One of the greatest impacts of the 2016 election was “the two main parties became more polarized than ever,” according to The Washington Post. The 2020 election is coming quickly, and many Democratic candidates running.
“Young people, like myself, feel a passion to enact change in the way our government is functioning, because the issues facing our country directly affect us,” said Sydney Werner, freshman psychology major.
Nineteen Democratic candidates are running, with 12 qualifying for the debate on Oct. 15. Here’s a rundown on the four who are currently polling the highest, according to The New York Times.
Joe Biden- Biden was Vice President to Barack Obama from 2008-2016 and a six-term senator from Delaware. According to The New York Times, healthcare is a very personal topic for Biden, and he is a strong believer in bipartisanship cooperation. However, he sees no room for cooperation when it comes to the issue of gun control. “The idea that we don’t have elimination of assault-type weapons and magazines that can hold multiple bullets in them is absolutely mindless. It’s got to stop,” Biden told NPR.
Elizabeth Warren- Warren is a former law professor at Harvard and was elected to the Senate in 2012. Considered to be more of a progressive Democrat, Warren is passionate about abolishing student loans, raising taxes on the wealthy and creating more social programs, and eliminating the electoral college, according to Politico. During the last Democratic debate, she discussed her proposed “wealth tax” and how the tax dollars taken from the billionaires of this country could be used to eliminate student debt so “every kid has a chance to make it,” Warren said.
Bernie Sanders- Sanders has been serving as an Independent senator for Vermont since 2007. Prior to his position as senator, Biden was a member of the House of Representatives. He ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2016 election and lost to Hillary Clinton. According to his campaign site, Sanders is focusing on guaranteeing Medicare for all. He doesn’t believe Immigration and Customs Enforcement should be abolished, but he does believe it should be restructured, according to PBS News Hour. Under Sanders’s immigration plan, he would give undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship, according to PBS.
Pete Buttigieg- Buttigieg is a Former U.S. Naval Reserve officer and mayor of South Bend Indiana since 2012. He is the youngest Democrat running at 37. He said he believes tech giants like Facebook, Amazon and Google should be broken up because, “The consolidation [of power] can very quickly turn into a kind of monopoly… that diminishes our freedom,” Buttigieg told The New York Times. Unlike Senator Warren, Buttigieg believes the country is headed in a positive direction when it comes to healthcare and gun control, according to Fox Business. In the most recent Democratic debate, Buttigieg made it clear he feels very passionately about America keeping its word when it comes to foreign affairs, specifically in Syria.
The President of the Point Loma Democrats club and junior political science major Maggie Valentine said a plethora of Democratic candidates, “[have] the potential to hurt the party, but when it comes down to the general election, Democrats will rally around whoever the candidate is, purely because we do not want another four years of Donald Trump.”
PLNU history professor Dr. Rick Kennedy said, “[The Democrats] are united in being too far left of the center- even their ‘moderates’ are not trying to talk to the middle. Democrats want to use the stupidities of Trump to create ‘a great leap forward.’”
Charis Johnston 
Angelica Moser