Sander vs Trump

Welcome back! It is the second edition of my “Trump vs:” blog and this week I will be taking a
look at another front runner, self-proclaimed democratic socialist Bernie Sanders.

The Policy
On the Sanders campaign website, there are twenty-seven policys listed ranging from things as
big as Medicare for all, and the Green New Deal, to smaller things such as empowering tribal
nations. I will mainly focus on his larger proposals. The first thing his campaign lists on his
website is Medicare for all. This is a plan that would be a single-payer system, modeled off the
type of health care found in many European countries. During the last election cycle, Sanders
brought the idea of single-payer into the mainstream consciousness, and in many ways
normalized the idea (at least amongst democrats). This plan stands in stark contrast to what
Trump has done while in office. Trump's response to Americans' problems with health care has
been a more free-market solution. He has worked diligently while in office to dismantle the
Affordable Care Act (Obama Care). The current president believes that the solution to lowering
prices is a free market solution. So with regard to healthcare, Sanders and Trump are pretty
much diametrically opposed. The Green New Deal is another one of Sanders huge policy
proposals, in brief, the idea is the same as the new deal of the 1900s, using climate change as
the catalyst to create (according to Sanders) 20 million new jobs all focused on stoping the
effects and causes of climate change. According to the Aspen Institute, the Green New Deal will
cost somewhere between fifty-two and ninety-five trillion dollars. Again, Trump could not be
more opposite of Sanders on the issue of climate change. Trump during his time in office has
taken the united states out of the parris climate change agreement and has relaxed restrictions
on power plant emissions. He has talked about getting coal miners back to work, and he has
publicly stated that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese government.

Zooming out from the minutia of policy details for a second, Trump and Sanders are very
different. Sanders believes in a very strong federal government and Trump believes in leaving
much of the power to the States and to the people. This shows in most of their views. The only
ideology that I can seem to find that is somewhat similar is that both Sanders and Trump are
isolationists, meaning that neither is very interested in people outside the US. This isolationist
ideology manifests in opposite ways, Trump has used military power quite liberally, while
diminishing our aid to other countries, whereas Sanders foreign policy beliefs are the inverse.

Polling
In polling from Real Clear Politics Sanders seems to have the edge in a general election, but the
spread is quite close in many of the polls, and Trump is even up two points in one. The range is
from Sanders plus nine to Trump plus two. That being said, in other polling not specific to
candidates the majority of Americans say that they would not vote for a socialist, and Sanders in
unapologetically and unabah=shfully a socialist, so when it came time for people to cast their
ballots, and Trump has been running non-stop adds about how Sanders is a socialist for 5
months its tough to say that sanders would definitely win.

Conclusion
If you agree with Trump on something then by definition you probably disagree with Sanders. So
from that perspective no Trump supporters will want to see Sanders win the democratic election.
From the point of view of who do you want Trump to run against, it is hard to say. Sanders is
winning in polls right now, but he also has one large looming weakness.