Bernie Sanders is the better, liberal version of Donald Trump.

Hear me out on this one. They both have controversial talking points that quickly draw the attention of an audience, and now more than ever the phrase “any publicity is good publicity” reigns true in American society. They both do not follow the social norms of their respective party, as both of them are not considered true Republican or Democrat. Bernie is one of the few independents in the Senate, but is more progressive than almost all members of the Democratic party. In addition, he has very extreme leftist ideas such as tuition-free public universities and medicare for all. Trump also began his campaign with very controversial and extreme right ideas such as the border wall on the United States southern border. The kind of rhetoric that Donald Trump used to win his 2016 presidential is very similar to the strategy Bernie Sanders is using, except he is not lying or making false claims every other sentence.

However, they are also different in many important respects. Bernie Sanders is entering the 2020 election with real political experience, as he has been the senator of Vermont since 2007. Trump entered his race with no political experience, using his success as a real estate mogul and business man as enough reason for him to take on the job as president. They also have very different views on how to make our country a better place. Bernie is accepting and progressive, while Trump is afraid of outsiders and conservative in his policies. Along with this, Bernie and Trump have very different views on how to make the economy of America better. Bernie calls himself a Democratic-Socialist, which means he wants to redistribute the wealth of America. The top 1% of wealthy Americans owns more than 50% of the wealth in our country. He wants to rid the corruption of the top 1% and the large corporations that they run who avoid taxes at the expense of the less fortunate. Trump on the other hand has cut taxes on the wealthy (his buddies) in order to have them create more jobs. This causes huge wealth and power gap between the rich and poor and causes the middle class to shrink. Although this makes the economy strong and creates jobs, it does not help the average American, it helps the few that have all the money and power.

In my opinion, Bernie has the platform, name recognition, and rhetoric to gain enough traction to oust Trump in the 2020 election. He has some of the same strategies as Trump, but he doesn’t use scare tactics and vague trigger phrases to gain the attention of a crowd. Bernie wants to help Americans by using some of the strategies that successful Democratic-Socialist countries used in Europe such as Norway.