Pack87 said:
Political philosophy question. If you do not like any of the candidates (either side) but you agree with about 30% of what one side thinks and less than 20% of what the other side thinks who do you vote for? That is why Trump is in office and could remain so. The country is not socialist (as a whole) and even though I don't think most people like Trump's behavior he is more conservative than anyone the Democrats are getting behind. James Carvell made some great points about where politics are in this country. You can't just make one side "the evil empire".
I think it's all about branding, honestly.
Conservatives talk about fiscal responsibility, but the truth is that Trump has ballooned the deficient by $4T dollars, a 20%+ increase from where it was when he took over. That ballooning is enabled by corporate tax breaks that will supposedly trickle down to the middle class and poor.
So you're an undecided voter that thinks fiscal responsibility is important. So you vote Republican because they're branded as such, whereas when people think Democrats they think about the social programs and higher taxes, because that's how they're branded. Truthfully it's probably much more fiscally responsible to actually tax corporations and put the money to work for middle class and poor, but everyone just thinks that those are "handouts" when not considering that corporations are getting handouts on a magnitude much higher than what would passed on to those that need it.
I'm pretty sure most economic summaries of Presidential tenures will show that the economy, debt, etc. have done much better under Democratic Presidents than Republican. GWB's administration was responsible for roll-back of lending rules that led to the recession in 2008/2009, and it was cleaned up while Obama was in office and he had the economy humming as Trump took over. But for some reason people like to think that Republicans talking about "deregulation" and "manufacturing jobs" will magically make the economy better.
There are also many that are Republican because they think that's the party God would get behind. It's baffling how focused they are on gay marriage and abortion rights that they don't worry about the other multitude of sins that are ignored across the board. For some reason the conservative Christians don't think about greed is a sin, especially when so much of the money that corporations and rich are given back could make incredible impact to society as a whole by helping with homelessness, hunger, education, things like that.
So with that, you have to vote with your conscious. Do you care more about abortion rights than children that don't have enough food each day? Do you care more about corporations getting tax cuts than you care about Universal Pre-K so children aren't sitting at home in front of a TV for 8 hours a day while their parent works a minimum wage job just to get by?
