Daily Archives: April 26, 2016

The Continuing Missteps of Bernie Sanders

Letter to the editor,

To the Editor:

In the article “Early Missteps Seen as a Drag on Bernie Sander’s Campaign” (April 3) Patrick Healy and Yamiche Alcindor discuss how Senator Sanders’s lack of campaigning in 2015 has hindered his success in early Democratic primaries. However, his missteps have not been limited only to the early part of his campaign. Sanders has won seventeen states thus far, the majority of which hold caucuses and not primary elections. Caucuses tend to favor candidates with extremely enthusiastic supporters, something Sanders has in droves. His campaign has thus been able to exploit the caucus system to their benefit. However, with only two Democratic caucuses remaining, the question remains whether or not this strategy of relying on the devoted base will work in states which use primary elections to assign electoral delegates.

Caucuses, one of the systems used during presidential primaries to select candidates, ought to be abandoned. Caucuses are the original system of American voting, a holdover from the days when land-owning white men, many of whom did not have professions, were the only Americans with the right to vote. Today the caucus system continues to discourage participation from working-class voters. Caucuses take hours, and a participant needs to be present the whole time. A low-wage worker, someone who works multiple jobs, or a parent without access to childcare can easily spend a few minutes casting a ballot at a local polling station. However many of them cannot afford to clear their schedules and devote a whole day to caucusing.

Although Senator Sanders often speaks of his desire to improve conditions for blue-collar workers, he has focused on campaigning to Millennials worried about college costs and retirees worried about their pensions and Social Security. Sanders’s rallies provide soundbites for the Internet generation, but he’s neglected the kind of small-time, face-to-face campaigning that tends to be popular with working-to-middle-class voters. These people often cannot participate in caucuses, but they vote. Unless Sanders’s campaign strategy changes, many of those votes won’t go to him.

Parents, Pay for College

Letter to the editor

Re “Should You Pay for Your Child’s College Education?” (NBC News, April 3, 2016):

You make the point that it’s okay for parents to decide not to pay for their kids’ college when they don’t have the means. This is certainly true, but such parents are not addressed in the article. Your suggestion that parents make their financial support conditional on their children’s grades and have them take a gap year to work—at most likely a minimum-wage job—is not financially useful for parents who truly don’t have the means to pay. Parents who really can’t pay could decide not to send their child to college at all, but nowhere does the article suggest that this is an option. The parents the article actually addresses are those who don’t want to pay but still expect their children to find a way to go to college.

In case these parents feel a twinge of guilt about forcing their kids to take on massive debt to pay for college, the article soothes their concerns: “Not all high school seniors are academically or emotionally ready for college.” A year in the working world “gives them a sense of accountability,” says the article, so making your children work to pay for college is actually good for them. To judge from its title, the article is about the parents’ finances. However, a child’s emotional readiness has little to do with finances, except that it excuses parents’ unwillingness to pay.

Some parents have good reasons not to pay for college. Those addressed in the article do not. Parents who have the means to pay for college and expect their children to go to college should pay for their children’s college education.

Growing Fences

Letter to the editor

In response to “Donald Trump is a monster, yes. But that’s what many Americans actually want” by Tim Stanley, Telegraph UK

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/donald-trump/12047232/Donald-Trump-is-a-monster-yes.-But-thats-what-many-Americans-actually-want.html

 

To the Editor,

Although Stanley accurately points out Trump’s absurd attributes that have led to his popularity, Trump is not a uniquely American problem. Americans are heavily criticized for Trump’s shocking success in the presidential race. He mocks minorities, promises to build a wall blocking immigration from Central and Latin America, and threatens to ban Muslims from entering into the United States. While Trump has considerable public support, especially for his strict immigration platform, we cannot blame American ideological shortcomings alone for Trump’s popularity. In fact, his kind of radical anti-immigration philosophy is shared among many other world leaders. For example, Marine le Pen received 18% of the vote in the French presidential election in 2012 and is speculated to run for office again in 2017. Le Pen was charged with a hate crime for a speech in 2015 in which she compared Muslims to Nazis. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán built a 175km fence along his country’s border with Serbia and Croatia and established new asylum laws in order to purge Hungary of refugees. Although there are still progressive and humane leaders in Europe, the growing popularity of these immoral immigration policies warrants concern, as they close borders and promote hostility in an already tumultuous political climate. The rising fear of terrorism incites individuals to agree with these conservative ideologies, increasing the chances of the populist, conservative, anti-immigration political factions being elected into office. Donald Trump “isn’t quite as out of the mainstream as he first appears,” as Stanley points out, but in fact he is part of a global phenomenon of xenophobia that will tear the world apart if it is not recognized and stopped.

Sincerely,

Rachel