It’s the most wonderful time of the year!
Just kidding, it’s incredibly stressful.
A few weeks back, I polled my Instagram followers and asked what issues they were most curious about tracking. While I received a wide range of responses, two things were clear: people are very invested, and (to my surprise) many have not made their final decision about a presidential candidate.
If you’re like me, you want fast, helpful, and (most importantly) accurate snapshots of where each candidate stands on the issues you care about. And if you’re like me in the “I want a snapshot” way, you may also be like me in the “I’m desperate for spin-free information” way. It can be really hard to figure out whether you’re encountering news or data that has been accurately represented.
With that in mind, I have done my dead-level best to bring you unbiased, opinion-free reporting from sources are tried, true, and trusted. Nothing I’ve written here came out of my own brain - it’s all sourced from dependable publications, 100% of which are linked and you can check my work.
I am not on a mission to convince you to vote for anyone in this post. Rather, I want to provide you with the best information possible so that you can decide.
First, a small note: this post only addresses the most-asked questions my Instagram followers submitted, and it’s only a bird’s-eye view of each issue. We could get deep into the weeds with every question, but that would bore you. Trust.
Let’s go!
ON EDUCATION:
What’s the problem? Education in the United States has long had its issues, and now is no exception. Aside from the new challenges introduced by the coronavirus pandemic, there are so many things at play: inadequate teacher pay, the opportunity gap in public schools, and lack of access to quality pre-K, to name a few.
Where does Joe Biden stand?
He’s promised to triple Title 1 funding to poorer schools to help close the opportunity gap between children of color and white children.
He’s also pledged to provide universal pre-k to 3 and 4 year olds before entering kindergarten.
Re: charter schools*, he hasn’t made his stance perfectly clear, to the chagrin of both the right and left. He’s been quoted as saying he’s “not a fan,” and wants to shut down for-profit charters (which make up a very small percentage of all charter schools nationwide). Progressive Democrats want him to be tougher on charter schools, and Republicans balk at his stance because they want charters to be expanded.
*A note: charter schools are public schools that operate outside the bounds of a school district, funded by a mix of public and private dollars. Conservatives like them because it offers parents choice; liberals tend to have questions about them because they can leave public school reform behind in favor of simply “opting out” of a traditional public education.
A lot more, which is outlined in his incredibly dense plan - you can read about it at the link below!
Read more about Biden’s plan here.
What has Trump done/promised?
Trump is campaigning on two primary issues: school choice and “American Exceptionalism.”
School choice means that he supports and wants to increase funding for charter schools.
American Exceptionalism refers to teaching a curriculum that paints the United States in a positive light rather than focusing on the country’s struggles or uglier stories.
He pledged to lower or even eliminate the Department of Education’s annual budget, but has instead increased it by $5 billion. He continues to propose decreasing federal funding to public education.
His appointment of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education was very controversial; DeVos has no prior experience in education and was widely criticized as being out of her depth.
Read more about what Trump has done and promises to do here.
ON ABORTION:
What’s the problem? While conservatives hold the line that abortion is morally wrong under most circumstances (though some allow exceptions for rape/incest/life endangerment), progressives push back that access to abortion should be easy and inexpensive, as abortion falls under the umbrella of women’s healthcare. Abortion can make the difference between whether someone votes for a candidate or not as it’s one of the most popularly cited “single issues” among single issue voters. Note: this is to say nothing of the Supreme Court’s stance on abortion potentially shifting with the appointment of a new justice.
Where does Biden stand?
Biden has had a varied history on abortion. Because he’s a devout Roman Catholic*, he initially began his career in politics with a distaste for abortion.
*One of the major positions of the Catholic church is to be pro-life across the board (ex. anti-abortion, anti-birth control, anti-capital punishment, anti-war, etc.).
Over the last few decades, he’s become more left-leaning, recently and most notably disavowing the Hyde Amendment* (which he previously supported). Changing his position means that he now supports federal funding being used more broadly for abortion.
*The Hyde Amendment designates that federal funding for abortions may only be used in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the life of the mother.
You can read more here.
What about Trump?
Trump, too, has had a storied history with the issue of abortion, but his views have changed in the opposite direction (from liberal to conservative). In 1999, he was quoted as saying that he was “pro-choice in every respect.”
In January of 2020, he curried favor with the pro-life movement by becoming the first sitting president to speak at the March for Life* rally, declaring his solidarity with their cause.
*March For Life is the largest pro-life organization in the world, which holds a peaceful event each January and produces literature for their cause year-round.
You can read more about his attendance at the March For Life here.
ON GUN CONTROL:
What’s the issue? The United States leads the developed world in gun homicides, topping the charts at 25.2x higher than other wealthy nations. Through the rise of groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA), conservative allegiance to the idea that citizens should be allowed to own and operate weapons has only grown stronger. Democrats push back that gun ownership should be allowed, but curtailed at certain points (like banning assault rifles).
Biden says:
He plans to ban assault rifles.
He also supports legally removing firearms from those who’ve been deemed a threat to themselves or others.
He supports universal background checks.
He would institute a voluntary buy-back program wherein people in possession of assault weapons or high capacity magazines could either sell them back to the government for a profit OR register them.
Read more here.
Trump’s position:
It’s challenging to encapsulate President Trump’s views on guns because he has changed his position while campaigning and in office.
During his 2015 campaign, he said a potential weapons ban a “total failure,” but then shocked fellow Republicans by aligning himself with Democrats and supporting gun reform in 2018.
Since then, there has not been sweeping change or further support.
In 2016, he stated that the Orlando nightclub shooting could’ve been prevented if more of the citizens inside the club had been armed. Shortly after, he swung back to the left by supporting a ban on gun purchase for people on the no-fly list. He later went silent on that position after experiencing massive blow back after the NRA, whose endorsement he’d secured, opposed that position.
The biggest gun-related move in his administration was in 2018, when he banned bump stocks, which was considered to be a bipartisan success.
ON COVID-19 VACCINES AND PROTOCOLS:
What’s the issue? A global pandemic has swept 2020 into a chaotic mess. So far, it’s claimed the lives of over 200,000 people in the United States. Schools have reopened with mixed success, and cases are still climbing in various states due to the mass attendance of super-spreader events, wherein lots of people are in close proximity. The numbers are disproportionately skewed such that people of color and low-income Americans are dying at higher rates due to pre-existing conditions and lack of access to quality healthcare.
What’s Biden’s plan?
Biden took on H1N1 in the Obama administration, and is already familiar with experts who’ve been advising him every 4 weeks throughout the year. This team is comprised of disease experts (think Ebola, Zika, and other flus), Health and Human Services Crisis experts, bioethicists and other experts in the field.
His plan is to start managing at a federal level, but he’s cautious about installing a federal mask mandate because he knows the push-back would be severe and might actually make things worse.
He does not believe in rolling out a vaccine until it’s absolutely safe to do so, but when there is a vaccine, under a Biden administration, it would be completely free to all Americans - even the uninsured.
His plan re: K-12 schools reopening can be found here, but largely includes funding schools with proper PPE and providing safety measures for educators and students.
Read more at Politico.com.
And Trump?
President Trump has come under fire for admitting on audio tape to Bob Woodward in a series of interviews that he knew as early as February that the virus was both deadly and airborne, but that he chose to downplay it to the American public. Critics argue that his unwillingness to acknowledge the seriousness of the virus hobbled the country’s experts from executing a plan that could have prevented tens of thousands of deaths.
The administration has also been criticized for interfering with information that the CDC releases to the public, insisting that they be able to “review and seek changes to” the CDC’s weekly scientific reports before those reports are reviewed by health professionals.
The administration has prioritized re-opening schools and bolstering the economy in recent months.
Trump has repeatedly promised a vaccine before the end of 2020, even intimating that it could be ready as soon as Election Day of this year,
Pfizer, the only company who could possibly deliver a vaccine before Election Day, is under enormous pressure. The scientific community is urging them to take the time they need in order comply with FDA standards; the American public desperately needs a vaccine; the electorate wants to ensure Pfizer isn’t being motivated by political timing. Read more about that here.
His own contraction of COVID-19 has put a new frame around his response to the pandemic. At the time of this post’s publication, he’s been out of the hospital from the hospital for a little over a week and is encouraging Americans “not to let the virus dominate your life.”
Multiple members of his administration and team of advisors have tested positive for COVID-19, tracing back to an indoor reception for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, wherein none of the attendees were following CDC protocol for mask wearing or social distancing.
You can see photos of the event here, where the NYT has identified people who tested positive.
LGBTQIA+ rights:
What’s the issue? Gay and transgender rights have been the topic of lots of conversation over the last four years as Democrats push to increase legislation and recommendations to expand protections under the law, while Republicans work to define gender more strictly. Note: again, this overview relates only to candidate positions, not including Supreme Court stances on LGBT issues.
What’s Biden’s plan?
Joe Biden has had a long history of varied opinions on LGBT issues. In the 90’s, he voted to stop same-sex marriage from being federally recognized, as well as voting to stop schools from teaching “the acceptance of homosexuality.”
As recently as 2006, he said that “marriage is between a man and a woman.”
However, his tune has drastically changed in later years. He went on the record supporting same-sex marriage before President Obama when they were in office in 2010.
Since then, he’s been celebrated by many leaders of the LGBTQ community for evolving, but is also criticized by progressives for not moving far enough to the left.
Trump’s promises, what he’s delivered, and plans for the future:
Despite posing with a rainbow flag during his 2016 campaign, the Trump Administration has made its stance clear on gay and transgender issues, holding that they’re different from issues of “biological sex,” and therefore not protected under the current civil rights law.
One of the biggest headline-makers of the last four years is HB2, a bill that passed in North Carolina requiring that every citizen use the bathroom that is reflected by the gender on their driver’s license. This caused uproarious protests and led to the state of NC losing massive amounts of business. As a result of that decision, the Supreme Court denied a hearing to a transgender plaintiff.
Trump has rolled back Obama-era guidelines issued to K-12 schools that encourage protection for transgender students and allow bathroom choice.
Trump famously tweeted that transgender citizens could no longer serve in the military, and the Department of Defense issued an order that prevents transgender people from transitioning while serving in the military, among other restrictions.
For a full view of the changes Trump made from Obama-era policies, check out the link below, which includes a graphic!
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Below are some questions I received that aren’t necessarily to do with large-scale policy positions, but rather, smaller one-off’s:
Q. What positive policies has the Trump administration enacted, if any? / What are Trump’s biggest wins and losses?
WINS:
Banning bump stocks in 2018, which you can read more about in the “gun control” section above.
He gave members of the military the largest pay increase in a decade.
He’s created jobs. Depending on how you count, the total “non-farm employment” has grown between 6.7 and 7 million jobs during the Trump administration.
If you’re conservative, a major victory would be that Trump has installed hundreds of conservative judges for lifetime appointments, including Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and, likely, Amy Coney Barrett.
Passing sentencing reform with the First Step Act.
Killing Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and helping to shrink ISIS’ presence throughout the world
A note here - when you hear people talk about “defeating ISIS’ caliphate,” that doesn’t mean “defeating ISIS” - “caliphate” refers to territories occupied by ISIS, and there are still thousands of ISIS fighters throughout Iraq and Syria. Still, this was a huge blow to ISIS.
LOSSES (according to the Business Insider piece I linked below):
National race relations and the response to Charlottesville and George Floyd’s murder
His handling of COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent economic crisis
Family separation and the deaths of migrant children at the border
Tarnishing America’s image globally
Withdrawing from the Iran nuclear agreement in 2018
Not following through on replacing Obamacare (AKA the Affordable Care Act), though he has dismantled parts of it
Impeachment
Sources: Politifact , The New York Times, and Business Insider.
Q. What is QAnon/Pizzagate?
According to the NYT:
“QAnon is the umbrella term for a sprawling set of internet conspiracy theories that allege, falsely, that the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who are plotting against Mr. Trump while operating a global child sex-trafficking ring. QAnon followers believe that this clique includes top Democrats including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and George Soros, as well as a number of entertainers and Hollywood celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, Ellen DeGeneres and religious figures including Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama. Many of them also believe that, in addition to molesting children, members of this group kill and eat their victims in order to extract a life-extending chemical from their blood.”
There’s much more in this article, but the gist is that die-hard QAnon believers get their messages on pages like Reddit from an anonymous, “high-level government source” named Q. They maintain that President Trump is eventually going to expose this invented ring of child trafficking, and that he drops little hints for them now and again to prove his faithfulness to that mission. For example, he once said offhandedly at a photo op with senior military leadership, “This is the calm before the storm.” “The Storm” is what QAnon die-hards call the moment when the big take-down will occur, so this sent everyone into a frenzy.
It’s hard to attempt to fact-check or debate a massive conspiracy theory, so I won’t. QAnon can serve a broad purpose, from simply entertaining people to serving as the bedrock for someone’s political beliefs and the way that person casts her vote. If you believe it, it seems no amount of literature can convince you otherwise. If you don’t believe it, then you’re in line with every major publication in the country.
QAnon has been identified by the FBI as a fringe conspiracy group that motivates acts of domestic terrorism.
Read the entire NYT deep dive here.
Q. Can you explain why the Biden/Harris campaign has been getting donations from Black Lives Matter?
They aren’t. The Black Lives Matter Foundation is a 501(c)3, which makes it illegal for them to donate to any campaign.
Q. Why does Joe Biden support defunding the police and making our country less safe?/Can you address “defund the police” and explain what it means? How will we function without a police force?
First, let’s break down “defunding the police.” This is a phrase with a lot of baggage and that has been widely misinterpreted and misunderstood; even if people don’t agree, we should all understand what it is. There are a couple of versions of what people want: defund/divest from the police, and abolish the police
The argument for DEFUND/DIVEST FROM:
In most American cities, the police force receives a disproportionately high amount of a municipal budget.* Proponents of the defund/divest movement argue that that increased spending allows police to have latitude and funding to misbehave more often, accounting for the fact that the United States has more police shootings than most other wealthy countries .
*think, really disproportionate - in New York, the police budget is $6 billion. That’s more than the budget of the World Health Organization, and more than the GDP’s of 50 countries around the world.
“Defund,” which might sound like it means “remove all funding from,” actually means “reallocate.” In other words: proponents of this movement want to take SOME, not all, police funding, and redistribute it throughout the community in places where it could help make more systemic change and lift communities out of poverty - places like schools, parks, and libraries. These improvements, supporters, argue, would re-imagine society in a way that would decrease the need for a police presence altogether.
In its inception, defunding the police was devised as a step toward abolition; however, in this current political conversation, many people support defunding without supporting abolishing the police, so it’s become its own stance.
The argument for ABOLISH:
Having said that, there are people who want to fully abolish the police, and that means what you think it means: to totally get rid of policing.
Members of this movement argue that police aren’t as necessary as we have come to think they are. Their position is that policing often leads to violence, rather than preventing it, and that the roots of policing are in racist institutions*, which means that policing often has racist results.
*A really important caveat here: this doesn’t mean that they’re accusing all individual police officers of being racist.
They’re not arguing that policing should simply disappear in the span of a few days; instead, they want to slowly start tapering things like gang units, continued hiring, and overtime away until policing and mass incarceration are gone.
Reform doesn’t work. Studies show that sometimes, efforts to reform police departments through “implicit bias training” can actually make things worse in the long run, because officers resent having had to complete the training at all.
There’s also no data that shows that accountability measures, like body cams, have any positive effect on police behavior.
When asked about what happens when there is violent crime, proponents of abolishing the police will cite the fact that police spend a very, very small portion of their time on duty responding to violent crime, and a much larger portion responding to traffic issues, non-criminal calls, interactions with the mentally ill, and drug-related activity or overdoses. When a call is placed to 911 for a non-violent reason, a paramedic, mental health professional, or other crisis team member would be dispatched instead of a police officer. (You can read more about that at this link, which is also the source of the graphic below. For violent calls, violence interrupters and mental health professionals would be called upon to help de-escalate violent situations.
Neither of these concepts are new and both have been around for decades, especially among Black feminist activists. Now, they’ve come into the mainstream as a response to the overwhelming racial unrest that arose from the George Floyd murder. For more, check out this article, or this one!
Biden’s position?
Joe Biden doesn’t support ANY of these things, despite what Trump has said and to the great chagrin of many progressive Democrats who were hoping for a more liberal candidate. Just to be clear, again: Joe Biden does not support defunding the police.
You can read more about Biden’s position (and what Trump has proposed) in this article.
Graphic courtesy of the New York Times.
Q. What were Trump’s border wall goals vs. progress made? What about MS-13?
This from the Washington Post:
“Trump has promised to build at least 500 miles of new fencing by early next year, and his administration has completed about 110 miles so far. To meet the president’s targets, crews will need to add about 30 linear miles of barrier per month throughout 2020, more than double the current pace of construction.”
As far as the notorious gang MS-13 is concerned, Trump’s commentary is a mixed bag of truth and fiction. Here’s a great, short article (though it is a couple of years old) here that details the five biggest things he gets wrong (including that MS-13 is not out to foil immigration law, nor are they posing as “fake families” at the border).
But MS-13 is certainly real and dangerous, and preys on immigrants and the children of immigrants (not the entire country at large). You can read more in detail about the heartbreaking violence in that same piece, where the author argues that if we’re going to make policy changes, we first have to be rooted in fact.
There’s an incredibly fascinating article, complete with graphics (like the one below) and tons of data, at this link.
Graphic from the Washington Post.
Q. Is Joe Biden a socialist or a “puppet of the socialist left?”
No. The far-left doesn’t think he’s liberal enough.
Q. I heard Donald Trump talking about what he’s done for Black people. So…what has he done for Black people?
Trump claimed recently that he’s done “more for Black Americans than any other president, maybe excluding Lincoln.” Claiming that he’s done more for Black people than Lincoln or Johnson, who signed the Civil Rights Act, is incorrect.
What Trump is most likely referring to are four things: reforming sentences in federal prisons, creating “opportunity zones,” a low unemployment rate among Black people, and increasing funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Here’s a brief breakdown on each of those things:
1. Opportunity zones:
Basically, an “opportunity zone” is a type of tax break that incentivizes wealthy investors to pour funds into poor communities. By investing in an opportunity zone, they get to defer taxes on capital gains. If the properties they invest in or “flip” increase in value over a set period of time, the investor doesn’t have to pay any taxes on that property.
The the way opportunity zones are drawn, affluent neighborhoods are included alongside struggling neighborhoods (for example, all of Puerto Rico is a zone - even resorts). The people who put this plan together designed it that way so that wealthier neighborhoods would attract investors; however, most investors are only putting money into those wealthy neighborhoods, not the lower income neighborhoods the plan was designed to help. The idea that this tax break has helped lift Black neighborhoods out of poverty is incorrect.
2. Low unemployment rates among Black Americans:
This is true - but it’s the result of policies that predated the Trump administration and actually began in the Obama administration. Other important factors are that Black home ownership is still low, and Black unemployment was actually on the rise before the pandemic began.
3. Increasing funding for HBCU’s:
Congress actually decides how much money these schools receive, and the program that doles it out was started in the 60’s. Trump taking credit for it as a win doesn’t really track.
4. Federal prison sentencing reform:
Federal prison sentencing reform: This is pretty much true. His support breathed life back into a bill that had been kind of in the basement of Congress since its proposal in 2015, when it was much more expansive than it ultimately became.
Read the NYT fact-check of that statement, here.
Okay, friends! WHEW - that’s it! I am 100% positive that there are things I missed, and as always, I’m open to corrections where I’ve inevitably made typos or errors. But I do want to reiterate that I worked hard to ensure it was centrist, accurate, and properly sourced. I hope this novel has been helpful to somebody in parsing through the many things that can impact how you vote.
Be well, wear a mask, and pretty please - vote, vote, VOTE!