 So about a month and a half ago when I talked about how Elizabeth Warren Revealed that she has a plan to essentially cancel about a half of all existing student loan debt Which exceeds 1.5 trillion overall by the way among 44 million Americans. My response was one This is a fantastic proposal and two Bernie You've got to get on this you've got to do this yourself because this is a plan that will definitely draw in younger voters And those voters may potentially jump ship and go to war and if they're supporting Bernie Sanders Just because this is such a phenomenal plan and guess what Bernie Sanders heard our cries and He listened because as Jillian Berman of market watch reports US senator Bernie Sanders is the latest Democratic presidential candidate to stake out a position on how to address college affordability and student debt But he's not offering a lot of details yet Our plan forgives massive amounts of student debt Sanders of Ramon independent told CNN's Dana Bash in an interview Sunday that touched on student debt Cancellation his statement was a response to Bash's question about how Sanders plan on student debt Stacks up against those of senator Elizabeth Warren a Massachusetts Democrat Warren unveiled a plan in mid-April that would cancel up to $50,000 in student debt for most of the nation's 44 million borrowers Sanders declined to offer more specifics on his plan for student loan forgiveness during the CNN interview When pressed by Bash, he said our plan will cancel a substantial amount of student debt And in some ways probably go further than senator Warren's he added later I don't have the plan in my pocket right now Warren had said in a previous CNN interview that her proposal to wipe out 640 billion in student debt is bigger than Sanders and goes further than his So it looks like he's currently in the process of drawing up a plan and he's saying my plan is gonna go further than Elizabeth Warren's And Elizabeth Warren is saying actually no my plan goes further than his now I don't know that she's even seen his plan So this is what I said back when I was talking about Elizabeth Warren's plan Since she didn't opt to cancel all student loan debt a hundred percent She is essentially saying let's cancel about half of it. She left Bernie Sanders room to kind of jump in and I guess you could say undercut her in a way and offer something that is better And it seems like he's gonna capitalize on that even if she is saying no my plan goes further than his But this is one of the benefits of having multiple progressives in the race This spawns competition and policy innovation and they're competing with each other to be more progressive This is fantastic. Now. Let me tell you why student loan debt cancellation is crucial to this conversation Let's look at some stats here. So 69% of the class of 2018 took out student loans and Currently student loan debt overall as I alluded to earlier totals 1.5 6 trillion it affects 44.7 million Americans and 11.5% of student loans are more than 90 days delinquent or in default now The average monthly student loan payment is $393 and the median monthly student loan payment is $222 that is absolutely insane such a huge portion of Your paycheck is going towards student loan debt that you may never pay off Like a lot of people assume this debt and they expect to never be able to pay it off They expect to have this when they are senior citizens or potentially until they die. I know a lot of people like that I'm assuming that I will never be able to pay off my student loan debt unless a plan like this goes through So it's absolutely crucial now the question is why do we have this need and you know There's always a lot of people that like to shit on millennials and say well, you know millennials are just winers I went to school. I took out student loans, but guess what? I paid it off Well, there's a reason why it's more difficult for millennials to pay off their student loan debt in comparison with boomers Because when you compare the cost of college now with the cost of college in the 80s and 90s the difference It's infuriating. So when you look at private nonprofit for your institution costs tuition in 1987 cost $15,000 now when you look at tuition for 2017 to 2018 that more than doubled 34,740 dollars. This is for a Private institution now when you look at public for your institutions back in 1987 to 1988 that school year it cost $3,000 and Going to 2017 2018 it tripled that is insane So we can't keep going in this direction with 1.5 trillion in debt 44 million more than 44 million Americans burden with student loan debt You've got to do something and all of these mealy-mouthed plans that like capping the payment at 10% of your income That's not enough you have to cancel it So people feel as if they actually are going to be able to pay it off now if you're asking me I'm saying let's just cancel all of it Let's give everyone a fresh start and then make public colleges and universities tuition free So Bernie Sanders can potentially do that. It seems like his plan is still in the worst But nonetheless the fact that he's considering this is exactly what I wanted So the fact that him and Warren are competing to be the most progressive is important however with that being said um Elizabeth Warren is gaining a lot in the polls and I like that you know She keeps proposing these plans because she's really forcing Bernie Sanders to step up now I don't know why Bernie isn't able to influence her to step up on Medicare for all I'm not saying that that's the fault of him But it's certainly her pivoting away from any talk about Medicare for all but nonetheless This competition is important But as Elizabeth Warren goes up in the polls the prospect of progressives potentially splitting the vote is Starting to really worry me. Now. Here's one poll that Kind of gave me pause. So this is from the Des Moines register Biden is at 24% and then when you look at Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren Bernie is at 16% Warren is at 15% Now Buddha judges at 14% just behind Warren and Harris is at 7% everyone else is pretty much pulling between 0 and 2% now assuming that if Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders weren't in the race and that support would go to the other candidate When you combine them, they're at 31% they would be surpassing Joe Biden already So I'm getting a little bit worried that progressives Could split the vote and this was one of my fears going into 2020 There's so many candidates running so long as there's more corporate Democrats to split the vote Then there are progressives then hopefully we can consolidate our vote and push your progressive to the front But now it seems like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are about even Which I mean theoretically it's nice to see you know progressives sitting at the top of a poll but with that being said I want to win right I want us to win and This is assuming that again if you know Bernie was out or Warren was out all of their supporters would go to the other Progressive you can't necessarily say that with certainty, but I mean Logically you can deduce that they're cutting into each other's support now remember in order to get any pledged delegates They're awarded proportionally you have to get at least 15% of The vote in a primary in any given state so what that means is that they're cutting into each other and this really worries me because This could lead to a corporate Democrat winning Maybe maybe not necessarily Joe Biden because it seems like his numbers are starting to dip But potentially someone like Pete Buttigieg or Kamala Harris They're better than Biden, but they're absolutely Inferior to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren so at the end of the day It's good that Bernie Sanders is proposing a student loan debt cancellation plan And I'm glad that him and Warren are competing with that being said. I really hope That they talk to each other about this and they stay in contact and realize that they both have the same goal to defeat Joe Biden and defeat a corporate Democrat and get a progressive at the top of the ticket now I really hope that's Bernie Sanders because if it's Elizabeth Warren, I do worry about her electability Certainly, she's giving us a lot with policy. She's producing policy after policy She's running a pretty good campaign with the exception of Medicare for all But I think that Bernie Sanders just has more anti establishment appeal And he could really pick up voters that Donald Trump won over in the rest belt in 2016 So we'll see what happens. This is great. Love the innovation. Love the competition But I really really hope that we don't end up splitting votes and paving the way for a corporate Democrat