Instigator / Pro
4
1500
rating
1
debates
0.0%
won
Topic
#5609
Kamala Harris is a much better candidate than Donald Trump
Status
Finished
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
Winner & statistics
Better arguments
0
3
Better sources
2
2
Better legibility
1
1
Better conduct
1
1
After 1 vote and with 3 points ahead, the winner is...
WyIted
Tags
Parameters
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 3
- Time for argument
- One day
- Max argument characters
- 10,000
- Voting period
- Two weeks
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
Contender / Con
7
1498
rating
34
debates
66.18%
won
Description
This debate aims to look at which candidate would serve the United States better as president. I am not looking to debate someone who just has completely derailed racist beliefs etc. but rather someone who may genuinely believe Trump is better suited for office. Anything is fair game beyond that.
Round 1
Pro
#1
To begin this debate I want to clarify a few things.
Derailed beliefs or subjective opinions will not be tolerated in this debate. Anecdotal arguments are allowed, but obviously as in any debate they are rather weak. Sources that are obviously not credible are not allowed. Although this line is not 100% clear I will call out any poor sources CON uses and CON has the same right to do so for me. This is not leeway for CON to discredit real credible sources.
What is the "winner" of the debate meant to prove?
The goal of this debate is to look at facts and statistics and prove that either former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris is the better candidate for president. This means that their overall impact on the United States and the world will be better than the other candidate. Both domestic and foreign policy are fair play.
With that being said, I will begin my arguement. My approach is to give a fair assessment of each candidate and then evaluate their past and potential impact. I will be using certain topics to evaluate this, but CON is welcome to introduce new topics of discussion.
I will start with former President Donald Trump.
Economic policy: Many Trump supporters cite the great economy under his presidency. However, a closer look at the Trump economy reveals any growth was inherited by the Obama administration, corporate growth, or short lived middle class growth. Early economic growth in the Trump presidency was a continuation of growth from the Obama presidency. Many of Trump's economic policies didn't even take place for the first year of his presidency, yet economic growth was still present. (1) Trump's presidency did spark corporate growth, via agendas like his energy deregulation. However, the impact on the middle class, and therefore the majority of American's was negligible. In fact, regulations have at best a positive impact on employment and at worst a neutral one. (2) Deregulation, on the other hand, has been shown to harm employment. (3) And Trump withdrew or delayed a reported 1,579 regulations. Lastly, let's look at Trump's short lived growth from his 2017 tax cuts. These cuts significantly favored the rich and barely benefited the working class. "...for both households in the top 1 percent and the top 5 percent — are more than triple the total value of the tax cuts received for people with incomes in the bottom 60 percent." (4)
Climate Policy: Trump's deregulatory plans halted needed action on climate change. There were 74 actions that weakened environmental protections. (5) Furthermore, he pushed the dangerous agenda that climate change is a "hoax". While the effects of Trump's poor choices in regards to the climate have not been researched thoroughly, the impact of climate change has. There has been a significant increase in natural disasters over the past decades, causing numerous fatalities, injuries, and negative financial impacts. (6) Trump ignoring these issues and further spreading misinformation arguing they aren't real through both his words and actions is extremely dangerous.
Civil Rights: I want to emphasize the importance of this issue. Beyond domestic impact, many countries use the United States to push for global human rights abuse. (7) The Trump administration facilitated a dangerous precedent by pushing an agenda allowing for human rights of vulnerable groups to be effectively ignored due to protecting religious liberties. (8) Trump also refused to acknowledge or do anything about cases of Muslim genocide, again setting a dangerous global precedent. (9)
I could continue on many of these topics, but will leave it at that due to lack of characters. I want to lastly mention that Trump plans to continue and exacerbate many of these problematic agenda through Agenda 47. Moreover, although denied by Trump, he has close ties with those involved with Project 2025. A lot of the people involved in Project 2025 were some of Trump's closest allies during his presidency.
Now on to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Economic Policy: Experts predict Harris' economic policies will reflect Biden's so this segment will mainly evaluate Biden's economic policies. (10) Biden's administration implemented a historic recovery from the poor COVID-economy Trump left them. The Biden office created 12 million jobs, bringing unemployment to pre-pandemic numbers. I will acknowledge that Biden's economy was a mixed bag due to inflation, but overall his administration made a great comeback from the pandemic, especially in comparison to other countries. (12)
Climate Policy: Unlike Trump, Harris presses the "urgency of the moment" in regards to climate change. She aims to improve and uphold the achievements of the Biden administration in terms of climate change. Biden passed the most comprehensive climate act in United States history. He has achieved 3 of his 10 key climate priorities and if Harris is elected this agenda can continue. (13)
Civil Rights: Lastly, Harris also aims to continue Biden's advances in Civil Rights. Moreover, she also would set a major precedent by being a Black women elected as president. Biden had many Civil Rights successes throughout his presidency. Experts reviewing the Lift Every Voice plan claim it was a major success. (14) Biden's policing executive order sent a strong message about the big issue of police brutality in the U.S., a large contrast to Trump who aims to militarize police. He also implemented an executive order aimed to stop voter suppression.
I could go into a lot more detail about many of these different acts, and will do so if CON decides to debate any of these topics. But overall, the Trump presidency was a failure on many levels, and if elected he plans to continue and expand his problematic agendas. In contrast, Harris looks to expand and uphold the historic successes of the Biden administration. This makes it very clear that the impact of Harris if elected would be significantly more positive than that if Trump were elected.
SOURCES:
2. https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20160224/104519/HHRG-114-JU05-Wstate-BivensJ-20160224.pdf
9, https://www.dw.com/en/indian-religious-minorities-face-increased-violence-under-modi-report/a49346394, https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/13/rohingya-house-resolution-pompeo-1063111, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/18/how-trump-talks-about-attacks-targeting-muslims-vs-attacks-by-muslims/
Con
#2
I appreciate pro's arguments. I can tell you that 24 hours is not enough time for me, so I messed up by accepting. I concede, but before I do, I will show you the responses I have planned. I use the snow flake method so this is actually the seeds for 2 rounds of content and not fleshed out, but I think there could be some benefit in seeing how I approach writing arguments.
Introduction
A lot of pro's case rests on a bunch of presuppositions that aren't supported. I'll likely save most of the rebuttals for the next round but some need to be addressed now. The judges should ignore the assumptions present in a liberal world view just as most of the already do with a conservative world view,
## Case Against Kamala
used prisoners for slave labor. https://www.thedailybeast.com/kamala-harris-ag-office-tried-to-keep-inmates-locked-up-for-cheap-labor
smoked weed while locking people up for it
Tulsi Gabbard [ripped into](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4fjA0K2EeE) Harris during a conversation on racism. “She put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations,” said Gabbard. “And then laughed about it when she asked if she ever smoked marijuana.”
opponent admits that Kamala would continue bidens policies
Kamala Harris knew Biden was in cognitive declined and still actively covered for him.
## Trump
passes right to try
Trump brought peace
trump reduced illegal immigration
This is good due to preventing brain drain in 3rd world countries and making things easier for dicatators by allowing the people who would challenge them to leave.
We also have to be worried about the demographic changes that will turn the country into a single party state which will cause corruptions similar levels as chicago, north korea and one party states everywhere.
## Rebuttals
>"Trump also refused to acknowledge or do anything about cases of Muslim genocide, again setting a dangerous global precedent. (9)"
pro says trump did nothing to protect Muslim Minorities but links the following article https://www.dw.com/en/indian-religious-minorities-face-increased-violence-under-modi-report/a-49346394
It is an article about the treatment of Muslims in India, does not support anything about genocide.
>I could continue on many of these topics, but will leave it at that due to lack of characters. I want to lastly mention that Trump plans to continue and exacerbate many of these problematic agenda through Agenda 47.
Agenda 47 can be found in the following link and does not appear to support encouraging atrocities in other countries. Pro is presupposing that America should be the world police without making arguments for why the United States should impose their morality on the rest of the world.
Pro says Donald trump called climate change a hoax but has provided no citation for the comment and no evidence that his policies would reflect that belief.
in the first round pro claims that deregulation harmed employees but nearly links to a document talking about completely unrelated mass layoffs. https://www.bls.gov/mls/mlsreport1043.pdf
Conveniently the document has sections called reasons for layoffs and not a single reason listed is deregulation. It is also a chart from 2012 so it's a chart from when Obama was president.
pro says that there were 74 regulations that made environmental protections worse and links to a document analyzing biden era policies on the environment. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/tracking-regulatory-changes-in-the-biden-era/
My opponent says Biden created 12 million jobs but the chart he links to https://www.axios.com/2024/01/31/us-economy-2024-gdp-g7-nations actually just shows that the United States is outperforming other countries when it comes to recovering from the pandemic. It in no way supports his claims.
pro says that experts claimed Biden made huge strides to help minorities, but it was not experts, he actually linked to a partisan advocacy organization, and accomplishments listed were focused on things like african americans appointed to Biden's cabinet as opposed to actually focusing on how african americans benefited from Biden's policies. https://nul.org/sites/default/files/2024-02/NUL-Biden-Progress-Report-web.pdf
pro says that Trump did not grow a strong economy but inherited Obama's. While the document he links to shows that Yes The economy grew under Obama, but that it also Grew under Trump and it merely criticized Trump for protecting Americas workers with tarrifs and being a bit hyperbolic, but does admit Trump grew the economy, shrinking inflation, lowering unemployment and lowering taxes. https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/2c298bda-8aee-4923-84a3-95a54f7f6e6f/did-trump-create-or-inherit-the-strong-economy.pdf
pro says the the tax cuts only helped the
--------------------------------
Again it's just the seeds of what I was planning but it may be of use to somebody. I also considered arguments not listed and rebuttals not listed as well, ones that essentially uses pro's premises against him
Can you give me the article for the following link, since it is paywalled please https://www.wsj.com/articles/unalienable-rights-and-u-s-foreign-policy-11562526448
I want to see how it relates to the following sentence "he Trump administration facilitated a dangerous precedent by pushing an agenda allowing for human rights of vulnerable groups to be effectively ignored due to protecting religious liberties."
->Thank you for clarifying some of the conduct of this website.
No problem.
->There is research on topics like this. If a topic comes up with no statistics for example, then it would fall on expert opinion and beyond that anything else is unclear and would remain a weak point probably only based off weak anecdotal evidence so I would hope voters recognize this.
https://www.ojp.gov/library/publications/comparing-crime-rates-between-undocumented-immigrants-legal-immigrants-and makes the left wing case, (The undocumented are less harmful).
I have though seen articles claiming the opposite from sources I can't remember but at the time, I believed they were reliable; Wylted might reference these. Lets say these sources are as reliable as the one I listed. Whose cite is more reliable; this site, or a hypothetical pro Trump .edu site (which in my very distant memory, I remember seeing but I can't find the site)? I believe someone like Wylted may have these sites on file.
Thank you for clarifying some of the conduct of this website. I will specify this further in my initial argument but this debate is to assess overall impact of each candidate. Trust me, I have plans for any arguments about abortion etc. that will not stonewall the progress of the debate. As for arguments like "Are undocumented immigrants more or less likely to commit rape as native born citizens?". There is research on topics like this. If a topic comes up with no statistics for example, then it would fall on expert opinion and beyond that anything else is unclear and would remain a weak point probably only based off weak anecdotal evidence so I would hope voters recognize this. I will call out any poor sources CON may use to refute any arguments constructed from said sources.
@wylted
->hold on so making factual claims that non western folks have different cultural beliefs than westerners is racist? That is an odd thing to say
Claiming that Indians tend to have different cultural beliefs (like being Hindu vs Christain majority America) isn't racist because you can find data on it to back the claim up. Claiming that Hatians are voodoo is also not racist. Claiming that either ethnicity has a majority of their followers being anti free speech with no data to back it up is racist.
->Are you seriously saying it is a subjective opinion that cultures can vary?
No; the culture of California is different than the culture of Texas. But it would be stereotypical to assume that all Californians are democrats and all Texans are republcians.
->I will clarify in my first arguement what counts as derailed.
I understand that's kindof what you plausibly can do; but you should define this in your description so debators know what they are signing up for. If you make a climate change debate with someone and then you talk about abortion, they didn't sign up for an abortion debate; but a climate change debate.
-> I consider empirically false statements about race, sex, etc. to be derailed beliefs.
That sounds very straightforward until propaganda inevibtibly kicks in. If you ask 1 Fox News viewer and 1 CNN viewer, "Are undocumented immigrants more or less likely to commit rape as native born citizens?", the Fox viewer would say yes; the CNN viewer would say no. One of them is objectively wrong; you can even find reliable sources that contradict each other. The experts can't even agree on that, and many MAGA people argue the experts are part of the deep state and can't be trusted due to their alleged corruption by some boogey man globalist.
->If con were to bring such an argument forward I would simply refute it due to lack of evidence.
Honestly, with debates, you should refute ALL arguments your opponent brings up to the best of their ability. If they make the claim that the majority of black women got abortions and the majority of black men (except they call them hard r) are deadbeat dads, then if you are black, then you may find that offensive and even racist, but you still have to debunk it. But how debates can work (like the debate style you selected) is there are I think 7 points you can win. 3 are from arguments; 2 are from sources; one is for grammar; another is for conduct.
If someone calls you the N word in a debate if you are black, then you can expect to get the conduct point, since use of either N word veriety in a debate context is poor conduct. But if you get angry in retaliation, then you might actually lose the conduct point (or neither one of you would get it).
You are anti-Trump; lets say you debate someone pro Trump. The debate ends; one of the voters has a very strong pro Trump bias and votes against you. You have the ability to flag that vote and moderation will look at it and plausibly remove it (vice versa if a hardcore anti Trumper votes for you).
Are you seriously saying it is a subjective opinion that cultures can vary?
I will clarify in my first arguement what counts as derailed. Yes the debate voters may not act according but that could happen regardless of any rules I put in place. I consider empirically false statements about race, sex, etc. to be derailed beliefs. I don't consider the argument you noted as being a derailed racist beliefs, because as you said it isn't empirically false, but it is just a weak argument not based in fact and therefore becomes more of a subjective opinion. If con were to bring such an argument forward I would simply refute it due to lack of evidence.
hold on so making factual claims that non western folks have different cultural beliefs than westerners is racist? That is an odd thing to say
->Any extreme racist or sexist arguments will be completely disregarded and will not count towards the debate. If con makes these arguments I will not respond to them and anyone voting in this debate should ignore them as they violate the rules of the debate.
You want the voters to ignore bigoted arguments; but there is no guarantee they would; and there are arguments you would consider racist that your opponent wouldn't. Somebody saying they don't like the hood can be argued to be racist (even though I've met black democrats who agree with this statement).
@WyIted
You've literally called yourself racist here by not wanting black Hatians to move here (presumably because they are black and claiming large swaths of strangers don't believe in western values like free speech which you can't verify because you don't know every Hatian out there. Some are free speech absolutists; others want to ban hate speech; just like white people):
https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/11373-meep-proposal-ban-stochastic-terrorism?page=3&post_number=74
Any extreme racist or sexist arguments will be completely disregarded and will not count towards the debate. If con makes these arguments I will not respond to them and anyone voting in this debate should ignore them as they violate the rules of the debate.
please stop calling me racist, it is rude.
-> I am not looking to debate someone who just has completely derailed racist beliefs etc. but rather someone who may genuinely believe Trump is better suited for office.
The part where you exclude people with racist beliefs but still support Trump; that takes out a lot of your competition (hopefully not a majority, but people like Wylted are racist and many Trump supporters share his views).