Closing Argument

I'll keep this as brief as possible.  With the election only 3 days away, it is imperative that you vote for a Democrat in every race on your ballot.  If you can't bring yourself to vote for Hillary, then vote for the rest of the Democrats anyway.  Do NOT vote for Trump.  Here's why.

Only Two Choices
Let's get this out of the way first.  Come January, either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be taking the oath of office.  Not Gary Johnson, not Jill Stein, not Evan McMullin or any other flavor-of-the-month candidate.  You may not like it, but those are the facts.  So you need to choose between Hillary and Trump; if you do anything else, you're letting other people choose for you.  And between those two candidates, the choice is blindingly obvious.

#NeverTrump
The case against Trump breaks down into three categories: his policies, his behavior, and his war against American democracy.  We will bullet-point items from the first two categories here, and discuss the last category at the end of this post.

First, his policy positions:

• He wants to torture suspected terrorists, and who knows who else.  In addition to being morally wrong and couterproductive, U.S. law has long considered the use of torture illegal.
• He has said on multiple occasions that he would kill the families of suspected terrorists.  Put bluntly, he would kill innocent people, including children, when they are related to someone America merely suspects of being a terrorist.  This would clearly be highly immoral and criminal.
• His signature issue is his desire to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.  This wall is estimated to cost the U.S. taxpayer between $15 - $25 billion, and is unlikely to have much effect on illegal immigration or drug trafficking.  (You're fooling yourself if you believe Trump's promise that Mexico will pay for it; he's not running for president of Mexico)  Additionally, it is a solution in search of a problem, as illegal immigration from Mexico has been steadily decreasing for the past decade.
• He wants to create a deportation force to deport most or all of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.  In addition to the human cost of splitting up families and communities, this plan is estimated to cost up to $300 billion and drain nearly $1 trillion from the U.S. economy.
• Typical of Republican candidates, Trump would enact a huge new tax cut, the main benefit of which would go to the wealthiest Americans and to corporations, and which would increase the national debt by an estimated $7 trillion over the next decade.  We all remember how well George W. Bush's huge tax cuts supercharged the economy, don't we?
• He has called to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S., and although he has formally changed his policy since then, this seems to be mostly driven by a desire to avoid comparisons to Nazi Germany's treatment of Jews, and not a change in his view of all Muslims as potential terrorists.  In effectively declaring war on Islam, there is no doubt Trump has aided ISIS in recruiting new terrorists.
• He supports the so-called "stop and frisk" policy for police, which as Jamelle Bouie explains, essentially amounts to sanctioned police harrassment of minorities.  Also, it's unconstitutional.
• Finance experts agree that Trump's policy statements about the national debt are nonsense at best, and disastrous at worst.
• He has publicly stated that as president, America might not fulfill its defense obligations to its NATO allies.
• He supports both South Korea and Japan becoming nuclear powers, and possibly Saudi Arabia as well.
• "A Donald Trump presidency poses a top-10 risk event that could disrupt the world economy, lead to political chaos in the U.S. and heighten security risks for the United States, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit."

Next, his behavior:

• As his statements about reducing the debt, meeting our obligations to our NATO allies, and nuclear proliferation demonstrate, Trump has no idea about how the U.S. or world economies or international security works, and he has no interest in developing the expertise required to be president.
• He offers as his main qualification his alleged success as a businessman.  But he has had multiple business failures, including as recently as last week, and that doesn't even include his epic Atlantic City casino fiasco.  His record of failure is so extensive, U.S. banks will no longer work with him.
• Whatever business success he's had has come largely from running scams like Trump University, and refusing to pay people money he owes them, knowing that he has enough legal muscle to prevent most people from getting justice in court.
• But he does love tying up the courts for his personal gain.  USA Today estimates that Trump is currently involved in 4,095 lawsuits and counting.
• He has a history of racism, including his insistence on the guilt of the so-called Central Park Five after DNA tests exonerated them from any wrongdoing.  Evidence of his ongoing racism can be seen in his support for "stop and frisk" policing.
• He is a sexual predator, a fact he was caught bragging about in a 2005 recording, and corroborated by (so far) 15 different women.  Given his recent derogatory statements about Hillary, Carly Fiorina, Rosie O'Donnell and Megyn Kelly, there's no reason to believe he's changed his ways (a man with a newfound respect for women wouldn't say such things).  Indeed, Trump's good friend Howard Stern confirms "This is who Trump is".
• He is a legendary misogynist.  In addition to being a sexual predator, it seems that he got into the business of running beauty pageants mainly so he could go leer at the contestants in the dressing room, including girls as young as 15.  He also agreed with Stern that his own daughter, Ivanka, is "a piece of ass".
• He lies as easily as he breathes (warning: page takes a long time to load.  I'm not kidding).
• He poses as a generous philanthropist, even setting up the Trump Foundation, but he's not.  He only made a promised $1 million donation to a veterans' organization after he was shamed into it.
• He insults, belittles and demeans practically everyone, including women, veterans and the disabled.

The final, and really most damning, arguments against Trump have to do with his efforts to undermine American democracy, with the eager assistance of the Republican party.  But we'll get to that later.

Benghazi! And the Clinton Foundation! And Emails!

At this point, you may be persuaded that Donald Trump is the worst candidate ever nominated by a major party in U.S. history.  And you'd be right!  So go vote!

However, you may still have reservations about Clinton, due almost entirely to a massive disinformation campaign on the part of the Republican party and its various organs (FOX News and, increasingly, Breitbart).  The short answer is: there's nothing to these faux 'Clinton scandals', or at least not much.  I've written detailed explanations about Benghazi and the emails already, and I've waded through quite a bit of refuting Clinton Cash.  But what you really need to know is much simpler.

Congressional Republicans hate Hillary Clinton, and will do anything in their power to destroy her.  And it has recently come to light that some FBI agents bear this same hatred, and have been working feverishly through the Clinton Cash accusations in an effort to take her down.

And you know what they all found?  Nothing.

There is no doubt that Hillary broke State Department rules in using a private email server for official business, and she has admitted her mistake.  But the worst that can be said is that she put some low-level classified information at risk --- at risk, mind you, which is a far cry from, say, selling state secrets.  Hardly a reason to lock her up, as Trump has been calling for.

When the FBI and multiple congressional investigations spend years trying to make a case against someone, and they're unable to find any evidence of wrongdoing, do you know what you call that person?

Innocent.

#ImWithHer

So what will Hillary do as president that's so great?  I'm glad you asked.

• A former Bernie Bro explains why he's come around to supporting Clinton.
• The Nation provides a dozen reasons for backing Clinton.
• And Kevin Drum really pulls out the stops, stating that "The progressive case for Hillary Clinton is pretty overwhelming".
• She supports reproductive rights more fully than probably any candidate for president in history, and her Supreme Court nominees are likely to reflect that fact.
• She's been working to improve the health care system for at least the last 25 years, and wants to improve Obamacare by adding a public option and introducing a Medicare buy-in for people aged 55 and up.
• Her immigration policy is pretty much 180 degrees away from Trump's.
• She supports universal early childhood education, which not only benefits all of America's children, but which is an extremely cost-effective way of reducing crime rates, welfare costs, health care costs, and providing other societal benefits.
• She supports raising the federal minimum wage to $12/hour (not as good as $15/hour, but still better than Trump).
• She has plans to reduce the burden of college debt.
• She's committed to equal treatment under the law for both LGBTQ and racial minorities.
• The Clinton Foundation. Republicans have (successfully, I'm afraid) conned people into believing the whole operation is a scam, but it actually does a lot of good, and the Clintons deserve a lot of credit for creating and running it.
• Lots of other good stuff.
• She would actually PAY for her proposed policy changes by increasing taxes, primarily on the wealthiest 1%, as opposed to Trump's giveaway to the wealthiest and corporations.

What Others Are Saying

Although it seems that a lot of everyday Americans support Trump, practically no one with any depth of knowledge of the issues does, unless they work for the Republican party, the Trump campaign, or FOX or Breitbart news.

• 30 retired Republican lawmakers have signed a letter stating that Trump lacks the intelligence and temperament to be president.
• 50 Republican national security officials have signed a letter stating that a Trump presidency "would put at risk our country's national security and well-being".
• Practically all of the newspapers making an endorsement in the election have endorsed Hillary.  Many of these papers have rarely if ever before endorsed a Democrat, including the Arizona Republic, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Dallas News, and the San Diego Union-Tribune.
• Trump, on the other hand, has only received endorsements from eight traditional newspapers, plus the National Enquirer and the official newspaper of the Ku Klux Klan.
• Despite Trump giving Clinton the nickname of 'Crooked Hillary', and his success in persuading the public that she is somehow corrupt, all independent fact checkers find that Trump is, by far, the bigger liar.

So, you know, if you STILL think Trump is the better choice of president, you'd better go back and check your work, since a whole lot of people --- most of them probably smarter than you --- think differently.

But the Most Important Reason to Vote for Hillary (and every other Democrat you can find) is . . . .

The Republican party is actively working to disrupt and undermine American democracy.  This may sound like I've gone into tinfoil hat territory, or that I'm using hyperbole.  But the facts could not be clearer, and it's important to come to grips with that now, before it's too late.

It started with systematic voter suppression efforts early this century, under the guise of preventing vote fraud.  Although there are practically no documented cases of in-person voter fraud (someone attempting to cast a vote under another person's name), Republican legislatures in 30 states have passed laws requiring a voter to prevent some form of ID before casting a ballot.  Although this sounds like a reasonable and harmless requirement, it exists mainly to reduce voter turnout among economically disadvantaged groups --- groups who tend to vote for Democrats more than Republicans.  Of course these laws face challenges in the courts, and in some cases they have been overturned.  The most egregious of these laws is probably in North Carolina, where a federal court found that the voter ID law was enacted to suppress turnout among black voters, who were targeted "with almost surgical precision".  And there's no reason to believe the voter ID laws in other states are any better.

Ironically, despite the Republican party's efforts to rig the polls in their favor, their nominee Trump is publicly claiming exactly the opposite, that the polls are 'rigged' against him --- but never providing any proof.  Because, well, there is none.

And this isn't the only way in which Trump and the Republicans are undermining the democratic process.

In a normal election, the candidates campaign --- they campaign on the issues, and/or they attack their opponent.  And then the voters vote, and the loser graciously accepts defeat.  This has become such an ingrained part of American democracy that we take it for granted.  And we shouldn't.  People who wave the American flag --- usually Republicans --- like to remind us that our freedoms were gained at the cost of great sacrifice on the part of brave soldiers in places like Gettysburg, or Normandy, and that their sacrifice must not be forgotten.  And they're right.

At the same time, Donald Trump and the Republican party are currently shredding everything those soldiers fought for.  Trump repeatedly tells his supporters that his opponent belongs in jail, and has promised to prosecute her if elected.  He has even gone so far as to obliquely suggest she should be shot.  For months, he has been warning of a 'rigged' election, and refuses to pledge to respect the outcome should he lose.  He's even gone so far as to suggest that the election should be cancelled, and that he should just become president by fiat (or unanimous agreement or something).

Meanwhile, Republicans already in office are doing all they can to pre-emptively delegitimize a Clinton presidency.  We've already seen government shutdowns and threats of government shutdowns.  Now Republicans are promising that they will leave the vacant seat on the Supreme Court open forever if Clinton is sworn in, and they've also promised to impeach Clinton as soon as they can.  There are no charges, mind you, they name no specific 'high crimes and misdemeanors'.  Presumably they'll impeach her first and figure out what her exact crime was later.  But this is what one expects from a banana republic, not the country we proudly think of as the example of democracy for the world.

But it gets worse.  As noted above, we now know that certain agents in the FBI have been pursuing an investigation into the Clinton Foundation for partisan reasons.  And of course the FBI director himself, James Comey --- in breach of long-standing Justice Department protocol --- sent a letter to Congress last week suggesting that there was new evidence in the interminable investigation into Clinton's emails, even though no new evidence exists.  What we have is the nation's top law enforcement agency abusing its power in an effort to influence an election.  And there's reason to believe these actions took place in coordination with the Trump campaign.

But it gets even worse! There are credible reports that Trump's whole campaign has coordinated with Moscow to discredit Clinton, including carefully timed email dumps from Wikileaks to keep the whole 'Crooked Hillary' narrative alive for the past 8 months.  Republican patron saint Ronald Reagan once made America swoon by referring to Russia as the 'evil empire', but now it seems that the Republicans are perfectly happy to let the Russians meddle in American politics, and hack American web servers as much as they like, so long as it helps Trump get elected.

None of this is normal.  It is very serious, and very dangerous.  And no matter what you think of Hillary, or Democratic policies or Democrats in general, it must be met with the starkest rejection possible.  This is why no one should vote for a Republican for any office.  The Republican party has become corrupt down to its roots, and the only way to address it is to make sure no one carrying the stench of Trump holds any elected office, ever.

In Conclusion

Clinton is clearly far superior to Trump on the merits, and even if that weren't true, a Trump presidency promises to bring with it corruption and abuse of power on an unprecedented scale.  It's time to teach the Republican party a lesson, that those who run for office should be concerned mainly with serving their country and promoting democracy, rather than with playing dangerous games which undermine it.  There is no better way to teach them that lesson than at the ballot box on Tuesday.