If you don't want to vote for an 82 year old grandpa with a stutter, who loves ice cream, his family, his country and maybe institutional processes too much, consider instead voting for the staff who comes with him.
The executive branch under Biden is staffed by a highly diverse, talented group of professionals who have worked through congressional chaos and judicial extremism to bring the most progressive agenda since FDR to fruition.
The presidency (as currently understood by nearly every constitutional scholar who isn't a member of the federalist society) is not really that powerful of an office when it comes to making laws or controlling the economy. The executive BRANCH, however, has a lot of sway (for now, SCOTUS is trying to destroy this) in setting specific policy in all areas of public life. The president appoints leadership for all the executive agencies, which are permanently staffed by non-political technocrats and bureaucrats.
In the Biden administration, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland is the first Native American cabinet secretary. Lloyd Austin is the first Black Secretary of Defense. Alejandro Mayorkas is our first Hispanic Secretary of Homeland Security. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigeg is an out gay man. That's just the biggest, most obvious. But the ranks of appointed secretaries, undersecretaries, and assistants are staffed by a group of people who better represent the cross-section of American than at any point before.
Biden's initial picks for his cabinet were more racially diverse than even Barack Obama's and he has nominated more women for positions than any president. Ever. 95% of his cabinet picks came in with government experience, which means they knew how to get to work within the system to immediately start helping everyday Americans.
The Biden administration has managed to pass the single largest piece of climate legislation ever, in the history of the world. They are working to eliminate student debt for millions of Americans despite a court system that does not want them to be able to do so. They are working to make life-saving medication accessible and affordable. They are steering the US economy out of the COVID recession better than any other government in the world. They are pro-union and have created millions of new jobs by investing in the green and tech industries that will future-proof our economy. They are working to eliminate junk fees that we have to pay to credit cards, airlines, Ticketmaster and hotels. The Biden tax plan will only raise taxes on individuals who make $400,000 and up: that's less than 10% of the country.
If you vote for Joe Biden, America will continue to be led and shaped by folks who have done all of this and want to do even more to help everyday people.
If you don't vote, you are making the choice to allow Donald Trump back into office. Never mind that he's been impeached twice, convicted on 34 felonies and indicted on dozens of others. Never mind that he's liable for millions of dollars in penalties for civil convictions, including rape, defamation and fraud. Never mind that he and his supporters attempted to overthrow the government and steal the 2020 election in every which way they could.
"Oh, but we survived his last term, so in four years he'll be gone and then we can pick from better candidates." You think. We barely survived his last term (never mind the millions of people who died or are still suffering the long-term effects of the COVID pandemic he helped spread) because the people he appointed were unserious, kinda bad at their jobs, and/or were blocked by career civil servants doing the right thing.
If you do not vote for Joe Biden in November and get everyone you know to vote for Joe Biden, Donald Trump will more than likely win the election. The people who would run the government under a second Trump administration have a plan. They have been working to recruit and train partisan loyalists to dismantle the thing that got in their way last time.
They will enact a national abortion ban. They will make public life as a trans person illegal and impossible. They will make contraception and fertility treatment illegal. They will legalize discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability, citizenship and housing status. They will allow oligarchs to squeeze even more capital out of the economy. They will defund public services like education, libraries, the post office and transportation. They will undo any progress we've made on climate. They will undo our freedoms of speech, press and assembly. They will establish a twisted Christianity as a national religion. They will try to use the military as a tool of domestic control. They will make our air and water dirtier and our food less safe to eat, our travel more risky and stop funding research into life-saving treatments. Life will be more expensive. Lots of people will die.
So again. You can vote for Joe Biden and his staff will continue doing an ok-to-good-to-great job in most areas, or you can not vote and help put fascists in control of our government. A 3rd PARTY VOTE IS A VOTE FOR TRUMP. You have to add to the tally on the Biden side. And while you're at it, vote for a senator, representative, state senator and state rep who will caucus with the Dems. Vote for judges and city counselors and mayors and school board members and comptrollers and whoever else is on your ballot who best fits your views or maybe just sounds least-bad.
Vote for Joe Biden (or whichever Democrat ends up on the ballot for president) and he will be gone after 4 years, and through all that we will have the chance to keep pushing the needle of progress forward. Don't vote and who knows if you'll ever have the chance to actually vote for a president again in your lifetime.
