Monthly Archives: June 2019

Politics, USA

The First Democratic Debates: Some Takeaways

The first Democratic debates are in the books.  In all likelihood, one of the twenty candidates that debated over the last two nights will ultimately win the Democratic nomination and take on Donald Trump in the 2020 general election.  As an American who lives in a potential swing state, I almost certainly will be voting for that person.  I am not sure yet who I want that person to be, and although I do have some early favorites, the last two nights were more about just learning who these people are and about the issues that will dominate the Democratic side of this election.  Here are some personal takeaways:

 

A “Marshall Plan” for Central America

Immigration has been a hugely important issue in the U.S. for a long time, but in Donald Trump’s America, it might be the most important.  I’m all for the more compassionate approach offered by this group of candidates, but at the end of the day, I want people to stop showing up at our southern border.  I want to live in a hemisphere that doesn’t have a crisis of refugees.  I want a president that is going to address the roots of this problem.  A Marshall Plan for Central America would do just that.

A Marshall Plan for Central America, as named by Julián Castro and described by several other candidates, would help to address the problems in Northern Triangle countries that lead people to seek refuge in the first place.  Much like “The Wall”, it would entail a huge investment on the part of the U.S. and certainly reduce the number of immigrants coming to the United States.  But unlike “The Wall”, it would be an investment that actually helps people on the other side.  We need to do for our Central American neighbors what we did for our European allies following WWII, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s the most effective way to address this “hemispheric problem”.

 

Se habla Español aquí

Night one of the debates saw a woke-off between Beto O’Rourke and Corey Booker as both tried to demonstrate their almost bilingualness to a party very interested in turning out Latino voters.  In one sense, I think it’s great that the Democratic Party is speaking a language of inclusivity (in this case, literally!).  In another sense, this was one of the most blatant displays of pandering and general douchebaggery from all four hours of the Democratic debates (and perhaps why we didn’t hear so much Spanish on night two).

Like Corey and Beto, I am a semi-competent Spanish speaker myself, and while it’s a great skill to have, I am also definitely capable of being a douchebag about it.  At least I’m aware of it though, right?!?!  Not sure that I can say the same thing for these two…

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Rehearsed responses vs. Off-the-cuff

When it comes to my enjoyment as a viewer, there is no comparison.  I HAAAAATE listening to the candidates who robotically relay their rehearsed responses, and I LOOOOOVE the candidates who respond to their questions authentically as if they come straight from their heart and/or loins.  That said, does it really matter when it comes to qualifications for the presidency? And actually, don’t we want a president who can sit down and think of thoughtful responses to complicated problems, even if they don’t entertain us when they discuss those thoughtful responses in front of a camera?  Probably, but I still hate it.

 

Avoiding the question

The above points withstanding, I think it’s great when the moderators point out the non-answers that so many candidates provided to questions that were oftentimes very direct.  I also liked the 15-second follow-up that they granted those candidates to give them the opportunity to do what they failed to do in the first 60-second go-round.  Spoiler Alert: most of them fail again.

 

Quiet Andrew

One of my biggest disappointments was how little we heard from Andrew Yang on night two of the debates.  While I’m not yet officially on the Andrew Yang bandwagon, I do think that of all the Democratic candidates, he’s the most intriguing.  The way the dude talks about tech, and automation, and UBI (or the “Freedom Dividend” as he calls it), makes him sound like he’s running for 2040 or 2060, and when those years arrive, I think we’ll look back on his diagnoses and say that he was ahead of the game on a lot of shit.  I’m still not sure I want him as the 2020 nominee, but if you find this guy as interesting as I do, listen to him on some of his recent podcast appearances:

 

Shoutout to the T’s in LGBTQ+

Though it once again sounds like pandering (especially when Julián screws up his terminology), it is nice to hear so much support for transgender issues, and LGBTQ+ issues in general, in a nationally televised debate for a major political party.  The pandering to a lot of traditionally marginalized groups that takes place in the Democratic Party is annoying, but better to be pandered to than to be ignored.  #Progress

 

Biden’s apology refusal

One person who chose not to pander, at least in one case, was former Vice President Joe Biden, who once again refused to apologize for some comments he made in regards to this country’s history of racial segregation.  Without offering an opinion on those comments, I can say that I appreciate Biden’s refusal to do what everyone does in these sorts of scenarios in 2019: offer an insincere apology.  The exchange between Harris and Biden in regards to these comments was one of the most interesting of the night, but the exchange only happened because Biden chose to stick to his guns (and his political record), even if he might be rightfully criticized for doing so.

 

To be young

I like Mayor Pete, but MY GOD is he young!  How can he know anything?!?  He is 37 years old.  I’m 32, and I’ll be 33 before he turns 38!  I’m still not over the fact that I’m now older than the vast majority of my favorite sports athletes and professional wrestlers.  I don’t think I’m ready to be nearly the same age as the president.  Plus, even if in his four-and-a-half extra years of life he’s managed to become 10 times smarter than me, he should still be at least 20 times smarter than that (or 200 times smarter than me) to be the leader of the free world.  #Math #OldPeople #Vote4Bernie

 

Interrupting

I’m torn on it.  I get why candidates do it, especially the candidates who desperately need the mic time in order to remain relevant, but the passive-aggressive Minnesotan in me cringes at the uncomfortability that it creates.  My suggestion: Give the moderators a button that controls the candidates’ microphones.  If Bill de Blasio won’t shut up because he comes from New York where everybody is rude, then cut his mic!  That will teach his big ass some manners.

 

Assault Rifle Buyback

Even though I found most of his mic time underwhelming, I was intrigued by California Representative Eric Swalwell’s proposal for an assault rifle buyback.  If we really want to reduce the number of guns, and consequently gun violence, in this country, this would be one way to try to do it.  Many believe that it had some success in Australia.  That said, the gun situations in Australia and the U.S. are apples and oranges, and the fact that Stalwell thinks that an assault rifle buyback would save the lives of “black children on the streets”, tells me that he might lack some understanding of this complicated issue.

 

Marianne Williamson

What in the actual F?  I would love to have video footage of the expression of bewilderment that slowly evolved on my face as she moved through her responses.    I can’t tell if she’s on something, or onto something.  Either way, I really hope she’s in attendance at the next Democratic debate so that I can continue to laugh-cry at tweets like the following:

 

 

 

Universal Healthcare

Healthcare is the other dominant issue, alongside immigration and perhaps climate change, that will likely be most important to Democratic voters in the 2020 election.  What is most encouraging to me is that all the major contenders for the Democratic nomination define universal healthcare as a goal (which was not the case a decade ago).  They have different ideas about how to get there—some through the immediate abolition of private insurance, others through an approach that is more measured and graduated—but it does seem that these candidates want all Americans to have access to a public option, aka single-payer system, aka Medicare for all.

I’ll be interested in continuing to listen to the different plans that the candidates put forward to create that system.  I think that Kirsten Gillibrand makes the most sense to me so far, that she’s happy to let private insurance companies remain in existence and compete with her proposed single-payer system (insinuating that they won’t be able to due to their need to generate profits), but for now I’m just satisfied that all the candidates want to head in the same direction—joining the rest of the developed world in guaranteeing healthcare as a human right.

 

Left-of-Center vs. Progressivism

The healthcare issue is illustrative of the larger choice at hand: do Democrats want to nominate a moderate, left-of-center candidate, or a progressive liberal?  Do Democrats want more mild and practical reforms within the existing system, or what Elizabeth Warren calls “structural change”, what Bernie Sanders calls a “political revolution”?  These are the questions that the Democratic debates, and eventually the caucuses and primaries, will need to answer.  The tone of these first debates suggest that the tide is turning towards the progressives, but I’m pretty sure that as of this morning, Joe Biden is still considered the front-runner.

I embody this split in the Democratic Party.  I’m inspired by the brand of egalitarian socialism described by Bernie, but I also see the shared prosperity that can result from what Gillibrand describes as “healthy capitalism”.  I love the idealism and aggressiveness in the detailed plans of Warren and Yang, but I also feel the sensibility and practicality in the proposed policies of Delaney and Klobuchar.

But all that said, I believe that what I and a lot of other potentially Democratic voters are experiencing is a good problem to have.  There were a lot of people up on that stage that I could see myself voting for, especially when they are running against Donald Trump.  I want the best candidate for the job, but I also want the best candidate for that job, and in the twenty candidates that I saw over the last two nights, I think there are at least a few people that would be pretty good at both.

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Education, Immigration, USA, World

Immigration, Compassion, & Policy

During the last week of school, I set aside my Spanish Immersion Human Geography curriculum for a class period in order to host a special presentation.  That presentation was led by five of my students.  All of them are teenagers from Central America, all of them immigrated to the United States within the last three years, all of them, save one, made the journey alone, without accompaniment from any friends or family, and all of them are now living in the United States as refugees.

Their stories are literally amazing.  This was evident in the astonishment on my other students’ faces as the five Central American boys shared their experiences of hours spent crammed into semi-trailers and trunks of cars, hiding from both Federales and narcotraficantes as they trekked across the Mexican desert, occasionally happening upon the corpses of failed migrants from the past, and fending off snakes and coyotes as they tried to find sleep in the montes at night.

Immigration had been a topic that we studied earlier in the quarter.  We learned terms like “push factor” and “pull factor”, “chain migration” and “quota”, “unauthorized immigrant” and “refugee”, and how these things all connect to the current immigration crisis at our southern border.  At the end of that unit, we also had a discussion—a Socratic Seminar about immigration in the United States, what we think about what’s happening and how we think our country should respond to it.  Opinions ranged across the board, some echoing Trump’s call for a border wall, some advocating for a more welcoming immigration policy, and many taking more nuanced positions somewhere in between.  My five Central American boys were conspicuously quiet during this discussion, but their presentation on this last Tuesday of class undoubtedly caused some of their classmates to reconsider some of their previously held positions.

I did not facilitate this presentation in hopes of carrying out some hidden liberal agenda that would turn all of my students into advocates for open borders and sanctuary cities, or convince them to vote Democrat in the 2020 election (most of the students are freshmen, so they won’t even be eligible).  Like any source that we consider in my classroom, I saw this presentation as an opportunity to offer my students a lesson in perspective—what this issue might look like to five individuals who have experienced it rather intimately.  And while I do hope that students will take these perspectives into consideration when forming their own opinions on this particular issue, I do not think that compassion for these young men and others like them needs to be nor should be the sole consideration that they take into account.

It would be a mistake to advocate for an immigration policy based solely on emotions like compassion.  While the desire to help people in need is an admirable one, it is foolish to think that the United States, even with all its relative wealth and resources, could offer comfort and refuge to all those who seek it, not only from Mexico and Central America, but from all of the world’s more troubled places.  Compassion can and should play a role in policy-making, but so should realism and practicality, and they do not need to be mutually exclusive.  For example, while I hate the oft-repeated Republican lie that congressional Democrats are advocates for “open borders”, I am also annoyed when any proposed border security measure—be it wall, barrier, or border control agents—is automatically labeled as racist, even though in some cases, it probably is.

Many people levy this accusation at President Trump, and while I would agree that many of his comments are ignorant and insensitive, I’m not sure that he is a racist.  I certainly cannot point to any utterance that represents definitive proof of hatred in his heart towards Latin American migrants.  But what I am certain of is that President Trump’s proposed immigration policies are dramatically lacking in compassion.

Trump has tried to argue otherwise.  In one of his more well-known statements on the matter, Trump said that “tolerance for illegal immigration is not compassionate,” but “actually very cruel”, as it encourages human trafficking that may not take place if the border were more secure and immigration policies were more stringent.  There is an argument to be made there, but that argument cannot qualify as compassionate if it does not address the situation of people who are sufficiently vulnerable to be taken advantage of by human traffickers in the first place.  A wall would probably reduce the number of people seeking refuge at our southern border, but it would do nothing to alleviate the suffering that influenced those people’s decision to make the harrowing journey that my immigrant students described.

With Trump, it’s also not just about what he says, but how he says it that suggests a lack of compassion.  It is not necessarily uncompassionate to say something like, “I think we need to secure our southern border, perhaps with a wall or structure, before we can begin to address the myriad other issues that contribute to the humanitarian crisis in Central America.”  However, it is something very different to start a nativist “Build the Wall!” chant at a rally packed almost exclusively with white people, some of whom likely scream those words with a fervor at least partially rooted in racist attitudes.  And Trump does nothing to discourage that.

I think those chanters might think twice about their choice of words and tone of voice if they were given an opportunity to sit in on a presentation like the one given from the Honduran and Guatemalan boys in my 9th grade Human Geography class.  That’s not to say that they would necessarily abandon their desire for a “wall”, but perhaps attaching some real human faces to the issue of immigration would push them to consider it with the nuance and complexity that it deserves.

I’m not sure what effect this presentation had on the thinking of my native-born students.  I did not assign any sort of reflection, and have no hard data to gauge any potential ideological shifts.  However, I do suspect that even my most conservative-leaning students might be more hesitant to stand behind any policies that would revoke their classmates’ refugee status, especially after hearing their stories.

And I think that’s a good thing.  Compassion is something that we should try to cultivate in the leaders and decision-makers of tomorrow.  Perspective-taking is something that should influence the way that we think about issues, and ultimately arrive at conclusions.  If we are going to make decisions to erect walls or ban refugees, then those decisions should hurt us, not excite us.  Because even if those decisions end up being the right ones, they also guarantee that human suffering will go unalleviated.  And if someone does not possess a level of compassion that allows them to feel the harmful impact of those unfortunate circumstances, then they should not be the one making those policy decisions.

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