Six reasons to reelect Trump
The Supreme Court is just two
Jeffrey Denny
Many sensible Americans who voted for Trump in 2016 are struggling for reasons to reelect him.
By “sensible,” I mean they don’t swallow Trump’s scaremongering about burning cities, threatened suburbs, tyrannical masking and looming Socialism aimed at panicking the gullible MAGA base.
So why else vote Trump?
1. To ensure government invasion of privacy.
This is counterintuitive given the longstanding paranoia, especially on the right, about government surveillance, intrusion, overreach and regulation.
Yet Trump voters are excited about the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg because he can pack the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, which was decided on protecting Constitutional privacy rights. In other words, people who hate government are dying to have government dictate our most private matters, namely healthcare and reproduction.
Beware the slippery slope. “One cannot presume that even [a] narrow reversal of Roe would guarantee the privacy right’s application to [other] areas” such as the right to reject medical care, James Madison University Constitutional Law Chair Mark Kende argued in a USA Today column last summer.
2. To extend the Covid-19 pandemic.
A vote for Trump is a strike against medical science and public health warnings, masking and distancing, other people’s health, and concern for the over 6 million sick Americans and 200,000 dead.
It’s also a vote for new spikes, more illness and death, and slower economic recovery, largely in Red States. (As of Sept. 22, all 17 states where cases were high and staying high went for Trump, and his crowded mask-less rallies aren’t helping.)
Seems self-sabotaging to me, but I’m sure Trump voters know what they’re doing.
3. To strip healthcare coverage from 20 million Americans.
The Trump-packed high court is more likely to strike down the Affordable Care Act in the middle of an historic pandemic and loss of job-related coverage, with no better replacement that Trump promised four years ago. Also seems like sawing off the limb you’re sitting on.
4. To flatten the stock market.
While he merely pumped the Obama recovery, many credit Trump with boosting the Dow and retirement accounts and believe he’s most likely to restore the growth post-pandemic. That’s why he downplayed the pandemic — to keep the bull market going as his ticket to reelection.
Meanwhile under Biden and the Socialist Democrats, the stock market and billions in investment value are certain to collapse.
Contrary to belief, history says otherwise. The stock market tends to perform much better under Democrats than Republicans.
“From 1952 through June 2020, annualized real stock market returns under Democrats have been 10.6% compared with 4.8% for Republicans,” a Wharton finance professor found in his recent study cited by Forbes.
Bill Clinton had the best cumulative stock market return at 210 percent, while George W. Bush had the worst at negative 40 percent.
5. To set back the U.S. economy.
Here again, many assume Republicans, especially a brilliant billionaire businessman like Trump, are far better than Democrats at managing the economy.
Wrong again. In the last 30 years, Democrats have excelled. In fact, like the poor schmuck sweeping up after a circus elephant, Democrats typically come in and fix the Republican laissez-faire destruction:
· In 1992, George H.W. Bush handed Bill Clinton a major recession as the inflated “Reagan Boom” led to a bust foretold by the 1987 stock market crash and the jobless rate spiked to nearly 8 percent.
· In 2000, Clinton handed George W. Bush a robust economy with a 30-year low jobless rate of under 4 percent. (Clinton also balanced the federal budget for the first time in a generation while cutting middle-class taxes and reforming entitlements.)
· In 2008, Bush handed Barack Obama the Great Recession when the housing sector and financial system nearly collapsed and unemployment spiked to nearly 10 percent on his watch.
· In 2016, after rescuing the nation from Bush Recession and launching a sustained recovery, Obama handed Donald Trump one of the strongest economies since Bill Clinton’s, halving unemployment to 4.7 percent. Obama also slashed the federal deficit from $1.4 trillion to $585 billion.
· In 2020, if Trump loses, he’ll hand Joe Biden another Republican economic disaster worsened by his mishandling of the Covid pandemic, with 20 percent unemployment rivaling the Great Depression’s 25 percent.
Thanks greatly to his tax cut for the wealthy, Trump would also hand Biden the largest federal deficit in history, growing it by 74 percent to nearly $1 trillion — even before the pandemic stimulus, which will increase the Trump deficit to nearly $3 trillion.
“Conventional wisdom says that those liberal Dems are generally bad for the economy and the stock market because of their big government tendencies, while fiscally conservative Republicans are good,” the Forbes article notes. “This widely accepted belief is actually fake news if you look at data going back to the end of World War II.”
See more recently, “Stocks perform better when a Democrat is in the White House. History proves it,” CNN Business, Sept. 23, 2020.
6. To ignore, accept or enjoy Trump’s gross indecency, disgrace of the presidency, and reckless reign of destruction.
A vote for Trump is a vote for a president who:
· Divides American against American for cynical political gain;
· Keeps the White House in a constant circus of mismanagement, chaos, confusion, incompetence and uncertainty;
· Rejects “the buck stops here,” says, “I don’t take responsibility at all,” blames everyone else and is never wrong;
· Lies constantly and then lies about his lies like we’re fools;
· Uses the presidential bully pulpit literally to bully his fellow Americans, assaulting and insulting anyone who dares to question, criticize or hold him accountable whatsoever;
· Denigrates and disgraces the “best people” he appoints and who suffer for their loyalty;
· As draft-dodging commander in chief with zero military experience, sneers at our top military officials, calling “my f***ing generals” “a bunch of p***ies”;
· Dishonors our veterans who fought and died for our freedom, calling them “losers” and “suckers”;
· Spreads fake news and false conspiracy theories, fomenting confusion, distrust and paranoia;
· Promotes racial bigotry and division, and gives aid and comfort to hate groups;
· Holds himself above the Constitution and the rule of law with the help of his cowed and craven GOP swamp cronies;
· Punishes his political “enemies” for doing their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution by telling the truth under oath about his actions; and,
· Is “dangerous” with “no moral compass” and “makes a mockery of our Constitution” as he “tries to divide us,” as his former Secretary of Defense, the decorated Marine Corps General Jim Mattis, said.
Mattis added, “We are witnessing the consequences of four years without mature leadership.”
Sounds like the worst reason of all to reelect him. Then again, I’m a Democrat, which apparently makes me a Socialist.
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
