Democratic Debate: Focus on Senator Bernie Sanders, Part II
This is a continuation of Shiny's analyses on Bernie's campaign and his debate at the first Democratic Debate. Read the first one here.
The next issue that was talked about was the economy and how the world financial system is on the verge of collapsing. He brought up with passion in his voice that within the last 40 years, the middle class has done nothing but shrink and is borderline disappearing. He plans on combatting this issue at hand by building up the infrastructure, raising the wages, providing paid family leave, and creating more free public institutions. He said that fraud is the business model and that is destroying the lives of the American people. Senator Sanders believes in breaking up the big banks.
“Congress does not regulate Wall Street, Wall Street regulates Congress,” he said.
Senator Sanders went on to talk about how it is not the responsibility of the middle class to bail out Wall Street. Because of the blunders Wall Street has made, Senator Sanders emphasized that Wall Street speculation should be taxed in order to provide free tuition at public colleges and also to lower interest rates on college debt.
After talking about the economy for quite a while, the next topic brought into the light was Medicare. Senator Sanders stands by social security and believes in expanding it, rather than cutting it. Quickly, the topic shifted to immigration, where he talked about how he, amongst other progressive voters, vote against one legislation piece because of the guest worker provision that completely disregarded the workplace safety and essentially supported low worker conditions. The topic regarding the healthcare of veterans was talked about again and Senator Sanders talked about how he passed a $15 million legislation to give veterans the healthcare they need.
Then talking about the PATRIOT Act, Senator Sanders discussed how he was 99-1 against the act and how he believe that the people “have a right to be free.” He wants to shut down the NSA and does not support them having all of our personal information right at their fingertips. Regarding Snowden, Senator Sander believes that he broke laws and therefore, needs to suffer a penalty but strongly emphasizes the fact that what Snowden did brings light to the fact that there are problems that need to be fixed and we should use this incident to take into consideration the problems going on regarding cyber-security.
Moving on, Anderson Cooper asked the candidates how their first term would be different than a third term of Obama’s presidency. Senator Sanders went straight on to say that the power of corporate America is ridiculous and that his term would be a term with political revolution in which the government would finally work for everyone, not just the elites in society. By increasing voter turnout, he says he will help the American people know what they need to know about the actions of Congress.
Clinton was asked why the American people should put another Clinton back into office and when Senator Sanders was asked to comment on it, he said that he was the only candidate that is not an elite in society and how he has no SuperPACs funding him. He says he could represent the average American worker the best. Afterward, the issue of climate change was brought up and he talked about how he brought up one of the first pieces of legislation in Congress that would impose a tax on carbon. He also talked about how fossil fuel industries funds Republicans and that’s why fossil fuels are not an issue many Republicans will actively discuss.
On the issue of Mandated Paid Maternity Leave, Senator Sanders brings up how every other first world country in the world lets mothers stay home and take care of their child on a paid leave. By stopping the tax breaks on millionaires, the tax dollars can be used towards making this a reality, according to Senator Sanders. The last topic that was talked about before the final question was recreational marijuana. Senator Sanders firmly believe that young people need to stop being jailed for smoking and that we need to rethink the criminal justice system. He ended the question by bring up the fact that if there are policies that the people want to see then they are need to go and start getting involved.
The final question had to do with a famous quote by FDR, “Judge me by
my enemies.”
All of the candidates were asked to talk about the enemies they were most proud to have and Senator Sanders said he was most proud to have the enemies of Wall Street and the pharmaceutical companies.
In closing, Senator Bernie Sanders said that America is a great country but with serious problems. There is too much inequality and we need to provide healthcare with citizenship. Paid family leave is fundamental to the success of our economy and in short, all of the problems our nation faces can be solved if millions of people stand up against the millionaires.
Senator Bernie Sanders did a tremendous job on addressing the problems that our nation faces and strongly discussed the issues that meant the most to him. He was able to find an interconnectedness between the questions asked and the issues he wanted to address. He showed that each issue is not independent of each other and ultimately proved that he can see the bigger picture that America needs to accept.
We have reached an age where we have accepted the lack of social mobility in our country and Senator Sanders seeks to demolish the inequality gap by motivating the common man to stand up for his rights.
By utilizing statistics to further elaborate on his opinions, he was able to show that his opinions are based in solid facts. For the next debate, I believe Senator Sanders should continue using the passion in his voice with the facts that he gives to bring up the country as a whole rather than using the tactics of the Republicans in which they bash their fellow candidates.
