplishment of Biden’s. Likewise, I don’t think all of the promises of future infrastructure people have given Trump after his tariffs to be an accomplishment until they come true. Our infrastructure did not suddenly become great. See also ‘bipartisan’. The money spent here also leads into the next point...
Raining money from the sky led to very high inflation during the Biden administration. His administration kept pouring government money into these giveaways extremely far into his term, after the inflation was already roaring. Again, inflation was literally the highest since Carter. It did come down toward the very end of his term, but the damage was already done. And extremely high inflation is obviously a point against him.
You like to claim that I ‘stated without evidence’ things when you asked for reasons, not ten paragraphs on each item. You asked many questions, and this isn’t a research paper. Your calling me ‘super racist and super sexist’ is mere ad hominem sneering. It was stated at the time (and no, I didn’t memorize exactly when) that Biden was looking for a black female vice president and a black female supreme court justice. When he found them, that means that it appeared to be based on those things, regardless of what their personal merits may or may not be. If a business said ‘only women may apply’, then you know they are selecting on the basis of whether the people are women or not. This is true even if they end up hiring the person who would have been single best candidate even if they didn’t have that rule. I also later state exactly why I am against Kamala Harris, it is an entire section. When I was reading about Ketanji as a nominee, there seemed to be very little support for her, and I haven’t heard any since. It is fair to call what Biden did racist and sexist when he stated it was about that. (And no, I don’t have the time to find that again.)
I definitely believe that Trump was and is divisive, which I noted explicitly! It is still a negative for Biden who was equally divisive. You never asked what I thought was negative about Trump (which I explicitly stated were serious), or positive about Biden/Harris, which I noted at the end of the comment. I very much had a number of them, but you were already objecting to the length. You could have simply asked for my positives regarding Biden and negatives regarding Trump.
Anyone who thinks Biden didn’t support the legal attacks on Trump was clearly not paying attention. And as I clearly state, I believe the legal attacks on Trump were meritless. I never attempted to make an argument on that point in this subthread.
Biden’s corruption is well known, but again, I was answering your questions about my reasons, not trying to prove anything.
Trump didn’t get an airplane, the United States of America did. This is entirely normal. Stop twisting things. I also don’t believe the other things you stated.
An ‘unprecedented pardon’ is unprecedented regardless of if you think it was okay. The length, generality, and preemptiveness were all unprecedented. He did it for Hunter and Fauci over a long period of time, and Hunter’s was literally unrestricted! I don’t remember the other names, but looking at an article, he also pardoned several other family members. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8r5g5dezk4o “In the final minutes of his presidency, Joe Biden pre-emptively pardoned several family members, including his brothers James and Frank Biden, and sister Valerie Biden Owens.” (The excerpt is the first paragraph.)
Then you again dismiss anything you don’t want to hear. You asked for reasons why I was against Biden, and that I felt he didn’t respect “the constitution, laws of the land, or the importance of faithfully executing his duties as president.” is obviously one of my more important reasons. You are objecting to my being honest.
As we get to Kamala Harris, you again simply sneer rather than wanting to know what my reasons are. “I don’t know” of her accomplishing things is extremely specific. You could try to make an argument that she accomplished things, rather than simply implying I don’t like justice for children. Also, a name is not an accomplishment. How did it actually improve justice for children?
Kamala Harris dropped out of the primary because she had no support among Democrats. It was during said primary and after that I heard many Democrats (not just a few) say such things. I don’t have links. Why would I have saved them?
Kamala campaigned and did not put forth an overarching vision in a way that reached people, which is perhaps why she lost. An unexpressed vision is not a vision that makes sense to voters. I read many things relating to her campaign, but it is literally on Kamala for needing to get her vision out there, if indeed she had one. What exactly did she think that America should be like. If you like, you could state what you believe her vision was (though you don’t need to). (Trump’s was literally his slogan ‘Make America Great Again’, which he then constantly expanded with specifics.)
You are seriously out of step if you think Biden being so incapable that he couldn’t run a campaign would leave him capable for the much more difficult job of being president. They replaced him as candidate for a reason. Running for president is hard, but it is still the easy part. If, in fact, he was perfectly capable and they forced him out to run Kamala that is also bad! And if that were the case, she should have said so.
Everyone knows there were a massive number of illegal immigrants during Biden’s term. Stop pretending otherwise.
You shouldn’t accuse me of bad faith when you refuse to understand or engage with so many of the things I am saying. Everyone know that the Democrats, including Kamala Harris, supported DEI.
How does calling a wealth tax ‘the worst tax’ mean that I think taxes are evil? Also, a reason, not an argument. If you really wanted to know why I am against wealth taxes, you could have just asked that. Wealth taxes fundamentally force people to stop having goods or other items and convert them to money, regardless of whether or not that makes sense, since wealth is not usually in the form of money. For instance, if a stock doubles in value, you now have to sell either that stock or other stocks if there is a wealth tax on stocks, regardless of if that makes sense. If I recall correctly, she and her proxies supported a tax on ‘unrealized’ capital gains, which is a wealth tax on stocks. Also, capital gains taxes are themselves bad even on already sold stocks, but I don’t think you want to go over that too much.
Sneering at me is also not a rational argument. She was clearly against what she and her proxies claimed was ‘price gouging’ and laws against price gouging are literally a form of price controls.
It is simple logic that if you can prevent someone from becoming president by simply claiming that they are a criminal, that people will claim there opponents are criminals. As already mentioned, I believe the charges were all baseless, and thus lawfare, as do a very large number of other people. Everyone already has their position on this matter, so there is little point discussing it further.
Why do you constantly mock the idea of taxes mattering? And I even say which ones.
I think you shouldn’t accuse me of ad hominems just because you don’t like my statements. It isn’t an ad hominem to state that she wouldn’t reform the government, it is a simple statement about her counterfactual actions as president. I obviously wouldn’t be able to prove what Kamala would have done even if she was trying to, since she never became president. But she made few or no statements that I interpreted as wanting to reform the government, while the opposition made a great many (whether you chose to believe Trump or not).
I don’t have links for her doing so right now, but have you read the news lately? About the anti federal government riots/ The Democrats are very clearly favoring ‘protestors’ that are doing quite a bit of rioting, and have done so in many other cases over the years.
We do vote for president. This is why we could reject the Democrats switching out their candidate without consulting the country. It would obviously be a precedent if the voters had simply gone with what the party did.
You seem fixated on the idea of calling me irrational. It is an entirely rational to not want the president to lead from behind. You could say that you believe the premise that she would is wrong, but you didn’t.
Then you claim the next point is somehow ‘random words’. It is very clear they are not. I am stating that those things (cheap prices, functional markets, abundant goods, physical safety, and equal enforcement of laws) seem to be in conflict with DEI and green energy, and that she would choose the latter. Again, you could disagree that it is true, but nothing about it is random. (And all of those things obviously go together.)
Then you accuse me of irrationality and a lot of bad faith when you simply refused to engage meaningfully with what I said. Should I believe that you are operating in good faith? I hope that you are and we can turn this conversation around.
I can assure you that literally everything I wrote was in good faith, as an attempt to answer your questions honestly. I am still willing to respond if you engage with what I wrote in the areas you respond to, or if you ask genuine questions in an attempt to understand, not fight. Limiting your questions might get more focused answers if that is what you object to.
Your final claim that I missed a question is untrue. “what would it take you to regret voting for Trump and admit that he is a disaster as a president? (be realistic no zombie apocalypse scenario allowed)”. I answered it in the sixth paragraph.
”There is only one thing that would make me regret voting for Trump: The feeling that America is worse off because of Trump being president than if he hadn’t been. Yes, a feeling. It’s vague for a reason. I can and do compare general factors for goodness and badness multiplied by his responsibility for them versus counterfactuals, but after that, it is all intuitive. All analyses I do on any subject are heavily dependent on intuition. Comparing a gestalt to a counterfactual gestalt is hard to put into small details. I don’t stare at the trees to discover the broader trends of the forest.”
There is no way I could give a more precise response to a completely open counterfactual, and still be telling the truth. Once again, you can object to my answer for various reasons, and claim it is a bad answer, possibly including that you don’t like to base evaluations off of feelings, but the claim I didn’t answer is false. (It might be quite reasonable to accidentally skip it, but I did answer.)
To briefly defend feelings, I see feelings as a shorthand for the entire situation. It is not possible to keep infinite details in mind, but you can aggregate them together (in a somewhat unreliable way) subconsciously, and then use those to determine how your conscious mind reacts to the number of things it can process in more depth. The conscious mind is much better at logic, but much worse at using all of the information you get. You can train your mind by carefully evaluating it before adding it to the pile, but you still add it to the pile in the end. And be careful in using it of course, because feelings are often wrongly applied.
A lot of people have bad feelings about engaging with political opponents from many unproductive engagements, and this makes everything look worse when you know an opponent is making the statements and /or questions (including to me). This is reasonable, but I don’t think it is serving you well when you meet someone who is engaging in good faith (which again, I assure you I am, even though I find your responses very frustrating as well).