By Weston David Pagano – The purpose of the Democratic primary process is to vet each candidate and choose the best one. They’re applying for a job for which you pay the salary, and a thorough background check is in order. Regardless of campaign promises and convenient claims of evolution, uncovering and addressing the potential nominees’ past actions is crucial, as it’s a politician’s record that best predicts how they might govern in the future.

This guide focuses on the four “major” candidates that come with the most concerns: Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, and Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke. Originally starting small after some family and friends asked me to put together a collection of articles, it’s quickly grown out of the desire to create an accessible and digestible public resource for all people to share.

Rousing debate within the party doesn’t weaken it, it strengthens it. If we don’t deal with the negatives of a potential nominee now, Trump will. If we nominate a candidate plagued by a litany of disqualifying issues, Trump will win. We can’t make that mistake again.

Nothing was included without a source for evidence, and unsubstantiated or sketchy claims were left out. I want this to be as accurate and exhaustive as possible and plan to update it as necessary, potentially even expanding to include other candidates. If you find an error or have a suggestion, please let me know!

Special thanks to just a few of the real journalists doing the real work that makes an aggregation like this possible, as well as these folks for partially inspiring this endeavor. You should follow all of them instead of me.

JOE BIDEN

has been personally involved in nearly every bad policy decision of the last 50 years. Currently coasting on name recognition and association with Obama, he can only go down from here as people realize he is more comparable to Trump than he is to anyone else. With all the negatives of Hillary’s failed campaign but none of the positives, he would almost surely see us lose the general election again. If you love your grandchildren at all please do not vote for Biden.

TOP 5 HIGHLIGHTS:

• Led the fight against desegregating schools
• Voted for the disastrous Iraq War and still says he’d “do it again”
• Wrote the racist Crime Bill that intentionally led to record-breaking mass incarceration, positioning himself to the right of even Reagan and Bush
• Opposed Roe v Wade and voted to allow states to overturn it like they are now, worked to undermine the ACA’s coverage of birth control, does “not view abortion as a choice and a right” and still opposed federal funding for it multiple times including during this election
• Long history of creepily groping/sniffing/kissing women and young girlsjust so many times, even including intimidation and continuing even now after his non-apology

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL:

• Racist comments like this and fondness towards if not impassioned support for so many of the worst racists and segregationists like thiswhom he chose to work with, as well as Republicans like George Bush, Dick Cheney, Mike Pence, and Jeb Bush
• As part of his crusade against desegregating schools he was the only member of the Senate Judiciary Committee to block two black appointees to the Department of Justice
• Lies about marching in the Civil Rights movement
• Horrible treatment of Anita Hill during Clarence Thomas hearing
• Supports cutting Social Security and Medicare and raising the retirement age on multiple occasions, backing Paul Ryan’s efforts to do so, while voting to gut welfare
• Led the disastrous War on Drugs, and somehow still opposes cannabis legalization, yet two of his children escaped consequences for drug use
• Pushed to expand death penalty, even to those on drug charges
• Sided with banks to overturn Glass-Steagall and deregulate, leading to financial crisis
• Led the disastrous Bankruptcy Bill resulting in increased debt and dismisses the plight of Millennials who are now the most indebted generation ever
• Defends billionaires hoarding wealth and promises to ensure it keeps happening at the expense of everyone else while voting to slash the top income tax rate and cripple the estate tax, resulting in $83 billion lost annually
• Opposes Medicare for All and says he “doesn’t have time” to propose another healthcare plan
• Opposed equal rights for the LGBTQ+ community until very recently
• Supported NRA in passing massive anti-gun control legislation
• Opposes meaningful action on the climate crisis like the Green New Deal, instead pursuing the “middle ground” while his campaign attacks publications for accurately reporting this. He’s rated D- by Greenpeace
• Plagiarized fossil fuel groups’ language in his woefully inadequate climate crisis plan after his climate advisor made $1 million from one natural gas company alone
• Voted to expand deportations and indefinite detention for immigrants multiple times, has opposed amnesty for immigrants and supports requiring them to learn English, and helped expand the system Trump now uses to commit human rights violations by 3,600%
• Voted to build border walls and supported sending military to the border long before Trump
• Voted to ban immigrants with HIV, locking Haitian refugees up in Guantanamo Bay
• Spearheaded the Alliance for Prosperity which increased deportations, border militarization, privatization, and oil pipelines for American exploitation while worsening the refugee crisis
• Architected Plan Colombia, internationalizing the War On Drugs resulting in mass death, displacement, and destruction of food crops, while opening the country to US business interests
• Voted to authorize invasion of the Netherlands if an American is tried for war crimes by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, refusal to participate in UN peacekeeping unless the US obtains immunity, and withdrawal of aid to countries that ratify ICC treaty
• Supports Israel’s right-wing regime and apartheid in Palestine purely to protect US interests
• Sides with Trump in backing right-wing coup in Venezuela
• Recklessly threatens nuclear war with North Korea
• Voted against abolishing the electoral college that undemocratically elected Bush and Trump
• Took $200,000 to help a Republican beat a Democrat to Congressdespite being anti-abortion
• Voted against enhancing labor protection enforcements
• Voted for NAFTA, supports TPP, is generally to the right of Trump on trade
• Works with union-busters and voted to cut union pensions and is generally bad for workers
• Consistently sides with special interests and corporations against antitrust regulation and voted for the first antitrust exemption since 1922
• Opposes net neutrality
• Driving force behind the Patriot Act, supports warrantless wiretaps / mass surveillance while his son partially owns the Chinese government’s mass surveillance system
• Personally tried to prevent Ecuador from providing asylum for Edward Snowden
• Says the CIA torture report is not a “black stain on this country” but a “badge of honor”
• Worsened the opioid epidemic and made it harder to treat
• Wants to make up reasons to jail anyone associated with a rave and literally bulldoze it down while his RAVE legislation lets kids die from preventable drug overdoses
• Has questionable electability based on receiving no more than 0.22% in 3 separate Democratic primaries. He has a history of insulting voters and is currently skipping major party events, hiding from the press, and holding only between a quarter and half as many public events as his rivals
• Plagiarized law school papers and campaign speeches (in which he lied about having coal miner roots), which ended his 1988 presidential run
• His anti-progressive campaign surrogate Ed Rendell is a sexist, pro-fracking, pro-AIPAC Fox News supporter who approved bombing a black neighborhood in Philadelphia, killing 5 children and 6 adults [Added 6/26]
• Used Charlottesville as a prop in his campaign video despite never even visiting once
• Is still openly courting Republican billionaires for donations, including John Catsimatidis, who’s compared taxing the wealthy to Nazi persecution of Jews
• Endorsed by Alan Dershowitz, the millionaire Trump supporter accused of taking part in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex ring, after Biden’s son ensured a similar billionaire pedophile avoided prison after raping his own toddler
• Voted to deregulate the credit card industry while a credit card company was his top donor from 1989–2000 and then hired his son
• His administration awarded a $1.5 billion contract to his brother’s construction firm despite his brother having no prior residential construction experience
• Funded by lobbyists and special interests, and very openly partakes in general corruption
• Hasn’t released any tax returns since 2015, which people seem to care about now
• Unconvincingly co-opted Bernie’s education plan and slogan, and a Biden PAC plagiarized Kamala Harris’ slogan for its name
• “A lot of us sit around thinking up ways to vote conservative just so we don’t come out with a liberal rating. I’m really quite conservative…”
• Meghan and the McCain family and Strom Thurmond have endorsed him, and Trump has donated to him
• The worst part? He’s still not sorry for any of this (but wants a black man to apologize to him)

PETE BUTTIGIEG

can at least partially speak a lot of languages and would be a historic first gay president, but he has less experience than Bernie had in 1988, and those 7 years as Mayor of Indiana’s 4th biggest town have been problematic at best.

TOP 5 HIGHLIGHTS:

• Fired South Bend’s black police chief for exposing racism in the police force, then lied about it, then fired those calling for an investigation, possibly leaving innocent black people imprisoned while some in his inner circle backed a $45,000 loan to one of the accused racist cops
• Refused to investigate the apparent lynching of a 16 year-old black boy
• When a white officer with a documented history of racist behavior that violated department policy was allowed to stay on the force without a bodycam he shot and killed an elderly black man, and Mayor Pete spoke to media before the victim’s family, skipped the vigil, and then gave a speech to the police instead to much criticism
• Allowed a white officer to keep his job after multiple racist and violent incidents including beating and tasing an innocent teen after breaking into the wrong house, and torturing a disabled man and posting a video of it online as retaliation for the man filing a complaint about the force ignoring a drunk driving incident, even despite a community-led campaign and petition
• Oversaw increases in homelessness and displacement during his time as Mayor of South Bend

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL:

• Oversaw a police force that was forced to pay out over $1.3 million in brutality and civil rights settlements
• Oversaw a 50% decrease in black officers on the police force, replacing many who left due to not being given promotions with white officers
• Demolished the homes of many South Bend residents unable to afford repairs and drastically ramped up unfair fines
• Did little to address the disproportionately high rates of poverty and unemployment among South Bend people of color
• Increased overall inequality in South Bend during his time as Mayor
• Responded to Black Lives Matter with the right-wing response “All Lives Matter”
• Dismisses workers striking for fair wages with right-wing epithet “social justice warriors”
• Does not support true Medicare for All and is the only top candidate not providing health care to his own staff
• Opposes tuition free public college
• Proposes mandatory national service
• Wants to keep troops in Syria
• Opposed Obama ending the torture of whistleblower Chelsea Manning
• Supports Israel’s bloody right-wing apartheid to the point he wants to model US security after it
• Opposes reversing Trump’s relocation of the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem
• Worked for evil McKinsey consulting firm
• Supports continued removal of incarcerated people’s voting rights
• Was for a while the only top candidate openly funding his campaign with lobbyist money, accepts money from Blackstone, and is one of Wall Street’s favorite candidates
• Won’t support universal childcare
• Has previously supported people opting out of vaccinations for personal or religious reasons
• Despite Indiana voters democratically choosing Bernie Sanders he chose to be a pledged delegate for Hillary Clinton instead, ignoring the will of his constituents
• Takes part in shady, backroom meetings in which the establishment plots to stop progressives
• Doesn’t support boycotting corporations for political reasons
• His pandering is kinda racist
• Would not push for a Democrat man to resign from office over sexual misconduct
• Polling shows he would likely lose to Trump in a general election

KAMALA HARRIS

would be the first female President who is also a corrupt cop.

TOP 5 HIGHLIGHTS:

• Pushed a law that forces schools to turn undocumented students over to ICE, separating them from their parents and violating human rights
• Laughed about putting parents in jail if their kids missed school, disproportionately harming the poor, families of color, and single parent households, including homeless mothers
• Refused to address what the Supreme Court calls “unconstitutionally overcrowded” prisons so she could perpetuate the exploitation of the mass incarcerated for slave labor close to $1/hour
• Declined to prosecute Steven Mnuchin after his bank’s predatory lending and foreclosure fraud broke the law “over a thousand” times and ruined the lives of thousands of homeowners, keeping him free to donate to her campaign and become Trump’s Treasury Secretary
• Spent years jailing disproportionately black nonviolent cannabis userswhile opposing taking cannabis off the DEA’s list of most dangerous substances and literally laughing at the idea of legalizing it even as her Republican opponent ran to the left of her on the issue. She then tried to pander by admitting to smoking herself despite prosecuting others, but got her story all wrong, and even offended her own Jamaican family to the point they’ve disassociated with her

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL:

• Used a technicality to stop the release of a man serving 27 years-to-life after being wrongfully convicted of possession of a knife under the three-strikes law she supported. When civil rights groups and nearly 100,000 petition signatures got him released after 14 years she took him back to court again for a crime he didn’t commit
• Opposed reforming California’s three-strikes law, which is the only one in the country to impose life sentences for minor felonies and incarcerates black people at 12x the rate as white people, three different times, even while her Republican opponent supported reform
• Appealed a judge ruling that the death penalty was unconstitutional and won on a technicality, resulting in continued executions
• When evidence pointed towards a black defendant being framed by police, Harris avoided DNA testing to keep him on death row
• Protected serial child rapists by refusing to prosecute in the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal
• Lied about her state’s solitary confinement to block a suit by inmates, claiming there was none in California when there were about 6,400 victims of the practice, which is considered torture
• Oversaw a state prosecutor falsifying a confession to get a life sentence and then destroyed the evidence, upheld a conviction secured by a prosecutor lying under oath, and oversaw the framing of another man
• Opposed legislation that would require independent investigation of fatal police shootings despite criticism from many civil rights advocatesincluding California’s Legislative Black Caucus
• Opposed statewide implementation of police body cameras and ignored police brutality, multiple officers raping a teenager, and other officers sharing racist and homophobic messages, despite multiple requests from the public defender
• Refused to hand over the names of police whose testimonies led to convictions despite the officers’ arrest records and past misconduct
• Tried to deny a transgender inmate healthcare and endangered trans women by forcing them into mens prisons, leading to the rape and torture of at least one trans inmate
• Stood by silently as $730 million was spent on moving inmates to for-profit private prisons
• Delayed the confiscation of illegal firearms from dangerous people, then posed a “continued risk to public safety” by failing to implement changes state auditors recommended to fix this despite receiving $24 million specifically for this purpose
• Voted two different times to block federal funding for abortions
• Following the foreclosure fraud scandal she negotiated a deal great for banks but bad for the ruined homeowners, becoming one of Wall Street’s favorite candidates
• Voted to give Trump increased military spending two different times
• Supports Trump escalating war in Syria
• Co-sponsored the bill that let Trump impose sanctions on Iran which violated the nuclear deal and lead to the currently rising tensions
• “Systematically violated defendants’ civil and constitutional rights” in crime lab scandal
• Kept her Orange County DA office from being charged for running an unconstitutional jailhouse informant program which they tried to cover up
• Oversaw San Francisco’s felony conviction rate rising from 52% to 67% in only 3 years
• Mocks the activist call to “build more schools, less jails”
• Supports collecting and keeping DNA from people even if they’ve not been charged with a crime
• Defended the discriminatory practice of cash bail in court as recently as June 2016
• Pals around with foreign right-wing influences Netanyahu and AIPAC
• Claimed to be unaware of sexual harassment and retaliation by her top aide over a 6 year span
• Sponsored a bill allowing for prosecutors to seize profits before charges are even filed and opposed a bill that would reform civil asset forfeiture
• Defended a prison’s religious discrimination in hiring policy
• Opposed calls to tear down 700 miles of existing border wall/fence
• Is a latecomer in endorsing Medicare for All and already appears to be backtracking on it
• Refused to review a case in which a pharmaceutical CEO killed his wife but made it look like a suicide after their son died under mysterious circumstances as well
• Refused to prosecute PG&E for its massive gas pipeline explosion and now its consultants are running her campaign
• Did not properly investigate the San Onofre scandal to protect her political allies
• Refused to investigate Herbalife’s exploitation and fraud, receiving donations from people connected to the corporation
• Her associate operated a fake police force but somehow all charges were dismissed
• Opposed legalization of sex work, endangered sex workers, and oversaw people being charged for prostitution without even agreeing to sex
• Endangered the public by supporting legislation that increased the homeless sex offender population 24x in 3 years, then appealed a court’s ruling that it was unconstitutional. Her Republican opponent ran to the left of her on this issue
• Accepted thousands of dollars of campaign funds from Donald and Ivanka Trump multiple times
• Accepts donations from prominent charter school pusher and billionaire Reed Hastings
• Polling shows she would likely lose to Trump in a general election and she is only polling 4th in her own state

ROBERT FRANCIS “BETO” O’ROURKE

More likely to stand on something than for anything, “Beto” rose to fame by clearing the low bar of being less unlikeable than Ted Cruz. Like most white men born into wealth he’s failed up, choosing a vanity run for President despite being best positioned to flip Texas’ other Senate seat in 2020. He says he was born for it, but maybe he should’ve just stuck to skateboarding.

TOP 5 HIGHLIGHTS:

• Appropriates Mexican nickname “Beto” to pander / trick Hispanic voters
• Used his political power to help his millionaire father-in-law gentrify poor Hispanic communities with a racist plan that “relocated” poor Hispanics to make way for property investments made by wealthy Republican donors
• Opposed Obamacare, tried to cut social security, and attacked labor unions to appease Republican donors
• Generally voted against Democrats so much he was in the top fifth of lawmakers voting against their own party, voting with Trump a third of the time even though he represented one of the most solid blue districts in the country
• Ran the most expensive congressional race of all time with immense establishment and celebrity backing and still lost to the guy who lost to Trump

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL:

• Voted with Republicans to deregulate Wall Street so many different times that I have to keep typing more words to hyperlink
• Voted two different times to block federal funding for abortions
• Sided with Republicans lying about “death panels” to undermine the ACA and abolish the IPAB (panel meant to lower Medicare costs for seniors)
• Does not support Medicare for All and voted for Republican legislationthat makes it easier for states to discriminate against pre-existing conditions
• Voted with Republicans for Trump’s second round of tax scam legislation
• Broke his own pledge to not accept money from fossil fuel industry, bringing in nearly half a million dollars, and then refused to sign anotherwhile backtracking on climate crisis legislation
• Voted with Republicans to lift the 40 year-old oil export ban, then did it again and then voted to speed up the exports. Also voted against Democratic legislation to ban new drilling
• Voted for 20 of the 29 military spending bills since 2013, opposing even a 1% cut in spending, all while bringing in more money from defense lobbyists than any other candidate
• Supports Trump’s attempted right-wing coup in Venezuela
• Is fine with people keeping assault weapons
• Voted for mandatory 15 year sentencing for teens attempting to send/receive a sext
• His campaign manager is a corporate lobbyist for Bank of America, Humana, Pfizer, and Juul who set the rules for the Democratic primaries/caucuses and licensed party voter files for profit
• His senior advisor is a corporate lobbyist for private prisons, Keystone XL, and Blackstone
• The #1 recipient of AIPAC lobbyist money in the House, he voted for largest military aid package for Israel in history and opposes BDS, ignoring the plight of Palestinians
• Voted for the “Blue Lives Matter” bill that turned police into a protected class, making assaulting an officer akin to a hate crime
• Backed Republican legislation to weaken the vetting process for border patrol hiring as they continue to commit human rights violations
• Helped a Republican beat who would’ve become the first queer woman of color in Congress
• Profited off of IPOs while in Congress
• Used campaign funds to pay his and his wife’s own company
• Supports charter schools while married to a charter school leader
• Does not support making public college tuition free
• Backed by finance industry-funded thinktank Third Way and Neera Tanden of CAP, which is funded by banks, insurance companies, arms manufacturers, and the United Arab Emirates
• Voted to fast-track TPP and wants to preserve NAFTA
• Cosponsored and voted for a Republican bill that made it harder to pursue auto lenders for unlawful discrimination and weakened protections for home mortgage borrowers
• Voted to create the unelected Puerto Rico oversight board that cut pension benefits, the minimum wage, and wants to cut its budget by 1/3
• Voted for FOSTA/SESTA which has been devastating for sex workers
• Inflated his own donor numbers in an attempt to appear ahead of Bernie
• Has a criminal record that includes DWI (Driving While Intoxicated) and burglary arrests
• Polling shows he would likely lose to Trump in a general election
• He promised us he wouldn’t do this