Trump has provided an unrelenting series of additional reasons he shouldn't be allowed anywhere near higher office since the insurrection on January 6th, 2021, most notably talking about seizing absolute power, pursuing vengeance and using state violence. In March 2023, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Trump addressed the conservative faithful by saying, "I am your warrior. I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution." He also framed the coming elections in apocalyptic terms, saying "This is the final battle, they know it. I know it, you know it, and everybody knows it, this is it. Either they win or we win. And if they win, we no longer have a country." (Conservatives sure love projection.) In December 2023, Sean Hannity asked Trump, "Under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?" and Trump responded, "Except for day one." When pressed, he said, "We're closing the border and we're drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator." Trump complained that media outlets mentioned the dictator part and didn't emphasize the 'one day' part (as if that made it acceptable), and then as usual when he's said something stupid or alarming, he and his supporters claimed he was joking, even though he clearly wasn't. In July 2024, he told a group of conservative Christians to "get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it any more. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians." That sure sounded like the threat of an authoritarian takeover, although in a later Fox News interview Trump unconvincingly claimed otherwise… and also pretended that he accepted the results of the 2020 election, conveniently ignoring his extensive election interference attempts, including the insurrection on January 6th, 2021.
At a late September rally, Trump complained that liberals wanted to destroy America and were preventing cops from doing their jobs, and proposed giving the police "one really violent day" or at least "one rough hour — and I mean real rough" to end crime "immediately." In mid-October, Trump referred to his political targets (including Democratic Representative Adam Schiff by name) as "the enemy within," and suggested they "should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military." In late October, he targeted Republican (and former Wyoming Representative) Liz Cheney, who's endorsed Kamala Harris for president, by saying, "Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face." NPR found that Trump "has made more than 100 threats to investigate, prosecute, imprison or otherwise punish his perceived opponents."
Trump has also pledged to forcefully deport 11 million or 20 million or however many immigrants – just like Senator Joe McCarthy , who also fearmongered about "enemies from within," Trump's numbers often shift. Notably, Trump's targets include legal immigrants. Besides the plan's immorality, it would also be impractically expensive, costing anywhere from 40 billion to 315 billion, money that could be much better spent elsewhere. Trump's immigration policies have always been more about demagoguery and cruelty than meaningful results, though.
In late October, retired General John Kelly, who was one of Trump's chiefs of staff, confirmed Trump's admiration for Hitler and said Trump "certainly falls into the general definition of fascist." Although some people still quibble about the label, there's no serious doubt that Trump is an authoritarian who will abuse power in office, and there's plenty of expert opinion supporting calling him a fascist specifically. Other high-ranking members of the former Trump administration have called him unfit for office, and thirteen former staffers signed an open letter supporting Kelly's assertions: "In a second term, those who once tried to prevent Donald Trump from his worst impulses will no longer be there to rein him in. For the good of our country, our democracy, and our Constitution, we are asking you to listen closely and carefully to General Kelly's warning." Even if we momentarily put aside the awful conservative agendas of a Trump administration, a Republican Congress, and conservative judicial hacks, the prospects of democracy itself being dismantled – or at least, a major candidate openly wanting to dismantle it – should give voters pause and supersede many other concerns.
Turning to policy, for decades, American conservatives and the Republican Party have stood for plutocracy and bigotry, and using the latter to achieve the former. This election has been no different, but what's unusual is how out in the open their extreme plans have been. Conservatives have been pushing the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, a "right-wing wish list" of extreme policies that they want to implement if Trump returns to office and/or if Republicans seize control of Congress. (As Rick Perlstein has pointed out, some of the proposals contradict others, but it's still full of scary stuff.) Trump has unconvincingly tried to distance himself from Project 2025, even though it was written by Trump loyalists and allies – in fact, at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration worked on Project 2025. Trump's much shorter Agenda 47 is much vaguer and less detailed than Project 2025, but perfectly compatible with it. Trump and his allies have continued to try to gaslight the American public about their links to Project 2025, and if you're on social media, you might have even seen conservatives step up the gaslighting by claiming Project 2025 doesn't even exist. Conservative policies are largely awful, typically only benefitting a select few – mostly the rich and powerful, and to a lesser degree, social conservatives. Conservatives cannot win policy arguments on the merits, so they lie about them constantly. Their policies also tend to be deeply unpopular, so they attempt voter suppression and other anti-democratic means to get their way.
The United States has multiple institutions impeding positive reform. Using an electoral college to elect a president rather than a national popular vote is anti-democratic, and has become glaring so in the past 25 years. In the past, some Republicans supported abolishing the electoral college and some Democrats wanted to keep it. But despite ample reasons to abolish it, Republicans want to keep it because it would be hard for them to win a presidential election without it. In the 2024 presidential election, seven swing states will decide the election and most of the country's opinion effectively doesn't matter. That's inherently problematic, and becomes more so due to efforts to suppress the vote and make ballot-counting more difficult. Voter suppression is a conservative movement, perpetrated by both major parties in the past, but in recent decades overwhelmingly practiced by the Republican Party. (The ACLU and Brennan Center for Justice cover voting rights issues diligently and have much more detail.)
Adding to our problems is conservative judicial activism, most dangerously due to the conservative hacks on the Supreme Court, who almost always rule in favor of those in power and for social conservatives, legal precedent, common sense and consistency be damned. Conservative activist judges at the federal level and lower have also inflicted plenty of harm. The judicial appointments of George W. Bush and Trump, and Republican obstruction of Obama's nominees, have created an ugly situation that could persist for decades. In theory, judges should be above the more petty political squabbles, and render wise, thoughtful decisions mindful of precedent and considering the likely consequences, all for the benefit of citizens and the country as a whole. In actual practice, particularly on the Supreme Court, that hasn't at all been the case, as seen in Bush v. Gore (2000) , District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), Citizens United v. FEC (2010), Shelby County v. Holder (2013) and related decisions, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health (2022) and Trump v. United States (2024), to name a handful – all decisions that ignored precedent and abused good sense to benefit conservative individuals or causes. The last one blatantly ignores not only legal precedent but the history and founding values of the United States, effectively making the president a king, immune from accountability.
It certainly doesn't help matters that the mainstream media, who should be informing the citizenry and helping them make good choices when voting and dealing with elected officials, consistently delivers such poor political coverage. Individual reporters and some outlets do good work, but the mainstream media as a whole are unrelentingly shallow. Horse race coverage doesn't tell voters much, but it can be produced with low effort, fills air time and columns, and presents an image of political neutrality. Meanwhile, as Josh Marshall notes, confrontational political interviews aren't necessarily useful when they merely reiterate an opponent's attacks and avoid dealing with policies and substance. That superficiality is the rule rather than the exception; much of political coverage amounts to little more than gossip. To quote a 2018 post:
Stories deemed too complex aren't covered – for example, explaining the abuse of Senate procedures and contextualizing them. More importantly, calling out one political side is simply not good business, especially when one side is consistently worse about lying, violating political norms and screwing over the citizenry. One of our national political discourse's key scourges is false equivalence, or "both siderism," claiming both sides are just as bad even when evidence to the contrary stands overwhelming. (For much more on this, see the archives of Digby, driftglass, alicublog, Balloon Juice, LGM or my own archives.)
Because reasonable conservatives are in such short supply, the media has to manufacture them or grade conservatives on a curve to try to appear balanced. They have to pretend that harmful or ludicrous conservative policy proposals have merit, or sometimes pretend that conservatives have a plan at all. (Occasionally, they do call bullshit.) They also have to pretend that white conservatives have good reasons for being upset, and that their constant ire is due to 'economic anxiety' and not because a significant number of them are racists or even white nationalists. In the case of Trump, adding in his frequent personal incoherence, these dynamics have been justifiably criticized as "sane-washing." It hasn't helped, either, that the owners of the venerable Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have dictated that their respective editorial boards cannot endorse a presidential candidate, despite the glaring differences between the two major candidates and the towering stakes of this election. This cowardice is deeply sad for anyone who remembers the best legacies of these papers, and has lead to reporters resigning, and thousands or even hundreds of thousands of cancelled subscriptions. Long-time Post readers have explicitly called out the betrayal of the paper's history and values, as well as that of the masthead of recent years, "Democracy Dies in Darkness."
As for the electorate, why are Trump's numbers as high as they are? Many voters won't respond to pollsters, and that percentage will probably continue to increase over time. Some voters also genuinely don't like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Democratic Party's platform. But Harris is still a pretty normal, mainstream candidate, whereas Trump definitely is not, and overwhelmingly not in a good way. Harris might represent too much of the status quo, but Trump is threatening to make many things much, much worse, pledging to do things the American people say they don't like. And have memories faded so quickly? Putting aside incidents such as Trump's bizarre, 40-minute dance party to avoid questions at an October town hall – or the infamous, Access Hollywood, "Grab 'em by the pussy" video reported in 2016 that some younger voters have only recently discovered – Trump's actual presidency was a disaster for most Americans. According to Gallup, Trump left office with a 34% approval rating and lower approval ratings than any president in Gallup's polling era; 538 has similar numbers. Yet in 2020, although Biden set a new record for the most votes received in a presidential election, breaking Barack Obama's 2008 record, Trump broke Obama's record as well, and received more votes than he had in 2016. Even after seeing what he did as president – including bungling the COVID-19 pandemic response, when he could have averted 40% of the deaths, according to a Lancet commission – more Americans voted for him than before. Many Americans have been unaware of his criminal convictions, and although those convictions and pending lawsuits have hurt Trump's polling numbers somewhat, most Republicans say they don't care, or claim they're more likely to vote for Trump as a result.
So: many voters aren't aware of Trump's actual policies and actions, some don't care, and the conservative base actually likes what he's doing. It's possible to break through to the first group and to the lesser degree the second, but it's almost impossible to persuade the third. As bad as mainstream political coverage often is, even if it's shallow at least it's generally factually correct. The right-wing echo chamber is much worse; conservatives can ignore reality and stick to a world of lies, including Trump's ludicrous, narcissistic, self-serving "big lie" that he won the 2020 election. Trump's most ardent supporters are essentially a cult.
It's worth looking at a few specific issues and conservative policies in more depth, to draw contrasts between the two major candidates and their parties, and see what's at stake.
Plutocracy and the Economy
Whatever else they do, conservatives and Republicans reliably fight to deliver more money and power to the rich and powerful. The Trump tax cuts in 2017 were a monstrosity, and just like the Reagan and George W. Bush tax cuts, were (to quote a 2022 post):
. . . plutocratic, funneling even more money to the wealthiest Americans to please rich donors. Contrary to Republican claims, the corporate tax cuts did not trickle down and the tax plan did not pay for itself; they just gave rich people more money.
The differences between the Harris and Trump tax plans are pretty stark. Trump wants to extend the expiring tax cuts for the wealthy, whereas Harris would raise their taxes. Trump would cut corporate tax rates, whereas Harris would raise them. Trump would give small tax breaks to taxpayers with children; Harris would give more substantial tax breaks to low- and moderate-income families. Project 2025 policies would increase poverty and hardship and shift more of the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class. ProPublica found that, as president, "Donald Trump built a national debt so big (even before the pandemic) that it’ll weigh down the economy for years." Meanwhile, by one estimate, Harris' budget plans would reduce the deficit by as much as 290 billion or increase it by as much as 710 billion; Trump's budget plans would increase the deficit by 4.5–5 trillion.
As Jon Perr points out, Biden's economic record is much better than Trump's was, and Harris' policies would be similar. Likewise, Rachel Maddow systematically went through arguments from Trump supporters that voting for him was "a business decision" and showed that Trump's policies would actually be worse for businesses.
None of this erases the essential point that just because "the economy" is doing well by measures such as gross national product and the stock market, average Americans might not be doing well with everyday expenses such as housing, transportation and groceries. But funneling more money to the rich has never helped with that, and conservatives and Republicans have consistently championed policies that economically hurt the middle class and especially the poor. (One of their tricks is to give a small tax break to the middle class that they'll brag about while giving a huge tax cut to the rich. It's a feature, not a bug.)
It bears mentioning that many conservatives do crave social status over prosperity, so votes by the rank and file who aren't in the wealthy donor class could conceivably be made with open eyes. But the reality is that they want prosperity, too, and like government handouts for themselves – they just don't like government aid going to those people. They've also shown that, for example, they're unaware of the degree of wealth inequality in America. The conservative movement has plenty of grifters, but even more marks.
Bigotry
Bigotry and scapegoating are other conservative and Republican perennial favorites. A recurring theme at the Republican National Convention in July was that immigrants are scary and they're coming to rob, rape and kill you. The speech of Canadian-born Texas Senator Ted Cruz was one of the more loathsome and aggressive in this genre, and unsurprisingly, it was highly misleading. Trump started his campaign in 2015 with ugly, racist rhetoric about immigrants, and it's been a consistent feature of his rhetoric ever since. Nonetheless, a Politico analysis published in mid-October found that "his racist, anti-immigrant messaging is getting darker" as he's spoken about "blood thirsty criminals," the "most violent people on earth," "animals," "stone cold killers," the "worst people," and the "enemy from within." One of Trump's most bizarre moments was a claim during his debate with Kamala Harris about (legal) Haitian immigrants in Springfield: "They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there." Thankfully, Trump was fact-checked by the moderators, who confirmed for viewers that Trump's claim wasn't true, but Trump insisted it was and that he had seen it on TV. (It was an unintentionally comic moment – it was if he was saying, 'But it must be true! I saw it on TV!' and the con had become the mark.) Trump's vice presidential candidate, J.D. Vance, then went on to defend the false claims about immigrants eating their neighbors' pets and told CNN's Dana Bash that he was willing to "create stories" to get the media to focus on what the campaign wanted to emphasize – in other words, to lie. He also referred to the Haitian immigrants, who are in the U.S. legally, as illegal. The Trump campaign and other conservatives just keep fearmongering and lying about immigrants.
Attacking brown people has been Trump's favorite flavor of bigotry, but in October, his campaign stepped up attacks on transgender people. If you watched the World Series, for example, you saw a particularly noxious and misleading anti-transgender ad. Apparently, the Trump campaign has spent about $19 million on anti-transgender ads. It's a rather strange choice for a closing argument.
Trump has also told Jewish groups that Jews who vote for Democrats are "very disloyal to Israel," that "Jewish people have no excuse" to vote for Harris, and scolded, "in my opinion, the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss if I’m at 40% [support]," essentially blaming Jews in advance for an election loss. Trump is a bigot, a bully and a bullshitter, and it would be hard to overstate how important spite is to his identity and his appeal to his supporters.
Reproductive Freedom and Health Care
In 2022, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court overturned the 49-year old Roe v. Wade (1973) decision that legalized abortion via Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, effectively making abortion illegal in many states. The majority of Americans want abortion to be legal, and even in conservative states such as Kansas, voters have chosen to protect abortion rights. Ten states have abortion measures on the ballot for 2024. Meanwhile, a majority of OB-GYNs say the overturning of Roe v. Wade is linked to more maternal deaths. At least one woman in Texas and two in Georgia have died as a result of anti-choice legislation that delays or prevents medical care. Project 2025 seeks to make getting abortions much more difficult if outright banning isn't possible, and even targets contraception, which is another awful, extreme and unpopular position.
Meanwhile, Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has confirmed that ending the Affordable Care Act is a goal for Trump and the Republicans, even though Trump has only "the concepts of a plan" to replace it. When it comes to health care, Project 2025 has a "antiscience, antidata, and antimedicine agenda," would eviscerate access to care for Medicaid beneficiaries, put profits over patients, and remove numerous ACA protections (many of them cost-saving).
Foreign Policy and Imperialism
Knee-jerk, fact-free "both siderism" is a blight on political discourse, but critiques of the two major U.S. political parties as being similar are most sound when it comes to corporatism, military spending and imperialism.
The current war and destruction in the Middle East is a major and legitimate concern for a significant number of voters. As of November 1st, the estimates are that "Israel’s blistering offensive on the Gaza Strip has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas militants killed roughly 1,200 people in Israel and took some 250 hostages back to Gaza."
I don't think Biden has done nearly enough to stop the conflict. Trump has reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "Do what you have to do" and that he wants the war over by the time he enters office. Harris likely will be better than Trump and possibly better than Biden on this front, but it's understandable that appeals from Harris, Obama and Bill Clinton haven't necessarily been convincing to Muslims and Arab-Americans. Bernie Sanders has recorded a video (also adapted as an article) disagreeing with Biden and Harris on their approach to Gaza, criticizing the Netanyahu administration, but endorsing Harris for president on the grounds that Trump will be much worse on Gaza and also many other issues. (Sanders mentions climate change, which I haven't covered in this post and has hardly been addressed by the national political media during this election… or in past presidential elections, for that matter.)
It's beyond the scope of this post to cover all the issues in the Middle-East, or all of U.S. foreign policy, or all domestic policies. I believe people should vote their consciences, and tried to provide a framework in a lengthy 2012 post, "Voting and Political Activism." The most relevant sections about foreign policy and imperialism start around here. I agree with the notion that voting is like a bus that gets you closer to your destination; it's not a marriage. Voting for a candidate does not mean agreeing with all of a candidates' positions; it just means they're the better choice, perhaps significantly, but sometimes only slightly. On the one hand, voting for the lesser of two evils is still evil; on the other, voting for the lesser of two evils means less evil. Voting is just one part of political activism, and when voting rights are assured, often the easiest. Major political changes require sustained political activism beyond voting. To quote a relevant passage from the post:
Basically, I'd suggest that dismantling the American plutocracy is a necessary but insufficient condition for dismantling American imperialism. It's necessary because the ruling class benefits from imperialism and is largely cloistered from its ill effects. They don't tend to serve in the military; instead, they own or invest in arms manufacturers. Dismantling plutocracy may be insufficient because, unfortunately, even in times of relative prosperity, a significant swath of the American public has supported imperialism and questionable wars abroad. However, good media, education, cultural exchanges, the arts and related efforts help raise awareness of, and opposition to, imperialism. Anything that helps foster general awareness, specific knowledge or critical thinking is a boon. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is not strictly true, but it does touch on the truth that average citizens tend to make bad decisions when they're scared (see the selling of the Iraq War), and tend to be less dickish and more generous when their basic needs are addressed and not a source of anxiety. (Meanwhile, the extremely wealthy and privileged tend to get more selfish and need to be curtailed.)
Trump is an authoritarian who would like to be a dictator. Conservative Supreme Court justices and at least one federal judge have tried to place Trump above the law and unaccountable; winning the election is crucial for Trump for self-preservation. Trump and the Republican Party, if they gain power, would make the U.S. more authoritarian, more plutocratic, more bigoted and more cruel. They would further the conservative push toward neo-feudalism. Trump has expressed a desire to effectively end democracy, and at the very least, voting would get much tougher for the minority groups Trump and his followers hate. All that would make dismantling imperialism and improving foreign and domestic policies much harder, probably increasingly so over time. An actual dictatorship would make positive changes all but impossible.
Personally, I'd love it if U.S. elections were less about harm reduction (as important as that is) and more about which beneficial, proven policies we were going to implement, whether that meant reviving and bolstering the best parts of the New Deal and Great Society, or borrowing good ideas from other countries. (Or maybe we could even discuss newer, positive policies.) Imagine, for example, if both major political parties competitively pandered to the middle class over the best single-payer, universal health care model to adopt. ('The German Bismark model!' 'No, the British Beveridge model is superior!') Alas, although we can choose which battles we fight to some degree, we generally can't control the nature of the battlefield itself; in the current system, we generally can't prevent rich, influential bad actors from picking harmful, dangerous political fights in the first place. This is the situation we've been given. It's rotten; it's a dumb time line; but there are people and causes worth fighting for. The United States of America, for all its flaws, was founded in opposition to a monarchy and tyranny, and fighting for democracy and equality might get us all a little bit closer to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Elizabeth Willing Powel: Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?
Benjamin Franklin: A republic, if you can keep it.
– Philadelphia, 1787
