Trump vs. Sanders
Indeed, let’s have a presidential election showdown between capitalist President Donald J. Trump and Marxist-communist Bernie Sanders.
With President Trump, our country has become “Great Again,” with a booming economy, a rebuilt, powerful military force, pro-business trade agreements, school choice, and with 90% of the American people being satisfied with their lives.
President Trump has not only delivered on his campaign promises, but he has also completed even more positive results for our country.
Communist Sanders has done basically nothing in all his years in political office, and, if elected as president, he will only bring Marxist ideology disaster to our country. He is 100% anti-U.S. Constitution because his communist mindset is 100% in opposition to the very political foundation of our constitutional republic. His economic platform is to destroy our capitalist economy, and if successful he will put our nation in the poor house. Our constitutional republic will become a socialist nation.
The Democratic Party has gone so far left it is on the edge of falling off the political cliff, and with Marxist Bernie Sanders obtaining the Democratic Party’s nomination and then losing the 2020 presidential election to President Trump, the Democratic Party will end up at the bottom of the cliff.
Explained another way, the Democratic Party is currently placing an electoral gun to its own head to commit political suicide and is ready to pull the trigger. Let it be so.
Yes, by all means, let’s have a presidential election face-off between capitalist and pro-life President Donald J. Trump and communist and pro-abortion Bernie Sanders on Nov. 3.
James G Borden
Hilo
Caucuses must go
Gather in a circle and yell at people till they join your circle. If another circle is too small, force them to join your circle or kick them out.
This is not a kindergartner’s game, but rather the system that is behind deciding one of the most important systems in America: the Iowa caucus.
Every year, before all other states, Iowa holds a caucus, and the vast majority of the time, the winner of this caucus goes on to win their party’s nomination.
For the last 16 years, pardon the notable exception of Donald Trump, the winner of Iowa’s caucus has gone on to become president of the United States. For a system that is so influential in the current political system, as this past Iowa caucus has highlighted, it is fundamentally flawed.
Iowa’s caucus results re-contextualize the entire race, but they are not by any stretch representative of the country as a whole. For arbitrary reasons, Iowa — a small Midwest state that is 90% white — gets to vote for presidential candidates before anyone else. The result from these races often, if not always, gives the winning candidates tremendous momentum and demonstrates a (possibly false) electability.
However, even if Iowa was the perfect state — fully capturing all the economies and demographics of modern-day America — it would still fail due to the terrible caucus system it sports. Caucus goers must gather in a circle for hours to show support for their candidate of choice. Only those who have the time and money to spend their night on such a frivolous activity may participate. Quite simply, caucuses are inherently biased.
Although viability thresholds allow caucus goers to move to their second choice, should their first choice not have enough votes, for the most part, voters’ first choice are the only ones considered. For many candidates, as demonstrated by Cory Booker throughout this election cycle, only looking at first choices of voters leads to flawed portrayals of support.
However, traditional primary systems are no better. Although traditional primaries allow for more people to access them and have a voice, they factor into account the second choice of voters even less so than caucuses. The answer to this is simple and is something many other countries have switched to years ago, something that has almost universal support in America: ranked-choice voting.
We must abandon the tired, flawed caucus system that has crumbled this February, and instead implement a holistic system that, unlike the current caucus system, is not just passable but rather revolutionary.
Kit Neikirk
Kurtistown
