Decent v indecent: you know what I mean

The choice in the American presidential election is a simple one. One candidate is decent. The other is indecent. This is true in many areas.

The economy

Trump mismanaged the COVID-19 epidemic and tanked the economy. Biden revived it. It is now growing more strongly than the pre-COVID rate.

The US economy is outpacing other countries:

Trump gave tax cuts to the rich that were expensive and did not deliver on his promises.

Biden has been really good for manufacturing:

If those aren’t enough reasons to vote for Harris, here’s another one for those in red states. Your economies depend far more on government programs than those of blue states:

Trump aims to cut those programs, give more tax breaks to the wealthy, and pay for them with tariffs the poor will shoulder more than the rich:

Immigration

Comparison of Trump’s and Biden’s immigration policies is complicated. But the numbers of illegal crossings surged during the Biden Administration as the COVID-19 pandemic receded:

The percentage of the US population that is immigrant is close to the earlier peak in 1890:

But deportations under Biden have been higher than under Trump:

More important: the US needs workers and entrepreneurs. Those immigrants Trump wants to deport open about a quarter of the new businesses in the US each year. The US has had more job openings than unemployed workers since 2018, except for the period of the pandemic:

Massive deportation would make the shortage of workers worse, reigniting inflation (along with the Trump tariffs). Immigrants have had lower crime rates than the US-born for at least 150 years. There is simply no moral, economic, or law enforcement reason for mass deportations, which would be violent and expensive.

Social issues

I can understand people who don’t like the idea of abortion. I don’t like it either. But that is not the issue. The issue is who should decide whether to end a pregnancy. I can’t imagine anyone more appropriate to do that that the pregnant woman herself, particularly if it is done before the fetus can survive. That was what Roe v Wade allowed. It should be allowed again, in all states. Anything less than that is bound to lead to confusion and strife. Governments should have a strictly limited role.

I don’t worry too much about the movement to ban books in libraries, even though the number of challenges is rising sharply:

I’m sure banning will guarantee books are read more rather than less.

But I do worry about the efforts to limit what schools teach, particularly about slavery and racism. Slavery was an abominable institution that tortured millions of people and killed many of them. No one should graduate from an American high school without that understanding. Students should also understand that enslavement of Africans was vital to America’s–and the world’s–economy for several hundred years before it was abolished. The wealth it produced is still in the hands of descendants of those who did not produce it. I’m not sure what we can do about that, but we should all appreciate the facts.

Foreign policy

The main foreign policy differences are all too apparent. Trump will back Israel to the hilt and surrender Ukraine (or part of it) to Russia. Harris will back Ukraine so long as the Ukrainians want to fight and try to restrain Israel. It is unclear what Trump would do about Taiwan. If he follows his own lead from Ukraine, he would hand it to China. Harris would likely follow Biden’s backing for the status quo against Chinese encroachments. On China, belligerence is bipartisan. Not much daylight between them.

More generally, Harris will back US NATO and Asian allies. Trump will try to wriggle free of alliance commitments.

In the past he has threatened NATO allies with letting them be attacked if they don’t ante up to 2% of GDP spent on defense by 2024. Today that means mainly Italy (where significant numbers of US troops are based), Spain, Portugal, Belgium (where NATO headquarters are located), Slovenia, and Croatia. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine pushed the laggards over the 2% mark.

Trump has also suggested that Asian allies (South Korea and Japan) get their own nuclear weapons so that US forces can withdraw. That is a really bad idea.

Identity

Important as the issues above are, I suspect this election will come down to identity. The aging but wealthy heir Trump and the untested, fake hillbilly Vance are unabashed liars and fraudsters. They have tapped into a deep vein of white, especially male, supremacist feeling in the American population. It was always there, but they have allowed it to surface. Harris and Walz represent the opposite. The Vice President is an accomplished, well-educated Black woman running with an experienced white male as her second.

Many Americans won’t worry about the policy issues. They will vote on identity. Democrat v Republican, young v old, urban v suburban v rural, liberal v conservative, minority v majority, rich v poor. I hope they will also consider another dimension: decent v indecent. You know what I mean.

Please register and vote!