This is the first installment of a series profiling students on campus on why they support different candidates.
I sat down recently with Tommy Rhodes, a junior Math major, philosophy minor from Washington State to talk politics. A Democrat who supports the party because they hold closer to his ideologies, he feels Bernie Sanders’s policies are better targeted to support minorities and marginalized groups. He is also a strong supporter of democratic socialism and socialism. All of the following information reflects Tommy’s beliefs and information he provided.
Policies
Sanders’s policies on paid leave (especially for maternity), single payer health care policies, progressive taxes, and increased minimum wage are all necessities. Since we know people are working multiple jobs just to get by at minimum wage, if we raise wages and allow people to make a living salary only working one job, we would actually increase the availability of jobs. In the arena of foreign policy, Sanders’s less interventionist approach makes him a stronger candidate.
Qualifications
What makes him stand out from Clinton is that he’s stuck by his positions throughout his career. With Clinton, Tommy said, “I feel like I’m being lied to,” because she seems to say whatever she thinks will get her elected. Bernie has stuck to his principles and is not trying to promise everything, instead focusing on what he has fought for his entire career. If you don’t focus on what America thinks of Sanders’s and instead look at what individual policies he wants to push through, you’ll find that a majority of Americans support them. If Congress were to focus on their constituents, a lot of his policies could move through Congress and he could get more accomplished. Finally, Tommy pointed out that, “he was endorsed by Killer Mike and that makes him a baller.”
Weaknesses
Throughout his political career, he has not always considered intersectionality and race in issues of classism, but he’s smart enough to surround himself with people who will. He also does not have the same level of foreign policy experience as Clinton, but he has the advantage of being less interventionist, and again he will surround himself with people who specialize in the area in which he knows he needs to improve.
Electability
Sanders is in a very similar place to Obama in 2008. He’s the only Democratic candidate ahead of all the Republican candidates in early polls and is actually fairly popular with moderate Republicans. Clinton has lower favorability ratings than Sanders and a lot of political baggage that will make it hard to sway votes from people that don’t already support her. Sanders’s biggest issue is that he hasn’t had enough exposure.
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