Pages

Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Who I'm Voting For

There's three presidential candidates left to vote for.

I don't hide it. I hate Trump. He's a criminal (really, his lawyers admitted), he's a racist (thank you Atlantic for rounding it all up), the Emoluments clause, Russian/Ukraine hacking, his isolation of US allies, the dozens of people fired or forced out of the White House for his various temper tantrums, the sheer amount of criminals involved in his campaign... the list just goes on.

So let's eliminate Trump. I would never vote for him even with a gun pointed at my head. 

I don't consider myself a Democrat. It's just that I mostly align with them. When I say mostly, maybe like 80% during Obama, 60% during Clinton.

Joe Biden represents the safe choice. He's establishment Democrat. He'll represent steady as she goes. Maybe a little more of a stable economy than we've had. Maybe he'll put some of those taxes back on the rich. Maybe the only thing he does is reconnect with our allies.

For most of us, this is probably fine. We'll be comfortable, the country will run, we'll face most disasters head on and feel proud to be American.

Even though I'll be comfortable with a Biden presidency, it's not good enough for me.

When I was newly married, living with my wife, making $12.50 an hour for a 32 hour a week job, a combined household income of roughly $45,000, the first student loan bill showed up. It was for $620. About half of one of our paychecks. With rent, we only had about $400 a month to buy groceries and live with. We ate spaghetti and turkey sandwiches almost every night.

We count ourselves lucky that we only had one person's student loans. We count ourselves lucky that over the past 11 years we were able to get aggressive with paying student loans and pay them off early.

I have many friends that are on a 30 year plan. 30 YEARS! Can you imagine paying your student loans for as long as it takes to pay for a house.

Now that my student loans are gone, I don't want anyone else to have to suffer in their 20s like we did. This is something I'm willing to cut a chunk of the military budget for.

When I was 26 I broke my leg and had surgery. Sal had surgery. We had followup surgeries. All in all we probably were out $30,000+ and we had good insurance.

You know what I saw in the emergency room? Poor people there with flu symptoms. People that couldn't afford to go to a doctor and had hoped that it would just pass, but here they are, in an ER with the worst version of the flu. And you know why part of the reason why your insurance is so expensive? Cause they can't afford to pay, so you're supplementing them.

Tax me a little more so that no one has to go through that. Everyone should have access to healthcare.

We've given up too many rights to the "free market." When I hear that, what I actually hear is corporations have more power than the average person. Income inequality keeps growing with the richest getting richer. Labor unions have been getting weaker since the 70's with the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act. The minimum wage has been stagnant for over a decade now. And I don't know about you, but my 40 hour work week has been creeping ever closer to 50 hours every year.

Sanders wants to give us back the 40 hour work week, empower unions, and fight the outsourcing of jobs.

And climate change is a real scientific issue that could doom us on this planet. I have a little niece that I think about. The struggles her generation are going to endure. Hell, the struggles my old body is going to endure. What's the planet going to look like in 50 years? Right now, most data says not good. 

Bernie has an aggressive plan for going all in on green energy.

I believe in Bernie Sanders. Just watch this video below. Sanders held a town hall on the opposition channel, Fox News, and he killed it. A wider demographic are attracted to his policies.


I don't think Bernie will win the primary. It's unfortunate. There's been a lot of advertising and media telling people that Biden is more "electable." The young, who overwhelmingly support Sanders, did not turn out on super Tuesday. And every other former presidential candidate seemingly making handshake deals to be in Biden's cabinet have endorsed him.

Everything is against a Sanders' win at this point.

My hope at least is if Biden gets the nod, the DNC sees where the younger generations values are, and the party moves back to the left. Democrats have been desperately trying to attract that moderate voter that I don't think exists anymore. 

No comments: