Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the two leading candidates in the democratic primary race. If you need help choosing which one is best for you, here's some help.
Lets start with what both candidates agree on:
- Abortion is a person's right.
- Legally hiring women and minorities.
- Same sex marriage. (Hillary Clinton has stated in the past that she believes that marriage is between a man and a woman, and has advocated for it. But her campaign announcement conveniently included a gay couple, and now stands for marriage equality; shady, like many politicians).
- Making voter registration easier.
- Prioritizing green energy.
- Expanding Obamacare.
- Higher taxes on the wealthy.
- Privatize Social Security.
- An easy, available path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
- No more expanding on the military.
Now, the differences:
- Bernie Sanders is a strong advocate for removing God from the public sphere, while Clinton doesn't have much experience advocating against it.
- Sanders strongly disagrees with giving stricter punishments in order to stop crime rates, where as Clinton once again doesn't feel as strongly about it.
- Sanders strongly disagrees with supporting and expanding free trade, while Clinton agrees.
- Sanders is completely against avoiding foreign entanglements, while Clinton is all for it.
- Bernie Sanders is a second term U.S Senate with 16 years in the house of representatives. He is the longest-serving independent member of Congress in American history.
- Clinton has served as an elected official for a total of eight years.
- Bernie has much more experience and has continuously throughout his life advocated for equality, while Clinton was working with an Ivy league.
- Clinton's top donors have been mostly from Wall Street and lobbying firms, while Sanders's have been from the people.
- Clinton is very wealthy and has a massive amount of money compared to Sanders, giving him a much better understanding of us average people than Hillary, one of the more wealthy people.
- Bernie has way, way, less controversial scandals than Clinton.
- Bernie Sanders most important goal of his presidential campaign is "the creation of a movement to take down the billionaires and give government back to the people". Bernie focus is on black rights, racial injustices, women of color, women's rights, gay rights, the poor, and the middle class. He relates to us, and he genuinely cares about bettering America. He doesn't want to win the election; he wants to save America from becoming the most controversial country of all time.
- Clinton said her campaign has "four general goals: to build the economy of tomorrow, to strengthen families and communities, to fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccountable money out of politics, and to protect the United States from threats that we see and ones that are on the horizon." But her ties with wall street, changing views on gay marriage, and recent email scandals has shown she is not very trustworthy – like most politicians. Although having a woman president would be nice, she might not be it.
Don't worry, there is still much time to make a choice. Watch debates, and do your own research, because much is to come. October 13 marks the first democratic debate, so be prepared to watch the two battle it out.
