Finally, the candidates are no longer presumptive.
American voters and their delegates have chosen, yet somehow we’ve ended up with candidates from both parties that almost no one likes. Both are liars. Both are power-hungry narcissists. Both have questionable morality. Most of us would use the term “sleazy” to describe actions both have taken to add to their personal wealth. Few of us would trust either of them enough to buy a used car from them.
But come November, barring a third-party candidate, a coup or an act of God, we’ll be choosing either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump as president. If our founding fathers were alive today, they might be thinking that a monarchy doesn’t seem so bad after all. Never has the phrase “lesser of two evils” been so literal.
So which candidate is the greater lesser? Or, more to the point, which candidate should get your vote?
One way to decide is to review the platforms each party passed at this year’s convention. A party’s platform, of course, is just a guide. Either candidate, if elected president, may ignore the party platform. Congress will have an influence, too, even if the next president follows President Obama’s precedent and pretends that Congress doesn’t exist.
But which platform is better for you and better for the country? We’ll review the Democratic platform this week and the Republican platform next week. We suggest that you also read them yourself before deciding how to cast your vote.
Higher Taxes and More Government
The Democratic Party platform isn’t much different than it might have been if Bernie Sanders won the nomination.
Hillary Clinton has talked about making her presidency a continuation of the Obama presidency, but, based on the party platform, it would move even further left. The platform can be summarized in four words—higher taxes, more government.
The middle class is purported to be the key beneficiary of this approach, although the last eight years of higher taxes and more government have left the middle class earning less and working at jobs that are less rewarding, if they’re working at all. The youth unemployment rate—ages 16 to 24—is still 10.7%. Upward mobility has been replaced by downward mobility.
The platform promises lots of free stuff, like free college education: “Democrats are unified in their strong belief that every student should be able to go to college debt-free, and working families should not have to pay any tuition to go to public colleges and universities.”
That’s one way of dealing with the student loan fiasco. College grads may still end up living at home and working at Starbucks, but if college is free, at least they won’t have student loans to pay off. Instead, the middle-class taxpayers who are supposed to be benefiting from this government largesse will be paying for it, since nothing—especially education—is ever free. With government footing the bill, college costs will skyrocket. Meanwhile, the value of a college degree will plummet, as anyone with a pulse will be signing up for a four-year free ride. Party time!
Where’s the Growth?
Given the dismal economic performance of the past eight years, you’d think the economy would be the central focus of the Democratic platform. If there’s anything in the 51-page platform that would create economic growth, we missed it.
The platform does promise to “create good paying jobs” with a “Make It in America” plan, but gives no details. Remember “Make It in Massachusetts?” That slogan, and it was only a slogan, worked well until a recession hit. If anything, the Democratic plan to increase the minimum wage to $15 and add more regulation to just about everything will destroy jobs, good paying or not. Unless, of course, you take a government job.
In the same sentence as the promise of a minimum wage hike, the platform says Americans should “have the right to form or join a union.” Of course, Americans have long had that right. But what about the right to not join a union? Most Democrats have opposed “right to work” laws, which give employees the choice of whether or not to join a union.
The platform promises to “leverage federal dollars to support employers who provide their workers with a living wage, good benefits, and the opportunity to form a union without reprisal.” In other words, small businesses, which are least able to afford high wages and expensive benefits, will be paying higher taxes, so we can provide breaks for Elon Musk and Tom Steyer.
There’s also a reference to building infrastructure, which was a premise of President Obama’s first-term stimulus package. That package cost more than $800 billion and the only thing it stimulated was more federal spending, helping to jack the federal deficit up to its current $19 trillion. Could the $783,000 spent to study why young people consume malt liquor and marijuana have been put to a better use?
If government spending stimulated the economy, as Keynesians would have us believe, Greece would be thriving.
Citizens United: The Movie
Another big Democratic priority is overturning the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which opponents often summarize as enabling corporations to control political campaigns. What you don’t hear is that Citizens United was a suit brought against the Federal Election Commission by the company that made the film, “Hillary: The Movie.”
The case revolved around whether government agencies could prohibit the publication of books and movies made or sold by corporations.
So here you have Hillary Clinton, who is supported by billionaires such as George Soros ($25 million to date) and Tom Steyer ($31 million to date), vowing to take “big money out of politics” by overturning Citizens United, a decision that allowed the distribution of a movie that offers an unflattering portrayal of Mrs. Clinton. No personal interest there, of course.
It’s worth noting that if Citizens United were overturned, the Clinton Foundation would still be able to accept contributions from foreign governments and well-heeled business executives without limitation.
The combination of free market capitalism, and the freedoms granted by the Bill of Rights and the U.S. constitution have created a standard of living and a degree of freedom in this country that has been unequalled anywhere. If you prefer to give up some of these freedoms, and instead increase government dependence and government debt, then vote for Hillary.