Politics

MCEVOY MINUTE | How We Move Forward After Defeat

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In the coming days, we will begin to understand the outcome of Tuesday night’s elections and see how Donald Trump triumphed when almost every major news source was predicting a win for Hillary Clinton on Monday. The results are shocking and deeply startling to many people whose personal identities were attacked by Trump throughout his campaign. Processing this outcome will not happen overnight and the fear that he will follow through with his campaign promises rooted in hatred and xenophobia will likely remain throughout the course of his presidency. Trump has shown himself to be a highly unpredictable man and pathological liar, and the fear that I feel for my friends and loved ones in the numerous minority groups that he has shunned, criticized and sworn to further marginalize is deep and very real. For now, though, perhaps the best thing that we can do is to take the time to consider how and why this has happened.

Politics

SENSE AND SENSIBILITY | The Conscience of A Liberal

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Awhile ago, Paul Krugman ran an op-ed piece titled “Plutocrats and Prejudice”, in which he observes the division between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton during the primaries as a division between what change is best. Senator Sanders says he, along with the people, will revolutionize politics, while Secretary Clinton says she will implement progressive reforms. The question of revolution or reform was discussed previously in Western Europe and pre-Soviet Russia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Scholars discussed this question in the context of what is the proper interpretation of Marx’s work. To achieve socialism, do we implement reform or do we need revolution? In the present, the goal hasn’t changed.

Politics

BETWEEN BARS | Unlock the Vote

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The one-hour car ride back to Cornell from Auburn Prison is a time for tutors to talk about how the night went. On my last trip, a few of the tutors in my car observed a voting poster inside a classroom. They found its presence ironic: after all, felons can’t vote. According to New York state law, no one who is currently incarcerated or on parole can vote. With the election less than two months away, efforts to register voters are ever present on Cornell’s campus.

Politics

MCEVOY MINUTE | To Millennials Considering the Protest Vote

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If you are like many college students, you probably find that you have barely enough time to complete your class work, let alone follow the news everyday. In case you have managed to avoid a newspaper since you came to campus in August, I am here with some potentially bad news: Hillary Clinton has lost the solid lead in the polls that she maintained towards the end of the summer. Nate Silver, the famed statistician of FiveThirtyEight, currently has Clinton’s chance of winning the election at only 55.8%, while a month ago he predicted her chance of winning at 80.9%. Furthermore, Donald Trump seems to be gaining more momentum in key battleground states like Florida and Ohio — both of which Silver predicted would vote for Clinton in August and now predicts will go to Trump. However, Clinton still has time to come back from her bumpy September.

Politics

THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL | Dear Undecided Voter

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Dear Undecided Voter,

Hey, I hope you’re doing well.  I am not going to make this too long, because I get it, we’re all busy people.  I just want to have a little chat. This is for all of you citizens out there who still haven’t made the ultimate choice: Trump or Clinton?  You have your different reasons — some of you view yourselves as “independents” and would rather vote third party, some of you are just postponing what you perceive to be a choice between the “lesser of two evils” and some of you just feel so frustrated with our democracy and the way that this presidential election season has unfolded that you aren’t going to vote at all.

Politics

CULTURALLY SHOOK | Donald Trump is Actually Kind of Right, For Once

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In an interview with ABC this Sunday, Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s running mate, likened Donald Trump’s encouragement of Russia to hack into Hillary’s emails to the infamous Watergate scandal. Kaine’s comment was his way of deflecting negative attention off Hillary by pointing out just how much worse Trump is. And it’s true. I hope you don’t need me to tell you this, but Trump really is so much worse than Hillary. That’s why it’ll surprise you to hear that he was actually kind of right.