What The Debate Didn't Cover-Two Simple Paths Forward for 2024:
An Average Voters' Guide (Designed to Make Your Lives Just A Little Bit Easier)
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Sure, some of us may have seen the last debate. But I doubt any of us thought it was a helpful guide to helping us make the right choice for 2024. Some of that is reflective of the failings of the moderators, some of that is more reflective of the failings of President Biden to explain his agenda and of Trump to do anything but lie.
So, since the substance was lacking, I wanted to take the time now to fill in the gaps. And maybe future debates should include questions based on this simple guide to the race:
President Donald Trump was the first President since Herbert Hoover to lose jobs under his tenure in office. Why? Because although he inherited a healthy economy with low unemployment from Obama, the rate of job growth actually stagnated in the Trump years. Then, his catastrophic management of the coronavirus pandemic stalled the economy, with double-digit unemployment, millions of jobs lost, and people living on the brink of disaster and death. That’s why he (not Joe Biden) shut down the country for months.
President Biden’s economic recovery is thus all the more impressive. 15 million new jobs have been created, with an unemployment rate at historically low levels (hovering at or below 4%), wages rising, a record-high stock market, strong GDP growth, and lower poverty rates, all after a worldwide outbreak of inflation and supply chain bottlenecks. And recently, costs have been starting to come down. Inflation has gone from roughly high of 9% to the present day 3%.
As President, Trump passed another round of tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, sending $2 trillion down the hole into our deficit. In 4 years, he increased the deficit from $22 trillion to $29 trillion, the greatest increase in the national debt in one-term in the history of the country. He and his GOP allies attempted (and failed) approximately 50 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, left office with a global record of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations, and deaths, and ended his presidency with a failed attempted coup and insurrection. That insurrection resulted in the deaths of 5 people, including Capitol Police officers, and caused injury to approximately 150 Capitol Police officers. If elected, he will do more Trump Tax Cuts, Dodd-Frank repeal 2.0, and who knows what with our democracy.
As President, Joe Biden passed a historic round of legislation, from the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the Inflation Reduction Act, to the PACT Act, the CHIPS & Science Act, the Electoral Count Act Reform, the Bipartisan Gun Reform Package, the Respect for Marriage Act, Postal Service Reform, the American Climate Corps, and more, including hundreds of bipartisan pieces of legislation.
If reelected, President Biden’s Administration will continue to focus on issues relevant to voters like the corporate greed fueling inflation (via the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau), workers’ rights & labor organizing (with the PRO Act), restoring Roe by congressional legislation and executive action, fair trade for small businesses and communities, reshoring global supply chains, expanding affordable housing, enacting a Families Plan for healthcare & education, enacting a Jobs Plan to build a blue & green renewable energy economy, enacting bold environmental conservation measures, campaign finance reform, full restoration of landmark voting rights & civil rights laws, and addressing gun violence and maternal mortality worsened by the Dobbs decision and the bump stock ban repeal.
Scranton Joe wants to have the wealthy and well-connected pay their fair share of taxes to invest in the middle class & working class—better known as the backbone of America. Manhattan real estate mogul Trump wants to bail out the wealthy even more at our own expense.
President Biden knows when to stand up to Wall Street and Corporate America in the interests of working families. Trump knows when to kneel down to Wall Street, Big Pharma, Big Oil, the DeVos school privatization lobby, Big Tech, Big Crypto, and Big Agriculture, just as they fill his campaign coffers at this very moment at exclusive high-dollar fundraisers. Trump is “one of them.” Biden is one of us.
Unlike Trump and Republicans who want to try once again with the Obamacare repeal, Biden and Democrats understand why we need universal healthcare: because we have a system right now that prioritizes profits before people. That is why President Biden—not Trump—is so devoted to lowering prescription drug prices and capping insulin costs.
Unlike Trump and Republicans who let DeVos ram the wrecking ball to public education, Biden and Democrats see why we need to make higher education—including community college—affordable, and why we should support our students and teachers alike. Education is not a business. It is a right for each and every American.
President Biden is the only serious presidential candidate who has a strong environmental record, and a long-term vision to the end of the decade and beyond, to mitigate and prevent the worst of the pending climate crisis with the help of places like Pennsylvania and Michigan. Donald Trump cannot even accept it as a reality: he has baselessly called it Chinese “junk science,” while dining with the same oil executives who are contributing to climate change and artificially inflating gas prices.
Joe Biden is calling out shrinkflation and greedflation for what it is: large corporations and Big Business trying to rip us off. Trump wants to jack up inflation with 100% tariffs on basically everything (literally).
President Biden is supporting law enforcement with the resources it needs, while continuing the push for criminal justice reform in the name of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Donald Trump and his VP suck-ups want to defund the FBI, defund the CIA, abolish the ATF, and tear down the Justice Department, all while empowering the “persecuted J 6th hostages.” No wonder crime rose under Trump, contrary to what he says.
President Biden has taken executive action on immigration and will work to secure the border and pass the comprehensive reforms we need. Trump may pretend to talk a good game on immigration, but he was the one who tanked a bipartisan bill in February introduced by one of the most conservative Senators, Senator James Lankford (R-Oklahoma). Instead of supporting reasonable measures to enforce the rules and laws of immigration, Trump separated families, and promised unfinished walls that Mexico still will never pay for.
In the spirit of the New Deal and the Great Society, President Biden is a long-time union man willing to stand publicly on the picket lines with auto workers. Trump wouldn’t know what a union is, or what the life of a worker is like, as the people of Lordstown, Ohio, and Racine, Wisconsin know all too well.
President Biden is taking on Big Agriculture for its role for eliminating family farm competition and raising grocery prices, which affects small farmers in Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri, and consumers in Illinois and Indiana alike. Trump, meanwhile, is all talk and no action for Rural America.
The Commander-in-Chief is a man working to this very minute to eliminate junk fees, cap credit card fines, secure student debt relief, and provide tax credits and food assistance for children and families. Trump wants to do Wall Street’s bidding by cutting more of Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and Social Security. Just like he proposed in his past budgets.
President Biden wants to codify Roe into law permanently. Trump and his Supreme Court appointees have created a chaotic patchwork of statewide laws which are forcing women to travel outrageous distances for reproductive health care. And now, they want to make things worse by banning abortion access, contraception, and IVF nationwide with the help of archaic laws like the Comstock Act.
President Biden is standing with communities for common sense gun safety. Trump is a loyal puppet for the gun lobby in the only nation that regularly deals with mass shootings every day of the week.
And if Trump gets his way, he will put someone as incompetent but subservient as Aileen Cannon on the Supreme Court, solidifying half a century of conservative judicial activism from the bench.
President Biden knows the meaning of military service and honoring our veterans. Trump calls those men and women “losers and suckers.”
Biden sides with Ukraine against an unprovoked invasion by Putin. Trump, on the other hand, has talked with Putin about his deluded fantasies of a Russian Empire. Unfortunately, Trump has shown time and time again that he has more faith in Putin than our allies. Look no further than Helsinki, Finland, where he sided with Putin over his own national intelligence officials on election interference from Russia.
Biden wants to rescue the Israeli hostages and secure peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Trump and his family want to use Gaza’s prime real estate simply for their own waterfront purposes.
Perhaps most importantly, Trump regularly attacks our democracy. He assails Biden over “rigging” the 2020 election, even though over 60 lawsuits nationwide at both the federal and state levels ruled against Trump. To top it off, his own director of cybersecurity Chris Krebs called the 2020 election the most secure election in history. Flash forward 4 years, his MAGA allies in the states are working to tip the scales in Trump’s favor with more poll worker intimidation, racial gerrymandering, and voter suppression. Trump wants our great nation to embody, of all places, Hungary. Hungary, if you don’t know, currently has a radical right-wing autocracy with an inflation rate that went as high as 24.5% post-pandemic.
These are the positions of the candidates, and the visions of their parties. Trump is looking out for himself and for his rich friends. Biden is looking out for us and for the values we all hold dear.
Yes, there is a whole lot people need to know about the people behind both Build Back Better and Project 2025. One person, Donald Trump, is an existential threat to our system of government—our democracy. The other, President Joe Biden, will enact a transformational agenda in his second term.
What choice will you be making?