A Trump vs. Harris primer

Moderates and swing voters can find arguments on either side, but the GOP is represented by a twice-impeached convicted felon who seems profoundly unwell

The US election is about two weeks away, but absentee balloting has already begun. The election will turn on turnout, but also on swing voters facing a bewildering array of issues—so I figure a cheat sheet might be helpful.

The first thing to understand is that little of what is said on the campaign trail should be believed. That goes double for Donald Trump, who simply lies more easily than most. There's a case to be made for Trump, but it has nothing to do with what he says about Vice President Kamala Harris on the stump.

She's not a communist, and there's no plan (nor means) to flood America with immigrants on a fast-track to voting rights. The Democrats also don't favor abortion after birth, which is indisputably murder. The latter was just a Trumpian senior moment, and it's odd that anyone believes any of it.

What we do have, though, are a range of issues on which even a reasonable person might agree with one party on some and with the other on the rest; that is more true now than before because the world has grown more complex and because both sides have scrambled things with the culture wars which cut across old party boundaries, driven by economics or geopolitics.

This situation creates swing voters. Identifying them is complex, but studies show that the truly undecided—as opposed to those who claim it to appear non-partisan—are on the rise. Such voters, if rational, must assign to each variable a coefficient: if you want abortion rights, how much do you want them, versus your passion level on issues that break the other way. And they shouldn't overthink: even if your preference on, say, gun control, seems hopeless, it won't be if enough people prioritize it and vote the same way.

So, here's my good-faith effort to survey the issues landscape: