OPINION

Haven’t decided who to vote for?

B. Jay Cooper rejects Trump due to his authoritarian rhetoric, dishonesty, and failure to deliver key promises. He argues Trump prioritises self-interest over national welfare and warns undecided voters against supporting him.

B. Jay Cooper

B. Jay Cooper

— 6 min read


Haven’t decided who to vote for?
Donald Trump speaking at a rally at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona. 23-Aug-2024.| Credit: Flickr/Gage Skidmore

A s the hours dwindle to Election Day, there still are many voters who either haven’t made up their minds or whose support for former President Donald J. Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris is still soft, and they can be persuaded.

Millions of us wonder how that can be, but I do get that some view Trump’s presidency as better for them financially, even though the numbers of his presidency prove that wrong.

This piece is not for those who, a long time ago, made up their minds. Obviously, you are hard-core Trump supporters, and you aren’t changing your mind. This is for those soft supporters or undecided.

It is a list of (just some) my reasons for not voting for Trump. My decision to vote for Harris has less to do with her ideology, whatever you think it may be, and more to do with – she is not Donald J. Trump, described by even those who worked for him as a danger to our system of government and our Constitution.


There, I said it. I'm voting against Trump just as I did in 2016 and 2020. I wasn't thrilled with the nominees I voted for. But I was certain who I was voting against.

My reasons for being a never-Trumper since 2016 have only grown, not diminished. Among them:

  • Right now, he is saying the silent stuff out loud. He demands in interviews he not be fact-checked. If ever there was a tell that he’s lying, there you go. Don’t believe me? I have a list of about 30,000 lies he told when he was the President. He hasn’t changed.
  • He talks like a fascist or wanna-be authoritarian, saying things like “the enemy is within.”
  • He never admits error. He is Der Leader.
  • He wants to replace the career federal bureaucracy with people only loyal to him, not the Constitution.
  • For years, he has been doing what despots do: Destroy belief in all institutions so that he and only he is the bearer of “the truth.”
  • The only campaign promise he kept was that he appointed three justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who allowed it to overturn Roe v Wade.
  • After completing that transaction with the Evangelical Right, he now claims he will be the “protector of women.” Mr. Former President, you already blew any chance at that by taking a 50-year-old right away from women and declaring that the (state) government has control over their health care.
  • He raises money to fund his campaign and instead uses it to pay his millions of dollars in legal bills. And then he complains to the people who gave him that cash that they aren’t doing enough and need to give him more.
  • He says Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, are eating your pets. He says Venezuelans have taken over Aurora, Colorado. The Republican mayors of those cities say that isn’t true, but he keeps repeating it.
  • No one is taking “Black jobs,” whatever those are.
  • He denies he lost the 2020 election and led an invasion of the Capitol to overthrow the election.
  • He called Obamacare a joke and now takes credit for “saving it.” And his vice-presidential running mate, JD Vance, now admits his mother was on Obamacare. Vance then disingenuously says Trump saved it!
  • Trump states that the feds are not helping hurricane relief (they are) and that FEMA has used its budget to fund programs for illegal immigrants (they aren’t).
CREDIT: FLICKR/GAGE SKIDMORE —
— MAGA supporters attending a Trump rally at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona. | 23-Aug-2024.
  • He is constantly grifting by selling his supporters everything from $100,000 Trump watches to $400 Trump golden sneakers to a $59.99 Trump Bible! (and wait, there will be more!)
  • If you have a conspiracy theory no one believes, just give it to Trump, he will gladly repeat if it serves his purpose – true or not.
  • He says that if elected, he will determine who gets disaster relief, not what the situation dictates. Read that to mean that if you live in a state that delivered its electoral votes to his opponent, you are less likely to get disaster relief – at all.
  • He said that immigrants “are the enemy from within... We have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics... and it should be easily handled by, if necessary, the National Guard or, if really necessary, the military.”
  • He says he’ll resolve the Russian invasion of Ukraine even BEFORE he takes office. First, he can’t; not an iota of authority to do that. Second, the only way to do that is to cave to his buddy Putin’s territorial demands (Don’t believe me? Check out the COVID test machines he secretly and callously gave to Putin when thousands of the people who elected him couldn’t get them at the height of the pandemic.)

And that ain’t all. But if that’s not enough, I have a $100,000 watch to sell you. And, I’ll throw in, for $499.99, a pair of gold sneakers. Or tell me you need more, and I’ll list some other reasons I have for not voting for him.

I do get how millions of my fellow Americans feel – and have been – left behind. I get how many of them believe they are being “replaced” by new citizens (and non-citizens) in their jobs.

Our immigration system needs major fixing. I get it. And agree.


And I get that the recovered economy hasn’t yet improved everyone’s lives. Got it. Not skipping over it. I don’t see how giving the wealthiest among us another tax cut solves it, which is Trump’s solution.

What I don’t get is how anyone thinks the answer is electing a convicted felon, thrice-married playboy who has been found legally responsible for rape, and appointed the justices – proudly – who overturned Roe v Wade is the solution. He didn’t build The Wall, and Mexico hasn’t paid a peso for what was built.

Donald J. Trump cares about one thing and one thing only – Donald J. Trump.

Trump likes to say that if you elect Harris, “you won’t have a country anymore.”

Like everything else he says in that vein, he’s projecting.

PUBLIC SQUARE UK

GOING FURTHER



Sources:

▪ This piece was originally published in The Conversation and re-published in PUBLIC SQUARE UK on 17 October 2024. | The author writes in a personal capacity.
▪ Cover: Flickr/Gage Skidmore. (Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.)
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