Wow, this is the most interesting reply I’ve gotten yet, because of just how much I agree with! I’m also a centrist. I also don’t want one party to gain too much power. And “since most things are actually pretty well tuned, incautious changes usually make things much worse” is such an articulate way of expressing exactly what one of my biggest political concerns is. I may steal that line! Ok, so to respond, it seems like the main points are: Media lies Don’t want drastic changes Trump had a successful presidency Other candidates are unimpressive Don’t want one party to have too much power
Media lies: I get this one. There’s something about seeing someone make false claims or bad arguments that pushes me to the other side. Interestingly for me, it cut the other way. I didn’t see much reporting about Trump in 2016 as much as I just heard him say things that were just blatantly false. Even getting past his continual bragging, he set a record for “pants on fire” statements. I wonder if I would have felt differently if I was mostly hearing media lies instead of Trump himself talking.
Don’t want drastic changes: Yes! 100%. I look at human history and see so much suffering, and we get to enjoy a peaceful life where I walk past strangers every day with no fear. And we have a political system where bribery is not the norm, people choose their leaders and laws, and leaders are supposed to serve rather than be served. I definitely believe in making things better, but just screwing with stuff without understanding it seems dangerous. Interestingly, this is actually one of my strongest reasons I don’t support Trump. Trump objectively has less knowledge of the inner workings of the political system than any other main-party candidate in my lifetime. And he also is pushing for change as strongly as the most progressive candidates out there. He wants to “drain the swamp”. He also set a record for administrative turnover. He has pushed for government shutdowns multiple times. To me, he totally seems like he’s coming in with a sledge-hammer. Most importantly to me, during his 2020 campaign, he repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. This is a gimme question that should be the center bingo tile for any candidate, but for him it wasn’t. Somehow a simple “yes, I’ll step down peacefully if that’s how the votes come in” was something he couldn’t say. This was a huge red flag for me, and when he then lied about the election, it confirmed my fears—that Trump wasn’t prepared to let go of power. That seems incredibly dangerous to me, and honestly, with no malice toward Trump himself, I think the best thing for our country would be if him and his family were thrown in prison as a result. Now, secretly, they could get carted off to a life of luxury in the bahamas or something, I don’t have any reason to want them to suffer at all, but I really need anyone considering a coup to believe there will be dire consequences for them.
Trump had a successful presidency: This one is really interesting. I had the exact opposite impression. There was tax reform passed, that’s a win. Other than that though, he failed to deliver on his promise of a wall or repealing obamacare (sure, because he had opposition, but it at least means he wasn’t successful crossing the aisle, if that’s a thing anyone can do nowadays). He had record administrative turnover and a brief trade war with China. And then, the big one, under his presidency, America hit number 1 in worldwide covid deaths, despite not being number 1 in population. Now, maybe none of this is his fault, but I certainly wouldn’t call it “success”. I’m curious if we have different sources of information, different ideas about what constitutes success, or just different emotional associations coming into his presidency that led us to opposite conclusions.
Other candidates are unimpressive: Yeah. I feel this one. I wish we had better. It feels like we keep getting stuck with picking the least worst candidate instead of the best. I guess I just have different values or views than a lot of people if those are the candidates that become popular enough to run. That said, I’ve been impressed by Kamala’s rhetoric this campaign. She talks about being a candidate for all Americans. She talks about wanting unity and conversation. She has committed to a peaceful transfer of power, and talks about respecting the will of the people. Is it all just talk? Maybe, but talk matters. How has my life really changed since 2016? Mainly, I feel I’ve become disconnected from a lot of people, and people write eachother off more now and find less common ground. It feels like so many conversations are shiboleths for “are you with us or with them?”. That is the real impact Trump has had on my life, and it has primarily been from how he talks. He constantly uses “us vs them” framing in his speech, he broke all sorts of ettiquette norms for talking to and about other candidates. He is almost always airing a grievance or bragging about himself and his people. I feel that’s the thing that has actually impacted my day to day life, and I prefer a candidate who at least espouses positive values. And hey, maybe it’s not all talk! I’m willing to give her or anyone else willing to say they want to work with the other side in this political climate a chance.
Don’t want one party to have too much power: Completely agree. My voting strategy used to be to split my vote. I liked Obama as a candidate and voted for him twice, so I went into 2016 fully intending to vote Republican. And I would have happily voted for Jeb Bush, or Kasich. But, the Republican party put Trump up instead and started the transformation into what we see today. I think this was a mistake. I’m actually afraid that the left will get too much power because I think the Republican party has abandoned truth and goodness and will eventually collapse because a core of “us vs them” anger isn’t sustainable. I wish we had the old Republican party. I would happily vote for Bush, McCain, or Romney. But we now have an anti-vax, anti-fact checking, anti-higher education, anti-free press party that won’t admit when it lost an election, and as much as I fear how this is going to slingshot back too far left, I’m busy avoiding the current dumpster fire. I’m curious: what do you think about the current GOP vs the GOP 20 years ago?
In conclusion, I think we have a lot of the same beliefs/values, and it’s super interesting to me that we ended up on opposite sides of the “trump divider”. If you have any hypotheses on how that happened, definitely share them!
That got very long. (Over 19,100 characters.). Feel free to ignore parts of it. TL;DR: Trump has a lot of faults but I should reiterate that I really do think Trump was a good president by my standards and I think there is a very high chance the he would be again, though it is far from certain. My reason really is just that I think he was a dramatically better president than I expected he would be when I begrudgingly vote for him.
Sometimes I have to correct for my tendencies to go the opposite way as people are trying to push me, but overall it seems like a useful way to be if I want to come up with what my actual personal beliefs are. Does Trump say things that are blatantly untrue sometimes? Yeah, and I really wish there were candidates I could select that just didn’t do that. I actually hate lying and liars so much. Give me an honest person that goes against what I want and believe and I will at least grudgingly respect it (if I can determine that is true, of course.) I don’t think we’ve had an honest candidate since George W Bush (and maybe not even then since I wasn’t paying attention during his initial election), though in some cases I have only determined that I believe they were dishonest after the election.
My personal definition of lying might be relevant to the discussion. ‘Lying is attempting to trick people into believing things that are either known to be false to the speaker or to which there is no genuine effort to correspond to reality.’
It is the first part being missing that makes me think he isn’t as much a liar as many other politicians. Trump isn’t trying to trick people in general, while his opponents are, so I consider his opponents to be lying and him to simply be a poor source of truth. That said, I do despise his lack of care, and sometimes consider it egregious (he definitely has often fallen under the ‘there is no genuine effort to correspond to reality’ part, which I would count as ‘negligent lying’ if he is trying to trick people. This is obviously very bad even when it isn’t lying.).
I do believe he is dishonest, and wish that weren’t the case. I think that the reason the word ‘trick’ for lying is important is that I wouldn’t consider something like a fictional story or a song or whatever to be lying in and of itself even though it is obviously false. He believes what he says, it just often isn’t true because he didn’t bother to check.
I believe that one of the reasons people claim Trump is more dishonest is that he uses fewer qualifiers that make things arguable, while something similar to what he said is often enough actually true, but other politicians are more legalistic liars, carefully not actually saying anything that can be easily checked. In other words, Trump says more things that are false while his opponents say things that are (intentionally) far more misleading and pernicious. This is probably where people came up with the ‘seriously but not literally’ claim about how you should interpret Trump. (Though don’t count on me to know what is going on inside other people’s minds. Mind reading is rude and we aren’t good at it. Yes, this makes it harder to know when other people are lying.) Obviously saying false things is not a good qualification for president, but I have to grade on a curve to an extent.
“I look at human history and see so much suffering, and we get to enjoy a peaceful life where I walk past strangers every day with no fear.” is a good way of describing what society is for, though I would go further. We want the correct response to seeing said stranger to be ‘Yay! Another person!’ rather than ‘How do I protect myself?’ or even ‘ugh! How annoying.‘. Obviously we aren’t at ‘Yay!’ in general, but it is a nice goal, and we are so much closer than societies used to be to it. Early on, society focused more on just reducing the danger level, and now we are at a point when we can carefully try to improve beyond just safety. Some people, mostly Democrats but an increasing portion of dissatisfied Republicans (who are often Trump supporters) don’t seem to realize that it needs to be careful. Trump is not the most careful person in his personal life, but he isn’t trying to upend things politically due to his personal moderation on many political topics.
Lack of fear in general might be part of why people focus so much hostility on politics, which is one of the few places left where there are very large genuine conflicts that aren’t personal (to the average citizen). Politics is actually sort of a safe outlet for many people, which has many unfortunate effects, but at least means they feel like it is okay to do so and it won’t lead to them being harmed. In many times and places, having a discussion like this about a controversial political figure who was once the leader, and may be again, would be a very bad idea, but for most of us it is very safe.
His signature desires like immigration reduction seem largely aimed at patching the safeness of our society, though I would actually like to see immigration increased, just more carefully chosen for the good of people already present in our society.
His fandom of tariffs seems the same way. I don’t like them. but I get why they seem like a good idea to some people and find them less harmful than many other attempted patches.
If you look at the actual changes Trump has made, they have been very limited. Small reductions in immigration, small reductions in regulatory burden, a reduction in new wars, small increases in economic efficiency, small reductions in tax burden, and a new segment of society feeling heard, lowering the likelihood of going outside the system.
His judge appointments have made flashy changes, but these decisions mostly just revert things to letting the states decide and moving closer to following the actual laws and constitution of the country. Luckily, those aren’t actually big changes, and the fact that people think they are is just one of the signs that our society is currently functional.
Also, you seem to be coming at this from an angle of ‘How big are the changes to government?’ whereas I am thinking more ‘How big are the changes to society?’ The former is larger under Trump, and the latter is smaller.
He seems to see large portions of the government as intractably opposed to their duty in serving the country, and unfortunately I agree with that, so I am more okay with large changes involving the government if I think they are narrowly tailored against those elements and won’t have much spillover into society. (I do wish they were more carefully targeted.) If you want the internal workings of the government to stay as they are, I do agree that Trump is not the right selection for that.
That said, it seems pretty clear to me that Trump doesn’t actually want to reduce government as much as your average Republican, (or increase it to the same extent as your average Democrat,) which sort of paints him as moderate? Drain the swamp was ostensibly about removing corruption, and I actually believe that was the real meaning (though corruption claims are often used to consolidate power around the one claiming it in other countries, so we should be careful about that).
Also, to mention the judges again, I think the judges Trump has appointed are more than willing to rule against him on anything that is hard to support based on the way the system is supposed to work. Trump has not created a cadre of loyal flunkies that will just go along with his big changes. A large number of people think he will try harder on that this time, but he does only have one term if he wins and I’m not convinced that he will try to do so.
I can’t agree that Trump wanting the votes to be correctly counted (which is clearly how he conceives of it) should lead to him being jailed. I don’t think he actually did anything genuinely illegal (though a number of people are trying to claim he did). I think he did just let go of power, after going through all the genuinely legal approaches he had available. That doesn’t stop him from constantly complaining about it of course, but I believe that even obsessive interest in the issue isn’t criminal.
On January 6th, there was no attempted coup (just a riot which is bad, but not the same kind of thing), congress was not in real danger, and Trump did not support it. (I responded a bit more in depth to another comment about that issue as well.) It is highly unlikely anyone will be persuaded about those matters of course since everyone has heard a lot about it.
Trump’s successes (Keep in mind that I expect presidents to largely fail): Lower taxes (letting people spend their money on what they want, not what the government wants) Improved economy/improved buying power A measured approach to foreign policy that keeps in mind our actual goals A foreign policy that allows other countries to take responsibility for themselves No new wars for us and reduction in old ones Few new wars in the world A lessening of border issues (aside from the grandstanding by both sides) Minor increases in freedom (from reduced regulatory burdens) Minor counterfactual increases in freedom (from not increasing regulatory burdens like his opponents want) A reduction in the rate of large changes in the law (though this was not always his preferred outcome) Returning some authority to the states or people by legislative means Returning some authority to the states or people by judicial decisions involving his appointed judges
Not repealing Obamacare is a failure on one of his campaign goals. It was by the singular vote of a guy with a personal animosity toward Trump, and who had a brain tumor that killed him, and thus had nothing to lose. I personally believe that McCain’s act was malfeasance since he actually campaigned himself on eliminating it (unless I am conflating him with other Republicans), but McCain saw himself as a defender of the old order, a not uncommon thing among conservatives. Trump did eliminate the mandate to buy insurance (which is the truly offensive part to me).
Not getting political buy in for the wall is also a failure of one of Trump’s campaign goals, but he did notably improve border security during his presidency. (Which promptly got worse again after Biden won. The wall would have been helpful.)
I admit that I don’t think of Covid as being a significant determiner in how I should think of Trump’s presidency (nor Biden’s). I honestly stopped paying attention to it a long time ago and never was super worried about it. (Perhaps this is partially due to personal experience: When I got Covid it sucked, but not any more than many other illnesses I have gotten in my life. It was perhaps slightly above average discomfort, but far less than things like the flu were when I was younger. I actually got the flu early in 2020 too and that was much worse. The rest of the family seemed to think the flu was worse too.)
As I recall, death rates from Covid are highly dependent on things like age, demographics, and preexisting health issues which Trump could hardly have been expected to change on his own. The presidency is powerful, but not that powerful, and the US death rate would be expected due to preexisting conditions. The things he did like closing the border were reasonable, though a little too late to actually be helpful.
His ‘operation warp speed’ did genuinely help the world to get vaccines very quickly compared to normal by paring back regulatory burdens, though it should have gone further. (Things like human challenge trials to immediately know whether the vaccines worked when developed could have cut several more months off the time, since the actual development only took a small number of weeks and safety testing could have been rolled into initial deployments as the factories started producing them.). We could have had vaccines before there were many deaths at all.
Death rates were overreported while I was paying attention (the famous, ‘with covid or because of covid’ thing is a big difference in the reported death rates between not just countries, but even states and counties in the US).
Also, I don’t believe statistics from places like China (who were clearly faking) or India (who are pretty third world in a lot of places, according to Wikipedia, the 125th to 136th in GDP per capita, which leads me to thinking they barely have real statistics in the country, though that could just be my prejudice). Those are the only countries with more population than the US. Also, the other countries with large numbers of people are generally pretty young (and thus not susceptible to such death rates) even if I did believe them. If I am not wrong, you have to get down to Japan which is vastly less populous than the US to find the next country with enough of an elderly population.
I honestly think that most of the damage from Covid was overreaction (like shutting down ‘nonessential’ businesses and screwing up supply lines in a way that lasted for years). Covid just isn’t a super deadly disease, and we changed the way society worked for years to a massive degree because of it. I believe that hurting the economy both directly and indirectly increases death rate substantially, just not in ways we know how to count.
Covid overreaches were mostly state level, though the CDC behaved like clowns. Trump was clearly not an expert on infectious diseases, and didn’t pretend to be. Unfortunately, the experts were themselves to blame for much that went wrong. (Unfortunately, the elderly often die from other Coronaviruses too, and when I heard what the general death rate from Coronaviruses in the elderly was, it was kind of shocking, though I don’t really remember what it was now. Coronaviruses that you haven’t encountered before don’t get antibodies quickly enough in the very old, and covid was genuinely novel to immune systems.)
A bias I probably should have thought to mention in my initial take on his presidency is that my life and the life of most people directly around me got better during Trump’s presidency, while during Obama’s and Biden’s they got clearly worse. In late 2019 and 2020 (despite Covid stuff) my life was so dramatically better than it had been before. Note: I don’t think this had anything to do with Trump but subconsciously I obviously would think ‘how do the years when he was president compare to other years?’ And I actually think that is a good idea since people can hardly know the actual effects of the changes over the period. This is likely a strong effect.
I always disliked Hillary, but I think Kamala Harris is much worse for some reason it is hard to determine. Honestly, I wouldn’t trust a anything Harris would say after her stint as Attorney general of California and I thought she was dramatically worse and more corrupt as a candidate for Senator than the other Democrat (who I did vote for because I found that despite not agreeing on policy, she seemed like a decent person and fairly moderate Democrat). I honestly don’t remember the original cause of said antipathy against Kamala, but I trust it for some reason. Obviously that isn’t convincing for other people (and rightfully so). Most California attorney generals and senators are people I disapprove of policy wise, but I think about them vastly less negatively.
She’s not my least favorite Californian politician (“Hi, Newsome.”) but she is probably second or third. I can’t actually bring to mind much of what she did representing California. (I do tend to especially dislike San Francisco Democrats. In my part of California, which is purple, the Democrats are nothing like San Francisco ones, at least when they are campaigning, though statewide tends more towards San Francisco style.)
As for Walz, he seems to be an extreme liar, (though I can’t necessarily trust that judgment since I haven’t researched him much,) though that is sadly par for the course these days in candidates. While, he’s pretty par for the course, I still hate it. Also, and this is a very untrustworthy judgment based off very limited information, he seems like a deeply angry and sanctimonious person. I think that one of the other answers mentioning that Democrats are very sanctimonious is part of what I don’t like about high profile national Democrats. I should probably research Walz more, but I doubt I will? Hopefully he doesn’t stay nationally relevant and I don’t have to think about him again? I don’t honestly have an opinion on JD Vance aside from thinking that his wife speaks well so I can’t really compare the two.
I do think I should put more effort into determining whether or not JD Vance is a decent backup president (which is one of his main jobs and the only one where he isn’t mostly a figurehead), but I honestly tend to put off a lot of my research on things until late in the cycle, and I already know I won’t vote for Kamala under any reasonably foreseeable circumstances, so I am paying a bit less attention to that. If it were to turn out Vance was bad enough, that would be a good reason not to vote for Trump, but would not be a reason to vote for Kamala.
Remember that I think the Dems are much more powerful on the national scene in almost all parts of society other than politics, and I’ve seen what happens when they get too powerful (in my state). I wouldn’t be shocked if the Dems managed to nearly maintain their current level of power even if they are soundly defeated at the national political level. In part, that is a bit of why the Republicans need to win, because the Dems will crush them if they don’t. (That could be biased by the fact that I am Californian, which means I watch the Dems routinely crush the Republicans. Perhaps I am overestimating the strength of the Dems and underestimating their foes.) That the Dems are stronger than ever is both an indictment against Trump, and a reason the Republicans need to win; the Dems will crush them if the Republicans lose many more times and we might be in for 20 years of pure Dem victories.
Honestly, I prefer the old Republicans too. By a lot. They were much more my style. I miss that era of the GOP.
I get why it changed though. Twenty years ago (also 40), the Republicans were genuinely trying to improve the world in a usually conservative way (which I am very much up for in many cases), but a decade ago, Republicans were using a ‘death with dignity’ strategy rather than fighting like Trump does, and people got tired of electing Republicans who were too concerned with their dignity to act, ceding cultural victory to the Democrats.
Losing slowly is not a popular strategy with voters most of the time. Trump basically did a hostile takeover of the Republican party, and did improve its chances of succeeding at Republican goals, though it also tossed some Republican goals aside and increased the chance that the Democrats would win enduring major victories quickly. I do think that the changes to the party aren’t necessarily permanent whether or not the Republicans win, but that would be because it could always change again.
If Trump wins, I think that could lead to a lot of reforms in the Republican party that would marry parts of their old style with a willingness to fight, but that probably doesn’t happen if Trump loses and his faction of the party gets repudiated.
That isn’t entirely bad, I don’t like a lot of the ideological changes and want a careful approach, but I am more worried about the power of the other team (and some of the ideological changes are good). Once your opponents know you won’t fight, you are doomed. Even worse would be if his faction gets more extreme after losing and it is the rest of the Republicans that get booted.
Also, I very strongly think that every country should be led by leaders that want to make the country great. ‘Make Liechtenstein Great’ should be the slogan of the leaders of Liechtenstein. Whatever that means to the people of Liechtenstein. This holds even for countries like China that I think very poorly of.
Wow, this is the most interesting reply I’ve gotten yet, because of just how much I agree with! I’m also a centrist. I also don’t want one party to gain too much power. And “since most things are actually pretty well tuned, incautious changes usually make things much worse” is such an articulate way of expressing exactly what one of my biggest political concerns is. I may steal that line!
Ok, so to respond, it seems like the main points are:
Media lies
Don’t want drastic changes
Trump had a successful presidency
Other candidates are unimpressive
Don’t want one party to have too much power
Media lies: I get this one. There’s something about seeing someone make false claims or bad arguments that pushes me to the other side. Interestingly for me, it cut the other way. I didn’t see much reporting about Trump in 2016 as much as I just heard him say things that were just blatantly false. Even getting past his continual bragging, he set a record for “pants on fire” statements. I wonder if I would have felt differently if I was mostly hearing media lies instead of Trump himself talking.
Don’t want drastic changes: Yes! 100%. I look at human history and see so much suffering, and we get to enjoy a peaceful life where I walk past strangers every day with no fear. And we have a political system where bribery is not the norm, people choose their leaders and laws, and leaders are supposed to serve rather than be served. I definitely believe in making things better, but just screwing with stuff without understanding it seems dangerous.
Interestingly, this is actually one of my strongest reasons I don’t support Trump. Trump objectively has less knowledge of the inner workings of the political system than any other main-party candidate in my lifetime. And he also is pushing for change as strongly as the most progressive candidates out there. He wants to “drain the swamp”. He also set a record for administrative turnover. He has pushed for government shutdowns multiple times. To me, he totally seems like he’s coming in with a sledge-hammer.
Most importantly to me, during his 2020 campaign, he repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. This is a gimme question that should be the center bingo tile for any candidate, but for him it wasn’t. Somehow a simple “yes, I’ll step down peacefully if that’s how the votes come in” was something he couldn’t say. This was a huge red flag for me, and when he then lied about the election, it confirmed my fears—that Trump wasn’t prepared to let go of power. That seems incredibly dangerous to me, and honestly, with no malice toward Trump himself, I think the best thing for our country would be if him and his family were thrown in prison as a result. Now, secretly, they could get carted off to a life of luxury in the bahamas or something, I don’t have any reason to want them to suffer at all, but I really need anyone considering a coup to believe there will be dire consequences for them.
Trump had a successful presidency: This one is really interesting. I had the exact opposite impression. There was tax reform passed, that’s a win. Other than that though, he failed to deliver on his promise of a wall or repealing obamacare (sure, because he had opposition, but it at least means he wasn’t successful crossing the aisle, if that’s a thing anyone can do nowadays). He had record administrative turnover and a brief trade war with China. And then, the big one, under his presidency, America hit number 1 in worldwide covid deaths, despite not being number 1 in population. Now, maybe none of this is his fault, but I certainly wouldn’t call it “success”. I’m curious if we have different sources of information, different ideas about what constitutes success, or just different emotional associations coming into his presidency that led us to opposite conclusions.
Other candidates are unimpressive: Yeah. I feel this one. I wish we had better. It feels like we keep getting stuck with picking the least worst candidate instead of the best. I guess I just have different values or views than a lot of people if those are the candidates that become popular enough to run.
That said, I’ve been impressed by Kamala’s rhetoric this campaign. She talks about being a candidate for all Americans. She talks about wanting unity and conversation. She has committed to a peaceful transfer of power, and talks about respecting the will of the people. Is it all just talk? Maybe, but talk matters. How has my life really changed since 2016? Mainly, I feel I’ve become disconnected from a lot of people, and people write eachother off more now and find less common ground. It feels like so many conversations are shiboleths for “are you with us or with them?”. That is the real impact Trump has had on my life, and it has primarily been from how he talks. He constantly uses “us vs them” framing in his speech, he broke all sorts of ettiquette norms for talking to and about other candidates. He is almost always airing a grievance or bragging about himself and his people. I feel that’s the thing that has actually impacted my day to day life, and I prefer a candidate who at least espouses positive values. And hey, maybe it’s not all talk! I’m willing to give her or anyone else willing to say they want to work with the other side in this political climate a chance.
Don’t want one party to have too much power: Completely agree. My voting strategy used to be to split my vote. I liked Obama as a candidate and voted for him twice, so I went into 2016 fully intending to vote Republican. And I would have happily voted for Jeb Bush, or Kasich. But, the Republican party put Trump up instead and started the transformation into what we see today. I think this was a mistake. I’m actually afraid that the left will get too much power because I think the Republican party has abandoned truth and goodness and will eventually collapse because a core of “us vs them” anger isn’t sustainable. I wish we had the old Republican party. I would happily vote for Bush, McCain, or Romney. But we now have an anti-vax, anti-fact checking, anti-higher education, anti-free press party that won’t admit when it lost an election, and as much as I fear how this is going to slingshot back too far left, I’m busy avoiding the current dumpster fire. I’m curious: what do you think about the current GOP vs the GOP 20 years ago?
In conclusion, I think we have a lot of the same beliefs/values, and it’s super interesting to me that we ended up on opposite sides of the “trump divider”. If you have any hypotheses on how that happened, definitely share them!
That got very long. (Over 19,100 characters.). Feel free to ignore parts of it. TL;DR: Trump has a lot of faults but I should reiterate that I really do think Trump was a good president by my standards and I think there is a very high chance the he would be again, though it is far from certain. My reason really is just that I think he was a dramatically better president than I expected he would be when I begrudgingly vote for him.
Sometimes I have to correct for my tendencies to go the opposite way as people are trying to push me, but overall it seems like a useful way to be if I want to come up with what my actual personal beliefs are.
Does Trump say things that are blatantly untrue sometimes? Yeah, and I really wish there were candidates I could select that just didn’t do that. I actually hate lying and liars so much. Give me an honest person that goes against what I want and believe and I will at least grudgingly respect it (if I can determine that is true, of course.) I don’t think we’ve had an honest candidate since George W Bush (and maybe not even then since I wasn’t paying attention during his initial election), though in some cases I have only determined that I believe they were dishonest after the election.
My personal definition of lying might be relevant to the discussion. ‘Lying is attempting to trick people into believing things that are either known to be false to the speaker or to which there is no genuine effort to correspond to reality.’
It is the first part being missing that makes me think he isn’t as much a liar as many other politicians. Trump isn’t trying to trick people in general, while his opponents are, so I consider his opponents to be lying and him to simply be a poor source of truth. That said, I do despise his lack of care, and sometimes consider it egregious (he definitely has often fallen under the ‘there is no genuine effort to correspond to reality’ part, which I would count as ‘negligent lying’ if he is trying to trick people. This is obviously very bad even when it isn’t lying.).
I do believe he is dishonest, and wish that weren’t the case. I think that the reason the word ‘trick’ for lying is important is that I wouldn’t consider something like a fictional story or a song or whatever to be lying in and of itself even though it is obviously false. He believes what he says, it just often isn’t true because he didn’t bother to check.
I believe that one of the reasons people claim Trump is more dishonest is that he uses fewer qualifiers that make things arguable, while something similar to what he said is often enough actually true, but other politicians are more legalistic liars, carefully not actually saying anything that can be easily checked. In other words, Trump says more things that are false while his opponents say things that are (intentionally) far more misleading and pernicious. This is probably where people came up with the ‘seriously but not literally’ claim about how you should interpret Trump. (Though don’t count on me to know what is going on inside other people’s minds. Mind reading is rude and we aren’t good at it. Yes, this makes it harder to know when other people are lying.)
Obviously saying false things is not a good qualification for president, but I have to grade on a curve to an extent.
“I look at human history and see so much suffering, and we get to enjoy a peaceful life where I walk past strangers every day with no fear.” is a good way of describing what society is for, though I would go further. We want the correct response to seeing said stranger to be ‘Yay! Another person!’ rather than ‘How do I protect myself?’ or even ‘ugh! How annoying.‘. Obviously we aren’t at ‘Yay!’ in general, but it is a nice goal, and we are so much closer than societies used to be to it. Early on, society focused more on just reducing the danger level, and now we are at a point when we can carefully try to improve beyond just safety. Some people, mostly Democrats but an increasing portion of dissatisfied Republicans (who are often Trump supporters) don’t seem to realize that it needs to be careful. Trump is not the most careful person in his personal life, but he isn’t trying to upend things politically due to his personal moderation on many political topics.
Lack of fear in general might be part of why people focus so much hostility on politics, which is one of the few places left where there are very large genuine conflicts that aren’t personal (to the average citizen). Politics is actually sort of a safe outlet for many people, which has many unfortunate effects, but at least means they feel like it is okay to do so and it won’t lead to them being harmed. In many times and places, having a discussion like this about a controversial political figure who was once the leader, and may be again, would be a very bad idea, but for most of us it is very safe.
His signature desires like immigration reduction seem largely aimed at patching the safeness of our society, though I would actually like to see immigration increased, just more carefully chosen for the good of people already present in our society.
His fandom of tariffs seems the same way. I don’t like them. but I get why they seem like a good idea to some people and find them less harmful than many other attempted patches.
If you look at the actual changes Trump has made, they have been very limited. Small reductions in immigration, small reductions in regulatory burden, a reduction in new wars, small increases in economic efficiency, small reductions in tax burden, and a new segment of society feeling heard, lowering the likelihood of going outside the system.
His judge appointments have made flashy changes, but these decisions mostly just revert things to letting the states decide and moving closer to following the actual laws and constitution of the country. Luckily, those aren’t actually big changes, and the fact that people think they are is just one of the signs that our society is currently functional.
Also, you seem to be coming at this from an angle of ‘How big are the changes to government?’ whereas I am thinking more ‘How big are the changes to society?’ The former is larger under Trump, and the latter is smaller.
He seems to see large portions of the government as intractably opposed to their duty in serving the country, and unfortunately I agree with that, so I am more okay with large changes involving the government if I think they are narrowly tailored against those elements and won’t have much spillover into society. (I do wish they were more carefully targeted.) If you want the internal workings of the government to stay as they are, I do agree that Trump is not the right selection for that.
That said, it seems pretty clear to me that Trump doesn’t actually want to reduce government as much as your average Republican, (or increase it to the same extent as your average Democrat,) which sort of paints him as moderate? Drain the swamp was ostensibly about removing corruption, and I actually believe that was the real meaning (though corruption claims are often used to consolidate power around the one claiming it in other countries, so we should be careful about that).
Also, to mention the judges again, I think the judges Trump has appointed are more than willing to rule against him on anything that is hard to support based on the way the system is supposed to work. Trump has not created a cadre of loyal flunkies that will just go along with his big changes. A large number of people think he will try harder on that this time, but he does only have one term if he wins and I’m not convinced that he will try to do so.
I can’t agree that Trump wanting the votes to be correctly counted (which is clearly how he conceives of it) should lead to him being jailed. I don’t think he actually did anything genuinely illegal (though a number of people are trying to claim he did). I think he did just let go of power, after going through all the genuinely legal approaches he had available. That doesn’t stop him from constantly complaining about it of course, but I believe that even obsessive interest in the issue isn’t criminal.
On January 6th, there was no attempted coup (just a riot which is bad, but not the same kind of thing), congress was not in real danger, and Trump did not support it. (I responded a bit more in depth to another comment about that issue as well.) It is highly unlikely anyone will be persuaded about those matters of course since everyone has heard a lot about it.
Trump’s successes (Keep in mind that I expect presidents to largely fail):
Lower taxes (letting people spend their money on what they want, not what the government wants)
Improved economy/improved buying power
A measured approach to foreign policy that keeps in mind our actual goals
A foreign policy that allows other countries to take responsibility for themselves
No new wars for us and reduction in old ones
Few new wars in the world
A lessening of border issues (aside from the grandstanding by both sides)
Minor increases in freedom (from reduced regulatory burdens)
Minor counterfactual increases in freedom (from not increasing regulatory burdens like his opponents want)
A reduction in the rate of large changes in the law (though this was not always his preferred outcome)
Returning some authority to the states or people by legislative means
Returning some authority to the states or people by judicial decisions involving his appointed judges
Not repealing Obamacare is a failure on one of his campaign goals. It was by the singular vote of a guy with a personal animosity toward Trump, and who had a brain tumor that killed him, and thus had nothing to lose. I personally believe that McCain’s act was malfeasance since he actually campaigned himself on eliminating it (unless I am conflating him with other Republicans), but McCain saw himself as a defender of the old order, a not uncommon thing among conservatives. Trump did eliminate the mandate to buy insurance (which is the truly offensive part to me).
Not getting political buy in for the wall is also a failure of one of Trump’s campaign goals, but he did notably improve border security during his presidency. (Which promptly got worse again after Biden won. The wall would have been helpful.)
I admit that I don’t think of Covid as being a significant determiner in how I should think of Trump’s presidency (nor Biden’s). I honestly stopped paying attention to it a long time ago and never was super worried about it. (Perhaps this is partially due to personal experience: When I got Covid it sucked, but not any more than many other illnesses I have gotten in my life. It was perhaps slightly above average discomfort, but far less than things like the flu were when I was younger. I actually got the flu early in 2020 too and that was much worse. The rest of the family seemed to think the flu was worse too.)
As I recall, death rates from Covid are highly dependent on things like age, demographics, and preexisting health issues which Trump could hardly have been expected to change on his own. The presidency is powerful, but not that powerful, and the US death rate would be expected due to preexisting conditions. The things he did like closing the border were reasonable, though a little too late to actually be helpful.
His ‘operation warp speed’ did genuinely help the world to get vaccines very quickly compared to normal by paring back regulatory burdens, though it should have gone further. (Things like human challenge trials to immediately know whether the vaccines worked when developed could have cut several more months off the time, since the actual development only took a small number of weeks and safety testing could have been rolled into initial deployments as the factories started producing them.). We could have had vaccines before there were many deaths at all.
Death rates were overreported while I was paying attention (the famous, ‘with covid or because of covid’ thing is a big difference in the reported death rates between not just countries, but even states and counties in the US).
Also, I don’t believe statistics from places like China (who were clearly faking) or India (who are pretty third world in a lot of places, according to Wikipedia, the 125th to 136th in GDP per capita, which leads me to thinking they barely have real statistics in the country, though that could just be my prejudice). Those are the only countries with more population than the US. Also, the other countries with large numbers of people are generally pretty young (and thus not susceptible to such death rates) even if I did believe them. If I am not wrong, you have to get down to Japan which is vastly less populous than the US to find the next country with enough of an elderly population.
I honestly think that most of the damage from Covid was overreaction (like shutting down ‘nonessential’ businesses and screwing up supply lines in a way that lasted for years). Covid just isn’t a super deadly disease, and we changed the way society worked for years to a massive degree because of it. I believe that hurting the economy both directly and indirectly increases death rate substantially, just not in ways we know how to count.
Covid overreaches were mostly state level, though the CDC behaved like clowns. Trump was clearly not an expert on infectious diseases, and didn’t pretend to be. Unfortunately, the experts were themselves to blame for much that went wrong. (Unfortunately, the elderly often die from other Coronaviruses too, and when I heard what the general death rate from Coronaviruses in the elderly was, it was kind of shocking, though I don’t really remember what it was now. Coronaviruses that you haven’t encountered before don’t get antibodies quickly enough in the very old, and covid was genuinely novel to immune systems.)
A bias I probably should have thought to mention in my initial take on his presidency is that my life and the life of most people directly around me got better during Trump’s presidency, while during Obama’s and Biden’s they got clearly worse. In late 2019 and 2020 (despite Covid stuff) my life was so dramatically better than it had been before. Note: I don’t think this had anything to do with Trump but subconsciously I obviously would think ‘how do the years when he was president compare to other years?’ And I actually think that is a good idea since people can hardly know the actual effects of the changes over the period. This is likely a strong effect.
I always disliked Hillary, but I think Kamala Harris is much worse for some reason it is hard to determine. Honestly, I wouldn’t trust a anything Harris would say after her stint as Attorney general of California and I thought she was dramatically worse and more corrupt as a candidate for Senator than the other Democrat (who I did vote for because I found that despite not agreeing on policy, she seemed like a decent person and fairly moderate Democrat). I honestly don’t remember the original cause of said antipathy against Kamala, but I trust it for some reason. Obviously that isn’t convincing for other people (and rightfully so). Most California attorney generals and senators are people I disapprove of policy wise, but I think about them vastly less negatively.
She’s not my least favorite Californian politician (“Hi, Newsome.”) but she is probably second or third. I can’t actually bring to mind much of what she did representing California. (I do tend to especially dislike San Francisco Democrats. In my part of California, which is purple, the Democrats are nothing like San Francisco ones, at least when they are campaigning, though statewide tends more towards San Francisco style.)
As for Walz, he seems to be an extreme liar, (though I can’t necessarily trust that judgment since I haven’t researched him much,) though that is sadly par for the course these days in candidates. While, he’s pretty par for the course, I still hate it. Also, and this is a very untrustworthy judgment based off very limited information, he seems like a deeply angry and sanctimonious person. I think that one of the other answers mentioning that Democrats are very sanctimonious is part of what I don’t like about high profile national Democrats. I should probably research Walz more, but I doubt I will? Hopefully he doesn’t stay nationally relevant and I don’t have to think about him again? I don’t honestly have an opinion on JD Vance aside from thinking that his wife speaks well so I can’t really compare the two.
I do think I should put more effort into determining whether or not JD Vance is a decent backup president (which is one of his main jobs and the only one where he isn’t mostly a figurehead), but I honestly tend to put off a lot of my research on things until late in the cycle, and I already know I won’t vote for Kamala under any reasonably foreseeable circumstances, so I am paying a bit less attention to that. If it were to turn out Vance was bad enough, that would be a good reason not to vote for Trump, but would not be a reason to vote for Kamala.
Remember that I think the Dems are much more powerful on the national scene in almost all parts of society other than politics, and I’ve seen what happens when they get too powerful (in my state). I wouldn’t be shocked if the Dems managed to nearly maintain their current level of power even if they are soundly defeated at the national political level. In part, that is a bit of why the Republicans need to win, because the Dems will crush them if they don’t. (That could be biased by the fact that I am Californian, which means I watch the Dems routinely crush the Republicans. Perhaps I am overestimating the strength of the Dems and underestimating their foes.) That the Dems are stronger than ever is both an indictment against Trump, and a reason the Republicans need to win; the Dems will crush them if the Republicans lose many more times and we might be in for 20 years of pure Dem victories.
Honestly, I prefer the old Republicans too. By a lot. They were much more my style. I miss that era of the GOP.
I get why it changed though. Twenty years ago (also 40), the Republicans were genuinely trying to improve the world in a usually conservative way (which I am very much up for in many cases), but a decade ago, Republicans were using a ‘death with dignity’ strategy rather than fighting like Trump does, and people got tired of electing Republicans who were too concerned with their dignity to act, ceding cultural victory to the Democrats.
Losing slowly is not a popular strategy with voters most of the time. Trump basically did a hostile takeover of the Republican party, and did improve its chances of succeeding at Republican goals, though it also tossed some Republican goals aside and increased the chance that the Democrats would win enduring major victories quickly. I do think that the changes to the party aren’t necessarily permanent whether or not the Republicans win, but that would be because it could always change again.
If Trump wins, I think that could lead to a lot of reforms in the Republican party that would marry parts of their old style with a willingness to fight, but that probably doesn’t happen if Trump loses and his faction of the party gets repudiated.
That isn’t entirely bad, I don’t like a lot of the ideological changes and want a careful approach, but I am more worried about the power of the other team (and some of the ideological changes are good). Once your opponents know you won’t fight, you are doomed. Even worse would be if his faction gets more extreme after losing and it is the rest of the Republicans that get booted.
Also, I very strongly think that every country should be led by leaders that want to make the country great. ‘Make Liechtenstein Great’ should be the slogan of the leaders of Liechtenstein. Whatever that means to the people of Liechtenstein. This holds even for countries like China that I think very poorly of.