I strongly believe that Hillary Clinton is far preferable to Donald Trump, and I will vote for her, and for Democrats, in this election. (What are YOUR specific plans for voting? When? Where?)
Here are some reasons I'm voting for Hillary and Democrats:
1. THE ENVIRONMENT. Hillary strongly believes in the science of man-caused climate change (as do over 97% of all climate scientists) and will work to alleviate its impact. Trump, and almost all Republicans, say that they don't believe the science, and their efforts on behalf of the oil, gas, and coal companies will make climate change worse. Indeed, Trump has stated that climate change is a hoax. (Examples of Trump Tweets: "Global warming is an expensive hoax!" and "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.")
2. TAXES AND THE ECONOMY. Hillary proposes a 4% surcharge on incomes over $5 million/year (they're currently paying rates that are approximately 7% less than in the 1990's) and implementation of the "Buffet Rule" to prevent mega-millionaires from using loopholes to avoid all tax. Trump proposes massive tax breaks, primarily for the ultra-rich. (There are other changes also; see www.forbes.com/... ) Hillary's plan decreases the debt or is almost debt-neutral by most analyses; in contrast, almost all analyses show that Trump's plan blows a $5+ Trillion hole in the debt. We've already tried massive tax cuts for the rich, during the Bush presidency, and that didn't turn out well.
In contrast to the rumors that Hillary is controlled by Wall Street, The New Yorker magazine points out that, "Clinton has strong proposals to prevent large financial institutions from taking on risks that could derail the economy again. She promises to defend the Dodd-Frank reforms (which Trump, like all the Republican candidates, has pledged to overturn) and to build on them. She would impose new fees on risk; strengthen the Volcker Rule, ... and bring regulatory light into the so-called shadow banking system, where much of the 2008 financial crisis began...."
Plus, my financial advisors believe that if Trump is elected, the stock market immediately crashes, because he'll start a trade war and because he's so completely unpredictable and unreliable, which the market hates.
3. FOREIGN AFFAIRS. While I don't agree with all of Hillary's positions or actions, she has decades of experience and has learned from mistakes; she has good relationships with foreign governments and, unlike Trump, will honor our treaties. She is also innocent of the trumped-up charges against her, e.g., Benghazi. (Eight Republican investigations so far, including an eight-hour grilling of Hillary, approximately seven million dollars spent, and nothing substantial was found. For example, despite talk-show rumors, there was no "stand down" order; no "intelligence failure," no "administrative wrongdoing.")
In contrast, Trump's ignorance of foreign affairs, his offhand suggestion that for the first time in history the U.S. default on its debt ("renegotiate"), and his disparagement of NATO and praise of the Russian strongman Putin are extremely unsettling. When coupled with his remarkably thin skin, stunning impulsivity, and vicious attacks on any advisors who disagree with him even slightly, I can see why a large number of military officers and Secretaries of State (notably including many Republicans) have endorsed Hillary, not Trump.
4. SUPREME COURT. The Court is currently tied 4-4 liberal-conservative. For that reason, and for the first time in American history, the Senate is refusing even to consider Obama's proposed Justice, who is a true moderate (and therefore not a favorite of liberals). The next President will appoint at least one Justice, and this will tip the Court. A Clinton Justice will probably vote to reverse the 5-4 Citizens United vote that allowed unlimited financing of political campaigns by corporations and unions, would probably reaffirm Roe v. Wade, and would probably reinstate the rules that prevented States from trying to interfere with minority voting.
A Trump Justice (if Trump is reliable, which he isn't!) would probably end Roe v. Wade, thereby making abortion for any reason illegal in the U.S., would certainly keep Citizens United, and would probably deregulate industry, leading to much more environmental pollution, banking malfeasance, etc.
5. TRANSPARENCY. Despite her tendency to privacy, it's to Hillary's credit that she and her husband have released all their tax returns since 1977, and her vice-presidential pick, Tim Kaine and his wife have released ten years of returns. (Indeed, it's these returns that have been used against her to fuel conspiracy theories about her indebtedness to Wall Street despite the lack of evidence that she's actually acted in Wall Street's favor.) Clinton paid a 34% effective Federal tax rate in 2015.
Meanwhile, Trump, despite multiple promises, for the first time in a Presidential election since the 1970's has refused to release any returns, giving irrelevant excuses ("audit" etc.) instead. A leaked page from an old return shows he has a tax loss of $916 million (probably due to a now-illegal loophole), so he probably has paid no Federal tax for over a decade. I strongly suspect that Trump refuses to release his tax returns because it would show that (1) he has far less money than he claims, (2) he's deeply indebted to Russian and other foreign banks, which would influence him, and (3) he has given almost nothing to charity. No U.S. bank will loan money to Trump, so the U.S. branch of Deutsche Bank and the Russians appear to be his major lenders. ("In terms of high-end product influx into the U.S., Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets," Donald Trump Jr. said at a conference in 2008. "We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.") A reporter who contacted over 420 charities that might have received money from Trump found that Trump’s charitable donations, despite his announcements, were extremely small.
6. SANITY. Hillary is a standard, flawed politician. I don't agree with everything she does, but she's generally predictable, has shown an ability to work across the aisle, and, conspiracy theories to the contrary notwithstanding, has been rated as lying less than the average politician. She had high approval (over 70%) when she was the Senator from NY.
Trump, in contrast, is, uh, unhinged. He's almost certainly a classical narcissist, with his self-centeredness, exaggeration of his accomplishments, incredibly thin skin, impulsivity, and extreme vindictiveness against anyone who disagrees with him even slightly or fails to praise him. What will he do if he doesn't instantly get what he wants, when he wants it? (And "what he wants" seems to change minute-by-minute.) What about his constant lying, even when it's trivial to show him contradicting himself? Does he have zero common sense, or does he have a psychological problem that allows him to believe whatever he wants is "the truth"? I think it's the latter; Trump's view of reality is warped and unreliable. That's dangerous for a President, of course!
SUMMARY. So for these, and other reasons (e.g., Trump's reckless insulting of virtually every minority or disadvantaged group in America, his incitement of violence and distrust in our system of democracy, his self-admitted sexual assaults, his record of stiffing his contractors, his financial failures [he'd have more money today if he'd simply invested his inheritance in an index fund!], and his love of crazy conspiracy and birther theories), I'm voting for Hillary and for a Democratic Congress that will support her, not for Trump, the narcissistic con man with a secret tax return and probable ties to Russia.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, I recommend:
The New Yorker editorial www.newyorker.com/...
Top 10 Clinton Myths Debunked: www.scarymommy.com/...
Trump vs. Hillary truthfulness: https://t.co/BhvmMqxZC0
Trump donations: www.washingtonpost.com/...
List of Clinton endorsers, which include a remarkable number of Republicans: en.wikipedia.org/...
BTW, on the EMAIL CONTROVERSY: I believe this is a tempest in a teapot; there's very little there. No emails were classified when they were sent. Only three emails were classified at the time they were received, and each contained only one "confidential" paragraph, but two of those paragraphs, and possibly the third, were found to be incorrectly classified; they're actually unclassified. (In addition, the document headers were marked by the sender as "unclassified.") The FBI found no evidence that Clinton knowingly or recklessly mishandled classified information, which is required by law for an indictment, and therefore the FBI did not recommend indictment. A relatively small number of emails have been classified retroactively, by bureaucrats worried because the emails were going to be published widely in the press. The vast majority of the retroactively-classified emails were deemed “confidential,” the lowest classification. (Virtually any U.S. citizen can get permission to read something that's "Confidential." Nothing important is labeled "Confidential.")
All work emails sent to and from individuals with state.gov email addresses were automatically preserved on the State Department email system. Even if Hillary had deleted them on her system, they were still preserved on the State Department system, as Hillary and her staff knew. Hillary directed the deletion of her personal emails from her server before the Congress or anyone else had asked for them. As soon as she was asked for them, her attorneys promptly sent the preservation notice to the tech firm holding the server. However, a low-level tech testified that on his own initiative he had deleted some emails after the notice was sent. (He had immunity, so there was no reason for him to lie to protect himself.) He did that because he realized that he'd not finished the deletions he had been asked to do months earlier, and he didn't tell his management.
The State Department did not have a policy forbidding what Hillary did. Indeed, Colin Powell had done the same, as was proven by an email record.
There is no evidence that Hillary's server was hacked.
The latest FBI announcement is being denounced by both Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians as unprecedented and highly political by an FBI Director who is a Republican. Note that the FBI admits that it has not seen the emails, that they are probably duplicates of what the FBI has already seen, and that it's possible that none of them are to or from Hillary. (BTW, why has the FBI refused to comment on Trump's possible ties to Putin's government and Russian hackers?)
And no one seems to remember that between 2003 and 2009 the Bush White House "lost" 22 million emails that included emails written while the Bush administration was advocating war in Iraq and while it was firing U.S. attorneys for political reasons.
