Ten Reasons To Support Harris

For democracy, against AIDS, lead, and factory farming

The election is right around the corner and a vote for the better candidate has very high expected value. Your odds of flipping the election are high enough—1 in a few million if you’re in a swing state—that given billions of dollars of difference in expected value between the candidates, a vote for the right candidate is potentially worth thousands of dollars. Given this, I’ll try to make one closing pitch for Harris over Trump, giving ten reasons to prefer Harris.

(If you want to cast a protest vote for some third party while still raising the odds Harris wins, go to swapyourvote.org. One swing state voter who normally would vote third party or protest votes will vote for Harris. In return, two Harris supporters from safe blue states vote for their preferred third party. This way two protest votes are cast, yet Harris gets an extra swing state vote).

First, Harris is better for democracy. After losing the last election, Trump launched a months-long attempt to overturn the results of an election that he knew he lost, almost bringing about the most severe constitutional crisis since the civil war. This raises the likelihood of Trump egregiously violating norms in the future. If a guy launches a months long coup attempt—an attempt to steal an election they lost, an election that they know they lost—you shouldn’t be too surprised (maybe 7% odds) if they don’t leave office the next time.

Second, Trump is likely to go after his political enemies. He has said he would do this over and over again and he tried to do it last time. During his last administration, Trump was muzzled by efficient, intelligent bureaucrats. This time, he’ll be unchained, with his administration being staffed by sycophants that have spent the last many years kissing his ass. This could create a massive lawfare cycle of increasing escalation.

Third, Trump is likely to put deeply incompetent hacks in charge of running important agencies. He’s promised to put RFK Junior in charge of public health—a deranged anti-vaxxer who would majorly set back public health. He’s likely to staff complex federal bureaucracies with corrupt and ill-informed MAGA loyalists, grinding the efficiency of the federal government to a halt. I don’t want those in charge of running the government to be selected based on how much they kiss Trump’s ass, rather than competence.

Fourth, Trump is worse on factory farming. Given that factory farming is responsible for most of the human-caused misery on earth, with millions being horrifically mistreated and killed every few weeks, with billions enduring hundreds of hours of agony as intense as the most intense agony most people ever experience, it’s worth regarding it as one of the most serious issues. Trump would and has undermined enforcement of federal animal welfare laws. Lab grown meat, the most promising alternative to factory farming, which, if it’s rolled out just 6 months earlier, could save many billions of land animals from a life of grotesque torture and hundreds of billions of fish, might be banned under a Trump administration. It’s been banned in various Republican states and his most likely choice for agricultural commissioner has been well-known for trying to ban it. As the one and only Glenn notes:

Ever since clean meat demonstrated its market potential last summer, outrageous claims and dishonest narratives from meat industry front groups have whipped conservative media and policymakers into a frenzy over cell-cultured products. Trump’s most likely choice for USDA Secretary, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, is a cattle rancher and farm subsidy welfare recipient who’s said he wants to follow the lead of Republicans in Florida and Alabama and ban clean meat — something the USDA may de facto be able to do by gumming up the approval process for cultivated products. Trump surrogate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who’s been promised control over the administration’s health and food safety portfolio, has promoted a baseless conspiracy theory that “fake meat” is part of a plot by Bill Gates to control the world’s food supply. Trump allies in Congress have introduced multiple pieces of legislation to restrict funding and free speech in labeling for alternative proteins, something that may end up on the next president’s desk if it gets attached to the farm bill.

Fifth, Trump is worse when it comes to existential threats. If you trust his own account, he got us very close to a nuclear war during his last administration, with North Korea. He opposes working with other countries, thus making it possible to regulate emerging technology that poses an existential risk. He thus raises risks from AI and biotechnology. He also heightens the risk of nuclear war with Ukraine by raising the likelihood of engaging in drastic, unpredictable action—Anatoly Karlin notes:

But as I’ve been saying since last year, there’s another possibility: Trump offers Putin a deal - a great deal! the best deal in the history of deals! - which Putin haughtily dismisses, because he has no theory of mind and takes it for subservience. Next up: Anduril drones and hundreds of Abrams tanks on the Zaporozhye plains come summer 2026. This scenario does not strike me fundamentally less likely than the other, nor is this idea particular to me: Analysts as disparate as Philippe Lemoine, Velina Tchakarova, and Igor Strelkov have proposed similar scenarios. Historically, Trump was far more hawkish on Russia than Obama, selling Ukraine lethal weapons and trying to torpedo Nord Stream II. Contra stereotypes, MAGA voters are no more pro-Russian than Democrats, and for their part, traditional Republican elites will be happy to go along with a foreign policy line familiar to them from the Cold War. To the extent that the Kremlin is banking on Trump getting back into office - and rumors suggest that’s exactly what their “plans” reduce to - they should, as with the others, be careful what they wish for. Though speaking just for myself, I would argue that either decision - withdrawing arms supplies to Ukraine, and conclusively ending the cruel delusion that the US has its back; or multiplying arms supplies in order to force a Russian defeat - might well both be more ethical than the current policy of the Biden administration, insofar as it forces an end to this dumb and meaningless bloodbath that is now largely sustained by both sides believing they can still eke out a substantive victory.

Sixth, Trump supports mass deporting millions of people. Shipping millions of people back to Mexico would have devastating economic consequences, particularly in productive sectors where half of new innovations come from immigrants and their children, and would worsen the lives of millions of people. Furthermore, immigration is an area where the federal government has greater control than others.

Seventh, Trump supports major tariffs—10% across the board. This is opposed by virtually all economists and, during his last administration, got us into a GDP shredding trade war. It’s hard to find a policy as universally hated among economists as tariffs and the fact that his major policy agenda seems to be based on restricting immigration and imposing tariffs, he’s worse on the economy (especially given that, as I’ve noted elsewhere, Democrats are much better for the economy than Republicans—the last five times a Republican administration has been replaced by a Democratic administration, growth has gone up, while the five ten times a Democratic administration has been replaced by a Republican administration, growth has gone down).

Eight, Trump would likely cut PEPFAR, a program fighting AIDS overseas. It’s saved about 25 million lives since its implementation under George W. Bush, saving over a million lived a year. PEPFAR is one of the most successful government programs of all time, yet Trump’s budget proposed slashing PEPFAR by around half, and the Republicans have opposed PEPFAR since a bogus myth started that it was funding abortion.

Ninth, Trump supports other things that are bad for the economy. He’s advocated defaulting on the debt which would defraud millions of Americans and completely nuke the credit rating of the U.S.. Trump has crazy ideas that would be bad for the economy.

Tenth, there are lots of good things about Kamala Harris.

Ozy Brennan

, author of one of the ~15 best blogs, helpfully lists some:

• Kamala Harris has promised to restore the Child Tax Credit expansion, one of the most successful anti-child-poverty programs in American history.

• Kamala Harris promises to preserve Biden’s legacy of letting Medicare actually fucking negotiate prescription drug prices.

• Kamala Harris understands that building more housing is the primary solution to the housing crisis.

• Kamala Harris has promised to protect voting rights.

• Kamala Harris wants a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

• The Biden-Harris administration probably provided too large of a stimulus after the Covid pandemic, but inflation is definitely better than the post-Covid recession many other countries are facing.

• The Biden-Harris administration passed the CHIPS Act, which caused more semiconductor plants to be built in the United States, which is important because semiconductors make computers work and a bunch of them are made in Taiwan which is not, like, great if we’re worried about tensions with China.

• The Biden-Harris administration is leading an international initiative to end lead poisoning. Let me go on a tangent about lead.

  • Globally, lead poisoning affects one-third of children: that is, the entire world has a rate of lead poisoning seven times greater than Flint, Michigan at its worst.

  • The average lead-poisoned child loses between one and six IQ points and has a 1.5 times higher rate of cardiovascular disease—while also being at higher risk of “kidney disease, anaemia, foetal health problems, behavioural disorders, ADHD, and possibly even mental health problems and dementia.”

  • Most lead poisoning these days comes from its use in paint, cosmetics, turmeric, and cookware, all of which can be eliminated with little cost to producers or consumers. (No one needs extremely bright turmeric.)

  • One of the top anti-lead charities, the Lead Exposure Elimination Project, basically just asks people nicely to stop.

  • In short, anti-lead-poisoning work has the potential to be one of the greatest humanitarian efforts in American history, at remarkably little cost to us or anyone else, unless a xenophobic fuckwit who likes it when foreigners die shows up in the White House and cancels it.

• … the Biden-Harris administration made naloxone available over the counter, which played a role in the massive decrease in opioid overdose deaths over Biden’s term in office.

Now, comprehensively rebutting every argument for Trump would take too long, so let me just address two arguments. One argument is that Harris supports mass murder in Gaza, the other than she supports the mass murder of the unborn.

Re Gaza, I find it to be a tricky issue and definitely don’t think it’s as clear cut as “there’s an obvious genocide going on that we should stop,” but I’ll grant for the sake of argument that this is right. Trump has said—including in the debate—that he wouldn’t restrain Israel at all or push for a ceasefire. If you think the war in Gaza is an evil genocide, Harris, despite her wishy-washiness, is clearly much better.

Now, commonly people grant that Harris is better for Gaza but suggest that you shouldn’t vote for someone complicit in genocide.

Philosophy bear

, widely known to be the second best non-human philosophy writer on substack, has an excellent article about why this is wrong. If there are two candidates and one would do a smaller genocide, while the other would do a bigger genocide, you should vote for the one who would do the smaller genocide. Your moral purity is less important than the lives of lots of extra people who will die—from AIDS, lead poisoning, and so on. Philosophy Bear convincingly argues that the deontological anti-voting-for-Harris position is untenable. PEPFAR saves more people every year than have ever died in Israel’s conflict with Gaza.

Second, people are often single-issue abortion voters. It may seem like if abortion is murder, ending the mass murder of babies is the single most important issue. I don’t think abortion is murder, but let’s grant it is for the sake of argument. Even if it is, the candidates are roughly equivalent on it: neither supports or could pass a national abortion ban. National legalization of abortion would also never pass, and Trump has bragged about being good for women’s Reproductive rights. I’ve written a whole article about this—based on plausible assumptions about the candidates’ abortion policies, the difference is tiny. A second Trump administration would even more thoroughly cement the Trumpian pro-choice wing of the Republican party. If you’re pro-life, you shouldn’t stand for that.

Additionally, as a pro-life acquaintance of mine argued, pro-lifers want to make abortion not merely illegal but unthinkable. They want it to be cast to the ashbin of history—regarded as revolting the way we regard slavery today. Aligning the pro-life movement with Donald Trump—the most polarizing person in the world—is just about the worst way of doing that. Trump’s banning of Roe may have won the battle for pro-lifers, but it lost the war.

I don’t know how many minds will be convinced by this last minute plea. Probably most people’s minds are made up. But given the immense value of a vote for the better candidate and the extreme closeness of the election, I thought it would be valuable to make one closing pitch for Harris.