The Claw

With the election fast approaching, our school shows a clear political bias, although our school is still somewhat divided. With supporters for each of our presidential candidates within the school, it is certain not everyone will be happy with the results. With four clear top candidates, many may not entirely know who each candidate is, and what their primary platform is. While Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are clear front runners, many people may not know who the other two main candidates are, Gary Johnson and Jill Stein.

Gary Johnson is the libertarian candidate. He pushes towards the closest thing we have ever had to a bipartisan candidate. He supports civil liberties such as privacy, while also wanting to reduce the national debt, and incentivize job creation. In order for him to have a good shot at winning, he would need for no one to have majority in the electoral college. If this were to happen, then the vote would move to congress. There, a bipartisan compromise, based on the clear dislike for the two front runners,  would likely end up with Gary Johnson on top.

Jill Stein is the candidate for the Green Party. Her platform is a very traditional Green party platform, which includes the intention to create a national state of emergency from climate change. She wishes to end oil based energy and switch to an entirely renewable means of production by 2030. According to her plan, this would create 20,000,000 jobs. In addition to this, she wishes to end poverty, and make enough jobs so that government jobs are the very last resort. By reducing military spending by 50% she hopes to create a just, free United States.

Hillary Clinton is the first of the two controversial front runners. While she has a vast knowledge of policy, her past haunts her. While hosting a non-secure private email server and using it for government documents is not entirely illegal, many people have become skeptical from her use of it. She seeks a liberal approach of making college tuition free, and reducing the national debt with an elaborate tax plan. In addition she wishes to bring true equality to the LGBTQ+ community and raise minimum wage.

Donald Trump is the other controversial leader. Unlike Hillary he is less scrutinized for his past, but is attacked much more in the present. He wishes to reduce taxes in order to make lives easier. The tax reductions would include income taxes and a sizable decrease in businesses tax, from 35% to 15%. This decrease would allow more local businesses to succeed. In addition, his controversial immigration plan would make it so that the citizens of the United States could feel safe from criminals and terrorists crossing our borders.

While each of these candidates have their strengths and their follies, no clear majority was found. With 48% of our 185 student poll leaning towards Clinton and only 14.6% for Trump, our school has close to a 50% majority towards the recent Californian liberal ideology.

By Benjamin Yanowitz