 Hello, and welcome back to Teens on Topic. I'm your host, Cedric Hughes, and today I'm joined by two special guests. I'm Ben Skinner. I'm Zara Bakshi. Today, we'll be discussing the upcoming presidential election, but before we do, let's look towards members of the community and see what they have to say. Are there any candidates that you're looking forward to who are running in the 2020 election? Not particularly. I'd like to see what Bloomberg has to say, although he's entered the race way too late. I think he should have joined much earlier. But I don't know. It's kind of all over the place right now. I mean, personally, I feel Warren and Sanders are out in front, at least on the Democratic Party side. I'm not a fan of Biden. So I guess I don't really have a favorite, but I think they need to come together before the election. And as far as the Republican side, I think there's only two candidates running. Trump and I know there's another Republican running, but obviously hasn't made an impact. So I would like to see any other Republican other than Trump, almost. Well, actually, I'm very interested in politics and I like Bernie Sanders, but I don't know whether he would be a good candidate for this particular time. However, I also would like to see a woman as president, and I like Elizabeth Warren. I think she is very intelligent and very capable, but we'll have to see. We'll have to see. I like Pete, Bear Pete also. So I watched the debates and I read about them and let's see what happens. Any Democrat that would beat Trump, but I'm concerned that there's too many Democrats out there, which is going to sort of wash out people's vote. And we really need a strong candidate. So I'm a little concerned about it. I have some favorites, but I don't think that they're going to get the nomination. So I think whoever could beat Trump is who we need to put forth. Well, I'm still keeping an open mind because I have a feeling that things are going to change and options are going to change before the election. Who I've been most interested in for a long time, though, is Elizabeth Warren. And I can remember many years ago seeing her interviewed on numerous PBS television shows, and she had a very clear understanding of a lot of economic issues that I thought were pretty complicated. And she wasn't afraid to state her opinions very clearly, but without too much emotion. So I've liked how she's handled that in the past, but I am still holding on to thinking that there may be future people that will also be stepping into the race. Not particularly. I'm just going to kind of let it unfold as it should. And then we still got a long ways to go. This is at least 11 months to go. So we'll let it unfold and let it go from there. Exactly. Yeah, I'm open to anybody, but it's a little too soon, I think, in my life to start focusing too hard on who's coming down the pipe. So we'll see. We saw a lot of interesting opinions out there from the Davis community. Among those opinions, a lot of the people talk specifically about four main candidates, and that was Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Pete Buttigieg. So those are our four front runners at the moment. Those are the four that many of the polls pick as the favorite to challenge Trump in this upcoming election. So when we look forward to this election, what do you two think our policies should be? What do you think your guys' vision for America is and what should our future policymakers be looking at? The first thing I just want to say is we saw a lot of people basically just saying we need somebody to defeat Trump. So I think that is a very common theme and a common sentiment among a lot of Democrats is I'm willing to get behind whichever candidate is going to beat Donald Trump. I actually think that's kind of been one of the reasons that we've seen candidates like Joe Biden being so successful is people feel that that candidate, Joe Biden, is the one who's most capable of beating Trump, and because of that, are willing to support him even though they don't necessarily most agree with his policies. And I feel like that's not a very healthy way to be conducting politics. Because to me, something seems logically wrong with supporting a candidate only because you think that candidate has the most support. If everyone just supports the candidate that they actually think would do the best job and that they actually feel the most passionate about, to me it seems like the candidate that ends up winning the primary would be the candidate with a lot of widespread and passionate support. So to me that seems like a much healthier way to be trying to figure out who the Democratic nominee is. Yeah, I think I very much agree with you on that. And I think we saw a bit of that in that first interview there. The first man who spoke was talking about how he was looking towards members who are a little more progressive, like Bernie or like Elizabeth Warren, and away from more traditionalist like Biden. What do you think? I think that right now the main concern for me is the climate change problem. There's a lot of that and as much as I think Bernie has a lot of those views in 10 years things are going to get worse if we don't change anything. So I think with Bernie's ideas I don't think they're quite, I guess, I don't think they're very realistic. And so I think I need, I don't, I, as long as, for me also I don't think Trump should be the next president again, but I am, I believe more in the moral values of the next president and if that's going to be climate change and lowering student debt. I think Bernie, even though his ideas are very to my own opinions, I don't think he can do that realistically. So if someone could come up a realistic solution I would be down for that. Okay. So looking here at ourselves, what candidates do we favor? You know, we heard from members of the community but I want to know about you two. So who do you like and who do you like in the Democratic field? I am a supporter of Bernie Sanders proudly. So at first I used to be a Kamala Harris supporter and then she dropped out so that made me a little sad. But I think as much as I believe in Bernie Sanders, I still think that last resort, depending on whoever it is, I would support Bernie Sanders. Bernie? Yeah. Okay. Okay. And so what about Bernie gets you guys really excited? What, you know, any, it could be anything general or specific within his policies. What do you think he would bring to American politics as president that would make our nation better? So for me, whenever I hear him talk, he kind of brings up this idea of making the country and specifically the economy and just all of our systems in the country work for everybody. I think a lot of people, myself included, feel that for too long there have been certain groups of people who have profited. There have been rich people like people selling pharmaceutical products who are just making obscene profits while there are people who are dying because they can't afford to buy those drugs. I think just kind of that idea of trying to create a country where everybody is able to be cared for with things like universal health care or things like prison reform where we're still allowing people in prison to vote because oftentimes they're not able to vote. So I think that felons can't vote in mostly primarily southern states. So like their rights are basically being taken away. So I think what I like about Bernie is just his message that we need a country that works for everybody and gives everybody that equal opportunity to be successful that we're not seeing happening in today's America. For sure. What about you? I think what I like about Bernie is his views towards looking also at all ages but primarily the future generations who can't vote because it's a very, I think a lot of politicians tend to bring ideas for adults, taxes and stuff like that while Bernie's views support lowering student debt. That's something, even though, yeah, students can't vote, this is going to help those who are younger than us and I think that is something I support is trying to make the future better for the ones younger than us and who can't vote. That's why I believe in him. So other Democratic candidates in the field have portrayed themselves as very ideologically similar to Mr. Sanders. So for example, Elizabeth Warren has many of the same policies. So what exactly is it about Bernie that draws you to him over, say, Elizabeth Warren? Is it maybe that he's been out there the longest advocating for it so that you can trust that he's going to put these policies in action or is it maybe something else? Yeah, so for me there are two things and you brush on one of them. It's the fact that he's been saying the same things for a long time. Like you've seen those videos of him back when his hair was not white and he's much younger and he's saying very similar things. He's always been an advocate of these ideas. So I feel like it's not just him saying these things because they're popular now. He's not just saying them because he's trying to win elections because of them. Like he was advocating for socialist policies at a time when socialism was basically a bad word in this country. So for that I feel like he's genuinely committed to the policies he's proposing. Second, he basically admits to being a democratic socialist while Elizabeth Warren, you wrote up, does not. And why I think that matters is because we've seen Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, like you said, have very similar policies. And I think by not using the term socialist, she's basically just pandering to the part of America who would not vote for a person simply because they are calling themselves a socialist while really what's important is the kind of core idea that both of them do value, which is creating a system that is honestly somewhat socialized where we're like I brought up earlier trying to create a system that's working for everybody. So I don't like that she's not using the word socialism talking about herself even though that's essentially what it is. I think that that's really interesting because even despite those progressive socialist policies that are being put forward, Elizabeth Warren has been very careful to craft herself as a self-proclaimed capitalist. So I think that that is something she has been very careful to call herself a capitalist, to maintain that standing. Zara, what do you think? I think as much as I think it's time for a woman to be president, I don't think the time is technically now. Especially I agreed with the point that Bernie Sanders has been here for a long time and I think his words have been out said so much that people have understood exactly what he wants. Well, a lot of what I believe when I see the news on Elizabeth Warren, I find some of the things she says controversial. There's a lot of things that sometimes I agree with it, but yet if I look at it too further, I think I don't agree with that. So I think it's mainly for me is the reason why I think Bernie is pretty successful is he's been there for a long time. He's been seeing there and I think he is capable. Everyone knows his guidelines and what he wants. So I think that's what makes him successful. I think that was really interesting what you just said about having a policy. You look at it face value and you perceive it as one way. But then when you look more into it, it becomes something different, something that you don't agree with. Was there something specific that Warren put forward that you thought looked good at first, but maybe once you looked more into it didn't like as much? Well, at the time I think it was something she was trying to put something against in a way where she was showing that she would be better than Bernie Sanders in a way at success. I can't remember at the moment. I was looking this over the summer. I just felt like she hadn't thought through it. She was just trying to become popular and use keywords that people really want to hear. I think that was what she was doing instead of just facing through and looking at what people really want. She was just using keywords. Of course, I think we're going to see a lot of that. We've seen a lot of it and we're going to see more of that in this primary season as still an incredibly divided field is trying to appeal to more and more voters. We're going to see candidates try and gain a broader base by using maybe some of these buzzwords that don't necessarily illuminate any specific policies. Sorry, you brought up a really interesting point of analysis earlier and that was the makeup of the candidates in general. In this upcoming debate coming up in later December, we're going to see a very real possibility of having an all-white primary where the only representatives are white men or white women. This got whittled down from a very diverse pool. Is this something that we should be concerned about and what can we do moving forward with this information? I think kind of yes and no. First, the no part is I don't think you should ever, in my opinion, support a candidate simply because they are not white or not supporting a candidate simply because they are white. In that way, I don't think it's an issue, but I think in a broader sense, I think it does kind of show that there are signs that maybe even the progressive electorate isn't as progressive as we thought and that there perhaps could be kind of subliminal factors making people not respond as positively to particular candidates. I don't think among the Democratic Party, there are very many people who are consciously saying this candidate is, say, African American because of that I'm not going to support him or her, but I think we're still seeing candidates who are not white not being as successful, generally speaking. To me, that kind of indicates that there's probably something going on in the subconscious of voters that makes them react differently to non-white candidates, which to me is very troubling. I think so currently, I think there are 20 Democrats who are up for election and I think about three of them. I don't know the math on that one are of different color and I think that as much as I think that is, to me if it's going to be an all-white selection, I think that's a bit of a concern to me because of the fact that we had seen progression through Obama being the first black president and then somehow I just don't know, I think there was, then I feel like there was a drop, there was something changed and I think that we do need to see progression in our society accepting more to be, you know, that anyone can be president not just some white rich man. It can be anyone, but I believe it is what it is, whatever turns out and I agree, you shouldn't just look at those who, what sex they are, what gender they are, you should look at their opinions. So I think it depends anyways, in the end it depends on what their opinions are. I wonder if that's part of the Trump effect because Democratic voters, like we talked about, just want Trump to lose, that's one of their biggest criteria. So perhaps what we're seeing is that voters just want a candidate who they feel can defeat Trump and maybe to a lot of voters, that means a white candidate. Like they don't have confidence that a non-white candidate can win states where perhaps the electorate's not as progressive. I think that's kind of with Joe Biden, Joe Biden's like more of a moderate Democrat and I think that's the reason why he's seeing a lot of support is because people think he's more electable. But I wonder if that same issue kind of has racial implications as well. So now I'd like to switch over to looking at their foreign policy. So generally in the primary season we don't get, as an in-depth view of these candidates' foreign policy, they're more focused on issues at home, domestic policy, to appeal to voters, but looking beyond that, looking at foreign policy, what is something that you want in the foreign policy of our next president? One thing that Bernie Sanders has talked about that I am a huge supporter of is kind of ending the idea that America is always right with our foreign policy. So with foreign policy in the past we've seen America doing a bunch of really awful stuff. We've seen the deposition of democratically elected leaders in favor of dictators who will just support the United States. We've seen the supporting of genocides or supporting of groups which have then gone on to be terrorists. And basically the U.S. is doing stuff that's not good, all in the name of America first, in the name of as long as our people can buy cheap oil, as long as our people can have global hegemony, it's fine if we make sure that these people have a dictator instead of a democratically elected leader. And one thing that I really like that Bernie Sanders has talked about a lot is ending the idea that that is an okay way to act. What do you think, Sara? I haven't exactly looked this much into for the elections but I think one thing is that with President Trump I think he destroyed a lot of reputation with other countries and I really hope that at least our next president can just try as much as they can to rebuild that because I think in a lot of other countries' eyes and a lot of foreign leaders I think view America as kind of now corrupt because of our president currently and I think that something needs to be rebuilt in my opinion. That's as for what I think that foreign policy needs to go. In looking at this primary leading up to this election season it's clear that it is still anybody's game while Biden might still be out in the front Warren and Sanders are hot on his tail. And Buttigieg too. Winning Iowa now, yeah. So we are seeing massive shifts in the Democratic Party which could have major implications yet to come. So I think no matter what happens in this primary and what happens in the election in general I think that the ideas and the discourse that has been raised that's what's important and that's what we're going to be carrying and that's what we're going to be looking at moving forward. Thank you for joining us. My name is Cedric Hughes and I have been your host for Teens on Topic.