If you ignore the daily mud-fights, Trump’s first term has been surprisingly effective, and he deserves to be re-elected.
As I write this, we are on the eve of the 2020 election, and it feels like we are about to go to war. The entire year has felt like one brutal grudge match for people across the globe, and especially in American politics it has felt like no other year.
Just as in 2016, when Trump was the underdog facing off against a vastly more experienced and powerful political foe, Trump is again the underdog facing off against Joe Biden, the experienced Washington politico. Recent projections give Biden an 89% chance of winning the White House, so a vote for Trump may amount to nothing.
Then again, we merely need to look back to the previous election for a little perspective.
In 2016, Donald Trump took the world by storm with his surprise victory as an underdog against a political juggernaut in Hillary Clinton. It was arguably the most impressive win in U.S. presidential history, and it caused a series of events to unfold which have brought our current situation to a point of explosive tension. Cities are being boarded up in anticipation of rioting due to the election. People have been talking about insurrection, violence, and even civil war. How did we even get to this point?
The events that led up to this are somewhat easy to understand, but also somewhat a bit like what might be found in a Tom Clancy novel. Setting those aside for the moment, looking back on Trump’s time in office, I’d say he definitely deserves a second term.
A vote to re-elect Trump would not only ensure America of having the greatest policy-making president in office during my lifetime, but of slashing back the rising tide of leftism that is quickly becoming a dire threat to the American republic.
On issue after issue, Trump’s policies have been incredible. From the appointment of hundreds of federal judges to the appointment of what seem to be three fantastic Supreme Court justices, to his enactment of pro-life policies, to his lowering of taxes, to his energizing of the economy, to his crackdown on illegal immigration, to his strengthening of our national security, reduction of regulations, forcing NATO to pay more of what it owed, to not starting any new wars, Trump has been as decisive a president as any. All of this, mind you, while being hampered with a false Russian conspiracy theory, and an impeachment on questionable grounds.
So far, Trump’s greatest threat – and this has been a significant one – has been the COVID-19 pandemic. This once-in-a-century event came at the worst time for Trump, and the Biden Campaign has capitalized on it. Democrats have a tendency to never let any scandal or disaster go by without taking advantage of it politically, so it should not have been a surprise that they capitalized on it. I say this without making a claim to Trump’s handling of the virus, which seems to be a mixed bag, but which will really only be properly analyzed in hindsight. In the thick of it, blaming Trump for “200,000 deaths” (or even calling for Trump’s execution over it, as Keith Olberman recently did) is simply ridiculous.
The other, less serious threat to Trump, has been Trump himself. He engages in fights on a weekly basis. He tweets out attacks on his opponents, and seems to never back down from potshots taken by critics. Of course, such attacks have been unnecessary, and even counter-productive at times, but they seem to be part of Trump’s modus operandi. Once can say they benefit him by allowing him to direct the news cycle, which is true, but they also have the effect of alienating those who simply want to shrink away from the display of petty combat by a world leader.
I have thought for some time that the best way to live during the Trump era might be to simply read a summary of the news about once a month. Seeing the highlights of Trump’s accomplishments without witnessing the mud flying about on a daily basis might would reveal all the beauty of Trump’s policies without seeing his sometimes boorish character on display. As someone active on social media, I do not have the luxury of avoiding the day-to-day squabbles that drive news cycles, but I imagine that many Americans may very well appreciate Trump on a macro-level and only occasionally hear about the micro-level verbal firefights in which he engages.
A vote for Trump, of course, is a vote against Joe Biden, or more likely against the potential policies of the heir-to-the-throne, Kamala Harris. Harris may be one of the most unimpressive candidates to assume the presidency if the pollsters are correct about the election and Biden resigns not long into his term, which is very possible. Unable to make it through the Democratic primary season, she was destroyed by Mike Pence in the vice presidential debate, and the highlights of her campaigning seem to be clips of her laughing in soft interviews in friendly interviews.
My vote, of course, will be for Trump. He deserves to be re-elected, and the Democrat candidates deserve to be shut down. The threats of violence at the prospect of a Trump victory should only sound the alarms even louder about the growing threat of leftist extremism, and should cause our nation to pause and consider the threat on its very doorstop. Tragically, such a threat will not only go unheeded, but will be actively encouraged by a the media class and pundits who actively seek the enactment of even more extreme policies to “break the system” and remake it according to their “utopian” vision.
Now, however, the situation seems somewhat bleak for President Trump’s changes of re-election. Whether we learn the results of the election at the end of the day or in several days is unclear. What is clear to me, though, about the long-term survival of America is that its prospects are dimming by the day. The cultural divide in the nation has rapidly deteriorated, and this election will simply further the size of the crevasse. If Trump wins, leftists will use it as an excuse to engage in insurrection (whether by cover or law or not), and if Trump loses, they’ll use it as an excuse to destroy their opponents and salt the earth to prevent their loss of power in the future.
My hope, at this bleak hour, is that Trump wins and is able, through some way, to engage enough Americans to buy into a common vision of America that values liberty the rule of law, and tolerates opposing views without resorting to violence. Without such a common vision, America may very well be lost.
