Are you better off now than you were four years ago?

Yesterday I cast my ballot for Joe Biden. If you know me, you’ll find this is about as unsurprising as a MAGA person voting for Trump. But the thing is this election won’t come down to the diehards on either side — there’s no question we’ll turn out. It will come down to the 10 to 20 million Americans who still aren’t sure who to vote for or whether to vote at all.

It’s these folks I’m addressing with this post. It is challenging to seek out facts in a media environment that is dominated by misinformation, polarization, and conspiracies. When watching debates like last night, it’s hard to know which candidates are telling the truth.

Who can you trust? Which president will better your life?

As an undecided voter, I think the best way for you to predict what another four years of Donald Trump will be like is not by listening to what he and his allies are saying now — it’s to examine what Trump has or has not done over the last three and a half years.

Or to answer the question that Ronald Reagan famously asked, “are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Has Donald Trump’s rhetoric and actions improved your life? The lives of people in your community? The lives of people in this country?

If you remain unsure about the answer to this question, if you remain undecided about voting, I’ve put a list together (with citations so you can ensure accuracy) that demonstrates just how worse off this country is under Donald Trump and his administration. Based on this track record, what do you think another four years will bring us?

Of course, it’s not just about why Donald Trump is the wrong choice, but also why Joe Biden is the right one. This resource will show you that no matter the type of voter you are, Joe Biden is the right choice.

If you’re reading this as a Biden voter, feel free to share this with someone who might be undecided on their choice or undecided on whether to vote at all. This election will come down to a couple of voters per precinct. Let’s give those voters as much information as we can.

COVID

• First, the obvious: we are in a global pandemic that as of October 20th has (officially) infected over 8 million Americans and killed over 220,000 people. Both numbers rank America first in the world. We have nearly double the number of deaths. CDC
• Another way to think about it: the number of deaths is currently equivalent to September 11th occurring 73 times.
• Cornell University released a report that found “the President of the United States was likely the largest driver of the COVID-19 misinformation ‘infodemic.’” He has consistently questioned (and mocked) the use of masks, touted unproven and often dangerous treatments (hydroxychloroquine, bleach), encouraged states to reopen prematurely, and has promised many times that the “end of the pandemic is in sight,” and has demanded his own agency (the CDC) remove helpful studies and posts that contradict his point of view. Vox
• In February and March, Trump called it a “new hoax,” compared it to the common flu, and assured the public that the virus will “disappear like a miracle” and that by Easter, “you’ll have packed churches all over our country.” Vox
• This is despite Trump privately admitting to journalist Bob Woodward as early as February 7th that the virus is “a plague,” the virus will “rip you apart,” and the virus is “so easily transmissible, you wouldn’t even believe it.” The contradiction between private Trump and public Trump can be explained by what he told Woodward on March 19th: “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.” Vox
• Instead of “playing it down” Trump could’ve prepared and followed through. Instead, this is what he and his administration did:
• After successfully navigating the Ebola crisis, the Obama Administration left a 69-page playbook on how to handle a pandemic. The Trump administration largely ignored it. (PBS).
• Obama also created a team to coordinate a pandemic response. In 2018, Trump disbanded the team, fired the head of the pandemic response, and cut a position meant to detect outbreaks in China, and an entire program dedicated to tracking pathogens around the globe. Vox
• When the virus began exploding in March, the Trump administration took weeks to figure out the delays and errors in its testing kits while not approving private company testing for multiple weeks. Vox
• When the supply chain broke down (for testing kits, swab, N95 masks, machines, etc) the federal government did not use its immense powers via the Defense Production Act to centralize mass production and distribution of needed material. Instead, mass shortages occurred as states fought with each other over PPE. Vox
• We never developed a comprehensive contact tracing program as seen in other countries. Vox
• When asked about America’s testing problems in March Trump says, “I don’t take responsibility at all.” Vox
• Eight months in we are in our third surge and we still do not have enough testing in America. About 30 million tests are given a month but experts say we need to test up to 193 million times per month. NBC
• A report in May found that 36,000 American lives could’ve been saved from March-May had we started social distancing measures just one week prior. This virus didn’t become known to Trump in March: he knew how deadly this disease was as early as late January. 36,000 people could’ve lived. NPR
• Another report from Columbia University released just this Wednesday found that upwards of 130,000 deaths could’ve been avoidable had Trump acted earlier and implemented public health strategies similar to our allies in Canada, Japan, Germany, and South Korea. Columbia
• When asked what he makes of over 100,000 Americans dying from COVID he replies “it is what it is.” Vox
• To top it all off, 32 people, including Donald Trump himself, tested positive for COVID after the Supreme Court announcement. It is now being called a super spreader event. New York Times

The Economy

• Trump’s biggest legislative accomplishment is the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin claimed the tax cut would pay for itself due to faster economic growth and that it would cut down the deficit by a trillion dollars. Neither happened. Vox
• Obama left Trump a federal deficit of $585 billion. In September, the federal deficit reached $3.1 trillion — by far the largest deficit in our history. Washington Post
• The federal debt was $19.57 trillion at the end of 2016. It has grown every year since and is now approaching $27 trillion, with no slowdown in sight. Axios
• Trump promised to grow the economy by 4%; the economy grew by an average of 2.5% during Trump’s first three years. (Axios) The economy contracted by 30% in the second quarter of 2020 and is expected to contract by 5% overall in 2020. Reuters
• After the tax cut but before the pandemic, the yearly wage growth rate increased by 0.4 percent. Compare this to the yearly wage growth rate under Obama’s last two years which was an increase of 0.7 percent. Inequality.org
• The $1.9 trillion tax cut was called by Trump a “middle-class tax cut.” However. the top 1% received an average cut of $50,000–75 times more than the bottom 80% which received an average tax cut of $850. Inequality.org
• America’s richest 400 families now pay a lower overall (factoring federal, state, and local) tax rate than the middle-class CBS News
• As of November 2019, the top 1% (approximately 1.5 million Americans) own $35.4 trillion worth of assets compared to nearly half of the American population (50th — 90th percentile) who own $36.9 trillion worth of assets. Bloomberg
• Meanwhile, the median annual earnings of all 53 million Americans (44% of all workers) aged 18–64 is only $18,000. Brookings
• Obama left office in 2016 with the unemployment rate at 4.7%; During the peak of the pandemic the unemployment rate was 14.2% and as of September the rate is 7.9% Market Watch
• In April, a total of 30 million Americans had filed unemployment claims since the start of the pandemic. Compare this to 7 million in Canada, 2 million in the UK, less than 2 million in Japan. Governments in Germany and France are subsidizing employers to pay employees to avoid mass unemployment. World Economic Forum
• Trump promised to bring manufacturing jobs back into America: Nearly 1,800 factories have disappeared during the Trump administration between 2016 and 2018 and 740,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost since February 2020. Economic Policy Institute
• Trump promised a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill to fix our roads, bridges, and dams; no action has been taken. BBC
• Trump promised to rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement. He did. But the USMCA is seen more as a rebranding effort which kept half of the original deal intact and “modernized” and “upgraded” the other half. USA Today
• Trump promised to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership; he did but has not attempted to create a better deal leaving China outsized power in the Pacific. Washington Post
• Trump promised to label China a currency manipulator (he did in 2019 then he reversed his position) and make a better trade deal with China. Instead, Trump’s trade war with China cost upwards of 340,000 jobs and lowered overall economic growth by 0.3%. USA Today
• And the nation’s trade deficit has risen 25% under Trump compared to Obama’s last year. USA Today

Health Care

• Trump promised to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Neither happened.
• Yet he continues to try and have the law repealed through the court but has no plan to replace the ACA. Washington Post
• If the ACA is repealed, over 20 million Americans will lose insurance and more than 135 million Americans would lose their protection for pre-existing conditions, including new COVID survivors. Center for American Progress
• Instead, Trump has cut open enrollment dates in half and cut funding to help American’s find a plan on the marketplace. Kaiser
• Trump has gotten two conservative anti-choice justices on the Supreme Court and will almost certainly get a third. It is now very likely that the Affordable Care Act will get struck down and Roe v Wade will get overturned despite 66% of Americans preferring it stays law. NBC
• Before coronavirus, 7 million fewer Americans had health insurance compared to when Trump took office. Since the coronavirus, an additional estimated 5 million Americans have lost health insurance. Vox; NYT

Corruption

• Donald J Trump became the third president in American history to be impeached. He received two articles of impeachment: one for abuse of power (asking Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and withholding Congressionally approved military aid) and another for obstruction of Congress
• Trump promised to drain the swamp. Eight high-profile Trump advisors have been arrested or convicted. Steve Bannon former top advisor for fraud; Roger Stone top advisor convicted for lying under oath; Paul Manafort former campaign manager convicted of tax and bank fraud; Michael Cohen Trump’s personal lawyer convicted for “orchestrating ‘hush money’ payments before the 2016 election to women who had said they had sexual encounters with Trump” and for lying to Congress about proposed Trump Tower in Moscow; Michael Flynn, Trump National Security Advisor, “pleaded guilty that year to lying to the FBI about his interactions with Russia’s ambassador to the United States in the weeks before Trump took office”; Rick Gates, former deputy campaign chairman, pleaded guilty for lying o investigators and conspiracy against the US.; George Nader, an advisor of foreign policy for Trump, pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography and bringing a boy into the US; George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty for lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts. Reuters
• Additionally, there were 11 cabinet officials and high-level White House Staffers who have either misspent taxpayer dollars (such as spending hundreds of thousands of unnecessary dollars on travel, gifts, furniture) or violated ethics rules. NYT
• As of August 2020, Trump has visited his properties 271 times as president and the Trump Organization has charged the federal government (i.e. taxpayers) over $900,000. Trump Organization has charged other GOP organizations nearly $4 million. Meaning: the Trump Organization is making money off of Trump being in the White House. Washington Post

Environment

• Five of the six largest wildfires in California occurred in 2020. Vox With two months left of hurricane season, there have been 23 active hurricanes, nearly double the yearly average. Washington Post This has been the hottest decade on record and the last five years have been the hottest years ever recorded. Our oceans are also the hottest on record. National Geographic. The Western US is in the largest prolonged megadrought ever recorded BBC On the opposite end, 2018–2019 was the wettest year ever recorded which especially negatively impacted the Midwest. Wired
• While Trump cannot be blamed as the direct cause for natural disasters, his denial of climate change and environmental policies have made the problem worse in the present and for years to come.
• He withdrew from the Paris Climate Deal that was signed by every single country in the world and he has consistently denied that climate change is an existential threat to our planet going so far as to call it a “Chinese Hoax.” NRDC
• He and his administration have reversed 72 environmental rules meant to protect our land, air, water, wildlife, along with policies meant to curb climate change. As of October, eliminating 27 additional rules are in progress. New York Times
• These rules include “limits on planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and from cars and trucks; removed protections from more than half the nation’s wetlands; and withdrawn the legal justification for restricting mercury emissions from power plants.” New York Times
• Trump has also put ingenious tribes and wildlife at risk to increase oil and gas drilling in the Arctic. New York Times
• All of this is occurring despite recent polling showing that 67% of Americans think the government is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change and 62% of Americans saying they see climate change effects in their communities like excess heat, flooding, storms, droughts, wildfires, and damage to wildlife. Pew

Discrimination & Systemic Racism

• Approximately 15 to 26 million Americans protested, marched, and demonstrated for Black Lives Matter during June. This would make the BLM protests the largest movement in American history. NYT
• The Justice Department “has cut funding in its Civil Rights Division, scaled back prosecutions of hate crimes, nearly abandoned its efforts to combat systemic discrimination by police departments, and backed state measures that deprived minorities of the right to vote.” Washington Post
• Of the 248 judges confirmed or nominated since Trump took office, only eight were Black and eight were Hispanic Washington Post
• The jobless rate for Black people in August was 13 percent, compared with 7.3 percent for White people — the highest racial disparity in nearly six years. Washington Post
• Trump has sought Muslim and Refugee bans with the former eventually being upheld by a conservative-backed 5 to 4 vote in the Supreme Court. On the latter, Trump has reduced refugees who are fleeing violence, war, famine, natural disasters, and so on from 85,000 in 2016 to 18,000 in 2020. ACLU
• The Trump administration is working to roll back policies to fight racial segregation. “By removing Obama-era policies, banks will be able to deny loans to black and Hispanic people or for cities to confine poor families to minority neighborhoods.” Politico

Global Affairs

• In a global poll, 29% of respondents had confidence in Trump; during Obama’s last term 64% had confidence in Obama. Pew
• On average, global citizens now have more confidence in Chinese leadership than Americans. Institute for Economics and Peace
• The Trump administration hasn’t ousted Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela or supported the people of Venezuela despite claims to do so. USA Today
• Despite much coverage and attention no deal and no progress has been made with Kim Jong Un. USA Today Two weeks ago, Kim Jong Un unveiled what analysts believe to be the world’s largest liquid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missile. CNN
• No peace deal has been struck with the Taliban (although they have endorsed him for reelection) USA Today
• Trump has done nothing about Russia offering bounties to kill American soldiers USA Today
• Trump has withdrawn from the internationally-backed Iran Peace Deal resulting in Iran continuing to enrich uranium and increased tension and military action from both sides. USA Today
• The US has been accused of human rights violations by separating 5,500 families and putting hundreds of children in cages. 207 children that were separated were less than 5 years old. NBC News
• Recent reports show that our government cannot locate the parents of 535 children that we forcefully separated NBC News
• Trump has stayed silent as a cultural genocide against the Uyghurs is ongoing in Xinjiang and he has stayed silent as China has cracked down on the human rights abuse in Hong Kong. Washington Post
• Trump promised to build a 738-mile wall on the southern border and have Mexico pay for it. As of August 2020, Trump and the administration have created 260 miles of “replacement and secondary walls.” The Trump administration has created only 5 new miles of walls. It cost American taxpayers $15 billion and no, Mexico did not pay for it. San Antonio Express-News

Donald Trump — the human

• Donald Trump is a self-proclaimed genius businessman — the reality is Donald Trump owes over $400 million and likely has over $1 billion of debt when taking into account his dozen different assets — hotels, buildings, mansions, and golf courses. Forbes
• Trump has referred to African countries as “shitholes;” to Mexicans as “rapists;” to neo-Nazis as “very fine people” and has said, “laziness is a trait in blacks.” The Intercept
• According to a nonpartisan Factchecker Database, Trump has made more than 20,000 false or misleading claims. These falsehoods and their amplification by allies have made it hard to tell truth from fiction. Washington Post
• He has called journalists “scum,” “slime,” “sick people,” “fake news,” and “the enemy of the people.” and has even asked the FBI to jail journalists. The Intercept
• He has been accused of sexual harassment by dozens of women and has been accused of rape by writer E Jean Carroll. The Intercept
• He’s speculated with zero evidence that Joe Biden is a pedophile and is on drugs. New Yorker
• Instead of focussing on his job, he has promoted dozens of conspiracy theories that have been proven false such as birtherism, linking Ted Cruz’s father to the JFK assassination, claiming Muslim’s were celebrating on NJ rooftops on 9/11, linking MSNBC host Joe Scarborough to the death of a staffer, saying Biden killing off SEAL Team 6, calling 75-year old Martin Gugino a member of ANTIFA, saying Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered, claiming Bill Clinton was responsible for Jeffery Epstein’s death, stating that Ukraine has the DNC server (?!), claiming Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, saying Wind Turbines cause cancer, repeating that there is widespread voter fraud in America, that vaccines cause autism, that a 2018 caravan was full of gang members and somehow people from the Middle East, that the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine could cure COVID, and most recently he has refused to debunk the ever-growing QAnon conspiracy. The list goes on Factcheck.org and American Progress Action
• He’s spent 283 days on a golf course at the cost of $141,000,000 to taxpayers Trump Golf Count
• He has consistently refused to ensure a peaceful transition of power or accept the election results if he loses in 2020.

This list is obviously not comprehensive. In fact, the most difficult part of researching and writing this list wasn’t finding what to include; it was knowing that I have barely scratched the surface on the damage that Trump and his administration have inflicted.

So again, I ask you, the undecided voter, has your life gotten better? Have your neighbors’ lives improved? Are we as a country more unified, healthy, and happy than we were before Trump?

These are the questions you will have to answer. Hopefully, this list helped. For those that have decided to vote for Joe Biden, please share with someone who you think falls into either category. The election will come down to them.