Amazing that you at least did the overwhelming obvious right thing even though your reasons are awful
i think breaking the barrier of sex in terms of male/female president is a powerful thing. there’s been so many women throughout history that could have been judith pulgars, politically speaking, and ended up getting pushed into more subservient positions
that’s the main reason. i dont think that’s an awful reason
as for the russian war thing, i rather like living in a pre-nuclear-war society.
It just implies that looking at the candidates the biggest and most important difference you see is that one is a woman.
Like, it’s great that you did vote for that woman as she also happens to be in favour of women having rights, lgbtq+ people having rights, doesn’t want mass deportions, still wants there to be elections in the future and a painfully long list of stark differences like that. It’s just impressive that none of that mattered to you, or that you are unaware of it
i’m more cynical about her. it’s not that i don’t think gay rights and women rights aren’t important. they are. but to me, the primary issues i care about, in order of importance
a) probability of war
b) attitude towards immigrants
c) economic position
d) foreign policy in general
so for example I think Kamala is probably more likely to get us into war than Trump is. That gives points to Trump.
on the immigration front, I don’t have any illusions about where the national conversation is going. I was brought here to this country illegally as a small child. I grew up here illegal and it wasn’t until my early 20s that I managed to naturalize
so i’ve been embedded in immigrant communities, with a lot of illegals sprinkled in, and have been paying attention to immigration news for virtually all of life
i can only think of two politicians who have done something meaningful for illegals. Reagan and Obama. Reagan of course gave amnesty to millions of illegals. Obama enacted the DACA policy, which wasn’t nearly as broad as amnesty, but it was definitely a good thing that helped hundreds of thousands of people. but “immigration reform” has been promised my whole life by DNC and never delivered. best was the half-assed DACA
But let’s look at rhetoric from Biden. During campaign in 2020 he advocated for a “compassionate approach” and was “pushing for immigration reform”. he promised to halt the construction of “the Wall tm”
What about the last couple years? He expanded construction of the wall which he timed with a photoshoot with Customs and Border Patrol at the southern border. He also went on TV and started using the word illegal - which is a term Democrats historically haven’t used. I don’t think it’s offensive or anything- but it’s telling to show how the overton window has sharply been shoved to the right
Now look at Biden’s successor - Kamala - the woman I voted for begrudgingly. go to her website and look at the policies and you will see zilch about compassionate approach or immigration reform. today it’s “security and strong border”
right now over 65% of all Americans (not just GOP) support deporting all illegal immigrants. Something absurd to say even a decade ago. Majority of Americans support a policy which would effectively have the military going around house to house in order to put over 10 million people in camps, which they would stay at for years while the government tries to figure out the complex and expensive logistical challenge of moving millions of people out of the country (Germans had this same problem back in first half of the 1900s. they came up with a controversial solution to that question, of course)
so i’m not saying kamala is equal or worse than trump on this. trump is partly at fault for the rise in this change. but i think long term it won’t make a difference who wins in this field. either way immigrants are screwed, so it doesn’t really matter to me in this election
economic position, i think not gonna matter much. the whole “tax breaks for first time homeowners” from Kamala is yet another bailout to the banks at the expense of regular people. Trump put in sanctions on China, raising prices for Americans… Biden kept them in place and put some more. I don’t think this is much different. the reductionist “tax the rich” is a nice slogan but without meaning. as long as the government has a money tap funneling public money to leeches, no amount of taxes will ever filter down to help the working class
foreign policy in general. again, i don’t see much of a difference. china from above is a good example. iran is another. Obama actually came up with a revolutionary deal- bringing the Iranians back into the fold. Trump torpedoed that deal in spectacular fashion and then moved the American embassy to Jerusalem. Biden maintained the “get fucked” attitude towards Iran and went to Tel Aviv in Oct of last year to bend the knee to Netanyahu.
so to summarize
for the issues i mentioned, which are the ones that matter to me, i think long term the choice of candidate isn’t going to influence anything significantly either way. the zietgiest is headed in a certain direction and i don’t think either candidate has the capacity or willingness to meaningfully change the course of things
so then we get to why did i vote for kamala. because I think it’ll be inspiring to girls and women across the country. it’ll implicitly let them know they are equal and are able to accomplish anything, even the highest office in the country
i think that alone is worth voting for her. and of course Trump is a bit of a wild card and I prefer stability.
