Regardless of
your political preferences, I encourage you to get involved in the 2024
elections. At a minimum, discuss the
issues and candidates with people. I’ll
address “Trump” voters and then “Biden” voters.
Please excuse me dropping titles such as “President” and “ex-President”;
simply using last names makes it easier for readers. Many links herein go to my past blogs. The many charts from The Economist and some others do not display below. You can find most at The Economist (opens in a new window so you can tab back and forth) or you can ask me to send you a word document with all the charts.
Trump Voters: In my blogs (Trump did some good things as
president; Why people vote for Trump (2020)) and discussion of issues below, I
acknowledge some good things happened during Trump’s presidency. However, I think Nikki Haley is more likely
to accomplish your future goals for the following reasons:
|
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Trump
|
Haley
|
|
Electability
|
May beat
Biden, but there is a good chance Biden would beat him again, particularly as
Biden is likely to continue to throw money at voters and to institute bad
policy for short term political gains.
|
Very likely
to beat Biden, as she appeals to a broad segment of voters and unlike
Trump/Biden is young and non-divisive.
|
|
Coattails
|
Trump has had
limited and decreasing success in electoral coattails.
|
More likely
to have positive coattails, which is important to success in office.
|
|
Likely
success 2024-28
|
|
|
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Personality
|
Wants
revenge; seeds chaos; alienates. (see Donald Trump’s profile).
Hasn’t changed and won’t change, witness his tirade that he’d
investigate Haley.
|
As an
immigrant's child, she learned how to develop relationships and succeed in the
USA. She has developed coalitions in
South Carolina, at the UN and in her campaign.
|
|
Reliability
|
Unreliable
on anything; all about himself; no loyalty to people or ideas. Does it bother you
that dozens of his former staff & allies say he should not be president? Many more beyond the list, such as Mike
Pompeo and Paul Ryan.
|
Consistent;
has track record.
|
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Ability to get support
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Stimulates,
motivates and ridicules opposition.
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Builds
support; people will be leery of criticizing 1st woman president
as they were leery of criticizing 1st Black president.
|
|
Coat tails
|
Will face
hostile Congress
|
Coattails
will make Congress more supportive
|
|
Status
|
Lame duck
|
Cooperation
encouraged by likelihood of 8 years
|
|
Longer term
success
|
|
|
|
Potential 2nd term
|
Can’t have
a third term
|
Good chance
for 8 years
|
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Post-presidency
|
Trump will
continue to be all about him. What
good would he contribute post-Presidency?
|
After 8
years, she’d be 60 and could have a lot of on-going impact as UN Ambassador;
congressperson; foundations; etc.
|
In sum, I can
understand that you feel motivated to vote for Trump, but if you step back and
look at things carefully, is Trump or Haley more likely to move this country in
the direction you would like?
Biden
voters:
Obviously, I can understand your fear of Trump.
(See my following blogs: Risks To Which Trump Exposed Us,
Donald
Trump’s profile, The
January 6th Hearings, Why
I’m voting for Biden (2020), Impeachment
of Donald Trump, Trump,
close your Twitter account).
I, like you, voted for Biden in 2020.
As you’ll see if you read my commentary below, I have been disappointed
in Biden’s performance. Most Biden
voters disagree with me, and that certainly is your prerogative. However, the polls between Biden and Trump
have been shifting more in favor of Trump, albeit close. I heard a presentation by noted
pollster/prognosticator Frank Luntz recently.
Barring an “October surprise” (which could go either way), he
anticipates that the trend will move further toward Trump’s favor because
Biden’s age is likely to become an increasing issue and because Biden is beset
with foreign and national issues that Luntz does not expect to get better. (I don’t entirely buy in to Luntz’s argument,
but it certainly is a risk that Biden supporters need to consider.)
You
might want to consider two alternatives to Biden:
1)
You
could support Haley. If Haley beats
Trump, your worst nightmare is gone.
2)
Depending
on how signals continue, at some point you might want to support a Unity ticket
that “No Labels” is stimulating.
Originally, a number of Democrats told me that they feared that such a
ticket would siphon more votes from Biden than from Trump, thereby causing
Trump to win the election. Lately, I’ve
started hearing that the Unity ticket may be a godsend because it might be more
likely than Biden to beat Trump.
Recently, I read an OpEd which expressed the hope that a Unity ticket
would be a savior by drawing more votes from Trump than from Biden, thereby
allowing Biden to win the election.
The Issues
I’ve included a lot of links below. In general, you can find the candidates statements on the issues at: Biden, Haley, and Trump.
Bringing
us together is my #1
issue. We haven’t had such a president
since Bill Clinton. I don’t think anyone
believes that Trump would bring us together.
Biden has clearly not brought us together. If you want to bring people together, you treat
your former opponent with respect. I’ve
never seen a president deal with his predecessor with such one-sided disdain as
has Biden. I understand that many Biden
supporters consider that to be appropriate, but it does not bring us
together. Consider:
·
Biden
refused to acknowledge that, under Trump’s administration, the COVID vaccine
was developed in record time, a huge boost to our recovery during the Biden
administration.
·
Biden
continued Trump policies (e.g., tariffs) without crediting Trump.
Biden
and the Democrats say they support democracy, but neither political party supports
democracy. That’s a big problem and spurs my support for
’No Labels’
and various election reforms.
Biden
has appointed and nominated extremists to government positions. In my blog, I commented on only one of the
extreme candidates he has put forward: Nusrat Choudhury should not be
confirmed as a federal judge. (As Wikipedia documents, she was confirmed by a very narrow
partisan vote.)
To
lead us effectively and bring us together, we need a leader with integrity and
character. I’ve never felt that Trump
has either characteristic (we found a 1988 family video in that regard) and I
imagine that both Trump and Biden voters understand why I dislike Trump (you
can see the above blogs).
I
used to think that Biden had those characteristics, but I no longer do. “Power corrupts” seems clearly to have
befallen Biden. In this analysis, I point
out Biden’s consistency in blaming other people for his mistakes. Voting Laws and Voter Suppression exposes shameful behavior by
Biden. Although I still don’t think he
benefited meaningfully from Hunter Biden’s trafficking in the Biden family
name, Biden has clearly mishandled the situation. Not only did he fail to thwart Hunter’s
activities, he seems to have aided Hunter.
Even if he was not involved in generating the false claim that Hunter’s laptop was part of a Russian
disinformation campaign, he did nothing to counter what he knew to be a false
claim. There are other examples.
On
the other hand, ‘No Labels’ is all about bringing us together. Nikki Haley grew up as the only Indian family
in her neighborhood, learning how to get along with people who were originally
hostile to her.
Foreign
policy. It seemed that it would be easy to improve
upon Trump’s foreign policy, but Biden’s has been much worse. Yet, ironically, in the next 4 years, Trump’s
foreign policy may be worse than Biden’s.
Trump’s
foreign policy involved speaking disgustingly favorably about our enemies,
being unduly influenced if they catered to his ego, offending our allies and
creating counter-productive tariff walls.
Nonetheless, as I observed at the time, he acted more stronger against
Russia than did Obama and he embraced Israel, producing real progress with the
Abraham Accords. He pressured NATO
members to increase defense spending.
Biden’s
departure from Afghanistan was horrendous, and he falsely
pointed fingers at his staff, the Afghanis and Trump, rather than admit his
failures. His Afghanistan fiasco is one
of the many ways he encouraged Putin to
attack Ukraine. I continue to believe that Putin
would not have attacked Ukraine in 2020 if Trump had been re-elected.
For
way too long, Biden refused strong support for Ukraine. How crazy is it to tell a country that they
can defend themselves only by destroying their land, without attacking their
enemy? Biden allowed Russia to dig in
and establish their defenses, then, in characteristic Biden fashion, he blamed
Ukraine for having difficulty ousting an entrenched enemy.
Trump
proposes to abandon Ukraine. Ironically,
having been so disappointed by Biden’s approach to Ukraine, I now must favor
him over Trump on this issue. As John
Bolton wrote (WSJ, 2024-02-01, p.A19) “President Biden’s aid to Ukraine has
been piecemeal and nonstrategic, but it is almost inevitable that a second-term
Trump policy on Ukraine would favor Moscow.”
John
Bolton (WSJ, 2024-02-01, p.A19) wrote, among other comments that demonstrate
that Trump is unfit “He invariably equated good personal relations with foreign
leaders to good relations between countries.”
I think Bolton was holding back.
It would be more accurate to say “He invariably equated SUPERFICIAL good
personal relations with foreign leaders to good relations between
countries.” In fact, all a person has to
do is to speak positively toward Trump.
Robert
Gates (Secretary of Defense under both Bush and Obana) wrote “I think he [Biden] has been wrong on nearly every major
foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” At the time, Gates lauded Biden’s character
and integrity. I thought the same at the
time, but as president, Biden has shown a great lack of character and
integrity.
Ironically,
Biden is being criticized by his handling of the Hamas-Israel conflict. I think he has done a good job in a very difficult situation in
which our ally, Israel has made a serious
mistake. It is important to understand, however, that the fundamental Palestinian problem is that one side has continually
rejected peace as a solution. (I stopped supporting Biden when he chose not to veto a UN resolutions that failed to include a release of the hostages and when he demanded that Israel put the safety of Gazan citizens above all else. Clearly, you can't wage war if your enemies' civilians lives are your #1 priority, particularly when your opponent uses human shields.)
Earlier,
I felt Biden was too negative toward Israel.
His interference relative to Israel’s internal Supreme Court issue exposed
the lack of character and integrity he has displayed in office. The Israeli Supreme Court has an unreasonable
amount of power, much stronger than the US Supreme Court. Yet, Biden somehow argues that the Israeli
Supreme Court’s power should not be restrained, while he supports reducing the
power of the US Supreme Court. The
consistency in his argument is not principle.
It is that the Israeli Supreme Court is currently leftist while the US
Supreme Court is rightist. Biden
supports the left at the expense of principle.
No
Labels says (rather vaguely) “It’s in America’s interest to work with our allies
to advance our mutual interests”.
Nikki
Haley has been strongly supportive of Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel.
Environment:
Overall, Biden’s environmental record is superior to Trump’s. Many environmental issues need federal
management.
Nonetheless,
I disagree with Biden on some process and policy issues. I fault both Republican and Democratic
presidents for absorbing power through presidential executive orders and, the
Democrats for administrative law-making.
Separation of Powers is very important to me. I also don’t like it when the federal
government picks “winners”, preferring incentives that encourage citizens and
businesses to invest in improving the environment. The cost of the Inflation Reduction Act (is
that a misnomer?) will be greatly inflated by the administration’s regulatory
rules. The Chevron Doctrine encourages the Executive branch to usurp the
responsibilities of both Congress and the Supreme Court.
Energy
policy: Although
Trump was not as supportive of renewable energy as I would like, renewables did
advance during his tenure (as shown several pages below). Prior to entering office, Biden said his
position was “No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill. Period.”
He also said “no new fracking” and “no new oil and gas permits on public
land”. While in office, he said “we're
going to be shutting [coal] plants down all across America”. While he emphasized that he would be
combative toward coal, oil, and gas, I think we need time to migrate to
renewable energy and should value traditional sources of power in the interim.
After
putting the industry on notice that he wanted to put them out of business,
Biden, as always, blamed those sources for energy shortages. He turned to Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia
to boost production. What sense does
this make?
1.
Attacking
fuel sources makes our energy supply less stable, hurts our economy and costs
jobs.
2.
He
made concessions to Venezuela and Iran, helping terrible regimes.
3.
He
made our allies dependent on our enemies for energy.
4.
He
increased worldwide pollution significantly because those foreign sources
develop energy in much less environmental fashion than we do.
I strongly support developing renewable energy, albeit in a
more balanced fashion.
Liquid
Natural Gas (LNG). As noted above, Obama
embraced LNG exports for geopolitical reasons.
He also thought that exported LNG was more environmentally friendly than
local coal.
Trump,
of course, embraced LNG exports, approving permits on average in 7 weeks.
Biden
averaged 11 months to approve until, in January 2024, he halted approvals to reconsider
whether to allow them. This article gives the anti-LNG-export argument,
that it is dirtier than local coal (because of methane emissions and shipping
emissions), will raise natural gas prices for US residents (by diverting
natural gas to LNG rather than increasing natural gas production) and will
replace renewables (countries that invest in LNG facilities won’t want to
convert to renewables).
My
main take-away is that we make major decisions based on unreliable studies, as
this article argues regarding studies under Obama and Trump. Sadly, the current studies also might be
wrong. Biden’s decision to review makes
sense but the activists won’t accept any conclusion other than no new approvals. It is troubling to me that they liken this
campaign to the Keystone XL Pipeline which was a colossal example of Federal
perfidy.
Opponents
suggest that, if we don’t export LNG, countries will develop more renewable
resources. Did they consider that
countries may build the facilities anyway, to receive LNG from Russia (which
had record LNG exports in December), Iran and Qatar, our biggest LNG
competitors?
Electric
cars: I have had
alternative fuel vehicles for more than 30 years, since successfully pushing
Transamerica for its first company car that could operate on methanol. But I am concerned that our heavy-handed
pressure to move to electric cars is driven more by an effort to claim
environmental leadership than by sound policy.
It is not clear that we have properly evaluated the relative advantages
and disadvantages of hybrids vs. all-electric cars. The reliance of electric vehicles on rare
earth minerals brings a lot of environmental, economic and security concerns.
No
Labels supports an “all of the above” energy policy and developing domestic and
friendly sources of rare earth minerals so we can build clean energy
industries.
Haley
acknowledges that climate change is real and caused by humans. She has supported a broad energy proposal
(including nuclear and offshore drilling in South Carolina) but has expressed concern
that green energy subsidies were misdirected and that 2035 electric car
mandates are unwise due to the rare earth minerals and the impact of the heavy
weight of electric cars on our roads.
Education is critical to our future in general and
to improve standard of living for our lower-income families. (I am more concerned about improving their
standard of living than about narrowing the range of incomes in the USA,
although I strongly support graduated income taxes.) As explained at education, I have many ideas regarding how we
can improve education in the United States.
We
talk a lot about systemic racism and white privilege in the USA. Although I agree those exist, I generally
think they are exaggerated. However,
where systemic racism seems most blatant and to have the most aggregate harm is
in our public school system. We’ve known
for more than 30 years that public charter are effective, but the teachers’
unions fight them tooth-and-nail because the teachers’ unions don’t like being
embarrassed that non-union schools have better results and because the
teachers’ unions want to hoard power.
The Democrats (Obama somewhat less so) and Biden, in particular, are
wedded to the teachers’ unions rather than to education. Biden says he is not a fan of charter schools because they take away the options
available and money for public schools.
He ignores that charter schools are often public schools and that they
use less money per pupil than other public schools.
No
Labels position is “No child should be forced to go to a failing school.” No Labels supports a goal of opening 10,000
public charter schools in the next 10 years.
Nikki
Haley has often spoken out in favor of charter schools and
improved education for less-affluent and rural children. She also has favored more local and parental
control of schools and more vocational training.
Immigration is clearly a major issue. My Immigration blog expresses my opinions on
immigration. Trump did too much
deportation. Separating children and
parents at the border was also wrong.
Unfortunately, Biden signaled that he favored open borders helping to
stimulate a flood. Now he is seeking
Congressional support to “empower” him to take action. How often has he, as president, felt a need
for Congressional support. By seeking
Congressional support, he is trying to convey the impression that his
mishandling of the border crisis was not his fault. I don’t disagree that Congress has failed to
do its job, but that does not explain Biden’s poor handling of immigration. At various times, each party has wanted to
kill any possible immigration agreements because they wanted immigration to be
a political campaign issue. Shame on them!
No Labels position is: secure the border; attract
hardworking taxpayers; protect the Dreamers.
Nikki Haley was an immigrant child; she knows what it is
like. She is compassionate and
respectful of illegal as well as legal immigrants but feels that we need
to protect our borders and should consider merit in selecting among potential
immigrants. She would defund sanctuary
cities.
The
economy. For several reasons, I tend not to vote based
on the current economy. The economy runs
on broad cycles where actions have intermediate-term or long-term impact. As a result, the “current” economy often
reflects the actions of previous presidents as much or more than the actions of
the current president. Furthermore, the
economy often reflects factors independent of the government. For example, some factors that boosted the
stock market during Obama’s presidency were:
·
Fracking,
which he actively opposed (but he then embraced resultant LNG exports after
Russia invaded Ukraine, exports which would not have been possible had he
succeeded in blocking fracking).
·
Drones,
which he felt should be restricted until regulations were created. According to this site,
Congress passed a law in 2012, which allowed the FAA to approve limited
commercial operations and individual private pilots on a case-by-case
basis. Operators had to be licensed to
fly full-sized aircraft and have a Class 2 Medical certificate, which oddly are
stiffer than the standards to fly a private airplane. It required full integration into our
National Airspace System by 2015.
According to a 2023 GAO report,
drones can provide “significant social and economic benefits”, but such
integration had not yet occurred.
·
3-D
printing, which was accomplished by private industry.
According to the WSJ, the USA economy grew 2.5% in 2023. Of note, fossil-fuel producing states led the ways (ND, 5.9%; TX, 5.7%; WY, 5.4%; OK, 5.3%; AK, 5.3%, WV, 4.7%; NM, 4.1%). On the other hand: WI, 0.2%; NY, 0.7%; OH, 1.2%; IL, 1.3%; INI, 1.4%; MI and NJ, 1.5%. Once again, it seems that the President is being credited with economic growth that he is fighting.
The
following chart suggests that the election of a Democrat or Republican has made
little difference in stock market growth during the 10 year period starting
with the beginning of the election year.
I
vote based on what I think is best for the country, not what is best for me.
The
biggest issue for me relative to the economy is the national deficit. See 10 Lessons from the Pandemic.
Sadly, our political system discourages Federal politicians from
addressing the deficit and we’ve exacerbated the situation by pushing more and
more issues to the federal level.
Tariff
and trade deals are
another important issue relative to both foreign policy and economics. While I agree that our national security
requires the protection of some industries (an issue that was overlooked prior
to Trump), Trump’s approach to these issues has been harmful. His claim that he is an expert negotiator has
been disproven by his presidential record.
For
all the criticism that Biden has heaped on Trump, he has maintained the
tariffs, which make the whole world’s economy less efficient. One adverse result is that USA consumers pay
higher prices. Ironically, Biden says
that we should help create jobs in other countries so their citizens will be
less likely to want to emigrate to the USA for economic reasons. Tariffs and less cooperative trade agreements
have the opposite effect.
Tariffs
have also damaged our relationships with our allies.
The
Economist printed a
series of charts (which do not display below) to show how various economic indicators
have fared under Trump and Biden. Proper
interpretation of such charts requires an intimate knowledge of how various
factors impact the economy and what actions were taken. While I don’t feel fully capable in these
regards, readers are likely to find my comments, which differ in some respects
from The Economist, to be interesting.
When
looking at Trump’s record, it is important to look at his first three years,
recognizing that the COVID pandemic created an extremely unusual situation
which required deviations from his normal approach. (My blog, 10 Lessons from the Pandemic, supports the responsive spending
in the Trump administration, but not the continued deficits under the Biden
administration.).
image: the economist
The inflation rate was
stable during Trump’s term, dipping slightly until it dropped precipitously
during COVID (which should be ignored, in my opinion). The two stimulus packages under Trump were
necessary to combat the COVID pandemic’s economic impact. Of course, we need to save money in good
years, to be able to overspend under such circumstances. However, Biden irresponsibly chose to rachet
over-spending to an even higher level.
His response to many issues is to buy votes by taking actions that will
cost the Federal government a lot of money which it does not have.
image: the economist
Below, please find a Statista chart showing the CPI and
real earnings during the Biden years:
Wages grew consistently
under Trump before COVID, and real wages were increasing even more. Furthermore, the lower-income classes saw a
higher percentage of wage growth, which had not been seen in a long time. The spike during COVID should be ignored.
According to https://www.americanactionforum.org/insight/wage-growth-past-six-years/, the growth in real
earnings averaged 0.8% between 2012 and 2017.
Clearly, Trump had a favorable impact.
Under Biden, average
gross earnings have fallen, largely because of the distortion caused by the
COVID numbers (lower income people lost more jobs, causing average earnings to
rise misleadingly). Average earnings
under Biden is now clearly a bit shy of the Trump trendline. Of itself, this drop is not substantial. But when coupled with increased inflation,
real wages are clearly not doing as well under Biden as they were under
Trump. With supply line difficulties
mostly resolved, government practices seem to be the cause.
image: the economist
To extend the above chart to include years before Trump, I
found the following chart from the St. Louis Federal Bank.
Thus, the percentage employed tumbled early in the Obama
years, but then started to rebound.
Under Trump, the rate of growth increased as his policies
spurred employment, getting back to the 2008 level before the pandemic. I give credit to Biden for doing well also,
although I think Biden is benefiting from changes that Trump instituted.
I applaud The Economist for using this metric. In the USA press, I’m accustomed to seeing
the ratio of the number employed divided by the sum of the number employed plus
those looking for work. That statistic
understates unemployment when people are discouraged and stop looking for jobs
and it undervalues action that causes more people to look for jobs.
image: the economist
As per my discussion above, 2020 should be ignored. In the remaining six-year period, Trump had
the three lowest deficits and Biden had the three highest deficits.
Furthermore, Biden’s actions have made increasing future deficits extremely
likely. I believe Trump did
significantly better in this key area.
Eventually, our debt burdened is going to come crashing down on future
generations, and the lower economic classes and middle class are likely to be
hurt most. Our deficits are
unconscionable. As I’ve noted, we need
surpluses in good years to be able to afford deficits required by pandemics,
wars, or other extraordinarily difficult times.
I don’t believe we can have a balanced budget every year, but in most
years, we should save for bad times.
If you look back to Obama’s years in office, you see huge
deficits early, steadily dropping to a bit below Trump’s first year. However, that history also indicates how
careful you have to be when analyzing such numbers. The following factors contributed to the high
early-year Obama deficits and to the lower deficits thereafter:
1)
The bank “bail-out” under the TARP program accounted for
half the 2009 deficit (per www.usgovernmentspending.com). Calling those transactions a “bail out” was
bogus. The Federal government invested
$426 billion and eventually recovered $442 billion (per wikipedia.org). TARP was done under Bush, yet Obama looked
good when the recoveries came in during his administration.
2) Obama decided to put the
wars into the budget. I applauded that,
thinking he was doing it to increase economic accountability. I hoped he would subsequently put entitlements
into the budget as well. Sadly, I
learned that he put the Iraq war into the budget solely to make his
administration look good relative to managing the deficit. He intended to reduce war efforts and wanted
to take credit for it. Had he planned to
increase the war effort, he would have kept the war out of the budget.
However, neither Trump
nor Biden wants to address the entitlement problems that are facing the
country. Both No Labels and Nikki Haley
have the political courage to address the issue.
Relative to deficits in
general, No Labels says “Congress must vote on a debt reduction plan from an
independent bipartisan commission.” I
was a fan of the Bowles-Simpson 2010 plan because it had both aspects I cheered
and aspects I grieved over, and was balanced and would have succeeded. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities* reports that about half of the
expense savings but none of the revenue enhancements have occurred anyway. The left-leaning CBPP does not favor adopting
Bowles-Simpson’s suggestion (relative to social security for example). The more supportive and centrist Brookings
Institution* published a list of 10 lessons from
the effort. “the balance” also concludes that it would have
worked.
* www.allsides.com/media-bias/ has ratings of L L C R R.
CBPP has the more left rating, whereas Brookings Institution has a
rating of C. It does not show a rating
for “the balance”.
Haley’s opinions on the
economy can be found here.
image: the economist
As I mentioned earlier,
stock market performance reflects much more than the current president. The Lincoln Financial Group chart I showed
earlier indicates that collectively over 10-year periods starting at the
beginning of presidential election years, it has not mattered whether the
Republicans or Democrats won the election.
However, that does not mean that specific presidents have not had
beneficial impacts.
The stock market has
done surprisingly well under Biden. However,
recent highs are largely attributable to the information technology industry;
other sectors collectively are only ~5% higher than in January 2021. The Biden administration has been blocking
technology mergers, so it seems that tech stocks have done well despite Biden,
not because of him.
I think stock prices are
inflated because we presume companies will continue far into the future
(company life expectancy is dropping significantly because of the pace of change)
and discount those very speculative earnings with a discount rate that is too
low.
The Economist chart
looks favorable for both Trump and Biden but is not determinative.
image: the economist
Homicide rates in each of Trump’s first three years were
below homicide rates in each of Biden’s first 3 years. The Democrats have been soft on crime in
general. I believe in criminal justice
reform including: replacing bail with electronic
monitoring in most cases; helping inmates turn
their lives around; helping released inmates be able to get a job; etc. I also agree with increasing the availability
of mental health support to reduce the need for police to handle such
situations.
However, I do NOT
believe in ignoring crime, nor do I believe in refusing to prosecute crime.
Biden may not be
responsible for this poor comparison to Trump, but his party bears
responsibility and he has done too little to push back against the progressive
wing of his party.
No Labels supports
barring the purchase of guns until age 21 and universal background checks. It also believes in more and better community
policing and in prosecuting crimes and taking steps to avoid recidivism.
Haley believes in supporting
police, prosecuting criminals and investing to reduce recidivism.
image: the economist
Despite the criticism of
environmentalists, renewable energy grew under Trump. However, it clearly has done better under
Biden. Furthermore, Trump pulled us out
of the Paris Accord; if he is the preeminent negotiator that he claims to be,
why couldn’t he have made it better, instead of pulling out? This issue clearly favors Biden.
However, I think Biden
has done poorly, as explained above, because I take a broader view of energy
policy and how it impacts our economy, worldwide pollution, climate change and
geopolitics. Furthermore, why not review
the possibilities of nuclear power as well as LNG? I am concerned about nuclear waste long-term storage,
but the French seem to be very successful with nuclear power and it is good for
the climate.
I think more attention needs to be paid to the possibility
that hybrids are a better (or perhaps fairly close) alternative to electric
vehicles.
As noted above, No Labels supports renewables with a focus
on securing reliable access to adequate rare earth minerals.
Haley wants to promote environmental innovation rather than
rush to sell current electric vehicles with their rare earth mineral reliance
on China and the Congo and their heavy weight which could be a problem for our
roads.
image: the economist
This chart shows a 40% increase in three years under Trump,
and production now is only 1.5% higher than it was under Trump. Clearly if Trump had been re-elected, the
growth rate would have been much higher.
The key question, of course, is what is the preferred level of oil
production? I’d rather that oil be
produced in the USA than in Russia, Iran or Venezuela.
image: the economist
See my earlier comments
about immigration. I did not like the
way Trump hunted illegal aliens who had led a clean life in the USA, had worked
and paid taxes. Criticisms of Biden’s
record compared to Trump ignore that aspect.
However, Biden’s
rhetoric stimulated a significantly worse immigration crisis. “Catch and release” with trials scheduled
years into the future is a disaster. Biden
has continued some of Trump’s immigration policies. Shame on them!
image: the economist
Both Trump and Biden
rate low in approval. In today’s world,
it is hard to get a good approval rating.
Nonetheless, an inspirational leader who works to bring us together is
critical and would get much higher ratings.
