Today marks the beginning of the presidency of Donald Trump. Regardless of political beliefs this is a significant occurrence which will determine the direction of the country for the next four years.Young Republicans president senior Timothy Wei, Young Democrats officers and seniors Ajay Singh and Jonathan Gurvey and Young Libertarians president junior Andrew Berger reflected on the election.

Why do you believe the elections resulted as it did?

Wei: I think that a lot of the news conglomerations did not report quotes accurately and did not conduct accurate polls. A lot of the population was taken for granted. I think the country really wants a change. I am not saying Trump is the person I want to see in the White House, just that Republicans offered an alternative, and that is what the people wanted.

Singh: I think that a large part of it was the way the campaign was run, the message of the campaign, who we targeted as our voters and overconfidence that we would have those voters. That was foolish on the Democratic party’s part. I definitely think the James Comey scandal played a part in it, but I do not think it played as huge a part as others might say.

Berger: I think the media played a large part in the election. We saw a shift from objective journalism into rhetoric journalism because I do not think the people cared as much about the truth and were drawn to emotional arguments as opposed to objective ones.

What do you think your party did well up to Nov. 8. What do you think your party did poorly?

Wei: I do not think the Republicans necessarily did anything well. It is not necessarily what we did well but what the Democrats did in their eight years of having the White House. There was a lot of optimism lingering in the air after the ‘08 election. Everyone expected Obama to be the change that America needed after Bush’s Iraq war. I guess he just did not deliver it.

Gurvey: One thing that my party did well was that we got out the vote in young people. We were very active among certain groups. Something that I think we did really poorly was that we overestimated and we trusted certain polls too much, and those polls ended up doing a lot of harm to us. The election was a lot closer than we thought and we lost the election as a result of that.

Berger: The Libertarian party made a bigger stride than it has ever made in an election, however I think if we had put up a different candidate than Johnson, we would have had greater success.

How do you view our current president-elect?

Wei: I think that now that he is going to be president on Jan. 20. I think that everyone needs to get behind him. We cannot keep on hating him. I did not hate him, I just did not support him. We have to stay optimistic about it.

Singh: I think he is a brilliant media mogul. He knows how to get his name in the news. He knows he can say an outrageous statement and still have people believe him. He knows how to cause a media uproar because the media needs headlines that are outrageous and exciting.

Berger: I think he has potential to do great things, and as our president, I hope he does great things, but, at the same time, I am very skeptical and nervous.

What do you think of his cabinet?

Wei: I do not agree with any of them. I think he should have chosen Mitt Romney as Secretary of State, but he chose Rex Tillerson. I guess it is like draining the swamp; he is selecting people who are not politicians.

Singh: I am not happy with his cabinet, especially with the choice of Rex Tillerson as the Secretary of State. I am not quite sure hiring the CEO of Exxon Mobil is a great idea given how many business agendas and interests he might have while serving on the job.

Berger: He based his whole campaign off on “We are going to drain the swamp, take out the big names in Washington, and are going to switch things up.” By the looks of it, he is almost doing the exact opposite. I would not say I am too happy, but I am going to try to hold my tongue until he gets inaugurated, and they start working.

What do you predict will happen in the next 4 years in regard to our country’s path?

Wei: It is going to be a new era where tax rates are going to drop. Hopefully, this solution will stimulate the economy a little bit. Also, foreign relations might be screwed up. We are going to be better friends with Russia. In the Middle East, I hope we are going to support Israel. Trump is a pretty moderate guy. I would even say he is not a Republican. He has some nationalistic and populist views, but I do not know if he is going to build that wall. It seems like he is retracting a lot of what he said.

What do you believe Trump has done for the Republican party?

Wei: I think that he has brought a new light. He has brought many different people into the Republican party that may or may not have a good impact. He has also brought back a lot of the people, the white working class that supported Reagan. I think he has taken a lot of the white Democrats back into the party. He has also alienated a lot of Republicans like me.

Do you think Trump should try to work with Democrats?

Wei: Trump is famous for making deals. I think that he is not one to be ‘my way or the highway.’ I think he wants to genuinely help this country. I think he will work with the Democratic Leadership and the Republican Leadership to create meaningful bills that everyone in Congress can at least agree on.

Do you think Democrats should try to work with Trump?

Gurvey: I think bipartisanship in government is a very good thing, but the thing that Trump has shown first and foremost is that he is very inconsistent with what he believes in. Certain issues he shares has the same ideals as the Democrats, but, on most issues such as immigration, trade, and other issues that he does not share the views of the Democratic party with, I think the Democratic party will resist him. Overall, I think that if we can work with him, then we should try to.

How do you think the Democrats should react to this loss?

Wei: I think that the Democrats should learn from their mistakes, particularly with the skewing of the primary election in favor of Clinton. They should be more careful with playing favorites.

Singh: I think we need a major reformation in how we run our party. We really need to think about who we put in the forefront, how we solve the corruption in the Wikileak emails, whether we like that it was revealed or not. I think we definitely need to rethink our party platform, who and how we are targeting, how we are playing identity politics, how we are going to approach different issues, who we need to  be campaigning towards. We need a fifty states rally at this point. A complete restart of the Democratic party is necessary because since we ran the most established candidates we failed against the least experienced candidate in American history. We need to rethink how we are approaching politics in general.

Berger: However they please. As a libertarian, I believe every individual has the right and prerogative to act as they see fit as long as it falls within the bounds of the law.

What are your views on the election result?

Singh: I am disappointed by the election result but I think it definitely calls for a reorganization of the message of the Democratic Party and the demographics that we’ve been focusing on. I agree with our soon-to-be former President Barack Obama in that we are all rooting for President-Elect Trump’s success at this point. We can not root for his failure because we’re then indirectly rooting for the country’s failure.

Wei: I am neutral regarding Trump. I do not know what he is going to do to this country. We will have to see. I am happy about Republican’s success in Congress.

Berger: I was not very fond of Clinton nor Trump, so, to me, I do not think I would have been happy either way.

Photo Credits:

Flag Photo: Leah Colin

Timothy Wei, Ajay Singh, and Andrew Berger: Vega Shah (Singh and Berger), Chris Levitt (Wei)

Elephant, Donkey, and Porcupine: Wikicommons