A commentator recently said we’re about to choose not just between two presidential candidates but between two systems. She was right.

President Biden’s trouble-free administration produced the most game-changing, often bipartisan legislation since Lyndon Johnson. Ex-president Trump’s produced little besides top heavy tax cuts, spiraling deficits and four years of scandal, capped off by his supporters smearing their excrement through the nation’s Capitol. Now he and his appointees fight to stay out of jail or plug backstabbing tell-alls on Fox News.

As for the plans themselves, Democrats stand for popular and practical programs like reproductive freedom, child care, drug price control, fair taxation and sensible gun and climate regulations. Kamala Harris promises to build on President Biden’s achievements.

Ex-president Trump endorses the Republican platform, most of which is downright silly: denouncing an imaginary crime wave, boldly condemning the non-existent electric car mandate, empty promises to reverse inflation … somehow, and much more in the same delusional vein.

One set of provisions is unmistakably batty. After promising tax cuts and mass deportation of millions of undocumented workers, Republicans pledge no cuts to Social Security or Medicare. Whoa! Undocumented workers support those programs through payroll taxes though they don’t collect benefits from either. Without their contributions, and weakened by tax cuts, both programs would be even more precarious.

Trump’s GOP pledges to make us energy independent, which we already are. And while cutting taxes, they will somehow “build a great Iron Dome missile defense shield over our entire country.”

Donald Trump was a deplorable administrator last time and his plans don’t make sense. He would only be worse as a virtual dictator, which he promises to be. Yet no Republican in Congress has the nerve to deny him any daft thing he wants. Vote their way at your peril.

Joe Glaser

Bowling Green