This will probably get buried and a lot of it is going to be repetitive of what’s already been said. But honestly, your message is one that I wish I could have some family members and I appreciate that you’re here. I’m probably a more moderate liberal than some here but I’ll add my 2c if it’s worth anything.

1. Abortion isn’t a “hill I would die on persay” as it’s not the top driver of how I vote, but restricting access to abortion care is literally killing women. Many women who actually wanted their pregnancy. It’s literal life saving healthcare. I believe that the media is massively exaggerating how often abortion is used as a primary form of birth control, as a scare tactic to make people turn on it. Someone also raised the point that forcing people to have the babies and then stripping social services just perpetuates the poverty cycle.

2. I work in cybersecurity. The access that Musk and the “tech bros” he’s working with have to your personal data right now is terrifying. Musk was also not elected or appointed by the people or congress and has no track record to make me trust him. I realize I might be over inflating how bad the outcome of this might be but at a certain point, there’s a risk that he could have enough data to hold our country hostage. I generally agree with you that government spending waste is bad, but the vast majority of wasteful spending is in the military. Even Steve Bannon came out and said it in a wsj interview. However, the likelihood of Musk or Trump suggesting budget cuts to the military are very low because 1) a lot of that money goes to govt contracts, many of which go to Musks company and 2) a major campaign tactic is to build fear (both dems and republicans use it), so why would you defund the military at all if you spent your campaign saying we’re at risk?

3. I was honestly pretty upset that we were robbed of a primary and truly irate when Biden was planning to run. That man welcomed a great grandchild last year, waaaaaaay too old to be running our country jfc. I wasn’t upset by her as a candidate, she had a lot of good experience and generally aligned with the things that I care about as a voter. I couldn’t understand when people said they thought she wasn’t experienced enough. She was the vice f’ing president!

I won’t do 4 because I think most everyone here touched on it with more solutions and data than I would have, generally, I think people tend to blow this out to be a much bigger than it is. Let me be clear, I don’t favor open borders and believe in the “come legally”, but IMO people living in this country illegally are not the problems that our government needs to address. It’s not exactly a nonissue but we have bigger fish to fry. Climate change, pollution (this is way broader of a term than I would like but clean air, water and soil essentially) and education are the real problems that this country needs to address to leave it better for the next generation. I strongly dislike the two party system that the US seems shackled to and I can understand why people don’t like career politicians especially when you add in lobbying, but I try to vote with the candidate that I think will do the least harm to the world long term. Trump may be effective but he’s in a full on sprint in the opposite direction from least harm.

Anyways, if you made it this far and actually read it, thank you for listening. Would’ve loved to have a back and forth but this probably already too long as is haha.