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I try to view it in a zoomed out perspective. Will either president meaningfully make life better?
And for that calculation I take into account a couple things.
A) quality of life for average people. You know- being able to afford your necessities. Being able to comfortably feed your family, pay your rent. Not having to stress about rent money or go into debt when your car breaks down
B) war. War brings chaos. Political and financial instability and average people (who are already not priorities) get put further back on the list. For example right now the US extending the length of Ukraine war is more important than controlling inflation or interest rates. Not to mention public money given to defense contractors that could be building homes for poor, feeding people, building infrastructure, etc
For reference, we have given Ukraine more $$$ (not counting lots of ways military deflates the real number) than Biden's infrastructure bill allocated for public transportation, roads and bridges, and airports combined.
C) and this is my personal bias here. We have 13 million illegal immigrants. People contributing to this country, filling a gap in the labor market, paying taxes, and yet they have to live in fear. Imagine walking around your whole life scared to see a police officer come out from around the corner.
These people have been here decades and every successive Dem promises to do something. All we get is lip service.
If I thought Biden was meaningfully better on any of those 3, I would vote for him.
But I think he's marginally better on A (maybe not because at least Trump was willing to flirt with a psuedo basic-income)
I think he's marginally worse on B (Trump is not likely to start WW3 over Ukraine, although probably just as if not more over Taiwan/Israel)
On c) they are both the same. Biden separates families like Trump. He was using same covid loopholes Trump was using to detain lawful asylum seekers at border.
Sure Trump has more harmful rhetoric but a border wall really does not do anything. Majority of illegals come on valid tourist visas and overstay. It's political theater.
Similar to my home state of Florida. DeSantis & Rubio (may God smite them down) pushed for a law to make it illegal to drive around an illegal immigrant.
Nevermind the fact that Florida has some of the highest rates in the country and that entire industries use them as the foundation (construction, agriculture, landscaping,etc). What happened when illegals started refusing to come to Florida?
They explained the law was symbolic, wasn't actually meant to detain anyone. They don't want real economic consequences. They just want to bang the xenophobic drum. It's absurd.
Absolutely with you on the horrible treatment of immigrants in general. It feels like we should give the Statue of Liberty back to France if it means nothing to us anymore. It is really vile, especially with so many acting like this is a Christian nation when they uphold none of the values, especially concerning how to treat those less fortunate. We became a great nation by accepting everyone and letting them have a chance to prosper, and I don't feel that magically changed in my lifetime.
My understanding is much of the Ukraine aid is not literal money, but rather donations of obsolete military supplies, like old planes and old ammo reserves, so it's money that has been spent decades ago, and instead of scrapping it, we send it to them to do their semi-proxy war for us. I feel this is a much more honorable fight against Russia than the Red Scare things of yesteryear, but I'm not old enough to have first hand perspective on it. I know I don't like what I do see of the Putin regime though.
I'm middle class, white, and CIS, so no president affects me that much, but many of my friends aren't in the same situation, plus I have empathy, so even if I can't relate to people, I still want the maximum net benefit for them.
Most of us probably aren't old enough to have much experience with traditional limited presidential power, so it seems like the president should have more to do with laws and the economy, etc, but they really shouldn't be involved in that stuff. The economy belongs to the Fed Reserve, because they're supposed to be experts. Congress is supposed to make laws. With Congress rapidly swinging between who controls it or such tight voting margins, it's no wonder we don't see meaningful change. It makes it hard to go full no-compromise when that compromise is mandatory and sabatogey by nature. The polarization sucks, but it's there until we fix that.
I think Trump is a criminal that should be locked up, and while I'm not tickled pink by Biden, he's done less bad things than anybody other president in my life I can think of, as sad as that is.