Friday, November 4, 2016

Trump's Disqualifications

Trump is so awful on so many dimensions that my effort to tweet a list of features/characteristics/stances got too long very quickly.  But let's enumerate a few--where each one by itself would be sufficient to vote against Trump (not in any order besides what comes to mind first):

  1. Ties to/stance towards Russia
  2. Inciting Violence
  3. Temperament
  4. The Quality of His Allies/Surrogates/Advisers
  5. His misogyny and self-admitted sexual assault
  6. His key claim to success, his business sense, is actually a record of ruin.
  7. His ties to Neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other truly deplorable actors.
  8. His flagrant disregard for the Constitution and the law
  9. His statements about African-Americans, Latinos, Jews, Muslims, disabled people and on and on. Take him at his word.
  10. His profound ignorance about all things but especially politics
  11. His amazing lack of empathy
  12. Failure to release his tax returns
  13. His weak grasp on reality--accusing others of the things he is guilty of.   His projection is not charming but dangerous.
  14. His protection stance on trade
  15. His willingness to default on the debate
  16. His view of negotiation--where the only good deal is an exploitative one
  17. His view of alliances as protection rackets.
  18. His contempt for veterans and the military.
  19. His complete lack of policy--all of his assurances is that he will have plans but refusal to elaborate before election day.
  20. Mike Pence--talk about a lack of empathy.
  21. How easy he is manipulated (see story about how Pence got to be his VP nominee).
  22. His casual attitude about the use of nuclear weapons and about nuclear proliferation.
  23. His inability to see complexity.  It was bad enough when Bush/Cheney didn't care about 2nd/3rd order effects, but Trump does not even know that such dynamics could exist.

I probably could come up with more, but I have work to do.  Anyhow, anyone of these should be disqualifying, but I understand that most Republicans will vote for Trump because party id matters more than pretty much everything else.  Which is sad, given how truly awful a Trump presidency would be for pretty much everyone.

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