Nicholas Crum

Mrs. Boyer

Honors US Government

12/12/2019

Andrew Yang is a Democratic Presidential Candidate running for the office of

President in 2020. He was born on January 13, 1975. Both of his parents were

Tiwanese immigrants, and they emigrated during the 1960s. Andrew Yang has quite the

impressive background. He was the founder of Venture for America, which helps to

create jobs for unemployed people in inner-city environments. Yang made most of his

money to date from the Test preparation company Manhattan Prep, where he was the

CEO for nearly 12 years. Compared to the other candidates on the current political

scene, Yang does not have nearly the net worth as his competitors.

One of the biggest concepts that Yang runs on is his concept of Universal Basic

Income, or UBI. This policy would give every American in the United States

one-thousand dollars a month, or twelve-thousand dollars a year. This is also known as

the Freedom Dividend. The idea behind this is that with the automation of the 21st

century, it is estimated that five million jobs will be lost to robots in the next 20 years.

Yang’s UBI proposal gives extra money to those people and it also accounts for the

people whose work is not recognized with money, such as stay at home parents or

full-time caretakers of loved ones. Out of the Democratic candidates, I think that Andrew

Yang is the superstar and I would like to see him get the nomination, even though it is

unlikely.
Donald Trump is the most likely Republican candidate for the 2020 election. He is

currently presiding over the Office of the President of the United States. He was born in

Queens, New York on June 14, 1946. When he was voted into office in 2016, he was

the oldest president to ever be elected to a first term at 70 years old. During his high

school years, he was at the New York Military Academy, until he got to college where

he went to Fordham University and eventually finishing his degree at The University of

Pennsylvania. He made his millions off of investing in real estate and the hotel

business. He also starred in his very own TV show, the Apprentice, which brought him

to the public’s eye even more. At the time he ran for president, he was very well known,

and it was thought that he could never make it in the political world because no one

would take him seriously. In 2016, despite being the underdog for the most part in the

polls, Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United States, winning a few key

states that secured his victory. One of Donald Trump’s main campaign goals that he set

in 2016 was the problem of illegal immigration. His flagship saying “Make America Great

Again” included a solution to this problem. He proposed that America built a wall along

its southern border to keep illegal immigrants out. This would help in areas where the border is

unprotected, there is little fencing, or no fencing at all. Things like drugs and human trafficking

have hotspots at these unprotected points, so there is some benefit to having a wall built.

Another one of Trump’s campaign goals was to bring more jobs back to America. He did, and

since his presidency, he has helped create 4.7 million jobs. His 2020 reelection

campaign has a slogan of “Keep America Great”. I think that he is a solid choice for

reelection because the country has benefitted from his presidency and I would like to

see it continue to thrive.

Joe Biden is a presidential candidate hopeful for the 2020 election. He is running for the

Democratic nomination, and of right now he is the frontrunner for the Democratic party. Joe

Biden was born on November 20, 1942. He earned his degree in law during the time of the

Vietnam War. He was going to get drafted, but was refused from the army because of his

asthma he had as a child. He went through many offices before he eventually became the Vice

President of the United States. He was on the city council of his hometown, New Castle, and

went on to be the Congressional Chair of the Judiciary Committee. In 2008, then presidential

candidate Barack Obama chose Biden as his running mate, and he went on to win the election,

making Biden the Vice President. Biden also got to serve a second term with Obama when he

was reelected. This political experience of eight years is partly what made him so appealing to

the public today and partly why he chose to run for president.

Joe Biden’s biggest campaign goal is to rebuild the Middle Class. He plans on rebuilding the

middle class by doing things such as raising the minimum wage to 15 dollars, an offset that

could change hundreds of thousands of lives by giving them more money in their pockets to

spend on things such as student loans, equity in their homes, and more. Another one of his

hopes, and one that I am actually a big supporter of is the rebuilding of our criminal justice

system. He plans to prioritize prevention and keeping people OUT of the prisons, and reducing

the rate that criminals go back to jail. As of now, 75% of people who are released from jail end

up back in jail within three years. This rate is atrocious, and Biden plans to focus on reformation

and reducing this number.

Overall, I think that Biden is second on my list if I were to go to Democrats, after Andrew Yang.

His experience makes him well qualified, and I feel like he would be a strong leader for the

country.
Bernie Sanders is a presidential candidate hopeful for the 2020 election. Currently, he is second

in line to the frontrunner Joe Biden for the party. Bernie is running as a Democrat under the

premise of Democratic Socialism. Bernie was born on September 8, 1941, making him 78 years

old. Bernie earned a degree in political science from the University of Chicago, and has been in

politics ever since. Bernie has served as the Senator from Vermont for 12 years, and previous

he had been a representative since 1991! Previously to running for the Democratic party, Bernie

has ran as an independent, which did not work out very well, as his campaign was

unsuccessful. In the 2016 election, Bernie was second in line to Hillary Clinton, to whom he lost

the nomination of the party, if not suspiciously. There were some theories going around about

the nomination being rigged so Bernie would not win, but otherwise he still endorsed Hillary

after he lost to her. Just a few months ago, Bernie suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized.

He is okay now, but some fear that electing a president as old as him has some risks.

Bernie’s main platform is for democratic socialism. He wants to close the gap between the top

1% of the country and the rest of the 99%. The top 1% of the country have more money than

the bottom 50% combined, and he feels that that is an unfair statistic and it should be balanced.

Another one of his flagship proposals is Medicare for all. Under this system, the United States

would have a universal healthcare system, instead of the privatized one that we currently have.

This means changing the way doctors see patients, and it changes the world of insurance and

pharmaceuticals. This would, however, cause a very noticeable spike in the way that citizens

are taxed in order to pay for the healthcare.

I think that Bernie running for Democratic Socialism is not a very good idea. I would also worry

about having a president being elected in at that age, just based on basic biology on how long

humans live.
Elizabeth Warren is one of three women currently running for the nomination of the Democratic

party. She is a hopeful candidate for the 2020 election and is running for the Democratic party.

She was born on June 22, 1949, making her 70 years old. She graduated from the University of

Houston Law school and taught at various law schools for many years. Her political career

included being on various chairs for the House of Representatives before eventually becoming

the Senator of Massachusetts. In her early days of campaigning and running for president, she

received some backlash for claiming that she was a Native American and she was the first

Native to ever run for president. It was later revealed that her ancestor was Native American,

making her only 1/1024th Native American. President Trump nicknamed her “Pochahauntus” for

this stint. Currently, Warren is third in the polls behind Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. At this

point, the nomination is really still up in the air and no one can be sure who will get it. She is

currently polling at about 16% with the Democrats.

Warren has some policies that are more out there than other current candidates. She proposes

a massive structural change to the way our democracy runs today to make it more fair and

simpler for hard working people to move up. She also plans to end big money influence on

politics, which includes bribes from big corporations for people to vote their way or propose

certain bills or laws. Similar to Biden, she plans to rebuild the middle class with an increased

minimum wage and an increased tax on the ultra wealthy. She is also a supporter of the Green

New Deal and the Medicare for All system. She proposes a 10% increase on taxes from the top

1% of the country to help pay for it, which in my opinion is unfair and really won’t pay for all of

the things that she proposes.

In my opinion, Warren does not seem like a very good leader for the future of the country. She

does not seem like she is able to run the country strongly, and to me she just seems like a weak

leader.
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