Dave B’s post from last week didn’t want to talk about why Mormons vote for Trump, so instead of polluting the comments there, I’ll give you my theory here.
As Dave quoted, in the last election 80% of Mormons over 40 voted for Trump, while 42% of Mormons under 40 voted for Trump. Other sources put overall Mormon support for Trump above 70%. So what gives voting for an amoral convicted felon? Here is my guess.
We are taught that our Church leaders are flawed, and will make mistakes. But we are suppose to overlook the flaws, because there is so much good that comes from them. Take Joseph Smith for example. Elder Andersen said in the Oct 2015 General Conference that we sould “give Brother Joseph a break!” Lies to wife about polygamy? Give him a break! Marries a 14 year old girl, give him a break! Send a man on a mission so he can marry his wife? Give him a break!
With most faithful Mormons already able to compartmentalize the life of Joseph Smith, is it any wonder that can do the same with Donald Trump’s life? Only watching Fox News is the equivalent of only getting your Church history from “approved sources”. Like my Stake President who told me he wasn’t going to read “Rough Stone Rolling” because he didn’t want to know those things about Joseph Smith, some Mormons will not watch CNN or ABC because they might say something bad about Trump.
So my theory is that Mormons are primed to look the other way with flawed leaders, ignoring Trump’s alleged infidelities, his bragging about grabbing women because “…when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything “, his felony conviction, his posting photos of Kamala Harris with sexual comments this week, etc, etc, etc. His good (being a Republican) outweighs the bad.
Your thoughts?
Wheat & Tares 
Sadly the modern pagan model for marriage has become serial monogamy. IMO it’s not too far off from polygamy.
I was talking to my mom at one point about how the GTE are a big issue for me because they are the anti-mormon lies of my youth,.now acknowledged by the church. She had heard about them but is afraid of where reading them might take her belief, so she isn’t going to look at them.
We all do that with some things. Don’t read the bad reviews about something/someone we like. Minimize the advice from our doctor that isn’t what we want to hear. Do the kinds of exercise we like but not the kinds we don’t like but also need. On and on. I personally have a really hard time reading news stories about child abuse or children otherwise suffering.
No doubt that many people cast ballots for Trump in previous elections and many will yet again, but I think that a significant of them are more votes against Clinton, Biden, or Harris than votes for Trump. Sometimes a voter chooses the lesser of what he or she perceives as two evils. Morality comes into play, but so do policies. Let’s be honest: some of Harris’ votes in November won’t be for her but will be against Trump.
D
Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have their own soiled reputations, which have been artfully buried by their party and the media. Trump’s reputation has been displayed so frequently that many voters have discounted it. When Trump was a Clinton Democrat 30 years ago it was just tabloid fodder.
Did you see K Harris’s convention speech or long awaited interview on CNN the other night? There’s truly nothing there except lofty platitudes.
I think many Trump skeptics are going to end up pulling the lever for him because they are sincerely nervous about her.
My approach is to not vote. But many folks would rather take a chance on a candidate not morally fit for office to avoid a candidate who is clearly in over her head.
In spite of our own history as outsiders many LDS are afraid of people coming over the border illegally / without papers. Some are tired of external threats, however inaccurately perceived. Fear of Islam, fear of crime, and fear of the unknown are real. Some conservatives would probably concede that Trump is a would-be strongman but might counter that’s better than anarchy.
Among older conservatives there’s probably a vivid memory of the Clintons’ frequent lying. I remember voting for Hillary but telling my wife I can’t believe I’m doing this because I did *not* trust her but I knew Trump would turn the federal government into his own reality show.
I’d also argue that racism is fundamentally baked into the US constitution. 10 clauses protect slave property. The most well known founding fathers were slave holders. The country was founded on racism and as a society we’re still wrestling with it. Enter white, Christian nationalism. Our national survival has never been threatened to the same extent as say France or England, so perhaps we don’t have the same visceral aversion to fascism.
Hmm . . .
Give me a choice between lofty platitudes versus a white supremacist, insurrectionist, and convicted felon and I’ll take the loft platitudes each time.
Besides, when it comes right down to it, the former president who invented the big lie is the real one who is “in over his head.”
i’m with quantitativemormon. I am a conservative in general, but I’m willing to go with Ms. Harris this time around rather than Doe 174 [er, I mean Mr. Trump]. I think our republic will be in safer hands with Ms. Harris, even though I realize I won’t like all of her policy decisions. We’ll have another election in four years.
There is also a good explanation for why Christians would vote for Trump that has been covered in the news, but I have not seen mentioned here on W&T. Peace, liberty and democracy, and the health of our children were given by RFK jr as positive reasons to support Trump. He is more connected to the democrat party than any commenting yet is crossing party lines in support of Trump.
Lots of LDS can see some positive results from the Trump years that provide moral reasons to support him. I am surprised that more here cannot see and acknowledge them.
With the Harris ticket we can, at least, be assured another election in 4 years.
RFK Jr. dropped out of the Democratic Primary last year when there was no significant interest in his candidacy. As an independent he didn’t fare much better. Whether or not he once had connections in the party, he has more recently been repudiated by almost all his family members, and the vast majority of elected Democrats. At one time he was a crusader for cleaning up the Environment, but he shifted his focus to vaccine disinformation, which can hardly be classified as concern for the health of children. Further proof of his bad judgment or even delusion is that he thinks that peace, liberty, and democracy would be promoted by supporting Trump, when the opposite is so manifestly the case.
Those put under religious delusions, such as Mormons, are easily put under political delusions as well.
“Peace, liberty and democracy, and the health of our children were given by RFK jr as positive reasons to support Trump.”
RFK Jr. is and has long been a deeply delusional man who used to have brain worms. He has said that vaccines cause autism and that wifi causes cancer. He believes and has promoted a long list of conspiracy theories. To say that Trump will bring more democracy is delusional in the extreme.
Trump is running on his past accomplishments, for better or worse. Despite four years of immigration and spending accomplishments, Harris is still running on personal entitlement. She needs to step up and take credit for her work.
If we voted on morality, as several seem to suggest here, then we would not have elected JFK in 1960 or Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, both known adulterers. And others, no doubt. We choose the lesser of two evils, and we weigh morality and policies both. If I had my druthers, and I probably won’t, I would see Harris elected but with Republicans winning House and Senate. If I vote for Harris, and I might, it will be a vote against Trump as a person and not a vote for Harris’ policies. If she wins, it won’t be with a mandate for her policies to triumph. Of course, the Republicans held the House this year and failed to send a budget to the Senate, so there is complete failure there. A pox on the fringes of both sides, both of whom see compromise as a dirty word. We need to govern from the middle. Trump may actually be better suited to that than his opponent.
There is also the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” facet. Conservatives who were feeling ignored and disenfranchised looked at Trump, who was hated by the libs and deliberately provoking them, and thought that if Trump is hated so much, that means he’s probably on their side. Or at least voting for Trump is a way to give the middle finger to the groups telling the conservative good ol’ boy network that their days are numbered.
Trump is intolerant. He appeals to voters who think that laws tolerating people who are different infringes on their rights.
avoid a candidate who is clearly in over her head.
Doesn’t the fact the Trump appointed dozens of officials who now oppose him say something about just who was clearly in over his head?
I tried to do the “both sides” thing for this post. I really did. But can we please just summarize what we’re giving Trump a “break” for doing? The reason Trump is running with JD Vance this time around is because of all those Trump enthusiasts chanting “Hang Mike Pence” on Jan 6, 2021. Remember the assault on the Capitol? The people who died? The people who tried to overturn the results of the election? Those are Trump’s biggest fans. A lot of them are still lying their tongues black about Trump’s attempted coup.
Project 2025 is the end of democracy. Trump has distanced himself from it, and is hoping that people don’t notice how much overlap there is between Project 2025 and Agenda 47. Trump told a bunch of his fans that if they’ll vote him into office in 2024, they won’t ever have to vote again.
And we’re comparing that to … Kamala Harris wanting equal rights for LGBTQ people? Wanting to tax rich people? Not having a detailed plan about how she’s going to overthrow rule by the people and install herself as an authoritarian dictator from day one?
Trump is in so far over his head that he didn’t run the country during his first administration. Remember that? On September 5, 2018, a member of the Trump administration anonymously published an op-ed in the NY Times entitled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration“. The author said there were multiple people in the Trump administration who worked to block some of the President’s worst and most destructive impulses. He used the memorable phrase, “know that there are adults in the room” in an effort to reassure the country that there were sane and responsible people trying to counter Trump’s general incompetence. The author writes: “The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.”
Trump gets people to vote. But if he takes office (God forbid), he won’t be the one running the country. The Republican senior officials who authored the 2025 Project will be running the country.
And here’s this fun headline: Former Trump Officials Are Among the Most Vocal Opponents of Returning Him to the White House. That’s the experience he’s running on. He was so horrible at being President that many of the people who worked with him the first time around are begging people to NEVER send Trump back to the White House.
Harris has fired 90% of her staff lastlemming. Same same.
Harris is noted for her hostile work environment, with 90% turnover as VP. She appears to be a hard boss to work for.
We’re not hearing that from the media, and Harris has been careful to cover it up.
“If we voted on morality, as several seem to suggest here, then we would not have elected JFK in 1960 or Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, both known adulterers.”
It used to be that Mormons cited morality as a key reason for their vote. I remember back in the 90s how Mormons went on and on about how Clinton was morally bankrupt and that that was one more reason, if not a huge reason, to vote Republican. For Reagan and the Bushes were moral people who didn’t cheat on their wives. Funny how I never hear that line of argumentation from conservative Mormons anymore.
It’s baffling to me why Mormons went so hard for Trump both times, but there are numerous possible reasons. Among them:
-Trump got elected in 2016 by appealing to large swaths of flyover country (which includes Utah and Idaho) by instilling a grievance mentality, claiming that the government only worked in favor of “coastal elites” (which ironically included himself) and played on the insecurity that White Middle America was forgotten and left behind. Which brings me to my next point…
-Trump primarily communicates using appeals to emotion rather than logic or reason. Devout Mormons are trained to trust their feelings over facts, and are thus unable to think critically when it matters.
-It requires nuance to have productive conversations about controversial issues (i.e. reproductive rights, immigration, gun control, etc), but orthodox Mormons are largely incapable of nuance. LDS culture demands an all-or-nothing, black-and-white, I’m-right-you’re-wrong worldview, which is not compatible with nuanced thinking. This effect is magnified in Utah, where Church culture is more closely intertwined with many aspects of citizens’ everyday lives (local government, schools, business/employment, etc.).
-Mormons are not very good at managing cognitive dissonance or challenging their biases, to the point that they short-circuit logical thinking and default to the worst possible choice. A typical devout orthodox Mormon believes with all his heart that Joseph Smith had a literal, face-to-face encounter with God and Jesus after praying in a forest, but if you remind him that the same God later threatened Joseph with a flaming sword to enter into secret marriages with multiple teenage girls, he will stick his fingers in his ears and sing a hymn loudly to drown out the “anti-Mormon lies”. This is also why it’s no coincidence that many, many LDS bishops have covered up abuse rather than report it to authorities, and insist that paying tithing to an obscenely wealthy Church is more important than housing or food.
-Old-fashioned party loyalty and straight-ticket voting, which have long featured prominently in Utah politics. Utah would elect a doorknob to statewide office if it ran as a republican.
So it appears those supporting Trump are willing to believe him even though the facts don’t support his views. There are fewer people coming over the border than under Trump, there will be more abortions under Trump, the economy for middle class is better without Trump. And then there are the big issues. US democracy is under threat from Trump, the rule of law, Ukraine, and some of Western Europe, Gaza and the Middle East, NATO. And destroy world trade, and world efforts to prevent CLIMATE CHANGE. have you noticed heat waves and forest fires.
Georgia’s, what is this morality that Trump is better at than harris? And how does it balance against the damage he has promised.
Ethan, You talk of the suffering of children. There are Palestinian children having limbs blown off by American supplied bombs. Surgeons who try to repair the mess are operating without anaesthetic even though Israel has it but refuses it. I do not know what is reported there? Trump supports Israel unconditionally, Harris says this has to stop. She can stop supplying bombs to Netenyahu or require that they not be used in Gaza or on Israel’s neighbours, like is required in Ukraine.
There is amazing logic being used here to justify supporting Trump. JFK may have been an adulterer but it was not known before he was elected, Clinton wasn’t either. Is anyone claiming Trump is not an adulterer? Is he standing against jfk?
Trump is such a danger but that is dismissed because he is Republican. He is republican in name only, he will not implement traditional republican values.
If it comes out that the majority of members voted for Trump, it will be a waste of time sending missionaries to any country with news media. The rest of the world can not understand how people can vote for Trump, and don’t want to be associated with such behaviour. Trump is so outside acceptable in the rest of the world, and will cause so much damage to that world that it is agast that he has any support.
I live in a world where our conservative party introduced gay marriage, supports universal healthcare, supports abortion on demand, and does not support Trump.
McKay Coppins pointed out that Utah (and presumably Mormons) are the least MAGA red state. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MisBzZYmWFk
People fantasize about all kinds of weird things. Here’s my fantasy:
November 2024. The race is so close that the outcome is still unknown for a few days after the 5th. Harris is coming up just a little short in the swing states and it appears that all hope is lost. Suddenly, we find out that Harris was pushed over the finish line by Utah, which, to everyone’s shock, has turned blue by a few hundred votes! I go to bed that night with renewed hope for my country and for my state.
Oh, and also I live in a house made of cheesecake.
Trump’s greatest achievement was to rid the country of Biden. He did it methodically, without a single disputed ballot or riot. Both parties owe him a debt of gratitude. Kamala Harris owes her candidacy to Trump.
I see Trump as a crypto-Democrat. He’s a throwback to the Clinton era of high stakes arbitrage, and certainly never met the old GOP standards for morals or fiscal responsibility.
The Democratic party left Trump behind. He was never part of the Bush/Romney/McCain GOP either. He’s combative, and has disposed of both Hillary and Biden, as if by spite for tangling with him. He is a political oner, and there will never be anyone like him again.
thhq: Harris running on “personal entitlement.” The only person with personal entitlement is Trump. Trump is a crypto-Democrat. What exactly is a crypto-Democrat in your mind? When I Googled crypto-Democrat I came up with a bunch of people that wanted crypto currency. That’s a poor definition for Trump. As for him being a throwback Clinton era high stakes arbitrage it makes no sense. Using big words and descriptive phrases can work for you but if they are not clear in their meaning, you’ve lost your audience. You keep commenting but I don’t think you’re persuading anyone with your “arguments.”
Mormons vote for Trump they are programed to be Republican, to think that Democrats are wicked, and to not think for themselves. Voting democratic sends shivers down their spines. They justify voting for Trump because he’ll get rid of abortion, stack the supreme court, and do any number of other things for Republicans. They don’t have to like him or his personality because of the separation of church and state. It allows them to bury their head in the sand.
Instereo if you’re not familiar with the term “crypto-nazi” look it up. Crypto-Democrat is a play on that term.
If you’re not familiar with how Trump made his money in real estate arbitrage (aka buy cheap then improve a property to sell or lease at great profit) that’s not my concern.
Thanks for all your downvotes. I’m cynical about ALL politicians, not just your party whichever one that is.
Instereo: You paint with a wide brush. This Mormon may not note for Trump, regularly votes Democratic and Republican in elections, does not think that Democrats are wicked, and tries to think for himself. What you write might be true of some Mormons, but not of all. You are not alone in painting with a wide brush, and you have good company.
I’m not here to persuade anyone of anything here. I’m here for the dialectic. Most of these threads present strong confirmation bias, which is an easy trigger for counterarguments against the fact-free ranting I often read. For instance, based on staff retention, Kamala is as terrible a manager as Trump is.
It’s not my problem that you don’t understand what I’m saying, and I don’t really care. It’s not my problem that you don’t understand whether I’m agreeing or disagreeing with you.
I spent about 25 years of my career doing this. Generally it was done negatively, looking for flaws to dismiss ridiculous ideas so that the company wouldn’t waste time and money testing them. Sometimes we wasted the time anyway due to company politics overriding common sense. In those cases I was usually left writing the report no one wanted to read. I learned, after having one of those 25 page reports torn up in my face, to write as clearly and as concisely as I possibly could.
Not everything failed, but business-changing breakthroughs were few and far between. Most of the time I just acted as an outer deflector shield, protecting the mother ship from incoming salesman pitches. Don’t buy this guy’s soap, don’t buy that cheap sulfuric, etc etc etc.
Georgis: I’m glad some Mormons vote for Democrats as well as Republicans. I’m glad you don’t think Democrats are wicked but based on comments that I read on Deseret News, and Salt Lake Tribune articles there does seem to be a strong feeling that Democrats are wicked or at least the names they use seem to indicate a total disrespect for the humanity of Democrats. As for painting with a wide brush, let me just say that my county (central Utah) in Utah voted for Trump 91%. Those in my Congressional District (the Southwest portion of Utah) was 85% for Trump. I’m sure the paint brush is a bit wide for Salt Lake City, Summit, or Grand County but it fits pretty well 15 of the 29 counties in Utah that were between 80-90% Trump in the last election.
thhq: I’m not sure why you think nobody knows that Harris had high turnover among her staff initially. That was in the news. I mean, it’s literally nothing compared to Trump’s history with his staff, the majority of whom do not support his candidacy. Being a “tough boss” is respected in men and often viewed as a character flaw in women, and “uppity” in black women. Regardless, it’s one piece of information in a campaign that’s full of information. To me, it’s not disqualifying, particularly given her opponent’s track record. It’s like saying she slept her way to the top when she is literally running against a serial sexual assaulter. If she was up against an opponent with a solid track record on these things, then perhaps I would care about this.
I’m in general dismayed by the political environment in the church. I remember one sister sharply stating online that President Dallin H. Oaks said “Black lives matter”, due to threats to him by Marxists, but no proof is given. I see in American Christianity the trend of “Evangelicals Are Now Rejecting ‘Liberal’ Teachings of Jesus”. I hear of members of the church feeling the same way, that the time of helping others, is over with. A number of members buy into immigrants taking so much, yet you can’t get unemployment or food stamps in most (if not all) states. You can’t collect Social Security if you never paid into it.
I think part of the stubbornness of some voting for Trump lies in people not wanting to admit they voted for him in 2016 & 2020, then admitting he was not as good as they had hoped. January 6 2021 shook up some of Trump supporters, but a number of “back the blue” Trump supporters just stick their fingers in their ears about the January 6 hypocrisy. Strangely, Richard Nixon won in a landslide in 1972, but, a lot of voters for him soured on him after the Watergate incident blew up, they would have never have voted for him ever again, even if 3 term Presidents were legal.
Now, I admit Harris & Walz have flaws, but, a number of things they are being accused of are poorly researched, or, fabricated. Trump, as President, had called up Walz during rioting in Minn., saying that Walz was doing a fine job. It’s also poorly explained how that Trump gave money to Harris’s Senate Reelection Campaign, but now she’s evil incarnate.
On a side note, I still wonder how Goldwater, with his anti-communism streak, lost Utah to LBJ in 1964.
Geoff – Aus: Climate change is a topic with strange contradictions. Trump & others deny there is any climate change or sea level rising, yet, there’s US oil refineries asking the US Gov’t. to pay for seawalls around their refineries. Huh?
Brad D: Both in & out of the church there’s people who wanted to clobber Bill Clinton for infidelity, yet ignore Trump’s issues with it. Go figure.
My comment about Harris’s poor staff retention is a concern hawkgrrrl. Your deflections about uppity black women and Trump’s morals don’t address the concern. She has a 25 year history of staff chaos.
As I said earlier I’m cynical about all politicians. My Trump put-downs seem to have been missed and earned me dozens of downvotes. I’ll repeat in one word: COVID.
Up until a month ago people here were all Biden diehards. Then Biden disappeared and now you’re Harris diehards. Harris was not born yesterday. She has a history on immigration and enabling $3 trillion in spending. She has a history of poor staff retention. These do not go away with a royal wave and a smile. If she wins we can expect more of the same.
I am cynical about politicians because they are all craven. The House is the worst. Every two years they have to go out and justify doing nothing so that they can keep their place in the buffet line. The only thing they agree on is borrowing more money.
The comments about people doing all sorts of mental gymnastics to defend their voting choices are all true, but this isn’t why people vote for Trump (or any other crappy candidate). It’s a symptom of a larger systemic issue.
The simplest explanation for 70% of Mormons voting for Trump is that 70-75% of US Mormons say that they’re Republican and Trump is on that ticket. The justification of their choice comes after the fact.
One of the main problems with US politics right now is that people don’t vote for who they think will be the best candidate; instead they vote against the party that they don’t want to win. There’s a huge distinction.
You can even see it in most of the comments here. The arguments are often less about why their candidate is good, and more about why the other choice is worse.
In the current system, people also feel pressured wait to avoid voting for a third party because third party candidates almost never win, and it can potentially have a spoiling effect on the mainstream candidate you are less scared of.
The solution here is unsexy nonpartisan voting reform – if my first choice is Coke, yours is Pepsi, but both of our second choices are Dr. Pepper then we’d both feel represented if Dr. Pepper ultimately won…but US politics lets Coke and Pepsi write all the rules to block Dr Pepper from having a chance.
Entertaining comment section aside, the original question is why Mormons are supporting Trump. I know of one extended family member who voted (in Utah) for Evan McMullin’s independent candidacy in 2016 and then Trump in 2020. The stated reason for supporting Trump in 2020 was abortion. For decades religious conservatives followed very simple logic that they should vote Republican in order to get abortion opponents on the Supreme Court. I think that’s still true for a lot of Mormon voters, including some who have a lot of concerns about Trump. The thing is, the court that gave us the Dobbs decision was effectively already in place before 2020, and it was obvious in 2020 that the election wasn’t going to change that, and I would argue the 2024 election won’t either. If the goal really is just voting for the Supreme Court, people could be strategic about this, but it appears this conditioning runs really deep.
I’m aware of one family member who is struggling with who to vote for. They have misgivings about Trump but have never supported a Democrat in their life and feel ideologically misaligned with the Harris ticket. They had considered supporting RFK Jr, but now he’s supported Trump. I can sympathize with this plight. I remember how hard it was for me to abandon my Republican conditioning 20 years ago when I couldn’t support Bush for a second term. My view as a Harris supporter is that someone needs to be speaking to this audience. Tell them it’s OK to vote Harris and vote Republican for their local congressional races. Tell them it’s OK to support a third party candidate if they are concerned about Trump. A Trump vote switched to a neutral vote is only half as valuable as a Trump vote switched to a Harris vote, but in a close election, it could matter.
To try and actually look at the thesis/prompt of the post, with respect to whether Mormons went for Trump because they’ve been trained to look the other way, all I can say is, perhaps we are taking this a bit too far. Does everything bad that individual members do have to be attributable to the church in general? Can people make crappy decisions, like vote for someone who has demonstrably lied, cheated, committed infidelity, stiffed creditors, mishandled classified information, committed rape in everything but name, and encouraged a mob to walk up to the capital, based on a mix of factors, only one of which (if at all) is their church affiliation?
As I’ve long thought about why so many are voting for Trump each cycle, including those in my congregation that I otherwise respected, I think more about the media ecosystem they consume as to whether the church is training them to be more inclined to vote for such amoral people. Perhaps that is a bias of mine, because I am a participant in that same church and have no inclination at all to vote for such an amoral person – let alone a person who, again, by his own words and actions has demonstrated a willingness to trample the constitution of our nation that so many conservatives claim to cherish.
I guess that is a long-winded way of saying, I think the original thesis of this post is off-base. It seeks to lay blame at the feet of the church for stupid decisions made in the political arena. Can there be a post about the tendency for leadership of the church to purposefully or inadvertently train lay members to “look the other way with flawed leaders”? I’m there there has been already, and will be again, and something could be there to discuss. But does that necessarily demonstrate causation for peoples’ stupid political decisions? I just don’t see it.
Rather, I see many people that vote for Trump repeating the lines they hear from their conservative media system (echochamber). And, contrariwise, I hear some liberals repeating the lines they hear from their liberal media system (echochamber). I do find persuasive the identification of the trend from social media for people to limit themselves over time to only those voices that sound agreeable to them/agree with their preconceived notions and expectations. That is a very human failing that cannot be simply blamed on our particular church governance habits (or past or even current hagiographic tendencies, which have always frustrated me).
And, since I’m on a rant, I’ll also note that to me, the gullibility of people or at least the willingness of the average person (of which I am more than I’m sure I recognize) to think deeply about any particular issue is another reason for (1) voting for someone like Trump, because the voter panics/despairs at having to do the hard work of determining what is true and what is a lie, and (2) the hagiographic tendencies of the church leadership in the past, and now – because of the concern of the same, scrape-the-surface person who may be unable to appreciate the nuance that comes from very human, complicated people (like every prophet and prophetess has ever been).
At least for me, I’ve tried to research what Trump has actually, demonstrably said, what he has lied about, and what he has done, and made my decisions that way. Many that I know who go for Trump do so based on their conservative media system fear-mongering, without a willingness to prove whether that fear-mongering is based on truth, lies, or wild speculation.
But I don’t see this as something that comes from the church.
How do we get better candidates? I have no idea. I prefer a governor to a senator for their executive experience. But we have no ability to vote for Haley or Newsom. We’re locked into insanity.
As The Who sang, “The old man has all the money”.
The one governor we had in the twenty-first century, GW Bush, was a disaster. The two senators, Obama and Biden, spent their time repairing the damage he did, and the damage done by the other president who had no executive experience except as the crime boss of his fraudulent family firm.
The post is thought provoking but some of the comments left me rather muddled and sad.
To add to the OP and Quentin’s comment: It’s ok for Joseph Smith and Donald Trump to not be perfect and still get our support. And while a lot of people don’t like Trump, this group seems only willing to vote for the other candidate if they are perfect. Unfortunately, Harris is not perfect. Walz is not perfect.
We saw this in 2008. Lots of people said they supported a black president but only if he was X and Y and Z and Obama didn’t fit the bill. We couldn’t just have a black president, he had to be THE black president. Lucky for us enough people were willing to take that chance. Obama was a good president. In 2016 it was the same thing. Lots of people claim to support a woman president, but not that woman president. She had to be perfect. And here we are again. It’s not good enough that Harris not be a crook, her lofty intentions and cabinet turnover rate somehow make her some sort of a moral failure on par with Trump. I can’t make it make sense.
Also in the Mormon angle is turning off (like a light switch) information we don’t like. Don’t like the gospel topics essays? Claim someone hacked God’s website. Don’t like Joseph Smith’s polygamy? Claim it’s anti-Mormon lies. Don’t like Donald Trump’s character flaws? Blame the media. The parallels do exist.
A month ago many people here thought Biden was angelic. Now Harris is angelic. That’s a huge hubristic pivot. It’s hyperpartisan insanity.
Biden anointed Harris and cut out every other qualified Democratic contender after he was jettisoned by his party. Simple revenge for what Obama and Pelosi did to him. No Newsom, no Whitmer, no Michelle, no Walz. That’s my rant.
@Hawkgrrl – I got a chuckle out of the repeated pushback against your assessment of Harris’ perceived staff retention issues. Like she’s not running against the man with the worst staffing record in the history of the presidency. He never even filled his cabinet during the entire term. He thought it was smart to appoint “acting secretaries” in order to circumvent congressional approval and to fire them more easily. It takes about 5,000 people, presumably gifted, to staff the executive branch, many of them working in cabinet service. 45’s “smart thinkin” crippled executive branch function so thoroughly that when Biden took office, just properly staffing the executive branch with people of talent, and encouraging them to do their job instead of terrorizing them, was enough to repair much of the damage done by 4years of non-leadership plus pandemic. And thus, Biden’s presidency appears as a raging success by all measures the sane Republicans of yore would desire.
I simply cannot take the grasping at straws of criticism for Harris&Walz seriously, while blindly ignoring the bottomless pit of incompetence, racism, misogyny, treason against the constitution, and dementia that presumes to impersonate a team of opposition.
And yet, we’ve seen that such a dumpster fire can be elected when enough voters stubbornly cling to partisanship above everything. People of good sense need to carefully pay attention to their vote, and help their like-minded neighbors do the same.
“A month ago many people here thought Biden was angelic. Now Harris is angelic. That’s a huge hubristic pivot. It’s hyperpartisan insanity.” I suppose. I never polled anyone. Perhaps many people simply like them both. And perhaps other people wanted someone younger as POTUS while still liking them both. There’s a world of possibilities here, and not all of them require hubris or insanity.
“Biden anointed Harris and cut out every other qualified Democratic contender after he was jettisoned by his party. Simple revenge for what Obama and Pelosi did to him. No Newsom, no Whitmer, no Michelle, no Walz. That’s my rant.” It’s your rant, so go for it. But this is pretty ignorant of the democratic process. The Biden campaign was technically the Biden-Harris campaign. Replacing Biden but retaining Harris allowed the campaign to continue without all the issues of a new campaign, the least of which would funding. (Sharon McMahon is an excellent resource on these sorts of topics if you are interested). Also Harris is qualified.
We’ll see Chadwick. Biden picked a very low popularity candidate compared to all the ones I listed.
@Chadwick – by every traditional measure of qualification that we use for the presidency, Harris is qualified. There are only two problems — she is Black/Asian and female. But in 2024, this is only a problem for racist misogynists. And Walz is qualified to soothe those owies.
@MDearest I could agree more. Sharon McMahon also explains in layman terms to us that because Harris was a minority, she would most likely choose a mainsteam Veep. No Buttigieg, no female, no more color. Too much diversity would upset the system. I think that’s sad.
“Biden anointed Harris and cut out every other qualified Democratic contender”
Funny how the only people complaining about this are Republicans. Within a week after Biden announced that he would no longer be running for reelection, all major Democratic contenders announced their endorsement of Harris. I haven’t heard one major Democrat or liberal personality complain about this or say it was unfair. At this point, Democrats are almost entirely united in beating Trump. No one wants to be the odd person out who causes division and helps hand Trump a victory. Harris has already been a heartbeat away from the presidency for the last almost four years. She was the logical choice to replace Biden if he decided to drop out.
Wheat and Tares used to be great place for discussions re: the LDS Church. It has now become a “garbage dump” of quasi political articles written with the disingenuous question of “why do Mormons do what they do”? There’s a pretty obvious political agenda here now…..and what was once great has become worthless.
The two or three who write this kind of tripe (often two or three times a week) will continue to do so; and will heartily pat each other on the back as they roll merrily along.
grizzerbear55, go away