Elle Love
ONLINE REPORTER
Recently both Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders dropped out of the election, leaving former vice president Joe Biden to become the Democratic Candidate for the 2020 election.
With the trending hashtags #BlueNoMatterWho and #DemExit there were mixed reactions among several Twitters users about having Biden as the 2020 Democratic Candidate.
“When the choice is between Trump, the racist incompetent, and Biden, the neoliberal hawk, who will represent your values? Let us continue to fight for socialist solutions through the November election and beyond. #NeverSettle #DemExit,” tweeted American trade unionist and political activist, Howie Hawkins.
There were also other users that expressed their support for Biden.
“Before you Biden haters abstain from voting this year or vote for a third party, remember you’re not voting for Biden. You’re voting for Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement!” user Eden Dranger tweeted.
As someone who feels a little displaced from politics since the 2016 election, I can understand the point of view of both progressive and moderate Democrats. However, I’m genuinely concerned for the future of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) because of the giant gap created from the 2016 election.
The mistake is that the DNC picked another candidate that the future generation of voters will not relate to. Young voters may “exit” and create a new party while the old one deteriorates. If we continue to have the mindset of picking “the lesser of two evils,” it will eventually break off the fracturing Democratic party.
At the end of the day, I would think about the practicality of what is happening currently and vote with what can potentially save the economy and the country right now. Even against my own progressive beliefs, it’s considerably favored to vote out the current President of the United States.
UNO Political Science professor Gregory Petrow, Ph. D., said the difference between the 2016 election and the 2020 election is the context.
“In 2016, the status quo, vis a vis the economy and the wars, had been stable since 2011 or so, but the country was ready for a new direction because the White House had been held for eight years by the same political party,” Petrow said. “So, the overall context favored the Republicans.”
Petrow said the context now is currently flipped toward the Democratic party in 2020.
“The election of Trump and the first two years of unified Republican control created a very strong surge in liberal public opinion that is going to make it hard for Republicans to win in 2020,” Petrow said. “Now, on top of that, the coronavirus has shut down the country and is hammering the economy.”
With the political and social mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic by our current president, Donald Trump, my mindset switched from political to practical.
Personally, I have supported former President Barack Obama even though I was not old enough to vote when he was elected. Joe Biden has values that would benefit the older generation more than the younger generation.
Joe Biden was responsible for passing the 1994 “tough on crime” bill that was responsible for the black and brown community being disproportionately incarcerated. Biden later defended the same bill in an interview saying the 1994 crime bill “did a lot of good for the United States” while ironically stating “institutional racism in America is a big problem that needs the country’s focus.”
Biden also has a problematic history regarding women politics, including his conservative stances against abortion. He has voted for many amendments against abortion rights over his decades in the political realm.
My hesitations against Biden are based on different perspectives as I am a young Black woman, and I cannot fully support someone who goes against my social and economic beliefs. Otherwise, it does not feel genuine.
However, with the mishandlings by the Trump administration Trump himself, I decided it’s time to face the reality of the new world.
After being engulfed with daily negative reporting of the COVID-19 pandemic, I questioned what it would be like to live in a world where we were well protected and had faith in our leaders again.
Would we address the need to fix global communication transparency whenever similar outbreaks occur? Shouldn’t we focus on which party needs to fix the lack of transparency between global governments around the world?
“In the end, the other Democrats running for president have much more in common with Biden than any Republican,” Pretow said.
Petrow said candidates are motivated strongly by ideology, and they want to imprint their ideological worldview on others.
“In addition, most of the candidates (not Sanders) are Democrats, and if they don’t endorse Biden after it becomes clear they are not viable themselves, they will do political damage to themselves in numerous ways,” Petrow said.
Despite my political differences against both the Democratic and Republican party, as an independent in 2020, I vote for humanity.
Camara Jones, Ph. D., whose work focuses on addressing the racial disparities in the healthcare system, said in an interview:
“COVID is just unmasking the deep disinvestment in our communities, the historical injustices and the impact of residential segregation. This is the time to name racism as the cause of all of those things. The overrepresentation of people of color in poverty and white people in wealth is not just a happenstance. … It’s because we’re not valued.”
Even though this stance may be controversial, I feel that the current administration’s mishandling of the pandemic will leave a century-long mark similar to the Great Depression.
“Once the government starts releasing statistics that show unemployment is over 10%, and that change in GDP is very negative, then economic evaluations will kick in and Trump’s approval will decline,” Petrow said.
Please vote only on getting #KingTrump out of the White House. Hopefully when we get a tyrant out of power, we can then focus on negotiating our political differences. Think practical, not political. Young Republicans, Democrats, Independents or whoever you define yourself as, please vote to save our future before the “grandfathers” in power continue to destroy our future.
I am not telling you to vote Democrat, but rather to vote for adults who are willing to save our generation before they leave it to us to save ourselves.
