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Democratic Candidate Spotlight: Andrew Yang

In the world of the Democratic Primaries, it may seem complicated to look at all of the candidates to find out which one fits your beliefs the most. With 19 candidates running for the Democratic ticket this year, many candidate’s campaigns die out because of low media exposure; there isn’t enough time to cover all of the candidates in-depth. Today we are going to be covering Kamala Harris.

Kamala Harris has been a Senator from California since 2017 and the Attorney General of California from 2011 to 2017. Before she joined the world of politics, Harris went to Howard University in Washington D.C. and double majored in political science and economics. After that, she graduated from the University of California and was admitted to the State Bar for California, meaning that she became a state prosecutor. With this background in law, political science, and economics, Harris seems like she has a good understanding of all the ins and outs of running a political office.

One of the most important things that Harris is pushing for is Health Care for all. One personal reason that Harris wants everyone to have medicare is because of her mother. When her mother was diagnosed with cancer, she had medicare. Because her mother had medicare, she was able to get the treatment that she needed to survive. Harris wants healthcare to be a basic human right. With that, she wants to reduce prices for life-saving medicine and protecting women’s health rights. With that basis, she also wants to create a 10-year plan to transition people from their old healthcare to the new, national one. Newborns and people who were uninsured during that 10-year period would automatically be enrolled. For people who already have healthcare because of their job, they would be allowed to keep it and the government would step in and make sure that everyone would have the same benefits.

With many people worried about the current climate change, Harris has created a plan for protecting the environment. Harris supports the Green New Deal which is a plan to make sure that America transfers to new, renewable forms of energy. She says that if the US were to invest $10 trillion dollars into helping to protect and clean the environment, the US could achieve a clean economy by 2045. Cleaning the environment is also good for business. Harris says that when we make the switch we have to make sure that people who work in these sectors have good, stable jobs.

Finally, a big part of Harris’s platform is that she wants to make college debt-free and remove all current student debt. Harris understands that student debt is one of the biggest fears about people attending college. Currently, student debt is up to $1.5 trillion dollars across the US. People who have attended college 20 years ago are still paying off some of their debts. Harris says that she would implement an Income-Based Repayment which is a way of making sure that people are able to pay for their debt as well as make enough so that they can survive. Since college prices have risen over 200% in the last 30 years, this is a pressing issue for many young voters.

Currently, in the most recent national poll, Harris polled 6% which is around what she has been polling for the whole year. However, she has fallen behind Pete Buttigieg who has taken 4th place is the race for the Democratic ticket. The real reason that she is starting to trend down is because of her performance in the October debate where she went on a rant about President Trump’s twitter and how it needed to be banned. Even because of this, in General National Elections, Harris is projected to win over Trump by 3 points. Only time will tell if Harris will be able to recover and win the ticket or if she will continue to fall behind.