2nd Presidential Debate

ST. HILAIRE | This Is What Donald Trump Has Done for Me

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Like many people, I tuned into the last presidential debate of the 2020 election cycle last week. The fragile masculinity of two American grandfathers and the way it manifested itself took up 90 minutes on every major news-media station and held the attention of myself and 63 million others on Thursday night. In a way, I think that we have been spoiled. I spent so much of the first debate pointing out disrespectful quips, laughing, internally crying and outwardly cursing our founding fathers for drafting a governmental system that could be completely decimated by “an unlikely candidate.” You know, as if ‘unlikely’ has recently become synonymous with racist, misogynist, xenophobic and ignorant. I have been seeing this new classification of the incumbent President Trump as “an underdog.” I had to refresh my definition of the word and found that it meant “a victim of injustice or persecution.” I feel obligated to express my displeasure that we classify the offender, our persecutor-in-chief, as “an underdog.”

Returning to the more tame and traditional Presidential debate that I tuned into on Thursday, I was bored.

2008 presidential race

BERNSTEIN | If You’re Voting Biden/Harris in New York, Do So on the Working Families Party Line

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The Working Families Party in New York State is at risk of losing its spot on future ballots if it doesn’t reach 130,000 votes for President. This third party is a left-wing advocate for social democracy and progressivism and it’s best known for its support of democratic challengers to moderate incumbents across the state. With new rules raising the minimum votes required for a third party’s spot on the ballot, WFP is at risk of fading away. In 2019, Governor Andrew Cuomo formed a commission to reform the campaign finance system in New York. One of the commission’s decisions was to increase the threshold of votes necessary to keep a third party on the ballot in future elections.

2020 presidential election

BERNSTEIN | Don’t Just Settle for Joe Biden, Stand for him

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After a brutal primary season, many democrats have feared that a young progressive bloc would refuse to vote for Joe Biden out of a strong rejection of leadership and moderate positions. Since the vice president all but wrapped up the democrat nomination, one plea to progressives seems to be more popular than the rest: Settle. The “Settle for Biden” mantra is going strong; in fact, there’s a grassroots organization of former Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) supporters leading the way in sharing the motto, fit with a 230,000-plus follower Instagram account. The organization wants to convince young progressives who were turned off to the Biden campaign that not voting would lead to four more years of President Trump. This mission is important — Biden may be ahead in the polls, but if they’re as wrong as they were in 2016, this race could be close.

Columns

CHEN | To Meddle or Not to Meddle: Facebook and the 2020 Election

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With only a few months left until the highly anticipated 2020 Presidential Election, voters are beginning to request their absentee ballots and presidential candidates are revving up their (virtual) campaign trails. Facebook is preparing as well; CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that the social media platform will not be running any new political ads the week before Election Day, in conjunction with attempting to add more context to misinformed posts on their site. Now, what obligations do large tech companies like Facebook and Google have to shut down misinformation? Is it their responsibility to monitor what people upload onto the internet via their service, which is pledged to be a free and open space? If Prometheus gave fire to mankind, should he have given them an instruction manual and a set of rules to go along with it, or was he right to let humans run rampant with their new toy, albeit one that could burn down the world if used incorrectly?