FOUR REASONS FOR TELLING TRUMP TO GO AWAY.
I voted for Trump in the 2016 general election and again in the 2020 general election. Perhaps more accurately, I voted AGAINST Hillary Clinton in 2016 and AGAINST Joe Biden in 2020. And I don’t regret either vote. I’m glad Hillary never became president, and, based on the last month and a half, I wish Biden had never become prez.
As is true of all presidential administrations, the record of Trump’s single term in office is a mixed bag – some real accomplishments, some real failures, some missed opportunities, some important issues not addressed at all, and some misguided approaches to serious matters that continue to plague America both at home and abroad.
But as someone who voted for Trump, twice, I sincerely hope that the Republicans will soon find a way to put him out to pasture and then to rally around another candidate – a highly electable candidate. Here’s why.
Since losing the 2020 election, Trump has damaged the nation and the GOP:
Even if Trump didn’t direct the mob’s attack on Capitol Hill – and I don’t believe that he did – he is guilty of not taking strong, decisive, and immediate action to stop the attack and to call off his supporters. He is guilty of dereliction of duty. Allowing Congress to be physically assaulted, as it was on January 6th, was a shocking and despicable failure not only of law enforcement but of government leadership. The president profoundly failed the nation that day, and for that reason alone, he should not be returned to the White House.
He has damaged the GOP by intruding himself into Georgia politics in a way that undermined the electoral chances of both Republican senatorial candidates and resulted in the loss of two seats. Those losses moved the Senate from Republican to Democratic control, thereby allowing the Democrats to move Biden’s legislative agenda through Congress. They would not have been able to do that had the Republicans kept their Senate majority. I blame Trump for losing the Senate.
Trump continues to lie about having won the 2020 election, thereby undermining faith in the functioning of our democracy. In his Jan. 6th speech, he claimed that “we won this election and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election.” That’s a lie. He lost to Biden by 7 million votes. Even if there were some irregularities, even though several states changed their voting rules at the last minute and in a constitutionally questionable manner, there is no way that Trump “won it by a landslide.”
Reason #4: As a long-time student and believer of effective communication, I have learned that the best leaders listen as well as speak. Donald Trump is a lousy listener. If he had listened to his own advisors as well as to Democrats and to Republicans, he could have gotten a deal on immigration, he could have moved forward on an infrastructure bill, he could have improved our national health care, he could have dealt more effectively with the pandemic and its economic fallout. He could have been re-elected. But he would rather talk than listen. Will he be a better listener four years from now? Fat chance!
But here’s the kicker. The American electoral choice is binary (unless a third-party candidate becomes a serious contender). Although I don’t want to see Trump back in the White House, for the reasons stated above, I have to admit that in a presidential general election, the question is never: “Candidate X, yes or no?” The question is always: “Candidate X or Candidate Y?” Even if the Republican nominee is seriously flawed, the question still remains: “Is the Democratic nominee better or worse for the country than the Republican nominee?” So, if the 2024 choice is Trump vs. Biden, or more likely, vs. Harris, and one is not enamored by then of the Biden-Harris administration’s track record, how should one vote?