A Weekly Online Magazine to Understand the 2016 US Presidential Elections
Made by 1st Year Students in the English Department at Rouen University
with a little help from Prof. Peter Marquis.
http://thecampaigndecoder.weebly.com
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Issue
#8. March 30, 2016
Contents
- The News These Past Week: Sander’s Unexpected Victories
- Background Check: “#8. Hispanics and Politics — A Trumped-Up Question?”
- Media Watch: “Candidates’ Reactions to the Brussels Attacks”
- Cartoon of the Week: “Whose Wife’s Hotter?”
.
____________________________________________________________________
The News This Past Week: Sander’s Unexpected Victories
By Garat Daphné, Geoffrin Anaëlle and Choi Chloe.
The Washington, Alaska and Hawaii Democratic caucuses were held on Saturday, March 26th, 2016. Contrary to general expectations – including polls – Bernie Sanders won by a landslide.
Although he remains far behind his opponent Hillary Clinton, this victory brings his supporters a lot of hope. Being aware of the results, Sanders declared : “we have a path towards victory.”
Sanders drew fire from media, which stated that he had only won in “white and rural” states. However, this states turned out to be “among the top most ethnically and diverse states in the United States.”
Furthermore, through the exit polls, young people represented a massive part of his voters which is not surprising considering he supports same sex marriage and wants to lower college tuition fees.
Sources :
Background Check #8: “Hispanics and Politics – a ‘Trumped-Up’ Question?”
By Maud Salbat and Kostadin Petkov
Immigration has always been a delicate issue in the USA. If you look at America’s history, you will notice that the government welcomes immigrants when they have an interest. (It was true before) the two quota acts of the 1920s – which banned immigration – and after the re-opening of the gates in 1965. The government’s major motivation was to benefit from Hispanics’ work thanks to the so-called “Brothers and Sisters Act”.
As the second largest ethnic group in the USA, Hispanics will make decisive votes in the Presidential race. Indeed, according to Pew Research Center, 27.3 million Hispanics were projected to vote this year. Among this percentage, 44% are approximately 19 years old which means this young population will have to be watched carefully by the candidates in the forthcoming elections.
A Washington Post poll revealed that 51% of the Hispanic population were likely to vote for Democrats, followed by far with 14% in favor of Republicans and still 32% were undecided. It means that there definitely are decisive votes to win during those elections. (Historically, Hispanics have largely voted for Democratic presidential candidates (see chart below)).
Despite these polls, Republicans stick to their hostile policy. Recently, Sanders declared that illegal immigration was a “trumped up and exaggerated problem”. That cutting remark reminds the population Trump’s will to build a wall between the USA and Mexico. In fact, Trump is a caricature of the Republicans’ policy on immigration as he wants illegal immigrants back to their countries (deportation policy).
But is he that harsher compared to other candidates? Ted Cruz and John Kasich are only more politically correct in their words, the first one saying that he wants to reinforce the law, and the second wishing that the country could lock its doors, a choice that may be devastating for the country’s economy.
The Democrats’ opinion on immigration shifted during Obama’s presidency. In 2007, Clinton and Sanders were both unfavourable to the Comprehensive Immigration Reform whereas they both promised to pass the bill through Congress during their presidency. The real issue is not so much about the reform but more about the way those Democrats would actually deal with unauthorized immigrants already living in the USA if they had the executive power.
Sources:
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/wapo-univision-poll-2016/en/
- http://www.pewhispanic.org/2016/01/19/millennials-make-up-almost-half-of-latino-eligible-voters-in-2016/
- http://www.vox.com/2016/3/10/11193556/sanders-clinton-immigration
- https://ballotpedia.org/2016_presidential_candidates_on_immigration
To go further
- “Reaching Out to Hispanis via Facebook”: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/02/prweb11575133.htm
- “Meet an Immigrant (Donald Trump Experiment)”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fboITcWaHy8
Media Watch: Candidates’ Reactions to the Brussels Attacks
By Margaux Fargeon and Camille Grard
After the terrorist attack which occurred in Brussels on March, 22nd 2016 – two in an airport and a third in a subway -, the American presidential candidates reacted a lot on social medias. While the Republican side had hard reactions, the Democrats called for unity and solidarity (source).
Donald Trump took advantage of those attacks to campaign and said on Twitter “My heart & prayers go out to all of the victims of the terrible #Brussels tragedy. This madness must be stopped, and I will stop it.” Indeed, he seized the occasion to push his ideas of restricting Muslims’ immigration to the United States, conflating Muslims and terrorists.
On the other hand, Clinton condemned Trump’s dangerous comments. To her, Muslims should have their place in American society. She indirectly answered Trump’s tweet with another one: “Muslim Americans: this is your country, too. These kinds of proposals are dangerous, hateful, and beneath us.”
Similarly, Bernie Sanders said: “We can’t let the Trumps of the world use these incidents to attack all of the Muslim people in the world”. While Bernie Sanders called for assistance and help for the “European allies”, Trump encouraged Brussels’ officials to do “whatever they have to” to extract informations – which means using torture (waterboarding).
For his part, Ted Cruz suggested to create a new law which would allow the police to “patrol and secure Muslims neighborhoods” in areas where gang activity is high. To which Donald Trump agreed, saying that it was a great idea.
Cartoon of the Week: “Whose Wife’s Hotter?”
by Poelie Guibrenet and Arthur Clarke
In this week’s cartoon, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, two Republican candidates running for president, are side by side at a debate. The journalist is asking about the wives of the two candidates in reference to an episode that happened a few days ago.
Indeed, a journal posted a picture of Donald Trump’s wife when she was young and half-naked and Ted Cruz retweeted it. Donald Trump responded by telling that Ted Cruz’s wife was depressed so in turned into a small war.
In this cartoon, which is very satirical, the cartoonist shows that the matters of the candidates don’t really fit with the real matters, by doing an enumeration about what they should worry about and added the story of their wives at the end, to point out that it is absurd.
He shows that the elections is polluted with useless informations that have more importance. It can be considered as criticism because he is considering them as childish. It is maybe also a criticism about the press which continues to be interested by that kind of information and neglect the other questions, more important about the policy, to be asked.
We feel the cartoon shows how stupid the US elections can be: focusing on the gossips instead of the important facts like immigration, foreign policies, taxes, and so on and so forth.
Sources : http://theweek.com/cartoons/615193/political-cartoon-cruz-trump
____________________________________________________________________
End of Issue #8. Thanks for reading.
Because of exams and end of classes, The Campaign Decoder will “suspend” its run until the Fall. We hope to see you then.
thecampaigndecoder 