Sunday Issues-October 13, 2024
Harris should be winning by a landslide.
Election Day is 22 days away. Why isn’t Harris winning in a landslide? That is the issue of the week.
For well over a year, much of the mainstream media has been on a mission—keeping Donald Trump from returning to office. Trump and his allies have condemned that mission as “Trump-hating,” a manifestation of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Trump has promised retribution against the “fake media,” and, ironically, some of the ex-president’s followers have slammed those who suggest he wants to be a dictator as not understanding that what Trump says is often not what he’ll do.
We all have Trump fatigue, but that will end in about three weeks, at least if Trump loses and concedes the election. My fingers are crossed.
If Trump is to be defeated, common sense must prevail on election day. Voters must decide which of the two candidates they want in the White House. But how should they make that decision?
Earlier this week, I jotted down a brief list of criteria that, if common sense is to prevail, voters should ideally use. I made the list short because too many voters don’t invest much time in making what should be a major decision, despite the fact that the outcome of the election could dramatically impact their lives.
Here are my criteria—and how they apply to each of the two candidates:
Integrity. We should want an honest person in the White House. Trump is not honest. As I noted above, when he is called a liar by some of us, his supporters respond by saying, “It’s only rhetoric,” and tell us that Trump doesn’t plan to jail Special Counsel Jack Smith, put a 1000 percent tariff on imported cars, deport millions of “illegals” to stop “migrant crime,” and be “a dictator for a day.”
In contrast, while you might not like Kamala Harris’ policy proposals, you can believe her when she offers them.
Ethics. Donald Trump has been found guilty of business fraud. The judgment may be thrown out because it is based on a novel application of a New York business statute, but there is no doubt that Trump inflated asset valuations to get a lower interest rate on loans. Trump similarly deflated asset values to avoid taxes. Ethical people don’t do this type of thing.
In contrast, has Harris done anything similar? Is there any evidence of her engaging in shady business practices?
Empathy. Last night I read a report on Trump’s comments made to billionaires attending a fundraiser in Trump Tower. In his comments, Trump called Harris “a retard.” That term is considered hate speech by the Special Olympics. He also called migrants “scum,” adopting a Nazi term used by Adolf Hitler to describe Jews. He also ridiculed a New York Times reporter with disabilities.
Trump is promising to deport “millions” of undocumented migrants if he is elected. Empathy? Trump doesn’t have any.
Sexual violence. Trump was accused of rape by his first wife, Ivanka. The allegation was later withdrawn, but Trump was also accused of rape by E. Jean Carroll and called a rapist by a New York judge. And then there is the Billy Bush Access Hollywood video where Trump bragged about assaulting women and getting away with it. And remember that photo of Trump with Jeffrey Epstein?
I don’t want a sexual predator in the White House. The only thing that has kept Trump from committing more recent sexual assaults is his age.
Mental acuity. For years, Trump reminded us of President Biden’s age. When Biden dropped out of the race, the media finally started listening to Trump from the perspective of whether he, too, evidences signs of age. Voters should listen to at least one Trump rally—pick from any of them. Trump speaks of windmills and hydrogen-powered cars and calls his opponents both communists and fascists, covering all bases. He also sometimes forgets where he is. On one recent occasion when he knew he was in Detroit, he warned that Harris would make all of America look like Detroit, which he described as “a mess.”
Even if you are not planning to vacation in Detroit later this year, you don’t tell a room full of Detroiters that their hometown is “a mess.”
Trump doesn’t call Harris senile. Instead, he attacks her, laugh, and calls her names. We know why. Trump is in severe decline.
Judgment. Earlier in my career, I ran a small public affairs firm. Occasionally, we hired someone who was a poor fit for our operation. When we fired them, they sometimes disagreed and left angry, which was rare. Contrast that with the dozens of former Trump cabinet officers and political appointees who describe him as unfit for office.
Did Trump exercise sound judgment when he hired people he later fired, often on Twitter? The comments of the former Trump officials are replete with tales of how Trump doesn’t read reports or listen in meetings and how ignorant and reckless he was in dealing with world affairs.
In contrast, there are reports that Harris has a sometimes chaotic relationship with staff. But is it in the same league as Trump? No.
If voters look at these six criteria and judge the two candidates fairly, they cannot vote for Trump. Even if they like some of Trump's policies—things like his tax cuts—they cannot vote for him. Trump, the man, is not fit for office. Harris, the woman, is.
Even if you believe Harris has no potential to be a great president, she is the only alternative to Trump, who we already know was one of the worst and promises to top his record.
Oh, did I forget to mention January 6 and the people Trump calls “patriots” and promises to pardon if elected? No, I didn’t.
What else is going on?
SpaceX just launched the fifth flight of its Starship, a rocket larger than the Saturn 5 that took astronauts to the moon. The company successfully caught the first-stage booster on the launchpad—that’s right, five minutes after launch, the booster returned “home.”
This is a historic moment in spaceflight.
The Starship is contracted to perform the first American moon landing in over 50 years, most likely in 2026 or 2007. Wow.
Thank you.
Thank you for reading Sunday Issues. I welcome feedback on improving Dean’s Issues & Insights, so let me hear from you.
© 2024 John Dean, all rights reserved.
I smiled when I saw that this week's column had a photo of Kamala Harris at the top. Thank you! I agree with all of your criteria for choosing a presidential candidate. I cannot fathom why Trump's supporters (who look, if polls are to be believed, like nearly half of our fellow citizens) are not using them to decide whom to vote for. Two possibilities. 1) They are "low information" voters who have not paid attention to what Trump has actually done and said and think he's "entertaining" or 2) They know exactly who and what Trump is and approve of and will vote for him anyway. In that case, they share his most loathsome qualities. If that's the case, heaven help us all. My hope at the moment is that the polls are wrong as they were in 2018, 2020 and 2022. I'm not expecting a landslide for Harris, but I am hoping for a strong, convincing win. Only one quibble with what you have said. You say correctly that Trump disdains the mainstream media because he thinks they have been unfair to him. My reading of that same media indicates a significant double standard that holds Harris to a much higher standard of behavior while giving Trump a free ride. Just one example: pundits were criticizing Harris for not doing enough interviews. So she did several. What did the pundits say about that? She should have done them sooner. She interviewed with the wrong people on the wrong networks or platforms. Meanwhile Trump sticks to reliably sycophantic interviewers, withdraws from the 60 Minutes interview Harris did, and refuses a second debate. Oh well...