Hillary Clinton – Running for President is Hard

Senator Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders was born on September 8, 1941, in New York. He grew up in Brooklyn as the youngest child of two Jewish immigrants from Poland. Sanders grew up in a struggling working-class family, as his father was the breadwinner for the house and worked long hours as a paint salesman. From his upbringing, Sanders recognized early on that America's economy was far from perfect, and at times, unfair. Sanders said that he saw far too often the American economy making the rich richer, while millions of working-class families like his own were struggling to stay afloat.

This was his motivation to get into politics. Sanders did so in the early '80s when he was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont. This was the beginning of his long and revolutionary career in American politics.

Before becoming mayor in 1981, Sanders ran for public office several times throughout the ’70s. His multiple attempts failed, primarily because he was running on behalf of the anti-war Liberty Union Party. This was a relatively small party that could never quite gain enough traction with the local voters. In 1979, Sanders gave up his membership in the Liberty Union Party and officially became a Democratic Socialist. Shortly after this, he gained his first political victory in 1981, when he was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont, by just 12 votes. After his successful tenure, Sanders was then re-elected three more times. This was big for the 'democratic socialist party” as it helped prove that they had staying power. As his political ambition grew, Bernie Sanders decided to run for national office and a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990. The unlikely candidate won despite his heavy opposition from the republicans, along with the more conservative democrats. In the house, Sanders took a strong stance against military spending. Sanders had questions and doubts about the use of military action. He said, 'As a caring Nation, we should do everything we can to prevent the horrible suffering that a war will cause.' He believed that the cost of military action was less important than other economic issues in the nation, especially at a time when the country had over $6 trillion in national debt. After serving 16 years in the House of Representatives, Bernie Sanders decided it was time for him to switch to the Senate. In 2006, Sanders ran against Republican businessman Richard Tarrant to become the Senator from Vermont. Sanders ended up winning the race by 33% and nearly 100,000 votes despite Tarrant’s substantial funding. The wealthy businessman spent over $7 million of his fortune in efforts to take down Sanders in the senate race, which ultimately proved to not be enough. During his time in the Senate, Sanders has acted on things like the national budget; Health reforms, Education, and Labor Pensions. Sanders also has been a huge advocate for things like a universal single-payer healthcare system, and efforts towards protecting the environment and addressing climate change. One of Sander’s biggest moves in the Senate was his voiceful opposition to the Supreme Court's decision to disband the landmark Voting Rights Act to expand voting rights. He has been serving in the senate for the past 12 years and counting. But next, Bernie Sanders attempted to take an even bigger leap in American politics, and this time he was aiming for the presidency.

In April 2015, Bernie Sanders officially announced that he was running for the Democratic presidential nomination. It looked to be extremely unlikely that anyone could win the Democratic nomination over the heavy favorite Hillary Clinton, a well-known politician who at the time was the US Secretary of State. Because of this, Sanders decided to run his campaign with very strong opinions, and bold claims. For example, Sander’s believed in a more-affordable higher education, this came in the form of tuition-free public colleges and universities. He also believes in a state-administered health care system. Throughout his campaign, Sanders frequently preached that “health care should be a right to every American”. Also, Sanders's agenda highlighted the issues of inequality in America. Sanders sought a huge economical change in the form of tax reforms, increased tax rates for the wealthy, and balancing the wages of men and women. Socially, he supported same-sex marriage and is pro-choice, both in alignment with the popular democratic opinion. Sanders repeatedly referred to his campaign as a “political revolution”. This trademark came from his never seen ambitions in American politics. With these issues at the forefront, Sanders's campaign quickly took off. So much so that Sanders broke records with the most contributions (3.7 million) from the largest amount of campaign contributors (1.3 million). With this Sanders became a true opponent of Hillary Clinton. When Sanders announced his campaign in April of 2015, Clinton had a 59-point lead on him: by February 2016, just 10 months later Sanders had closed the gap to just 5 points. In the Democratic Primaries, Sanders won 23 states and received over 13 million total votes. Despite this, Sanders ended up being narrowly defeated by Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Primary. Despite the loss, Sanders's campaign was still considered a huge success. He had rebirthed socialist ideas into American politics and changed the norms of many Democratic opinions. Before running for president, Sander’s name was pretty well known in the local area, but never on the national level. But, Sander’s captivating presidential campaign has made him one of the biggest names in all of American politics.

The current health care system in the United States is one of the biggest issues for Bernie Sanders. Throughout his campaign, Bernie Sanders repeatedly stated that “health care should be a right”, and that “Every man, woman, and child in our country should be able to access the health care they need”. Sanders believes that the American healthcare system is broken, and needs to be addressed immediately. Because of this, Sanders created his proposed health care system called “Medicare for all”. Medicare for all was created in an attempt to make healthcare guaranteed and affordable to all Americans regardless of their economic status. The plan would create a federally administered single-payer health care program. This would bring comprehensive coverage to all Americans. Sander’s plan could cover nearly all possible components of health care. This includes things like inpatient to outpatient care; preventive to emergency care; primary care to specialty care, including long-term and palliative care; vision, oral, and hearing health care; mental health and substance abuse services; as well as prescription medications, medical equipment, supplies, diagnostics, and treatments. Under this plan, patients will also be able to choose between various health care providers on their own, without having to worry about whether that provider will have any out-of-pocket costs they can’t afford. This proposed plan has been estimated to cost $1.38 trillion per year. But, this plan will cost nearly $6trillion less than the current healthcare system over the next 10 years. Also, this plan is projected to save middle-class families nearly $5,000 a year, and businesses would save over $9,400 a year in health care costs. Many speculated that the plan was simply too good to be true, and one of the biggest questions surrounding this plan is how the government will be able to pay for it when the patients are paying much-reduced rates for even more care. The answer is progressive income tax rates. American’s earning above $250,000 would have income taxes raised to 37%-52%. This would raise at least an additional $110billion a year. While this may shaveound a little extreme to some people, it is consistent with what Bernie Sanders preached throughout his entire campaign.

Immigration is another glaring issue for Bernie Sanders, being a son of an immigrant himself. The core of Sander’s immigration agenda comes from his belief that Immigrants are some of the hardest working people in this country, and that they are what makes this country so unique. Sanders believes that of the 11 million illegal immigrants in this country, 99% of them are here to create a better future for their families, and are also extremely beneficial to the American economy. For these reasons, Sanders believes that these people should have the right to live in this country without having to fear being deported. Sanders is aiming for a fair and humane immigration policy. For him, it starts with ending deportation. Sanders has often referred to deportation as “evil” and an “injustice”. He believes that the growth of the immigrant deportation system and the expansion of border militarization has to lead to many unjust policies that have resulted in the separation of hundreds of thousands of immigrant families. Of Senator Sander’s 4 main focuses for his immigration plan, Dismantling inhumane deportation programs and detention centers is the first. The second step in his plan would be to create an easy and fair path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants. Sanders has also noticed that the path to citizenship for these people will take less than 5 years. Third, Sanders plans to ensure our border remains secure while respecting local communities. To do this, Sanders acknowledges that we must continually modernize our border security measures and maintain security, all while protecting the rights and needs of our border communities. The last point of Sander’s plan is to regulate the future flow of immigrants by modernizing the visa system and rewriting bad trade agreements. This starts with keeping families together. Sanders believes that families should never have to be separated throughout the immigration process. In addition, Sanders sees the huge importance of seriously reassessing our foreign and international trade policies while accounting for the effects they have on immigration and U.S. workers. Sander’s plan is meant to be able to help millions of America’s hardest working, and most valued people.

I find Bernie Sanders as a very honest and extremely likable individual for a politician. I find some of his ideas very intriguing, and I do believe that he could bring good change to some areas of our country. Despite this, I do not believe Sanders would make a good fit for a president, primarily because some of his biggest ideas seem unattainable. For Starters, “free” college and medicare are simply too good to be true. To summarize, not only would these policies be extremely expensive, but equalizing the costs of all health care and education would hinder the degree of education or health care you would be receiving. Also, making education free would remove any incentives students had to pursue things like scholarships since the Federal government will already cover all of the expenses. Also, Sander’s idea to raise the minimum wage to $15 would not have much of an effect on poverty. This is simply because a majority of people in poverty are unemployed, meaning raising the minimum wage would not affect them. Raising the minimum wage to $15 would only hurt the small businesses who would struggle with the expenses of doubling their employee's pay. Lastly, something that bothers me about Bernie Sanders is how he always talks about how he won't accept any money from 'big companies, and their vested interests' yet, he is on record accepting large amounts of campaign funding from big unions. It is hard for me to believe that these unions who are funding his campaign do not have vested interests of their own. For these reasons among several others, I would never be one to vote for a politician like Bernie Sanders although it is very evident to me why he is so well-liked and extremely popular in our nation.  

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