In this regard I wanted to ask you, since you have been interested in politics, is there any candidate that has not been terrible for you?
Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver would be ~ideal from my perspective. He usually says exactly the same thing I'd say on any given issue. Oliver's not going to win, of course. Of people who could realistically be a Democratic or Republican presidential candidate someday, I'd be a lot happier with one of the libertarian-leaning Republicans like Rand Paul, or one of the progressive Democrats like Ro Khanna. Neither of those groups are perfect, but they're a lot closer to me on the political compass than Trump or Harris.
I am missing some about "reproductive rights" AKA "choice" AKA "abortion" - Trump is going decades back on rights.
Trump won't do anything significant on abortion. After Dobbs, he (correctly) views it as a political loser. He even had Melania come out as pro-choice to soften his image on the matter.
On borders, I doubt that anybody would be able to implement a mass deportation process and frankly, stopping immigration is easier said than done.
Presidents have a lot of control over the border overall. Trump basically closed the border during the pandemic, which Biden maintained for a while, but then Biden gave work permits to over a million illegal residents just by proclamation (via TPS designations). Trump probably can't do his massive deportation without Congress because DHS wouldn't have enough funding, but he could slash both legal and illegal immigration through various executive actions.
I posted on non-proliferation because I think that the moment the nuclear umbrella of the US support is in question, most of EU would have a serious reasons to get over-armed with nukes
That is an interesting argument which I hadn't heard before in a Trump vs Harris context. I do agree that if the US is a less-reliable ally, then that will lead to nuclear proliferation. I would for example predict that by 2028, Ukraine will either have a pro-Russian government, be under somebody's nuclear umbrella, or have its own nukes (which it can develop in a few months).
But ultimately I don't find the argument that convincing:
- I'm not actually that worried about nuclear proliferation. I tend to think that if a country has the resources to develop nukes, then it probably has enough not-totally-insane people around to prevent nukes from being used in a way that would cause global devastation. For example, North Korea and Pakistan are not exactly stable or friendly countries, but nobody there wants their worlds and lives to end, so they've been able to have nukes without using them for a long time. I'd currently estimate the probability of global nuclear devastation in my lifetime at something like 3%, and if we added a few more nuclear countries, my estimate would only go up a percentage point or two, or even less if we're talking about stable EU countries like Italy.
- Hawkish US policies can also
increase the risk of nuclear war. If Russia gets desperate enough, they might actually use nukes (starting with small tactical nukes). If we were extremely worried about nuclear war, we'd do
some amount of appeasement, and not consider it totally unacceptable if aggressive nuclear powers manage to slowly conquer territory. Long-term, we'd hope that they'd collapse from within due to their inferior economic systems and internal resistance, and/or we'd strengthen our own conventional/nuclear weaponry and infrastructure to be overwhelmingly better than theirs. To a large extent, control of territory is more of a liability than an asset. If we allowed Ukrainians and Taiwanese to freely immigrate to the West, and then Russia/China took these territories, I'd see that as a net gain for the West: the people are what's most valuable, and occupying that territory is mostly just going to be a long-term drag on the aggressors.
- Even if Trump's explicit goal was to destroy NATO (which it's not), the most he'd be able to do is chip away at it a little bit, since even most Republicans are very pro-NATO. If Trump did anything too blatant, he actually would be impeached and convicted. The most anti-NATO thing I can imagine Trump getting away with is: Russia does a limited invasion of some worthless territory in northern Finland or Norway, Trump ignores it, and NATO's deterrence value is therefore damaged. That'd be a hit to NATO, but a future pro-NATO president could undo the damage. Making the US fully isolationist would be a project of decades, not just 4 years.
On reproductive rights, he setup the SCOTUS so that bans could be implemented. In a way, he has paved the way already but there is a reason for it: the vote of the Evangelists, Methodists, etc... If he goes back to soft on abortion, these may also be less inclined to vote. I did see Melania's speaking about it... well, there may be a backslash from these groups or not.
On illegal immigration, the reason why Biden could issue permits to such a number of illegal immigrants is because they were there in the first place. My point is that you cannot really close the border with Mexico , because the transport of goods is nowadays massive in economic terms. And you cannot really "build a wall" that is effective. The illegal immigration will be there because is mostly composed of people who are running from failed states, drug lords, corruption and above all, empty stomach levels poverty. There is nothing you can do to them worse than what they run from.
You need to manage them, because they will keep coming.
On proliferation;
1 - Nearly any country has the potential to develop an atomic weapon. The technology is many decades old - yet still quite effective in terms of air-to-air defence avoidance. Among those, Iran and North Korea in my book do not qualify as "responsible", but look, even the neo-nazis might take power in otherwise "responsible" European states. And it does not take to have a world ending incident to create an unacceptable result of millions dead and massive increases in cancer worldwide. That type of incident increases very quickly as more actors have the weapons.
2 - The use of nukes by Ruzzia has not happened for a reason. All the "red lines" have been systematically broken, including for example, Ukraine destroying yet another refinery (billions) 1500 km away from the front or invaded Kursk (Ruzzia properly). Escalation requires reaching a new level of war in which you
switch the advantage of the opponent to your advantage - that is why Ruzzia has not used nukes (I do not think Putin would physically survive that).
3 - Territory as a liability... well that is really something. Territory between Moscow and Berlin is "buffer", not a liability in the European books.
4 - On Trump not damaging NATO beyond repair, you say that the Republicans would prevent that - to which I can only observe that every Rep that has opposed Trump has been catapulted into oblivion. It is nearly impossible to oppose Trump a keep being a viable candidate. On Trump being impeached and convicted, he has already been convicted without any particular repercussion and was not impeached even after instigating a march to the Capitol and remaining silent while it took a violent turn. It does not look like the impeachable type does it?
The thing is that it is much better for the US and its allies to have distance and resistance between Ruzzia and Europe, else you need to spend billions in creating that defence and deterrence... or, well,... arm Germany, Finland and Poland perhaps with nukes and wait for the extreme anti-EU right to take power to test their "responsibility".
Bottom line, too many risks, too big of possible impacts on a Trump presidency, the type of risks I would not want to be on the table.