Recent Updates #7

In this blog post, I would like to talk about the first democratic debate I just finished watching on NBC. First and foremost, I thought all the candidates were very well spoken and made great points when they talked about the ways they want to change our economy and society, as a whole.

Before discussing how the topics the candidates were discussing would impact the economy, I just want to write about some of the facts behind the debate. In the debate were ten candidates: Bill de Blasio, Tim Ryan, Julián Castro, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O'Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard, Jay Inslee and John Delaney. In an article on CNN addressing the debate, titled, “The First Democratic Debate, Night 1”, it listed the people who talked the most and least in the debate. The candidate who talked the most was Cory Booker and the candidate who talked the least was Jay Inslee. Inslee actually got less than half the time that Booker did to speak, which is something I found extremely interesting and unfair. During the debate, I noticed that candidates would attempt to speak and give their input, and would be cut off and not given that time back. In my opinion, in debates like this, every candidate should get the exact same amount of time and be given the same amount of opportunity to share their opinions because each candidate worked extremely hard to get to this point and they all have important things to share.

Aside from all of that, the candidates brought up a lot of pressing issues in the economy. A major issue being universal health care. The majority of candidates agreed it is a necessary step; however, it was argued by lot of the candidates that “medicare for all” would eliminate a lot of people’s private insurance, which is an issue for those who really like the plans they are already on. According to the same CNN article, this is true and medicare for all would indeed cut private insurance for 150 million people. This was eye-opening and fascinating to me because I had never thought about all the people who would lose their insurance plans and potentially be given a worse plan. Even though I do agree that healthcare for all is something that needs to happen, I felt that the candidates who were pushing for both healthcare for all and people to keep their private insurance would be more beneficial to our economy and the people in it.

Another important economic topic that was addressed was immigration. The majority of the candidates had immigration plans and did not want to turn immigrants away. It was also brought up by Amy Klobuchar that 25% of Nobel Prize winners are immigrants, which the number is actually higher. This fact is really interesting and reveals that immigrants are actually extremely beneficial to the economy and make great advancements.

Other topics such as gun control, police shootings, and more were brought up in the debate, to which all the candidates did a great job and made very valid points during. All in all, I thought the way they answered the questions brought up things I had never thought about before.

Source:

Rocha, Veronica, et al. The First Democratic Debate, Night 1: Live Updates. 2019. CNN, Cable News Network, www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/democratic-debate-june-26-2019/index.html.