Political Parties and Politicians

Political Parties 

Political Parties link the general public to the government by taking stands on certain controversial issues and projecting their discussions to the public to listen. By promoting their ideas and issues publicly, they are able to inform the public on what they think the government should be doing to handle certain situations. By doing so, it causes the public to think about these issues and come up with their own ideas on how the government should be run. Political parties are an important linkage institution because without them, there would be no candidates. If there are no candidates, then there is no one that can represent a certain group of people, like liberals, democrats, and etc. Without representation, the people that are elected into power will not be an accurate representation of the public.

Constitution Party 


I decided to write about the Constitution Party, whos main purpose is as follows: “The mission of the Constitution party is to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our prosperity through the election, at all levels of government, of Constitution Party candidates who will uphold the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights. It is our goal to limit the federal government to its delegated, enumerated, Constitutional functions” (https://www.constitutionparty.com/principles/mission-statement/).

The issue that I wanted to focus on were Gun Rights. My party believes that the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution clearly supports gun ownership. Based on this, information, the Constitution fully supports people’s rights to bear arms with purpose of self-defense, defense of family, and defense against tyranny. They believe that government legislation that tampers with the right to bears arms should be immediately revoked by the government, for example, the Federal Firearms Act 1968, or “Gun Free Zones.” Additionally, they support the organization of militias organized at a state level.

The party's website covers everything about the 2nd amendment and shows us that we the public have the right to bear arms. The 2nd Amendment is apart of the Constitution, which makes it a very reliable source. The biased of this argument is that although there have been recent events that show that gun purchases and uses may need to be restricted, they still believe in the the right to bear arms. They ignore current evidence and blindly support the Constitution. A limitation for this article would then be that party ignores current events and doesn’t think that gun rights should be restricted for a limited amount of time. But even with these limitations, I believe that the article has good rhetoric because the evidence used to support their argument is very strong since it is the U.S. Constitution.

Politician: Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator of Vermont

General Information about Bernie Sanders:

• Date of Birth: September 8th, 2017, in Brooklyn 
• Height: 6’0”
• Spouse: Jane O’Meara Sanders (m. 1988), Deborah Shilling (m. 1964-1966)
• Children: Levi Sanders 
• Service in the Government: 16 years in the House of Representatives, serving his second term as Senator 
• Greatest Achievements: Ran for president in 2016, elected 8 times by Vermont to serve in H.O.R., longest serving independent in U.S. history, has passed more amendments than any other Congressmen, Professor of Political Science at Harvard University, and led the first civil rights sit-in in Chicago 

I chose to analyze Bernie Sanders because I really liked what he stood for when he was running for president. I truly thought he was going to at least get to represent the Democratic Party during the election but I was wrong. As you can probably tell, Bernie is apart of the Democratic Party and has a lot of beliefs such as, charging companies for carbon emissions, free tuition at public colleges, break up big banks, and launch universal, government-provided health care. Based on his beliefs, you can see that he is strong on social reform and is very progressive with change. 

Politician Artifact: Twitter Post 

The artifact above is a tweet from Bernie Sanders twitter account. The tweet is about Bernie giving his opinion on Trump’s harsher attitude towards the victims of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Trump made a few comments about how the aid that the U.S. is providing for the territory is not going to last very long. In response to these comments, Bernie gave his own opinion on the matter stating that Trump doesn't realize that Puerto Rico is apart of the U.S. and should be treated accordingly. Additionally, he shows his support for the victims by stating that Congress should be providing relief as quickly as possible.

First off, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are apart of different political parties. Trump is a Republican and Bernie Sanders is a Democratic, so there views on a lot of controversial topics are usually very different. But in this scenario, I think Bernie is pointing out a weakness in Trump — his patience. Trump, for some reason, made a comment that somewhat put the blame on Puerto Rico for being in the situation they are now. Being that making that comment caused him to receive a lot of backlash, I think that Bernie saw it as an opportunity to point out another flaw in our President. By pointing out his flaw, Bernie not only gains more support but further diminishes the reputation that Trump has. But this tweet is one of many, Bernie has a multitude of responses to the comments and decisions that Trump has made. He also tends to be on the side of the people, almost, like the voice of the people. He is constantly advocating for social reform, he is on the progressive side.

Like stated before, I think Bernie tweets only when he sees an opportunity that will benefit him in some way. Now when I say this, I am not trying to portray him as someone that is self-centered, I am just trying to show that he likes to exploit Trump for his mistakes. I think this is one of the biases that he has — he does not like Donald Trump. During the election he despised Trump and his standpoints on a multitude of issues. A limitation that I see in Bernie’s point of view is that he is constantly bashing Trump’s arguments, which, in a way, brings even more attention, or maybe even support to Trump’ argument. I think that because he is constantly discussing how bad Trump is, he is constantly bringing more and more attention to him which allows Trump to influence an even larger audience. I would also like to add that the reason why he is so focused on social reform is because he has been advocating for social reform throughout his whole life. An example of this is when Bernie was seen and arrested at a civil rights protest of segregation in 1963 at the University of Chicago. This is just one example of why Bernie has such a strong belief in social reform.