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Background on Principles & Values


This section cites the candidates underlying philosophies, principles for decision-making, and the values that underlie their stances on the issues and their voting records. In practical terms, this section is where the candidates explain their campaign slogans.

Elsewhere in OnTheIssues, we have a policy of quoting strictly issues-based material, omitting the political components of each candidates speeches. In this category, we relax the rules substantially so that candidates can explain their political philosophy.



Principles & Values topics in the 2024 election cycle:

  • Q: Did Trump win or lose the popular vote?
  • A: Trump won the popular vote. The mainstream media wishes that weren't true, so they note that Trump got less than 50% of the vote. But Trump got more votes than Harris, which is all that matters:
         
    Donald Trump 77,173,150 49.76%
    Kamala Harris 74,771,161 48.21%
    Jill Stein (Green) 830,121 0.54%
    Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (Independent) 755,831 0.49%
    Chase Oliver (Libertarian) 644,587 0.42%

  • Q: Why did Kamala lose when she had a billion dollars and thousands of enthusiastic supporters?
  • A: Because that enthusiasm was relief from Biden withdrawing, and did not translate into votes. The massive donations and massive enthusiasm came from people who would have voted for any Democratic nominee anyway. What matters in the presidential election is the "undecided" voters who are committed to neither the Democratic nominee nor the Republican nominee -- those voters leaned toward Trump. Trump did better in 2024 than in 2020, in just about every city and every state and every sub-group. Why?

  • Q: What can the Democrats do to recuperate from their electoral loss?
  • A: A: The Democrats need to listen to the people. The Republicans were good at that; the Democrats were not. [This is the opinion of OnTheIssues editors! Not fact-based reporting!]
      The Republicans connected with voters on numerous issues where the Democrats did not, and the Republicans pointed out repreatedly where the Democrats disconnected. In particular, on three top issues, the Democrats were so disconnected that they appeared to be lying to the voters. My phrase is that Kamala lost because of "Democratic Lies, on the big three I's":

    1. Inflation: The Dems lied to the American people by mischaracterizing inflation as "in the past" or "tamed", when the American people were still experiencing sticker shock at the grocery store. The Dems knew that "It's the Economy, stupid" in every presidential election, but believed they could "educate" the American public about the economic meaning of inflation ("rising prices", which were "tamed", as opposed to "high prices", which still remain high). The Dems made the decisive error in 2022 by calling their stimulus package "The Inflation Reduction Act," when every economist predicted that it would not reduce inflation (and was never intended to). The American people rightly interpreted this as "lying," which brought into question the entire Democratic economic platform.

    2. Immigration: The Dems lied to the American people by mischaracterizing immigration problems as something that only Congress could solve. The Dems listened to the voters and acknowledged that there was an "immigration crisis", and succeeded in getting a strong bipartisan comprehensive immgration reform package to Congress, but that didn't happen until February 2024. Had it occured in February 2023 or February 2022, a biparisan bill likely would have passed -- but by February 2024 it was too little too late. The Dems defended their lateness by saying that Biden was disallowed from using Executive Orders to address the problem without Congress, and then Biden used Executive Orders to address the problem without Congress. The American people rightly interpreted this as "lying," which brought into question the entire Democratic domestic platform.

    3. Indignation: The Dems lied to the American people by mischaracterizing the prospective Trump/Vance adminstration as extremist, trying to make voters indignant at chaos, scandals, and risks to democracy. The prime example of lying: The Dems unsuccessfully attempted to conflate Trump's policies with "Project 2025" (detailed below) but lied about the content of Project 2025 so much that Trump could shrug off any part of Project 2025 by saying "I haven't read it." Trump succeeded at inuring the American public to corruption scandals -- he made it seem like every politician had scandals like Trump's scandals. The Dems attempted unsuccessfully to say "But Trump's scandals are worse" and on more scare tactics like "Trump's scandals show he's a risk to democracy." The American people rightly interpreted this as "lying," which brought into question the entire Democratic party as a trustworthy communicator.
    So, what can the Democrats do to recuperate from their electoral loss? They can LISTEN instead of trying to EDUCATE the public. All pundits and all campaign staffers, by their nature, know more about the issues than the general voter, so they want to EDUCATE the pubilc -- but that's not their job! Their job is to get their candidate elected. In off-years, pundits might educate voters -- but in election season, pundits need to listen, and respond to voters' actual issues. In particular:
    1. Listen on Inflation: Bill Clinton got it right by telling voters "I feel your pain" -- empathy is much better than educating. Clinton had no immediate solutions for inflation in the 1990s, since no president has immediate solutions for inflation -- but he LISTENED to the people and FELT what they were experiencing. Expressing empathy is especially important about economics -- Biden/Harris never expressed empathy with the plight of financially overwhelmed voters. They DID attempt to come up with policies to address financial woes: cheaper prescription drugs and student loan forgiveness for the short term, and ARPA and investments in infrastructure for the long term -- all of those DID improve the finances of the recipients. But those benefits didn't go to everyone, and didn't come with any empathy. Trump, in his first term, signed checks to millions of individual people for COVID relief; Biden/Harris instead pushed general policies, resulting in Biden lamenting "I should have signed checks like Trump did."

    2. Listen on Immigration: Democrats tried to portray the Trump/Vance immigration policies as anti-LatinX and were repudiated by Trump gaining compared to 2020 among Hispanic voters. Democrats tried to portray Trump as anti-Muslim but Muslim immgration policy got buried under the Gaza issue, where Trump, Biden, and Harris all had pretty much the same pro-Israel policy. Trump instead listened to the voters, who cared about how immigration pressure was inflating housing costs, and requiring immigrant housing in local communities across the country. Trump concluded "seal the border; Biden/Harris concluded "educate the public on how Biden has already addressed the border crisis." The public doesn't want to be "educated" about how America should address the "root causes of immigration" -- they want a reduction in the local costs of housing immigrants and schooling immigrants.

    3. Listen on Indignation: Many people showed up at Trump/Vance rallies sporting T-shirts adorned with the phrase "I'm voting for the convicted felon." Democrats might have listened to that widespread sentiment and understood that voters simply were no longer indignant about criminal and civil scandals -- maybe they're burned out from so many scandals, or maybe the issues were exaggerated too much, or maybe Trump's counter-attacks worked. Pundits have long argued against "negative politicking" because it doesn't work -- it's a well-known camapign mantra to "let someone else bash the opponent so the candidate doesn't have to" (that's called "oppo research"). Trump ignored the pundits on this strategy, as he did on many others. The Harris/Walz campaign tried to portray how the second Trump administration would be "ruled by chaos", summarizing the Trump oppo research in a not-too-negative way. While it's accurate that a Trump/Vance administration would be more chaotic and less predictable than a Harris/Walz administration , the voters responded, "yeah, chaos is ok." Amid the rampant lies from both parties, and the mischaracterizations from both sides of the mainstream media, voters learned to find the message amid the chaos. The message that Democrats need to learn is this: "Listen to the voters; Trump did, and Kamala didn't."

  • Q: What about Project 2025?
  • A: The mainstream media and the Democrats over-played Project 2025, when they should have simply read it and reported its content. Five policy prescriptions from Project 2025 mischaracterized by the mainstream media:
    1. Ending the Affordable Care Act: Nope; Project 2025 wants to reform ObamaCare to reduce its mandates, but not end it.
    2. Complete Ban on Abortion: Nope; Project 2025 wants to end all aspects of federal funding for abortion, but doesn't propose any "national abortion ban".
    3. Defunding the FBI: Nope; Project 2025 wants the FBI to focus on actual threats and crime, instead of Hunter Biden's laptop
    4. Eliminating the EPA: Nope; Project 2025 wants the EPA to focus on environmental protection instead of land use policy.
    5. Muslim Ban 2.0: Nope; it's just not there. Project 2025 suggests plenty of immigration restrictions--from building the wall to ending Temporary Protected Status--but those mostly apply to Mexico and Haiti and Latin America, not focused on Muslim countries at all.
    All of the bold italic phrases are quoted verbatim directly from "Overview of Project 2025", a video by the popular podcaster Molly Jong-Fast, available on YouTube iHeartRadio. Ms. Jong-Fast is a well-established member of the mainstream media: an editor at The Daily Beast; a writer at The Atlantic; and a political analyst at MSNBC News). Click for fuller review and excerpts.

  • Q: Why did some states switch from majority-Biden to majority-Trump? (in 2024)
  • A: OnTheIssues sees five major reasons:
    1. Voters didn't care about Trump scandals,; the public was over-burdened by scandals and accepted that as part of American politics.
    2. Trump deflected his scandals successfully with Hunter Biden, driving Biden out. The pundits call this "What-about-ism", but the public got tired of hearing it all.
    3. Trump exploited partisanship and played to his base, whch Democrats called "The Big Lie," and Trump turned that back on Dems too:
    4. Trump gained votes among Hispanics and gained ipartisan appeal (like RFK) -- Trump's appeal was never issue-based but more about distrust of government.
    5. Trump echoed and amplified the public's distrust of the mainstream media (which OnTheissues agrees with, since we were founded on that principle!) Everyone knows MSNBC is biased, and so is Newsmax -- Trump admitted it and the public agreed.

  • Q: Why did some states switch from majority-Trump to majority-Biden? (in 2020)
  • A: Conspiracy theorists cite this as a reason for claiming a "stolen election" -- but it's just political reality because Trump was the incumbent. Anti-incumbency is a strong political current in America (Biden/Harris could say the same for 2024). That's especially true when there's a crisis/recession going on, as with the COVID shutdown and aftermath. Trump had to walk a fine line between touting his pandemic successes and his pandemic problems, like shutdowns (mostly left to the states, but the president takes the blame for it anyway). Trump failed in 2020 on walking that fine line; Biden/Harris failed in 2024 on a similar fine line in the context of COVID recovery.

  • Q: What did Russia have to do with our election?
  • A: A lot; that's what the Mueller Report was mostly about. Mueller reveals that the Russian government began in 2014 to prepare their disinformation campaign for the 2016 election, including positioning Russian agents in America. The Russians did not initially support Trump--their purpose was simply to lay the groundwork to disrupt the 2016 elections. Later, they did actively support Trump, and actively opposed Hillary Clinton. Mueller concludes that the Russian interference in the 2016 election was successful--their online disinformation campaign reached 126 million people on Facebook and Twitter.

  • Q: Were crimes committed on January 6th?
  • A: Yes; hundreds of people were convicted of crimes. The important question is, "Did Trump commit any crimes?" and the answer is "No, he wasn't convicted of any." Details on that below, but here's a list of convictions resulting from the January 6th Capitol riot: The Demcorats tried to make the 2024 election a referendum on January 6th (and failed, because of the reasons discussed above). In general, Trump and the Republicans downplay January 6, and the Democrats play up is significance:

    2020-2024 Election Principles & Values Issues

    Political Diamond

    Political philosophy in the US can be better defined based on one's stances in two dimensions, social and economic, rather than the typical one-dimensional right-left axis. This is most commonly enunciated by candidates in terms like "Socially liberal and fiscally conservative." The combinations of the two-dimensional philosophy are:

    2016-2020 Election Principles & Values Issues