Mr. Biden, I heard on the news that you plan to make a big deal of $Rump’s tax issues. Please don’t do that. It has very little to do with the immediate and compelling and life-threatening issues of America’s voters. I have been interacting with independents and previous $Rump voters. They are thinking about voting for you. Give them reasons. Please. If the tax issue comes up, dispose of it quickly and return to the pandemic — perhaps segue with “Lack of taxes paid by the wealthy is why everyone else’s taxes are so high yet we can’t seem to afford for the government to help us out.”
Here are Chris Wallace's topics and how I’d recommend responding to them. Please keep bringing them back to life-and-death issues:
The Trump and Biden Records
The biggest screw-up of $Rump’s record: The mishandling of the pandemic. The continual minimizing that is even still going on (“We are turning the corner,” $Rump said yesterday as more states reported increasing numbers of cases). The lies and divisions $Rump encourages, and how they set us up for being unable to handle the pandemic. The ignorance and yet narcissistic refusal to let knowledgeable experts handle it. The 205,000 reported dead and how many more are probably dead and unreported — given a recent study showing the number of probable Covid deaths about 28% higher than the reported number, then we are currently probably at least at 260,000 dead. The partial shutdown of travel from China, but only after the virus was then in Europe. The partial shutdown of travel from Europe only after the US was already infected by the thousands. The ongoing lack of a federal response, not enough supplies, not enough stimulus money, not enough lockdown, taxpayer money going to wasteful scams run by “friends” of $Rump or businesses he’s invested in. The continuing lack of response. The continuing mishandling of the pandemic. People crying over the graves of their grandparents, their parents, their friends, their children, their grandchildren. Not a single word of condolence from $Rump. Whatever else $Rump or Wallace want to talk about, keep bringing it back to this, the mishandling of the pandemic, with hundreds of millions of disrupted lives and hundreds of thousands of dead Americans as a result. Negligent homicide.
In contrast, Obama’s handling of the Ebola epidemic from 2014-2016. Despite allowing Africans in to the United States for treatment, “only two people have ever been infected with Ebola while on American soil and neither died”. Keep bringing it back to that. Obama’s epidemic: Two infections. $Rump’s epidemic: Currently more than 7 million infections. Two. Versus more than 7 million. And Obama left $Rump a pandemic plan that you will follow. Explain some of that, exactly what you will do to get this under control. Then return to $Rump’s failure. Obama: Two. Zero dead. $Rump: Seven million. Over 205,000 counted dead. Underestimates of his abject failure.
The Supreme Court
I have heard you talking about how access to affordable healthcare is at risk. Keep emphasizing that, that’s good. Due to the $Rump destruction of the economy and our health from mishandling the pandemic, accessible affordable healthcare is more important than ever and its lack is most obvious now. If $Rump has a plan other than asking the Supreme Court to end the ACA, what is it? Specifically? He has said it would be ready in 2 weeks several times over the course of the last 4 years. He shouldn’t wait to be re-elected. Let him present it NOW.
You might also throw in some stories about women who have had to have late-term abortions. It’s usually in order to save the life of the mother and/or remove a nonviable fetus causing her agony. It is not “pro-life” to kill women who are trying to have babies, and especially not to put women’s life and health in further danger and maybe they die after they’ve been raped and forced into unwanted pregnancies. That’s why abortion has to be legal, affordable, and accessible to all. When it happens needs to be the woman’s decision with the advice of her doctors, just like men’s health decisions and timing are theirs with the advice of their doctors. Women can be trusted more than judges. Especially judges with religious agendas that blind them to grim realities. You were brought up that abortion is wrong, like me; but we have had to face the facts that killing pregnant women with our demands is the actual wrong. A lot of judges still don’t understand that. It is not a politician’s place to have any decision-making power over a citizen’s healthcare decisions.
Still, more palatable to swing voters, and bringing us back to the idiocy of the current handling of the pandemic and challenges to the ACA, is that access to affordable healthcare is at risk for all of us. Repeat it. They say everything has to be heard at least 3 times before it sinks in. Three. Everything, 3 times.
Covid-19
Great! Another chance to say all of the above. Hit him hard and repeatedly. He will try to change the subject. This is his biggest weakness. Do NOT let this 15 minutes be used for any other topic!!
The Economy
The biggest rationalization I have heard from $Rump voters is that he gave us a good economy until Covid hit. He did not!! He was blessed with a leftover good economy from the Obama/Biden years. Here’s one good summary in charts from a relatively conservative publication, markets.businessinsider.com/… $Rump had only managed to do damage to the Obama economy even before the pandemic hit.
Of course, his mishandling of the pandemic has caused the economy to crash, and no matter how much he — and admittedly we all — want to open up, the economy will only get worse as the rates of Covid infection expand under the $Rump non-virus-fighting plan. Explain that the stock market is being artificially propped up, and this cannot last forever under $Rump’s ineptitude. This is not a sharp businessman who ever saved the economy and can ever save it in the future. This is an incompetent, not particularly bright narcissist who spent his father’s entire fortune and now is in debt in the billions. Hit him hard again and again!
Explain what you will do: Send all non-essential workers back home, with monthly stimulus payments to pay their bills. Explain that even $Rump’s Treasury Secretary admitted that the federal government could afford to send out monthly checks indefinitely, until the pandemic was under control. This would keep people housed and fed and with medical care, and would stimulate the economy in providing these needs. Send all students back home, whilst giving them computers and broadband Internet connections. Use your war powers to get nationwide publicly paid broadband infrastructure fast, so currently under-served areas, both urban inner city and rural, can have access to the Internet for education and business and other purposes, finally bringing this country into the 21st century as far as the technological prowess needed for the future. This will greatly equalize education, bringing standards up to the best schools in the country, improvements that have been badly needed for a long time. Pay teachers and professors bonuses, as teaching via the Internet will require some extra time and creativity at least for the first year as they learn the best ways to use technology to teach their variety of students. But keep students learning at home until there is a proven safe and effective vaccine. There is NO reason to allow these proven super spreaders! A law can be passed to simply pay the schools’ and universities’ expenses, minus outrageously inflated and completely unnecessary executive salaries, with the above stimulus payments to the staff.
Stimulus payments should be something on the order of $1500-2000 per adult per month, and about $1000 per child per month (payable to their caretakers, not to them directly). This will provide a bit of a “thank you” to parents who have extra emotional and time burdens with their children not in school.
Race and Violence in our Cities
This is an unfairly loaded question. Fight it as such. Present the facts regarding "violence in our cities”. Push hard on the freedom and right to protest, and especially to petition the government for redress of grievances, and the freedom of the press, as vital protected First Amendment rights. Call out the infuriating horror of a president trampling on our precious First Amendment to the Constitution. Repeatedly state that the vast majority of protesters have been peaceful, that only a handful have engaged in violence, that more often the violence has been perpetrated by white supremacist followers of $Rump and $Rump-hate-speech-inspired white domestic terrorists, some of them cops illegally acting under color of “law”. Give the statistics if you can find them. Talk about adding funds to police departments for social workers and mental health teams and crisis intervention teams, to cities for mental health facilities and affordable shelter for the homeless, and taking away from the police military weapons and military thinking because the citizens of the United States are not the Enemy, we are not at war with our own neighbors.
Talk about the need to reform the police. They know what to do, now they need to be motivated to do it. Every criminal in the US should be treated like Brad Parscale. Every police officer should patrol his or her district in pairs, on foot, so that they know the people they serve and so that people know who they are. There should be better selection of police so that those personalities who like to serve others are selected, not those with authoritarian bullying personalities. We need to get rid of for-profit prisons. Prisons should be motivated to let people out as soon as it is safe to do so, not to keep them in to increase their own profits. Training needs to be reformed so that recruits will fail classes if they shoot a virtual unarmed suspect as much as if they do not shoot a virtual dangerous armed suspect.
Let citizens air their grievances, governments respond, and have police departments that truly serve and protect all citizens, and racial problems will resolve. This country is stronger because of its diversity, not weaker. Welcoming strangers into this country provides many new opportunities for everyone, few threats to everyone, and we will continue to investigate applicants to make sure of that.
Of course we will remove the ridiculous border wall. Violating people’s private properties, worsening erosion along the river, spending billions or trillions on structures that can be defeated by a $40 ladder from a discount store, are such wasteful idiocy that it’s almost inexpressible what a travesty this has been. We will add personnel and signage to the border, allow applicants for asylum and speed up the process, as required by international laws that $Rump has been ignoring. Most people probably won’t even want to come here until the pandemic is under control, but those who do, and pass screening, will help provide us with our essential services.
The Integrity of the Election
Present the facts repeatedly: This has been thoroughly investigated. There are bills languishing in front of Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans that can and should be passed right now to ensure minimal interference in our elections from other countries. Mail-in voting has been used for decades with no evidence of increases in fraudulent ballots; in fact, there is some evidence that it is LESS open to fraud! Both Democratic and Republican states encourage mail-in voting. We will make in-person voting as safe as possible. But voters should not have to choose between exercising their right to vote and exposing themselves to Covid infection. We will make mail-in voting and drop-off ballots as secure as humanly possible. Voters should feel free to vote by any method they prefer. $Rump needs to stop pretending that there is something wrong with mail-in ballots in blue districts but they are perfectly fine in red districts. In fact, the vast majority of the Washington DC government votes by mail-in ballot and has ever since it was offered. If $Rump thinks mail-in ballots are fraudulent, perhaps he should decline to vote this year and allow his previous votes to be erased, since he has voted by mail-in ballot repeatedly himself.
Well, Mr. Biden, I want to give you time to read and consider this, and know it’s already late in the day, so I am going to publish although I’m sure these expressions of thought are less than perfect.
The main point is, please bring everything back to lives saved and economy stimulated. $Rump has many levels of outrageousness. Let the rest of it go for now. To address all of it would require a speech of several months’ duration, and much of it is intentional distraction. Don’t let him distract you. Focus on lives. Thank you!
Folks, unfortunately I need to go help Mom. So this is now an open thread on the subject. Please discuss amongst yourselves and tell Mr. Biden how you would like to see him address the issues in the limited time frame available. What about Mr. Biden and Democratic values will attract nonvoters, independents, swing voters, former $Rump voters? If you think it’s valuable, please buzz Mr. Biden’s team.
And please don’t forget: Repeatedly check your registration as needed to ensure it’s valid in early November. Make sure you have proper ID. Then or during early voting where available, vote like our lives depend on it. Because this year, even more than usual, they do! More than half a million US deaths by the end of 2020 if we keep easing restrictions.