Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
T
his week, President Donald
Trump came to Michigan
to ask for our votes in an
election that’s now less than 50 days
away. But Trump didn’t come to
Michigan to campaign to undecided
voters. At no point did he make
any discernible attempt to have an
honest conversation with Michigan
voters about issues and policies
that affect their lives. Instead,
Trump’s superspreader grievance
tour touched down in Saginaw on
Thursday night.
The
president
urged
his
supporters to show up at polling
places to confirm their absentee
ballots had been counted, a move
intended to both call the results
of the election into question and
to encourage his supporters to
intimidate other voters at the polls.
This wasn’t the first time he made
such a ridiculous request — he’s been
repeating it since his rally in North
Carolina earlier this month where
he told attendees to “vote twice in
the November election.” But as the
president continues to push people
to trust only an election result in his
favor, it is worth looking into why
Trump is so sure he’ll lose an election
fair and square, and why Michigan
could hold the key to ridding our
democracy of its greatest threat since
the Civil War.
Michigan played an integral role
in handing Trump the keys to the
White House in 2016. Whether or
not the swing state was legitimately
up for grabs isn’t the question – of
course it was. While most polls
consistently showed Democratic
nominee Hillary Clinton with an
edge in the state, it was close to the
margin of error as the election drew
close. How Trump managed to come
out of that night with Michigan’s
sixteen electoral votes should serve
as a cautionary tale in 2020. His
margin of victory was less than
the number of votes received by
minor candidates. Former President
George W. Bush proved in 2000 that
all you need to win a close election is
a spoiler.
While the president of the United
States is a world-renowned idiot, he
has some politically-savvy minds
working to muddy the electoral
waters in his favor. “I like Kanye
very much,” may seem like a
strange thing for Donald Trump, a
candidate for the presidency, to say
about Kanye West, a “candidate”
for the presidency. Why would a
candidate like Trump, a man whose
reputation is literally built on the
back of treating his opponents like
human garbage, offer such kind
words about an opponent with the
name-recognition and unorthodox
appeal that West has? It probably
isn’t a blistering shock to discover
that while the GOP knows West
has no chance to win the election, it
also knows his campaign can serve a
purpose for Trump.
If, by colluding with West, Trump
can trick enough people into voting
for the rapper, he has a fighting
shot in multiple swing states where
he’s currently running well behind
Democratic nominee Joe Biden. A
537-vote difference in Florida brought
on by liberal activist Ralph Nader’s
third-party candidacy ensured Bush’s
victory in that election. In 2016, then-
candidate Trump again showed the
value of a third party candidacy in a
polarizing campaign, capitalizing on
third party spoilers to win Michigan,
Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in
2016. In 2020, he has weaponized
the spoiler candidacy, no longer just
incidentally benefitting from it, but
actively exploiting it for his own gain.
While Biden’s polling edge is
bigger than Hillary Clinton’s at this
point in the race four years ago, so is
the spectre of third party candidacy
in 2020. Gary Johnson was a perfectly
nice guy and Jill Stein was a perfectly
(probably) unwitting Russian asset,
but neither candidate’s campaign was
as titillating as West’s, and neither had
such a strong opportunity to make
genuine mainstream inroads. Of
course, though, neither was actively
accepting assistance from allies to the
sitting president of the United States.
West’s name recognition, especially
among young voters, makes him a
uniquely haunting prospect for
our democracy. All West has to do
is pull enough uninformed voters
underneath his umbrella to earn a
truly catastrophic place in American
history, and people our age have the
best opportunity to stop it.
West has a unique resource
for a candidate: a personal image
cultivated outside the scrutiny of
Washington, D.C., and the political
press. Because that same press treats
his candidacy as illegitimate, it has
become derelict in its scrutiny. In
2016, that political mythologizing
of Trump — “He’s a successful
businessman,” “He tells it like it
is,” “He’ll run the country like a
business,” actually came true, but
only if you had rampant nepotism
and corruption in mind — was
one of his strongest appeals on his
way to winning the election. If it
resonated on such a large scale
four years ago, who’s to say West,
with Republicans at his side, can’t
exploit that phenomenon on a much
smaller scale? That’s all he has to do.
Through that lens, his candidacy
is not funny; it is not a joke and it is
certainly not to be taken lightly.
Anybody who has ever set foot
on a college campus knows how
hard it is to get young adults to
take anything seriously. That’s
a challenge that gets amplified
exponentially when you throw
names like “Trump” and “Kanye”
into the mix. It’s important that these
problems are contextualized for the
young voters who are most likely
to make these mistakes. A vote for
Kanye West is a vote for the payroll
tax cuts Trump used to dupe people
into not realizing that he’s driving
Social
Security
to
insolvency.
Student debt totals over $1 trillion
in the U.S., but a vote for Kanye
West ensures that your debt stays
on the books, while corporations
and the top 1% of wage-earners
continue to reap the benefits of
the excess income Trump’s 2017
tax cuts handed them. A vote for
West is a vote for the $141 million
in taxpayer funds used since 2017
to finance the logistics of Trump’s
277 golf outings as the “leader” of the
free world.
Kanye West has created art that
resonates with and uplifts millions
of millennials and Gen Z’ers. His
music has inspired countless young
people around the world. He’s one
of the most enigmatic, prolific and
influential artists of our lifetimes.
Don’t remember him for that.
Remember him for trying to screw
over your country for a generation.
For our generation. Never forget it.
Jack Roshco can be reached at
jroshco@umich.edu.
JACK ROSHCO | COLUMN
Trump using Kanye as an electoral pawn
Max Steinbaum can be reached at
maxst@umich.edu.
T
hree minutes without air,
three hours without shelter,
three days without water
and three weeks without food.
These are the rules of survival in the
wilderness. The rule of three makes
President Donald Trump’s most
recent attack even more sinister,
as he continues to spend his time
in office trying to undo Former
President Barack Obama’s legacy.
Hidden by distractions of a global
pandemic,
nationwide
protests
and an economic decline, Trump’s
Environmental Protection Agency
removed coal plant regulation that
revised the Clean Water Act passed
in 1972 and will have catastrophic
results on public health. This move
was completed with the purpose
of maximizing profits without any
regard for the environment and the
detrimental effects on health that
will follow.
Proving once again that his
“drain
the
swamp”
campaign
slogan was a complete and utter lie,
Trump nominated ex-coal lobbyist
Andrew Wheeler to run the EPA.
Throughout both his 2016 and
2020 campaigns, Trump has put an
emphasis on saving the dying coal
industry. In Trump’s most recent
attempt to revive coal, Wheeler
revisited the adjustments made
by the Obama administration in
2015 requiring coal-fired plants to
invest in treatment technology that
keeps toxic wastewater out of the
waterways,
therefore
protecting
drinking water. The new revision
cut out the requirement for state-of-
the-art water treatment technology.
This move would save the plants
money in the short term but would
no longer require them to protect
their neighboring waterways, likely
causing more costly health problems
and expenses down the road. Over
two and a half million people have
died from unclean water and the
corresponding diseases that result
from it. Depending on the type of
chemical pollution, polluted water
can cause liver damage, skin cancer,
Dysentery and Malaria. Possibly
the most disturbing and horrifying
aspect of the new rule is that it will
not require coal plants closing by
2028 to follow any of the wastewater
regulations, setting up potentially
disastrous health and ecological
effects
on
the
surrounding
community.
Coal-powered plants leave behind
wastewater filled with arsenic,
lead and selenium which, if leaked
into drinking water, can lead to
cancer,
reproductive
problems
and even neurological problems.
Unfortunately, the residents of Flint,
Michigan know just how devastating
tainted water can be when water
protection
isn’t
taken
seriously.
Insufficient water treatment and
testing, paired with a slow, sometimes
nonexistent, government response
left Flint residents with health issues
that could plague them the rest of
their lives.
In an attempt to close a $25
million budget, former Michigan
Governor Rick Snyder appointed an
emergency manager in 2011 to help
balance the budget. Two years later,
that manager decided to temporarily
pump water from the Flint River,
where
the
water
was
highly
contaminated, through aging water
pipes where lead found its way into
the drinking, bathing and cooking
water. This led to developmental and
growth damage, skin rashes and an
outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease,
a rare form of pneumonia that took
the lives of 12 people. At the same
time, Nestlé was paying $200 a year
to pump hundreds of thousands of
gallons of water, just two hours away
from where Flint residents were
struggling to find clean water to drink
and cook with.
Trump’s EPA has continued with
the principles we saw showcased in
Flint by putting profits over the health
and safety of communities. Following
in the spirit of Ayn Rand, Trump has
continued to roll back corporate and
industry regulations, including nearly
100 regarding the environment. So
far, four water protection orders have
been overturned with seven more
in the process of being erased. In
an attempt to save the coal industry
money, Trump has cut through the
bureaucratic red tape that requires the
plants to look out for the environment
they currently occupy. On paper, the
recent EPA deregulation would save
the coal industry $140 million every
year but not without putting the
health of over 1 million Americans
who live within three miles of a coal
plant at risk.
Environmental deregulation puts
millions of lives at risk in exchange
for short-term economic gains. This
forces us to talk about how we value
human and ecological life. Is a short-
term bump in stock dividends worth
adversely hurting so many people?
The answer to this question should
be extremely clear. Human life is
priceless and should be treated as
such. Every single person needs clean
water to survive, so it must be seen
as what it is: a necessity. We need to
reevaluate our relationship with the
environment and how we interact
with it. As a country and global
community, we must stop putting the
profits of the few before the health
and safety of many. Most importantly,
we must remember that water is life.
ALEXANDER NOBEL | COLUMN
Water is life, so don’t mess with it
Alexander Nobel can be reached
at anobel@umich.edu.
MADELYN VERVAECKE | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT MIVERVAE@UMICH.EDU
Wednesday, September 23, 2020 — 10
I
t’s hard to say how many
undecided voters there still
are, but to a good deal of them
— perhaps, even, to a good deal of
those who have already made up
their minds — the idea of voting
for presidential nominee Joe Biden
or for President Donald Trump in
November presents something of a
Sophie’s choice. Trump has joked
on Twitter that “Sleepy Joe” doesn’t
know “what office he’s running for,”
and that the former vice president
“doesn’t know he’s alive.” Jackassery
aside, the president has a point —
Biden isn’t as sharp as he used to
be. On the other hand, we have
Trump — a narcissistic, woefully
incompetent,
grade-A
lunatic.
Hunter S. Thompson’s description
of Richard Nixon as “... a man with
no soul, no inner convictions, with
the integrity of a hyena ...” is an apt
branding of our current president,
except the average hyena is probably
more trustworthy and has a better
command of international politics
and morality. With less than two
months to go, many Americans must
be scratching their heads: Really?
These two are the best we got?
As The New York Times’s Giovanni
Russonello reported in June, the
2020 election “could become only
the second presidential contest in the
history of modern polling in which
both candidates are seen negatively
by most voters.” The first was in
2016. It wasn’t always this bad. With
the exception of the 2016 election,
each of the five presidential contests
in my lifetime featured candidates
who were reasonably likable. Since
2000, the Democrats have nominated
Gore, Kerry and Obama; the GOP has
tapped Bush, McCain and Romney
— all fairly likable and sane guys. So,
what gives? Are the 2016 and 2020
matchups just aberrations? Or is this
what presidential politics will look like
from now?
It is tempting to point to the
benefits of a parliamentary system
here. Under that framework, a party,
rather than a specific candidate,
gains the most seats in a national
election and that party’s leader
becomes the prime minister. In this
alternate universe, a parliamentary
system would likely deliver us “Prime
Minister” Nancy Pelosi in the event
of a Democratic win, or “Prime
Minister” Kevin McCarthy should
the Republican Party take back the
House.
Excluding those on the left who
are unwilling to recognize the
degree of Biden’s decline, and those
on the right who are members of the
Trump cult, these two are probably
more palatable options than the
ones we will have in November. The
impossibility of the U.S. adopting
the Westminster model aside, it is
important to point out — if our metric
is providing Americans with two
fairly solid alternatives — that our
electoral system has worked pretty
well in the 232 years of its existence.
Does it have other problems?
Absolutely.
What’s unique about our country’s
political landscape today is the extent
of our polarization. Intense political
divides are of course nothing new,
but looking at the past 50 years
for context, it appears there hasn’t
been as much philosophical real
estate between the left and the
right as there is today. Republicans
ultimately respected people like Al
Gore, and Democrats didn’t broadly
question John McCain’s character.
By 2016, something changed. To
the left, Trump was a neo-fascist,
race-baiting Putin wannabe and his
base was too thick-skulled to realize
how much damage he would do. To
the right, Clinton was a calculating,
condescending, sanctimonious tick,
with an untrustworthy base that
would lick the floor to put her in the
Oval Office. The rhetoric, on both
sides, became unhinged; it was, and
is even more so today, vicious and
visceral in the absolute.
Couple this intense polarization
with incessant media coverage every
time Trump fires off a tweet or
Biden jumbles his words, and it’s no
wonder why we all become further
entrenched in our predispositions
against the other guy. For better or
worse — and it’s probably for worse
— we have entered a Brave New Age
of information inundation. That’s
not going away in November, even if
Trump does; that’s the world we live
in.
Democrats believe that a Biden
presidency will bless our country
with a return to normalcy, which the
Divine Providence knows we need. If
we’ve paid any attention the past four
years, however, it’s easy to see that
these hopes are misguided. If Biden
is sworn in as the 46th president
on Jan. 20, 2021, Fox News will do
what Fox News does best: lament the
senility of the man in the Oval Office,
predict the chaos and anarchy —
perhaps even death of the republic
— that a Biden presidency will allow
and generally stir a conservative
firestorm. The liberal media outlets
will defend him tooth-and-nail
against these attacks. In short, the
roles will reverse, and the coverage
will be more or less the same.
Lyndon Johnson said that being
president “is like being a jackass in a
hailstorm … There’s nothing to do but
to stand there and take it.” Nearly 55
years later, that’s what it feels like to
be an American citizen. A change in
president will not bring a change in
the weather. The hailstorm will still
rage, and we, the jackasses, will have
to stand there and take it.
MAX STEINBAUM | COLUMN
Jackasses in a hailstorm
Design courtesy of Madison Grosvenor