Voting. Issue III Part I
The importance of voting, why you need to vote, dissecting candidate platforms, and voter suppression and how to combat it.
Gif by Denyse.
I remember when I was seven years old seated in my admissions interview for my elementary school and the admissions head asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up and I said to her, “I want to be president so I can lower gas prices for my mom because she says they’re expensive” (the cost of gas was almost three dollars a gallon at the time). I am one hundred percent sure my answer was the reason I was accepted, but it’s been eleven years later and I have no intention of being president and I’m not sure how, as a journalist, I can officially lower gas prices. And, in these eleven years, after living through Bush’s, Obama’s, and the current presidential term, I have gained a better understanding of American democracy, government, and politics and I now know that the president is tasked with larger tasks than just gas prices (whether they handle the tasks effectively or not is up for debate). I’ve also come to understand the ideas of democracy, political efficacy, and voting. From the ratification of the 14th Amendment to that dreaded 52% in the 2016 presidential election, I’ve learned it all and I know that voting is very important. As the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire Primary just took place and we near the 2020 presidential election, I think it’s important we discuss voting and the candidates.
In my AP US Government and Politics class, we agreed that, in short, the purpose of the American government is to accurately, truthfully, and effectively represent the people and act with the best intentions to serve the people. (It’s debatable if this holds in our current dystopia, but I’ll digress.) One of the largest tools the people have to ensure the government is achieving its purpose is through voting.
In 1870, Congress passed the fifteenth amendment which allowed African-American men the right to vote. However, states still found ways to suppress Black men from voting through poll taxes, literacy tests, fraud, and intimidation. In 1915, the Supreme Court struck down the “grandfather clause” which stopped those whose grandfather couldn’t vote, from voting. Black citizens spent decades fighting for their right to vote until 1964 when the Twenty-fourth Amendment was enacted and prohibited poll taxes and in 1965, the Voting Rights Act was put in place to prohibit states from using methods to exclude Black citizens for voting which caused the percentage of registered Black voters to rise from twenty-three to sixty-one percent.
Now, in 2020, we have the right to vote (however, not everyone has the opportunity to vote, which, unfortunately, is determined by classist and racist state laws). With the November election quickly approaching, data showing that millennials and Generation Z will make up 37% of the 2020 electorate and suggesting that an overwhelming amount of Black people will be voting this term, and candidates half-assedlypandering for the coveted “black vote,” we need to discuss just who (or if anyone) represents the Black body.
Note: As a voter registered “Independent” with a left-leaning political affiliation, I will be discussing the platforms of Democratic candidates only. I have no desire to discuss the current person in the office and I won’t be voting Republican, I do suggest you do your research on Bill Weld, former Massachusetts governor, he could be the candidate that represents you and what you stand for.
Gif by Emma Baynes.
Joe Biden
“We’ve got to rebuild the backbone of the country: the middle class. We’ve got to demonstrate respected leadership on the world stage. We’ve got to make sure our democracy includes everyone.”
Joe Biden, former Delaware senator and Vice President to Barrack Obama, was the front runner for the Democratic Party, however, he’s lost his momentum and support after placing fourth in the Iowa Caucus and fifth in the New Hampshire primary. Biden intends to restore the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which addressed state and local level legal barriers that prevented Black people from exercising their right to vote (Isn’t that wild? Even after the 15th Amendment? Black people can’t have nothing.), and increase the electorate by offering easier access to exercising one's right to vote through automatic voter registration and same-day registration. He plans to increase federal funding for low-income housing and require inclusive housing grants for lower-income families as well as providing returning citizens with housing upon their release. Biden also plans to expunge weed convictions, legalize medical marijuana, and decriminalize the recreational use on a federal level. He also intends to help lower and middle-class Americans economically and expanding the middle class by starting a income-based repayment program that does not require those making less than $25,000 a year to pay interest on undergraduate federal loans and a simple loan forgiveness program that offers student debt relief for up to $10,000 every year of national or community service for up to five years. Biden also plans to offer two years free of community college and tackle the other factors such as transportation, childcare, and financial challenges. He also intends to bring back Obamacare and repeal the law allowing companies to avoid negotiation with Medicare and limit the launch prices of their drugs with no competition as well as prohibit generic drug price increases that are more than the general inflation rate. He also will eliminate the death penalty on a federal level and offers states incentive if they follow the federal government’s example.
I always thought of Biden as the sidekick of Obama (Which he is now trying to use to his advantage in the race. Is “Vote for me! I’m friends with Obama” the new “I can say the n-word, I have Black friends!”?), always together, cracking jokes, comparable with one another, and so on. I didn’t know much about his history, I just knew his relationship with women was frayed. After a quick search, I found a clip from The View where, in April, Biden apologized for the way Anita Hill was treated during the case of Hill and (a black republican) Supreme Court judge (two of them on the highest American court), Clarence Thomas, who she accused of sexual harassment. During the case in 1991, Biden, the then-Senate Judiciary Committee chairman allowed Thomas to testify before Hill, after initially saying Hill would get to testify first and didn’t take testimony from three women who offered their own stories about Thomas. Several months after the hearing, Biden said he worried he had not "attacked the attackers" of Hill "more frequently and consistently."However, he couldn’t have acted differently toward Thomas without violating “the basic values embodied in our constitutional system." Prior to the 2008 presidential election, in an interview with CNN, Biden suggested that other parties were to blame the handling mistakes of the hearing while in Anita Hill’s biography, "Speaking Truth To Power," she suggested that he inappropriately weighted Thomas’s presumed innocence and criticized him for forcing her to go into details that "disgusted" her. Then in 2007, prior to entering the 2008 election as Obama’s vice-presidential candidate, he referred to him as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”And in the Atlanta debate, Biden faced backlash after saying, "I come out of the black community," he later tried to clarify that he meant that his ties to the black community are older and run deeper than his peers. He told CNN, "what I meant is political, I come from the black community. It's the reason why I ran in the first place." He wants to “study reparations” so I guess.
Other than the hypocrisies of supporting Black people but disrespecting them on multiple occasions, he doesn’t agree with eliminating the electorate and while he may decriminalize marijuana and end the death penalty on a federal level, he still allows the state choice in what they do with their laws. Laws that don’t support marijuana and laws that support the death penalty negatively affect Black people at disproportionately higher rates than other communities. If he were for Black people as he states, he’d be critical about which laws he allows states the power to make. In a policy comparison chart by The Washington Post, Biden is one of the least “left” candidates and, from my perspective, I think his “middle-ness” is to not upset either side, but serving the people means making positive change, not ineffective compromise.
Michael R. Bloomberg
“Defeating D***** T***** — and rebuilding America — is the most urgent and important fight of our lives. And I’m going all in.”
Micheal “Mike” Bloomberg, billionaire and former New York City mayor, entered the Democratic presidential candidate race late in November with his main goal being “beat Trump.” Two decades after leaving the Democratic Party and running for New York City mayor as Republican, he opted to register as Democrat in October 2019 so he could serve as the “moderate alternative” to Joe Biden. Bloomberg plans to decriminalize marijuana on a national level but will allow the states to make the laws pertaining to its recreational and medicinal use. In reference to economics, he wants to raise the federal corporate income tax rate above 21%, subsidize teacher pay with federal government money, and cancel student debt based on income. He also plans to enact laws to increase charter school accountability and end all abortion restrictions. Bloomberg also wants to allow the federal government to negotiate drug prices with Medicare. However, he opposes medicare for all and is opposed to the idea of a program requiring the federal government to give all the American people jobs. While he intends to stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio with “taxes that put the additional burden on those who can best afford to bear it,” this essentially means taxing the middle class. Bloomberg also is in support of only twelve-week paid family leave and instead of offering free college tuition, he plans to offer college assistance. He also supports keeping the electoral college and offering reentering citizens the right to vote upon their release, not while they are incarcerated.
Again, I don’t know much about this candidate, just that he was New York’s mayor for a while and implemented the stop-and-frisk program which negatively affected Black and Latinx communities at disproportionately high rates. In 2013, he argued that the stop-and-frisk program was a “vital public safety tool” that saved the lives of Black and Latinx citizens who were disproportionately likely to be both victims and perpetrators of crime, saying, "I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little. It's exactly the reverse of what they say." However, during that same year, Bloomberg’s last year in office, according to data from the New York Civil Liberties Union, 56% of the citizens stopped by police were Black, 29% were Latinx, and only 11% were white. Then in a video from 2015, Bloomberg not only revealed that he increased stop-and-frisks during his time as mayor, but he described Black and Latinx men as being prone to criminality and that these stop-and-frisks were a nonissue to other New Yorkers and would make the city a safer place. To worsen the blow, he then went on to say that the NYPD did not stop Black and Latinx citizens enough. However, these stop-and-frisks increased nervousness, feelings of worthlessness and emotional distress, and anxiety and symptoms of PTSD in young Black and Latinx men in neighborhoods with high stop-and-frisk rates. These stop-and-frisks also reduced the level of engagement with other New York City programs, such as communities not reaching out for help via 311 calls. Bloomberg has also tried to claim that he reduced stop-and-frisks in 2012 because it was hurting too many innocent people, however, he failed to mention that a federal judge ruled it violated a citizen’s constitutional rights and was a form of racial profiling. Prior to the ruling, he also vetoed the city council’s proposal to increase police accountability for racial profiling and wanted to “mend not end” stop-and-frisks. Prior to his bid to run, in November, Bloomberg apologized for the stop-and-frisk tactic, but his apology gave a misleading narrative and he omitted key facts. In the apology, Bloomberg remarked that there has been a 95% reduction in the use of stop-and-frisks, however, he did not specify that this sharp decline only came after the 605% spike in stop-and-frisks. In 2012, under his office, there were 532,911 recorded stop-and-frisks (55% Black, 32% Latinx, 10% white), in 2014, there were 45,787 reported stop-and-frisks (54% Black, 27% Latinx, 12% white), the year after his last term as mayor. Now, this month, Bloomberg has unveiled his “Mike for Black America” campaign to show his support for Black-owned businesses, apologize, again, for stop-and-frisks, and pledging to “right the wrongs of institutional racism.” Bloomberg said, "I know I can’t change history. But what I can do is learn from my mistakes – and use those lessons to do right by black and brown communities who have suffered."
Truthfully, I can’t see myself voting for someone who constitutionally wronged Black people for years, leading to a disproportionate increase in police violence, arrests, and anxiety and fear among the Black community in relation to law enforcement. I also don’t see myself voting for a billionaire especially when taxing the upper class more is a current political topic. I am also peeved that his overarching campaign goal is “defeating T****.” That boy’s name comes up in every candidate's mouth, I’m sure they all want to defeat him, but I want to know more. What are his goals, plans, and intentions that set him apart from other candidates? I don’t feel like I know Bloomberg, only his past and his desire to defeat the same man who supported his stop-and-frisks tactics.
Issue III Part II, featuring the next few candidates, will be in your email inboxes next Sunday.