If you asked me who I’m planning on voting for in the Democratic primaries, I’d tell you that it would be easier for me to tell you all the reasons why I’m not sure who I want to vote for. I still haven’t established a candidate that I feel fully confident in voting for and I’m not sure that I’ll be able to.
In the end, I suppose that the issue with politicians is that they are all human and have human faults. Most are influenced by money and power, which makes it almost impossible to find one that feels entirely genuine.
This will be the first time I am able to vote in a presidential election — in 2016 I was only a month short of being able to vote in the November elections and I hated knowing that my voice wasn’t going to be heard. But now that it will be, it feels like I have no one that I am as passionate about as I had fantasized I would when I was 17.
Right now, I am feeling stuck and lost on who to support, because it doesn’t feel like any of the candidates have values that I can fully align myself with. The candidate that came closest to what I was looking for in someone to support was Senator Cory Booker, who dropped out of the race earlier this month.
He emphasized values that I found incredibly important and would always turn the conversation back to them. In particular, Booker talked about a lot of class issues and how they relate to race, as well as how issues with climate affect poorer people more. Many of his policies focused on these issues and he talked about them in detail during debates. But due to the number of big-name people running, it seemed like Booker never stood a chance.
Now, with those left in the race, I either question their policies and motivations, or I don’t think that they have enough of a chance to win against Trump.
Of the current top four polling candidates, Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg are both off the table for me. Every time I hear Biden speak it makes me cringe. He doesn’t seem to have any solid policies, and just uses buzzwords and his recognizable name to continue his campaign. As a powerful politician, Biden’s endorsement of another candidate could have been a powerful tool for a candidate with a powerful stance on important issues. Instead, he chose to run and talk about his friend Barack at every chance he gets.
Buttigieg should have been great, I mean a young liberal gay man should have been someone I wanted to support, but he seems to not hold many strong positions. For many of his policies, he started to lean more moderately when it started to give him higher positions in polls. A politician who will change his stances so that he will gain more support is not someone that I feel confident supporting.
On that same basis, I feel like Elizabeth Warren has recently taken on those same tactics. Despite issues with deception in the past, I thought that Warren had great ideas and strong values that would benefit America and that I could support. But she has recently taken on a more moderate stance on some topics, including issues with ICE and student loan debt. This makes me worry that she may not stand strong in ideals that I admire if she made it into office.
Someone that I believe will not sway in his opinions is Bernie Sanders, who throughout his years in politics has always been steadfast in his feelings toward major issues. I worry however that some of his ideas are too extreme and won’t hold up well in the general election. There are so many moderates who might not like Trump, but don’t think that Sanders would be any better for his own issues. So instead, they could vote third party and we might be in the same situation as 2016, when many people chose to vote for neither Clinton or Trump, and we could end up with another four years of President Trump.
Politics are hard. There is never an easy-to-find answer when it comes to issues that are determining the fate of our country — especially when they are so divisive. I am in a situation where I’m not sure where to go from here and who to support. The one thing that I hold onto hope with is that I would be more comfortable with the top Democrats in office than Trump.
Photo provided by Victoria Howard/ The Johnsonian
