NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
With just over two weeks to the presidential election, we are giving our endorsement to former Vice President Joe Biden.
UNITY. One of the top reasons we prefer Biden over Donald Trump is Biden’s willingness to collaborate and listen to diverse ideas, which is in stark contrast to Trump’s divisive leadership style.
“Having worked with Joe Biden in Congress and during my time serving as a Cabinet Secretary, I know Joe to be an intelligent and empathetic person,” said former Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta. “There is a long way to go and a lot of work to do in order to repair the divisions in our nation… His judgement and basic decency will ensure that no one will have to feel abandoned, alienated, or unrepresented.”
CHARACTER. A longtime public servant, Biden is a decent and fair person. He has the ability to not let political differences become personal bitter divisions. When he accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party in August, Biden said, “Character is on the ballot. Compassion is on the ballot. Decency is on the ballot.”
Despite Trump’s crowd-pleasing campaign pledge to “drain the swamp,” his family business discovered a lucrative new revenue stream once he was in office—people who wanted something from the president. An investigation published by The New York Times on Oct. 11 found over 200 companies, special-interest groups, and foreign governments that patronized Trump’s properties while reaping benefits from him and his administration.
Since Trump took office in 2017, seven former advisers who served at the White House or worked in the campaign have been swept up in criminal prosecutions. Many had lots of money to contribute to senators who later voted on their confirmations.
We believe Biden’s Cabinet choices will be based on what’s best for the American public, not just ‘yes’ people to contribute to his hubris. Biden chose Kamala Harris as his running mate, a move some called risky. Biden was not afraid to make bold choices and put a woman of color front and center of his campaign.
In 1972, Biden lost his wife and daughter in a tragic car accident. He began taking the Amtrak to and from Washington, D.C. every single day (about a 90 minute-trip), so he could be at home with his boys. He did this throughout his career and said it helped him feel closer to his children. We doubt that that’s something Trump would do if faced with a similar situation.
GET IT DONE. Former President Bill Clinton called Biden “a go-to-work president, a down-to-earth, get-the-job-done guy.”
Biden is a workhorse and Trump is a show horse who’s more interested in getting attention and praise than getting actual work done, someone who makes promises and doesn’t deliver.
We believe in Biden’s sense of personal responsibility and admitting when he’s made a mistake. Trump has been unable or unwilling to take responsibility for anything that goes wrong. He’s quick to blame others and blasts the media for reporting “fake news” when it shows him in an unfavorable light.
FOREIGN POLICY. Trump’s approach to foreign policy—especially denuclearization talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un—haven’t panned out. During a pre-dawn military parade on Oct. 10, North Korea unveiled what appeared to be a new intercontinental ballistic missile that’s larger than any the country has rolled out before—despite Trump’s claim that North Korea was “no longer a nuclear threat.” Trump seems to be more interested in photo ops with authoritarian heads of state like Kim, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping than developing any kind of real foreign policy, and he has alienated our allies.
Biden played a leading role in the Obama administration’s policy on Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, and other conflict areas. As a U.S. senator from Delaware from 1973 to 2009, he also served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for three decades.
ECONOMY. Trump claims to have “built the greatest economy in the history of the world” and while it’s true the economy was doing well prior to the pandemic—continuing a trend which began during the Obama administration—but there have been periods when it was much stronger.
Biden oversaw the 2009 Recovery Act as Obama’s vice president—a nearly $800 billion government-spending program intended to rescue the country from the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. It involved more than 100,000 projects—275 programs within 28 federal agencies.
You, or someone you know, may have voted for Trump four years ago because you think he is a great businessman.
“In business we focus on results, and I think his results do not earn him a second term,” said Carly Fiorina, who was among the candidates for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. The former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard is not the only Republican who has publicly broken from the party and endorsed Biden. Cindy McCain, widow of 2008 GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, and former HP CEO Meg Whitman have thrown their support behind Biden.
PANDEMIC. Despite contracting it himself, Trump remains dismissive of the virus that has killed over 211,000 Americans. He has made countless false claims about treatments and regularly ignores life-saving public health guidelines.
Olivia Troye, former homeland security, counterterrorism, and coronavirus adviser to Vice President Mike Pence said what she has seen during her tenure at the White House “has been upsetting.”
She told NPR, “There were numerous instances where I saw the president speak, you know, during task force meetings—when he did attend them—where he, whether it was a joke or not, has said comments such as, ‘You know, maybe this virus is a good thing. I don’t have to shake hands with people anymore. I don’t have to shake hands with those disgusting people.’
It was shocking to me that that is where his focus and his concern was—was just on the interactions with his own voters and Americans instead of the fact that we had a crisis on our hands.”
Biden promises to listen to science, and make sure that public health decisions are made by public health professionals and not by political hacks.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama said it eloquently.
“We can no longer pretend that we don’t know exactly who and what this president stands for,” she said in a video released by Biden’s campaign on Oct. 6. “Search your hearts, and your conscience, and then vote for Joe Biden like your lives depend on it.”