Too much of the media is looking at this presidential race as if it were a "Dancing With the Stars" contest, a World Series or the Super Bowl. It's not.
As people well know Hillary Clinton and I had some very vigorous debates during the Democratic nominating process and we certainly do not agree on every issue. Nonetheless, there is no question in my mind that she is, far and away, the superior candidate in this election. That is why I intend to work as hard as I can to see that she is elected.
Here are four reasons why I support Clinton over Trump.
One: At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, we must not elect a president who wants to resurrect the failed trickle-down economics of the past. When the very rich are becoming much richer and there has been a 10-fold increase in the number of billionaires since the year 2000, it is economic insanity to propose, as Trump has, hundreds of billions in tax breaks to the top 1 percent. His proposal to scrap the estate tax would provide a $53 billion tax break to the wealthiest family in America, the Waltons of Wal-Mart. And guess who else would benefit? Trump's proposal would provide a $4 billion tax break to Trump's own family.
While millions of Americans work longer hours for lower wages, it is beyond belief that any serious candidate for president would support huge tax breaks for the top 1 percent while, at the same time, propose cutting services to millions of families in need. As part of Trump's trickle-down economics, he would throw 20 million Americans off of health insurance by repealing the Affordable Care Act. He also has proposed large cuts in education, housing, childcare, veterans' medical care and other domestic initiatives.
Donald Trump talks a great deal about our trade policies and the outsourcing of American jobs. Yet, his very own clothing line is manufactured in Bangladesh, Mexico and China. How can Donald Trump, with a straight face, object to corporate outsourcing while his own company exploits some of the lowest-paid labor on earth to make his ties, shirts and other products?
I also find it strange that someone who professes to be concerned about American workers packed his economic advisory council with billionaire hedge fund managers and Wall Street bank executives. His idea for Treasury secretary is Carl Icahn, who is infamous for hostile takeovers of distressed businesses, laying off workers and eliminating health insurance and retirement benefits. This is not a candidate who will represent the needs of American workers.
Unlike Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton supports raising the minimum wage to a living wage and pay equity for women. She has a very specific plan to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and create millions of decent paying jobs. She will also join me in making public colleges and universities tuition free for all families in America with incomes of less than $125,000 a year -- 83 percent of our population.
Two: Climate change is real, it is caused by human activity and it is already creating devastating problems in our country and around the world. Unbelievably, despite the virtually-unanimous consensus of the scientific community that climate change is the greatest environmental crisis our planet faces, Donald Trump believes that climate change is a "hoax" perpetrated by China.
The scientists tell us that we have got to move aggressively in transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy. Trump's view is just the opposite. He believes that we should expand fossil fuel production. If we want to effectively combat climate change, aggressively expand the production of sustainable energy and break our dependence on fossil fuels, we must elect Hillary Clinton.
Three: Our nation has struggled for centuries to combat racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. Sadly, Trump has made bigotry the cornerstone of his campaign. We simply cannot, in the year 2016, turn back the clock by electing a president whose "birther" conspiracy was a racist attack on the legitimacy of our first African-American president, whose anti-immigrant rants have slurred Mexicans as "rapists" and "criminals" and who would ban Muslims from entering the country. Trump has been called "a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot." That's not me talking. That's Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican.
Further, we do not need a president who continuously insults women, has called them "pigs," "dogs" and "slobs" and seems obsessed about women's weight. The job of the next president is to bring us together, combat sexism and racism and not divide us up.
Four: Almost every objective observer has concluded that Donald Trump has taken lies and distortions to a whole new level. I don't often quote Mitt Romney, but the former Republican presidential candidate was right when he called Trump a "fraud" and a "phony."
Major publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post and others have noted that Trump doesn't seem to understand the difference between truth and lies. PolitiFact awarded "the many campaign misstatements of Donald Trump" as its "Lie of the Year" in 2015. The Pulitzer Prize winning website checked out 77 statements and rated more than three-quarters of them Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire. "No other politician has as many statements rated so far down on the dial," PolitiFact concluded. The New Hampshire Union Leader has called Trump "a liar, a bully, a buffoon." That's coming from a conservative newspaper that for the first time in more than a century couldn't bring itself to endorse the Republican presidential nominee.
For those reasons and many more, Donald Trump must not become the next president of the United States. On November 8, the choice is clear. Hillary Clinton for president.
