U. S. government is weird. On the most basic level, a democratic republic with checks and balances between three branches of the government designed to write, enforce, and interpret laws, with parallel structures on the state and national level, seems like an excellent and intuitive system. But when you get into the fine details, everything suddenly seems arbitrary and kind of stupid. For example, who the hell decided to have goddamn Iowa be the first caucus state? How on earth does it make any sense for candidates to pander to some mostly-white, mostly-empty state from November to February of election years, then forgot about us as soon as the votes come in?
All the same, as little sense as it makes, Iowa is the first caucus state, which means that I’ll have a wildly disproportionate power in choosing the Democratic candidate this Monday. The last few months I’ve seen student advocates handing out flyers every time I walk into the dining hall and sat through fifteen-second campaign ads every time I watch a video on YouTube. I even had the chance to see Elizabeth Warren and Beto O’Rourke live the past couple months. And, since I have this electoral power I didn’t earn and don’t really need, I figure I might as well use it to advocate for my chosen candidate, Elizabeth Warren.
My girlfriend sometimes teases me that I only like her because I’m studying to be a public school teacher, and she made a pretty explicit effort to pander to my field at her campaign rally. And really, that is a large part of it, not just that she’s a defender of teachers, but she seems to speak and act for actual citizens. Of course, being on the side of the people is something almost every candidate claims, but Warren makes the claim more coherently and effectively than any other politician I have ever seen. Her “two cent tax” on those with over fifty million dollars strips away the lie that taxing the wealthy hurts all of us, and reveals how much the push against taxation is motivated by greed. Bernie aims for something similar with his railing against millionaires and billionaires, but Warren combines rhetoric and policy in a much more elegant way that I think can reach voters more effectively.
That focus on policy is another reason I like Warren. All the candidates have a nuanced policy, but Warren has a long record of dealing thoroughly and specifically with the details of what needs to be done. I especially like how she admits the possibility of working with an uncooperative house and senate, and has a specific list of plans for how a president can enact progressive policy on her own. A common comeback is that her policy, though detailed, is too extreme to work. But I’d argue healthcare for all, for example, is neither unattainable (it works for most other industrialized countries, and with much lower costs) nor frivolous (people dying from preventable conditions in the richest country on earth is simply unacceptable).
Of course, extremely progressive ideas aren’t exclusive to Warren, and many people on the Grinnell campus prefer Bernie Sander simply because, if you chart their political leanings, Bernie comes out the furthest left. But I find Warren’s ideas much more clearly articulated in her speeches and debates, and she has a better history of working with people to achieve progressive aims, given that Bernie refused to identify with the democratic party in the senate.
And I won’t deny that Warren’s gender is important, and one of the reasons why I’m voting for her. Donald Trump’s campaign and election sent the message that sexism, misogyny, and outright rape are acceptable, and the reaction from alt-right communities and the rise in hate crime after his election show that our politicians have real effects on our communities. This isn’t just an abstract population statistic, it’s an immediate effect: the day after Donald Trump’s election, men in pick-up trucks drove through campus harassing students of color and women. Electing Elizabeth Warren wouldn’t extinguish sexism immediately, but it would be a strong symbolic victory with positive effects on how people in our country view women. And it’s not impossible either: with a much weaker platform and less enthusiastic support, a woman still won the popular election in 2016. Donald Trump is the president, but America chose Hillary Clinton.
As passionately as I support Elizabeth Warren, all of the candidates have their strengths. I would love to see Pete Buttigieg provide the world with a progressive Christian icon, and America’s first gay president would be a huge step forward. Andrew Yang’s insistence that disabled people should not be valued for their labor but their status as human beings is a powerful truth that needs to be spread. Bernie Sanders would implement many of the same badly needed reforms as Elizabeth Warren. Even Joe Biden, probably my last choice, would still move the country in the right direction, and the progressive energy of this campaign season will mean he’ll do it with more vigor than if he won the nomination easily. I’ll happily vote for any of them come election season. But even if any of them would be a good choice, the question is who is the best, and I’ll gladly answer Elizabeth Warren come Monday.
No comments:
Post a Comment