Election 2020 (Part 1): My Assessment of Trump’s Presidency, and Why I’m Voting the Way I’m Voting (…like this will really change anyone’s mind, but hey, don’t you want to know what I think?)

As we are now just days from the 2020 Presidential Election, with all the tension and toxicity every single American has felt for the past four years, and in light of everyone’s dread of what the fallout of the election will be, I thought I’d take time on my blog to write about my perspective of Trump’s presidency and the issues surrounding this upcoming election. Ideally, we should be able to voice our opinions and reasons for voting for any given candidate and then let things play out in the ballot box. I voice my opinions, you voice your opinions, and even if we disagree, we respect each other and we respect the process.  If your candidate loses, you respect the results of the election, you give the winner a fair chance, and then four years later, you evaluate his job performance, you consider what the other candidate has to offer, and you make your choice again. That’s how democracy should work.

Of course, ever since 2016 and the election of Donald Trump, all norms have flown out the window and it seems like our society has plunged into a sea of madness. I am 50 years old and have never seen our country like the way it is today. That being said, in these next two posts, I want to explain my thinking about the last four years and the upcoming election. If nothing else, this post will help me organize my own thoughts about the craziness of these past four years. Hopefully, it can help others get a better grasp on the situation we all now face. Enjoy.

The Shocker of 2016
Back in the GOP primaries of 2015, I thought Donald Trump was a joke, and I was shocked and horrified that he won the GOP nomination. When it came to choosing either him or Hillary Clinton, though, I found both candidates so repulsive that I didn’t vote for either one. (Truth be told, at that time, if Joe Biden had been the candidate in 2016, I might have voted for him). Now, I have long felt that our government as a whole had become too much of an entrenched bureaucracy and that both parties were equally guilty for kicking the can down the road with a number of pressing issues facing our country. It was the same thing every four years. Presidential candidates said the right things, did the whole “election thing” they way we’ve come to expect, but despite who won, those promises to address those pressing issues, be it the national debt, income inequality, or a broken immigration system, never got addressed.

Trump was so offensive in his rhetoric that I couldn’t vote for him. I assumed Hillary would win and our government would just continue to slowly atrophy, with the rich and powerful continuing to be rich and powerful, while everyone else was just slowly ground down. When Trump won, though, I couldn’t believe it—no one could. What happened? It turned out that a whole bunch of working-class Democrats decided to do the ultimate “anti-establishment” vote by voting for the biggest middle finger to the federal government ever to run for office. Why did Trump win? No, it wasn’t because the American people who had just overwhelmingly voted for a black president two times in a row turned out to be so racist that they wanted to vote for an orange man. It was because people were sick and tired of the federal government never following through on the basic issues that concerned the working-class.

Nevertheless, Trump? On one hand, it worried me. On the other hand, though, I remember thinking, “Oh, this is going to be fun!” I honestly thought that he would be impeached within the first two years because he blurted out national security secrets in public, or something like that. At the same time, I hoped that the voting public, as well as our politicians, would be so scared of the fact that Trump actually got elected, that they’d realize they their ineptitude is sort of what led to his election, and that they’d finally get a spine and work together for the good of the country. In any case, my view was this: Even though I didn’t like him and didn’t vote for him, Trump won. I was going to respect the results of the election, give him a fair chance, and judge him on his record. I even joked with someone that, who knows? Maybe if Trump brings peace to the Middle East (Haha! Like that would happen!), maybe I’d vote for him in 2020! Still, I had pretty much made up my mind that as long as the Democrats acted like the adults in the room, I would probably be voting for the Democrat candidate in 2020, and two years into Trump’s presidency, I vowed that I would never vote for him, and that I would vote for whomever the Democrat candidate in 2020 was.

Evaluating Trump’s Presidency
But here we are, four years later, and I think I’m going to vote for Trump. I cannot go into a long discussion about everything that follows, but when it comes to the Trump administration in terms of polices, here is my evaluation, both pros and cons. Obviously, this will not be comprehensive, but these are the things that stood out to me. This will be the only election we’ll be able to say, “Hindsight is 2020,” so here goes. First, the cons:

• Much of Trump’s rhetoric and tweeting has been sophomoric at best and divisive and poisonous at worst. It has been positively un-presidential. That being said, I’ve felt that the rhetoric coming from the Democrats has been just as divisive and poisonous as well. Basically, I hate Trump’s rhetoric, but the Democrats are no better.
• When it came to the issue of dealing with the border situation, I did not like his decision to separate children from their parents who crossed the border illegally. I fully acknowledge that the overall situation at the border and our immigration policy in general has been broken for years and without Congress getting a spine and actually tackling the problem, it was a lose-lose situation. But that move was not good. At least the administration backed off that decision when the country objected.
• I really hate the soaring national debt–I don’t think either party has the guts to get that under control, though.

Now the pros:

• Prison reform and the First Step Act, both of which began to rectify the mass incarceration of black men, which had been the result of the Crime Bill of 1994, the one, ironically, that Joe Biden had been instrumental in writing and passing.
• Long-term funding for historically black colleges.
• America has become energy independent, so we are not dependent on other countries for our energy.
• Up until the Covid-19 crisis, record unemployment across the board, especially for minorities.
• The median family income for middle-class families rose by $6,000 and worker wages began to increase for the first time in years.
• He ended NAFTA and reworked the USMCA trade deal.
• He confronted China’s cheating in trade and stealing of intellectual property.
• He defeated the ISIS caliphate and killed its leader, Al-Baghdadi.
• He killed the Iranian general and terrorist Soleimani.
• The three SCOTUS picks he made are all well-qualified and outstanding justices. Regardless if one is upset over the circumstances of Amy Coney Barrett, I don’t think anyone can say she isn’t immensely qualified.
• And oh, numerous Middle Eastern countries are signing peace treaties with Israel.

Regardless what one thinks of Trump himself, let’s admit it, any administration would be elated to be able to check all those off as accomplishments. Quite frankly, I have been legitimately shocked at the things this administration has gotten done. But I’m going to give credit to where credit is due.

Covid and Climate Change
There are two other issues that have factored into my assessment of Trump’s administration: The Covid pandemic and the issue of Climate Change. If I were to grade Trump on how he has handled the Covid pandemic, I’d give him a “C.” I think he was right to ban travel to/from China early on; I understand shutting down the economy for almost two months, due to the fact that nobody—not even the experts—had a real handle on what the virus was; and once we had flattened the curve, I agreed with his decision to let the individual state governors manage when/how they would re-open their states. I also think “Operation Warp Speed” will end up getting us a vaccine for Covid-19 in an incredibly short amount of time. I agree and applaud all that. I do think, though, that Trump appeared too cavalier and gave mixed messages concerning things like mask-wearing and social distancing. But I think a nationally enforced mask-mandate would be foolish and I’m glad Trump didn’t do that. Also, at the beginning of the pandemic, the CDC estimated that we might have up to 2 million deaths, and that even if we did everything right, we’d still probably have close to 200,000 deaths. So, could Trump have done some things better? Of course. Is he “Dr. Death” with blood on his hands? No.

Another issue that some people are concerned about is his decision to take the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Some say that because Trump is a “climate change denier,” that he is bringing on a global genocide. Honestly, I think that is overblown. The fact is that carbon emissions in the United States have continued to go down, even after we left the Paris Climate Agreement. As with other politically correct litmus tests, “Do you believe in climate change?” has become somewhat of a shibboleth in our country these days. I don’t care if one says they believe in climate change or not. All I care about is whether or not our country is on the right path to making the environment cleaner—and we are.

Conclusion Thus Far
Obviously more can be said about any number of polices and issues, but for me, when I commit to looking at actual issues and polices, these are the ones that have garnered my attention. And I dare say, that if one takes the name “Trump” off the title, puts to the side all the rhetoric and noise over the past four years, and just looks at the actual policies and accomplishments of the administration, one has to admit that there have been some notable achievements. I don’t care much for anyone who thinks that Trump is some sort of messianic figure, nor do I care much for anyone who insists that Trump is some sort of demonic boogeyman. I actually had someone tell me that they thought Trump was worse than Joseph Stalin. I told that person, “I hope you’re joking, because if you’re not, you are positively delusional.” He wasn’t, and so I concluded he is.

Trump, just like every other president, should be evaluated on his job performance. I did not like him at all in 2016 and was convinced he’d screw things up so much that he wouldn’t survive his first term. Although I still don’t like much of his rhetoric, the fact is, when it comes to policies and accomplishments, he has surprised me. That has not been the deciding factor, though, in my decision to vote for him this time. The deciding factor has more to do with what I’ve seen transpire with the Democrats and the mainstream media. To put it in the kindest terms, I have not been impressed…at all. That will be the topic of Part 2.