Fernanda Figueroa | THE RIDER
With early voting beginning on Oct. 13, here is what you need to know about the 2020 presidential candidates, Donald J. Trump, Joe Biden, Jo Jorgensen and Howie Hawkins.
President Trump is the incumbent and candidate for the Republican Party. Trump won the presidency in November 2016, becoming the 45th president of the United States, and since then has worked to “Make America Great Again.”
Keeping up with the promises made in his 2016 campaign, “President Trump is working hard to implement his ‘America First’ platform, continuing his promise to the American people to lower taxes, repeal and replace Obamacare, end stifling regulations, protect our borders, keep jobs in our country, take care of our veterans, strengthen our military and law enforcement, and renegotiate bad trade deals, creating a government of, by and for the people,” according to his official campaign website.
“Trump, his platform, per his website, really seems to emphasize the promises that his original campaign had made,” said Natasha Altema-McNeely, a political science associate professor. “And in his view, in the view of his campaign management team, the promises that they feel they’ve kept.”
Former Vice President Biden is the presidential candidate for the Democratic Party and Trump’s main opponent. Biden announced his run for president in April 2019 and won 2,693 delegates in the primaries, according to ballotpedia.org, to become the party’s nominee on Aug. 18 at the Democratic National Convention.
Biden’s platform, per his official campaign website, emphasizes economic recovery for working families, racial equity across the American economy, the reopening of schools safely, women’s rights, the improvement of education, the making of American goods and equality for people with disabilities.
“What we see is [him] taking position on various issues that are quite the opposite than the positions emphasized by the incumbent president,” McNeely said. “And that is to be expected because the incumbent president is a Republican and presidential candidate Joe Biden is running as a Democrat.”
Photo credentials: Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons
Trump and Biden are the main candidates for the 2020 presidential elections and they each have rather different platforms, the difference being that one does have a platform and the other does not, according to political science Professor Nicholas Kiersey.
“Trump simply doesn’t have a platform,” Kiersey said. “If you look at his website, there is little evidence of having an actual set of policy positions.”
While not considered major opponents, Libertarian candidate Joe Jorgensen and Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins are also in the running for the 2020 presidency.
“One of the biggest challenges for third-party candidates is just getting on the ballot,” said Robert W. Velez, a political science lecturer. “When it comes to presidential politics, until we make ballot access easier, we are just not going to see a lot of competition from a third-party candidate.”
Jorgensen’s platform focuses on classical libertarian views, such as decreasing government spending, having affordable health care, bettering the environment by replacing coal and oil plants, reducing taxes, ending civil asset forfeiture and bettering education, according to her official campaign website, https://jo20.com/.
Per his official campaign website, Hawkins’ platform focuses on COVID-19 emergency measures, an ecosocialist green new deal, peace policies, an economic bill of rights, a socialist economy, political democracy, social justice, criminal and civil justice, media democracy and tax justice.
Photo credentials: Wikimedia Commons
Early voting begins Oct. 13 and ends Oct. 30. The deadline to request a ballot by mail is Oct. 23. Election Day is Nov. 3.
