It has now been 10 months and a day since Minneapolis seemingly turned upside down when now-former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck. Floyd died later that same day on May 25. Floyd’s death, a bystander video and an eruption of protests and riots made Minneapolis the epicenter of the Black Lives Matter movement — not just in Minnesota or the United States, but on an international scale.

Just four days (but seemingly an eternity) later, Chauvin was arrested and charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Since then, second-degree murder has been added; third-degree murder has been both removed and subsequently re-added. Details on the three charges can be seen here.

In the summer of 2020, protests demanding social and racial justice, the end of police brutality, systemic racism and more erupted across the United States. NBA players, among others, began taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem. Statistics have shown that the Black Lives Matter movement following George Floyd’s killing may be the largest protest movement in United States history.

With jury selection now complete and opening statements beginning Monday, all eyes will remain on Minneapolis for the next month, possibly months.

It’s fair to say this case is incredibly important. I imagine it will be one of the most high-profile cases in Minnesota’s history, next to the Jacob Wetterling abduction in 1989. State vs. Chauvin is the first criminal trial in the state to be livestreamed, putting it in a national spotlight reminiscent of the O.J. Simpson murder trial. As the world tunes in to the trial, I have a bad feeling that many Minnesota high schools will tune it out, avoiding the discussion altogether. I hope they prove me wrong.

If we aren’t talking about the largest movement in the United States’ history — sparked by potentially the highest-profile case ever in Minnesota — in Minnesota high schools, what are we doing?

Teenagers have long complained that what they are taught in high school is not important or relevant. While in high school, I heard my fair share of people griping as they learned geometry, precalculus, the difference between “who” and “whom,” or that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. Looking back, they might have had a point. After high school, I know all of those things have minimal value for most people. In a healthy democracy, however, having engaged, productive, knowledgeable citizens and voters are not just important; it is essential.

Public schools are the bedrock of our democracy. They educate our young people into productive citizens, voters, and future jury members. Without public schools that foster civil discussion and develop well-informed, well-read, politically active citizens, our democracy cannot sustain. Over the last few decades, our public schools have become more scared than ever to moderate civil discussions on controversial topics. This avoidance of discussion on tough issues — racism, gun control, abortion, police brutality, you name it — has undoubtedly contributed to our increasingly polarized political climate. Any marriage counselor would agree with that premise.

As a citizen and former public high school student, I worry that our public schools will shy away from discussing the most high-profile case in the nation today and quite possibly the most high-profile case in our state’s history.

I’m a man of many quotes, but one in particular, attributed to Mark Twain, seems to be especially important right now. It needs to be heard by high school administrators, teachers, and students alike: “Don’t let your schooling get in the way of your education.”

I understand that math, English, science, etc., have their place in the public school system. But this moment in time, these next four weeks, are bigger than that. Instead of focusing on schooling, we need at least some focus diverted to education. To teachers: It doesn’t matter if you technically teach science, English, math, music, you name it — find time to discuss this trial. Even better, livestream it during class. This trial is too big, too important to only be discussed in social studies classes. I’m not a teacher (yet!), so I’m not going to act like I know exactly how this conversation needs to happen, but it needs to happen.

Again, don’t let your schooling get in the way of your education.

Not only should teachers and administrators alike want civil discussion of the Chauvin trial in the high school classroom, I argue that they are failing to do their jobs if they don’t.

So, high school students, send this column to your teachers. Teachers, send this column to your fellow teachers and your administrators. Administrators, send this column back to your teachers — not just with an endorsement to discuss this trial in class, but with the expectation that they will do so.

Because, as the quote often attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr. goes, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

I’ve now been employed by the Minnesota Daily for about two months, writing weekly columns usually centered around what I view as the most important issues facing American politics.

For anyone who has watched the cable news networks (I’m looking at you, Tucker), read the newspaper or scrolled through Twitter, you might think the biggest story facing our country today is Dr. Seuss removing six books or Mr. Potato Head becoming a gender-neutral Potato Head. Being as political as I am, I’ve had plenty of people close to me reach out, asking for my take on what some view as an important topic in our current political discourse. My response has always been the same: Who cares?

I wouldn’t make the big bucks at the Daily if my column consisted of just those two words, so let’s get into the nitty-gritty of this crucial topic. (Note: When writing that, I paused to throw up).

First, the Dr. Seuss controversy. Dr. Seuss Enterprises discontinued six books from production, those being “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” “If I Ran the Zoo,” “McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!,” “Scrambled Eggs Super!” and “The Cat’s Quizzer.”

Maybe some of you have read these books, but speaking for myself, I have not. After reviewing some of the racist imagery, it makes perfect sense to me to remove these books. Actually, everyone I’ve talked to about this (more people than I’d care to admit) acknowledged that these six specific books have racist images.

That isn’t where the controversy lies. Instead, the controversy comes back to “cancel culture.”

A popular common concern is that people are looking back in time and trying to erase the bad things in our history. This point is moot when considering the removal of these six Dr. Seuss books. Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the company that oversees Dr. Seuss’ estate, discontinued production of the books despite seemingly zero pressure from the public. Who are we to deny a private entity from making a decision that they see as being in their best interest?

Then comes the equally ridiculous controversy behind Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head. Hasbro, the company behind the brand Mr. Potato Head, announced on Feb. 25 that they are changing the brand name to a more generic Potato Head. Per the same statement from Hasbro, “Rest assured, the iconic MR. and MRS. POTATO HEAD characters aren’t going anywhere and will remain MR. and MRS. POTATO HEAD.”

The Mr. Potato Head situation was even discussed at the Conservative Political Action Conference by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and others, centering in on the left’s supposed desire to “cancel” Mr. Potato Head. Left out of Gaetz’s (and others’) speech, however, was that this couldn’t be further from the truth.

First, Hasbro made the switch — like Dr. Suess Enterprises — under seemingly zero outside pressure. Second, Hasbro hasn’t even canceled Mr. Potato Head. He will still exist, as will Mrs. Potato Head. Hasbro is simply changing the name of the company to a generic “Potato Head,” recognizing that many families now consist of two moms, two dads, a transgender parent or other combinations as society’s recognition of LGBTQ individuals increases.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said of cancel culture that it “is the number one issue for the country to address today.” Although Jordan, a politician who makes $174,000 per year, sees cancel culture as the most pressing issue for the U.S. to tackle, I think the millions of Americans without work, the millions more who work but are in poverty and the tens of millions without health insurance would beg to differ.

My point is that while politicians — in this case on the right — are focused on riling up their base with unimportant yet controversial issues, they are failing to actually help the American people. Instead of focusing their attention on the increasing wealth gap, health care crisis, pandemic, recovering from a recession and more, Republicans are focused on the decisions of children’s book and toy companies.

In a fiery speech on the House floor, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), speaking to Republicans, sums up my viewpoint pretty well: “Stop talking about Dr. Seuss and start working with us on behalf of the American workers.”

If the Republican Party truly was the pro-worker party they sometimes claim to be, they’d be working alongside the Democrats to increase the federal minimum wage, pass a massive COVID relief bill, produce pro-union legislation and more. Instead, they overwhelmingly vote these popular bills down and rile up their base with this culture war nonsense.

So, until we recover from this recession and pandemic, raise the minimum wage and get everyone the health care coverage they deserve, don’t ask me what I think about Dr. Seuss or Mr. Potato Head. I simply don’t care.

Everyone’s least favorite weekend is upon us: As we move to daylight saving time (DST), our clocks will “spring” forward as Sunday at 1:59 a.m. central standard time (CST) mysteriously changes to 3:00 a.m. central daylight time (CDT). Besides the jokes about this weekend being shorter, complaints about losing an hour of sleep and the day-long question of why we do this weird time manipulation thing anyway, we simply accept it as reality and get over it by Tuesday (at the latest). Then, we’ll do it all over again in the fall and next year in the spring, like clockwork. Pun intended.

But why do we actually do this weird time manipulation twice a year?

Although some will point to farmers wanting more daylight in the evening hours of the summer, this is actually a myth. DST is actually about conserving energy and was first implemented during World War I. When the sun is up, we are less apt to use the lights in our house. As we progress toward the summertime, with the sun rising earlier and earlier, we are asleep when the sun rises. Essentially, we are wasting daylight. Because of this, we manipulate the time in the summer so we “steal” an hour of daylight from the morning when we are asleep and shift it to the evening when we are awake. This, in theory, saves energy, since lights aren’t needed as much when the sun is up. Still, reports have found that this saving is minimal if it exists at all.

Well, even if the savings are small or nonexistent, are there any downsides to standard time? As it turns out, the downsides are quite substantial.

To be clear, there are two different factors to consider when it comes to this time change being problematic. First, there is the problem of the switch itself, i.e., “falling” back an hour the first Sunday of November and “springing” ahead an hour the second Sunday in March. Second, there is the reality of when the sun is up in standard time — November through March — versus daylight time — March through November.

Secondly, the time switch itself isn’t just an annoying hour to lose or a helpful hour to gain in sleep. Both instances, but especially springing forward in March, have a negative effect on our circadian rhythm, or our internal clock that impacts our sleep schedule in layperson’s terms. According to the American Heart Association, a Swedish study showed a 6.7% increase in the risk for a heart attack in the first three days after we spring forward and a Finnish study showed an 8% increase in the risk for a stroke in the first two days after we spring forward. Additional studies show that the time switch also causes an uptick in suicides, workplace injuries and fatal car accidents.

Then, there is the issue of whether to stay in standard time or DST. Standard time, which is when we have more daylight in the morning, but less in the evening, is very problematic. In the last hour of daylight in DST — an hour that in standard time was dark, but in daylight time is light — we see a large decrease in robberies, murders and rapes. This is all attributed to the added hour of light in the evening. In addition, the added hour in the evening during DST means commuters drive home from work in daylight, leading to a 3% decrease in car crash fatalities.

Although there are, admittedly, larger issues for lawmakers in Washington to worry about, this issue needs to be considered. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced a bill in 2019 to make DST permanent in his home state of Florida. Just this past Wednesday, Rubio re-introduced the same bill. This bill would also allow Arkansas, Alabama, California, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Washington and Wyoming to make the permanent switch to DST. Allowing just these states would obviously cause confusion when traveling across state lines, but no worries — making DST permanent nationwide would solve that problem.

To be clear: We should end the time switch, but we should remain in DST, not standard time. The benefits of the switch are minimal if present at all, while the downsides are fairly substantial. This Saturday night (or Sunday morning), turn your clocks forward to DST. Let’s just hope we stay there for good.

How do we help Americans reach and stay in the middle class? Democrats argue in favor of increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Republicans have long argued for tax cuts on the wealthy, which would eventually trickle down (the jury is back; this doesn’t work). In the last few years, there appears to be a new bipartisan solution to help Americans reach and stay in the middle class: universal basic income (UBI).

UBI means different things to different people, but — generally speaking — it means giving cash payments to people without an income or work requirement (hence, universal). This is done either instead of or while cutting down on “in-kind” benefits like food stamps, housing vouchers or other programs. UBI advocates (like me) argue that it would cut down on increasingly large and complicated bureaucracy while simultaneously ensuring we have a sufficient social safety net. It’s a perfect example of both “keep it simple, stupid” and “more bang for your buck.”

Sen. Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah and the GOP’s 2012 presidential candidate, is pushing for a program like this called the Family Security Act. His deficit-neutral proposal calls for $250 monthly payments to parents of children ages 6-17 and $350 payments for parents of children ages 0-5. It meets all the requirements for a UBI-like system:

1) It simplifies the system by consolidating the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit.
2) It is a monthly cash payment.
3) It is nearly universal. Romney’s plan doesn’t begin phasing out payments until individuals exceed $200,000 per year or couples exceed $400,000 per year.

Then comes St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter. St. Paul will give selected families $500 per month with no strings attached, a plan they are calling the “People’s Prosperity Pilot.” It’s a trial-run to see if UBI will work, but studies have already shown that it works in other nations.

Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang had a similar proposal that he called a “Freedom Dividend.” It would give every — yes, every — American at least 18 years old $1,000 per month. Yang likely gained much of his momentum in the 2020 Democratic primary due to this unique proposal, and 42% of Yang supporters said they wouldn’t vote for any other Democrat that would become the nominee. This confirms that UBI has widespread support from people of every political ideology, as Yang primary voters may have been swayed to vote for Trump or a third party in the general election.

Yang’s UBI proposal likely led to stimulus checks being a key part of COVID stimulus bills. They are simple, widely popular, effective and have bipartisan support — exactly how I see UBI ending up in the future.

And as far as bipartisan support, there are many reasons why every corner of the electorate should desire a UBI.

To conservatives and libertarians:

I can already sense the incoming comments. Along with Romney, Carter, Yang and others, I am a socialist second-coming of Karl Marx. Far from it. This proposal is what would save capitalism. Capitalism doesn’t work if the masses don’t have money to spend. This solves that problem automatically. The poor have money for necessities, and the middle class has extra cash that could immediately go back into the economy, whether it be to complete a much-needed car repair, have an occasional night out, etc. This then leads to these businesses expanding, hiring more workers… Sounds like a pro-small business, capitalistic proposal to me.

Then comes the argument that workers will work less. However, in Finland, a study showed that UBI recipients worked the same number of days as non-UBI recipients (since they can still receive a payment if they work) were healthier and less stressed. This disproves the theory that giving people cash would disincentivize work. If anything, the status quo disincentivizes work. Unemployment insurance is obvious — payments stop when you start working again — but the same is true for other means-tested welfare recipients. Make too much money, and risk losing welfare payments.

To progressives and liberals:

There are many ways in which UBI would be a win for progressives as well. Given a 2000-hour work year, a $1000 per month UBI would act as a $6 per/hour raise for everyone, not just those working a minimum wage job. UBI would give low-wage workers something to fall back on, instantly giving labor unions more bargaining power.

UBI is a bipartisan solution to curbing poverty. I’m not naive enough to think that people from every part of the political spectrum will come to the same dollar amount. I favor a $1000 per month UBI and wish to preserve and implement some other social programs, but certainly, some progressives will want more, and some conservatives will want less. Nonetheless, UBI needs to be brought even further into the mainstream discussion when trying to help Americans reach and stay in the middle class.

Ending poverty — along with maintaining a robust middle class — would be a good first step in genuinely having the freedom of opportunity. That much is simple, but how we achieve it has long been complicated. UBI shows that maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t have to be that way. Keep it simple, like Romney, Carter and Yang. Just give the people money.

A few weeks ago, Fox News personality Tucker Carlson, on his primetime show “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” said that “There was no physical evidence that George Floyd was murdered by a cop. The autopsy showed that George Floyd almost certainly died of a drug overdose.”

This is contradictory to what two autopsies said. Although they differed on some things, they agreed that Floyd died by homicide. At best, Tucker was being misleading, but what he said was probably closer to a lie. Sadly, that doesn’t even matter. In a previous defamation lawsuit against Carlson, Fox News argued (successfully, I might add) that “given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer arrives with an appropriate amount of skepticism.”

Is this even true? Do Tucker’s viewers arrive with an “appropriate amount of skepticism” to what he says? I’m not so sure. As former Minnesota Sen. Al Franken said, “We have two sets of truth.” Franken is right. Recent polling by CNN shows that 75% of Republicans do not think that Biden’s 2020 win was legitimate. And though it’s flat-out wrong, it’s not even a fringe, far-right belief that Trump won the election. Even usually reasonable people are being bamboozled.

Ever since former President Donald Trump lost the election, he has been falsely arguing that he won the election and that widespread election fraud (coupled with other conspiracy theories) led to Biden winning. He was still pushing this narrative on Fox News just last week, saying “I think we won substantially. And Rush thought we won. He thought it was over at 10 o’clock; 10:30, it was over. A lot of other people feel that way, but Rush felt that way strongly.”

Trump can lie on his own time, but Fox News shouldn’t allow him to spread these conspiracies on their airwaves, free from dispute. Newsmax and One America News Network (OAN) — two networks that have (somehow) found room to the right of Fox News — allowed Trump to push the same narrative on their airwaves.

Rush Limbaugh passed away last week, and this column wouldn’t be complete without bringing him up. To say the least, he was awful. He once said, “Holocaust 90 million Indians? Only four million left? They all have casinos, what’s to complain about?” During the AIDS/HIV epidemic, Limbaugh had a segment titled “AIDS Update,” in which he mocked those who died of AIDS, even reportedly saying that, “Gays deserved their fate.” Late last year, he floated the idea of secession on his show. In 2009, he referred to then-President Obama as “more African in his roots than he is American.”

Tucker, Limbaugh and Trump have one thing in common: What they do can be really, really profitable. In 2020, “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” along with his colleague Sean Hannity’s show, “Hannity,” became the first two cable news programs to finish a whole year with more than four million viewers. Limbaugh had long been a staple of right-wing talk radio, and made $84.5 million in 2018. Trump raised $207.5 million in the month following Election Day, largely based on his voter fraud nonsense.

These three aren’t in the business of helping our country. They aren’t in the business of moderating healthy public policy debates. They’re like a local Applebee’s: Serve up exactly what the customers want, or they’ll go to the place that will. Many conservatives don’t want to entertain the idea that Trump could have lost the election, or that a white police officer could have done wrong to a Black man.

Instead of facing these realities, right-wingers go get their comfort food from the likes of Trump, Carlson, Limbaugh, Fox News, OAN or Newsmax. I don’t blame them. I’ve been pretty clear on this; Democrats, almost as much as Republicans, have long failed to help the working class or the poor. I blame those like Trump, Carlson and Limbaugh that prey on desperate, hurting Americans, giving them what they want to hear in the short-term, making a quick buck for themselves, and rotting our democracy in the long run.

It wouldn’t do much for me to sit here and tell Carlson, Limbaugh and Trump not to lie or be divisive. It’s worked for them, so why should they care? What we need to do is stop making it so incentivizing for people like Tucker, Limbaugh and Trump to lie.

Stay tuned, because there will be much, much more to come on this.

Just seven days ago, former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate concluded. Fifty-seven senators voted that Trump was guilty, including seven Republicans (Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse and Pat Toomey). Although this was the most bipartisan effort ever to convict a president, it was still 10 votes short of the 67 needed to convict.

I’ll start with the obvious. On the merits, Trump was guilty as charged. Even overt partisan Mitch McConnell acknowledged as much immediately after voting not guilty, saying, “Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.” McConnell — and many other Senate Republicans — hide behind the argument that it is unconstitutional to convict a president who is not currently holding office, even though the founders’, legal scholars’ and originalists’ interpretation of the Constitution argue otherwise.

I applaud all seven Republicans for being able to buck the former president and do the morally right thing. That being said, Trump’s impeachment trial reminds me of two situations in our nation’s history: One where the convenient wrong was done, and one where the inconvenient right was done.

The convenient wrong

This event took place on Sept. 22, 2011, at a Republican primary debate. Stephen Hill, a gay soldier serving the United States in Iraq, asked Rick Santorum about the historically awful policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” As Hill finished asking the question, there were audible boos from the crowd, seemingly unhappy with a gay man in the military. Being upset with this is (or at least should be) obvious to anyone. Instead of acknowledging disgust with the boos or proclaiming that he doesn’t want the vote of anyone who boos an American soldier that was literally in combat, Santorum took the convenient wrong, stayed silent and answered the question.

The inconvenient right

Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ, as he was known) assumed the presidency after the assassination of JFK in 1963. LBJ was a Democrat from Texas. I know that sounds like an odd combination but it was far more common then than it is today (Theodore Roosevelt was a progressive Republican from New York). Then, LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. Although a lot still needed to be done to end racial discrimination even today, this was a crucial step in the right direction.

When signing the bill into law, he turned to an aide and said something to the effect of, “There goes the South for a generation.” While this is definitely a simplification of the issue, he was right. Southern conservatives slowly turned away from the Democratic Party, and now Democrats seem to be wasting their breath campaigning in deep-red states like Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, etc.

Other than four years of Jimmy Carter, the Republican Party held onto the White House from 1969-1982. Sometimes politicians use the term “country over party.” LBJ actually lived and acted upon it, taking the inconvenient right.

Oftentimes I love debating public policy whether I agree or disagree with politicians. These situations are far from that. It’s about leadership. Part of being a leader is having the guts to tell others when they are wrong. Trump lost the election — plain and simple. It wasn’t stolen. Republican congressmen and congresswomen know that. They just didn’t have the guts to do the inconvenient right. Trump incited an insurrection at the Capitol. Republican members of Congress know that. They just didn’t have the guts to do the inconvenient right. Many of those who did stand up have already been either censured or criticized by their home state or, in the case of Mitch McConnell, have been the subject of a nasty statement from the former president himself.

Part of having guts is doing the inconvenient right. No Republican should want the vote of those homophobes that booed Stephen Hill. No Democrat should want the vote of those in the Deep South that opposed the Civil Rights Act. It’s early, but we can already add to that list. No Republican should want the vote of someone who thinks Trump won the election. No Republican should want to win if it means sweeping Trump’s incitement of insurrection under the rug.

Even if it doesn’t show in the moment, one thing always shows in the history books: our politicians need guts.

Forty-three Senate Republicans failed to do the inconvenient right. Mark my words: History will look upon them poorly.

I grew up in Willmar, Minnesota, a small town in Kandiyohi County, 90 miles west of the Twin Cities. Kandiyohi County, like much of rural Minnesota, is a Republican stronghold, going for Trump by a 25-point margin in both 2016 and 2020. Plenty of my friends, friends’ parents and former teammates voted for Donald Trump.

Now, I attend the University of Minnesota and live in Minneapolis, a city that went for Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020 by massive margins. Nearly all of my college friends voted for Biden.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about the last few years of our political climate and how it impacted my life. It turned into an endless cycle of pushing and pulling. First, President Trump would tweet something that was admittedly ridiculous. Then, half of my friends would say that it wasn’t a big deal (sometimes they were right), and half of my friends would say that what Trump said was — well — ridiculous (usually they were right).

That, however, isn’t what or who I’m writing about in this column. In my view, public policy and our individual differences in policy preference need to be discussed far more than they currently are. Over the last four years, attacks have turned more personal — ad hominem — rather than staying focused on differences on social and economic issues.

Instead, I’m writing about those who have somehow written off the more than 74 million Trump voters as no more than unintelligent, racist homophobes, or as former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton previously called half of Trump supporters, a “basket of deplorables.”

Am I smarter, nicer or morally superior than half of my friends — 46.8% of America — simply because I voted for Biden instead of Trump?

I wholeheartedly argue no. As former presidential candidate Andrew Yang put it, if a slim minority of voting Americans do something, we better do our best to understand it.

Being a Trump supporter and being a good person aren’t mutually exclusive. Our country would be in a better place if my fellow Biden supporters could agree to this simple statement: Trump supporters are also generally good people who want to see America improve. I’ve long been critical of Trump, and I will continue to be. I don’t think he was a good president — it’s that simple. But he did inspire a massive movement with a passionate base, one that we all need to aim to truly understand. Just because I write off Trump as a bad president doesn’t mean I need to write off millions of Americans as bad, too. He didn’t just pack rallies with homophobic antisemites (though those people were, of course, there). He filled those rallies with moms, dads and my neighbors.

And I get it, the argument that we just need to be nicer to other people is a tough sell. I often times will take a political lens on these issues, and I’ll do it again here. I want to get my friends to vote for the same people who I vote for. In the most recent presidential election, that person was Biden. The worst way to do that is to describe the other side’s people as racist, homophobic, or unintelligent. The best way to do that is to keep the conversation civil and tied to policy. For the most part, Trump voters’ concerns were in good faith.

We are in the heat of an impeachment trial at the conclusion of a tense election season, and I’m certain there is plenty of bitterness on both sides. That’s the main reason I wanted to write this column. Valentine’s Day is coming up this weekend. Don’t just love your significant other. Love liberals. Love conservatives. Love Biden voters. Love Trump voters. Love each other. In many ways, we are far more alike than we are different.

Or, as an Iowa fan said to me and my friends last year at Kinnick Stadium, “I don’t care if you cheer for the Democrats, Republicans, Gophers or Hawkeyes. At the end of the day, we’re all on the same team.”

Don’t worry, Gopher fans. “We Hate Iowa” still applies — but only on the gridiron and in the stands.

As a political science major, I did plenty of watching and listening in the lead-up to the 2020 election, especially the Democratic primary. Everyone had their schtick. Bernie wanted universal, single-payer healthcare. Andrew Yang wanted a universal basic income. Tulsi Gabbard wanted to end the wars. Elizabeth Warren had a plan for anything and everything.

While each of these could-be presidents had a policy or policies they were known for, President Joe Biden gave vague-but-meaningful stump speeches on “healing the soul of the nation.” His victory speech on Nov. 7 had a similar message.

Let me start here: He’s right. After all, studies have shown that the United States is more politically polarized today than any time since the Civil War. (Read that last sentence again!). The issue I have isn’t Biden’s message; my issue is his lack of a meaningful policy proposal to heal polarization. With little insight or detail into Biden’s plan to heal our political divide, may I suggest we start with ranked-choice voting (RCV)?

Under RCV, voters can rank their first, second, third, fourth (and so on) choices. If no candidate is the first choice of the true majority (more than 50%) of voters, RCV comes into play. The candidate with the fewest first-place votes is removed from contention. Anyone who voted for said candidate will automatically have their second choice calculated. This process is continued until a candidate gets above the 50% threshold.

Currently, most American elections require the winning candidate to have a plurality (the most votes) to win. In these races, a candidate could win with 34% of the vote if three candidates ran. In this system especially, the possibility of a “spoiler” candidate forces voters to choose someone they think can win. Because of this, votes for a third-party candidate are usually meaningless.

Our current system force-feeds Americans into choosing between the Democrat or Republican, even though recent polling shows that 45% of Americans identify as independents. Why do we operate under a two-party system when 45% of Americans don’t identify themselves with either of the two parties? From the same Gallup poll, 24% of Americans are Republicans and 30% are Democrats.

Why do we allow a system where the outer 54% rip apart the inner 45%? In RCV, it would likely be the exact opposite. Since candidates would need to build a coalition of more than 50% of voters, they would have to appeal to a wider range of voters, likely shifting politics more toward the political center. Regardless of where we shift politically though, it would automatically shift to make our government more representative of its voters while also relieving polarization. In a representative democracy, that’s the goal, right?

Our current primary system not only allows divisive rhetoric from candidates — it encourages it. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a newly-elected Republican congresswoman from Georgia, is the latest example of the political benefits of being divisive. Greene has pushed several conspiracy theories, from the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting being fake to a laser beam in space being the culprit behind the 2018 wildfires. (Yes, she actually said that.) Under an RCV system, candidates would be forced to build broader coalitions. Meddling ridiculous conspiracies might currently work to win a primary, but it could almost never work to get a true majority of support in an RCV election.

Divisive rhetoric from a candidate like Donald Trump — one who essentially called fellow candidate Ted Cruz’s wife ugly — should have no place in a political exchange. But the current system rewards it. Then, after primary candidates tear each other down, voters are forced to choose between the lesser of two evils in the general election.

Whenever people are forced to choose between two rivals — whether it be the Packers and the Vikings or Democrats and Republicans — it only raises the temperature in the room. The difference between professional sports and politics, though, is that the public should not have to be torn apart because of an election. Under our current voting system, this will sadly always be the case.

Joe Biden won the general election, finishing with the most votes by a winning candidate in our nation’s history. It is fair to say that many of those voters cast their ballot for change and healing. RCV is a great start, but just that: a start. A less-divisive nation is like Rome; it isn’t built in a day. Change takes time. I know I write for a college newspaper, and not too many would want to spend their weekend reading a public policy book by a 20-year-old, but stay tuned: This discussion on solving polarization is far from over.

I begrudgingly voted for Joe Biden in the general election. Like many Biden voters, though, it wasn’t so much a pro-Biden vote as it was an anti-Trump vote. I was — am — worried about Trump’s divisive and destructive rhetoric. The insurrection at the Capitol that he incited (at least according to me, every House Democrat, and 10 House Republicans) proves my point.

For many, the bar for President Biden is low. On the floor low. After all, he won’t be sending mean Tweets, making fun of people with disabilities, downplaying a pandemic or lying about the existence of widespread voter fraud, right?

If my first column does anything, I hope it cautions people against this “vote blue no matter who” line of thinking. Donald Trump and his divisiveness was far more so a symptom of our nation’s underlying problems than he was the problem itself. We still have massive wealth inequality, more than anytime since the Great Depression. Pre-pandemic, we still had 34 million Americans (including 10.5 million children) living in poverty. We still have nearly 30 million Americans without health insurance.

These are problems that didn’t vanish when Trump left office, and they won’t go away if Biden continues his moderate, “diet-Republican,” stance to fix these issues. In the richest country in the world, poverty is a policy choice.

But poverty and wealth inequality didn’t begin with Trump. In fact, two former Democratic presidents that are, for some reason, beloved — Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — saw wealth inequality grow during their presidencies as well.

I see Biden’s presidency going one of two ways: It could be Clinton 3.0, or it could be FDR 2.0. His first 100 days are crucial in determining the future of our nation.

If Clinton 3.0 is anything like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama’s neoliberal, moderate presidencies, it would lead to a continued destruction of the middle class and losing the Senate and/or House in the midterm, followed by a historically bad Republican (George W. Bush/Donald Trump) being elected in four or eight years.

If FDR 2.0 is anything like the original FDR, it would lead to the flourishing of the average worker and the middle class, and lead to Democrats holding onto the White House for the next two decades. FDR 2.0, from my perspective, would mean expanding workers’ rights, raising the minimum wage, passing a massive infrastructure bill, and creating a substantial new social program, i.e. Medicare For All.

Remember, in the 1930s, Social Security was controversial. Now, it would be political suicide for a politician to push against Social Security. Medicare For All would be in the same position.

Of voters, 69% support Medicare For All, while 67% of Americans support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

The determining factor will be what Biden does and doesn’t deliver to the working class, especially in his first 100 days. If Biden and the Democrats want to be popular, do popular things! (Revolutionary statement, I know.) It’s currently day eight, and Biden has done little other than reverse Trump-era executive orders and be a genuinely nice person, though not to belittle either of these. If it hasn’t been made clear yet, I’m not optimistic he’ll deliver to the working class, either.

My point is this: Democrats sold the majority of Americans on voting for Biden, because it would save us from Trump. House Democrats (with 10 Republicans) impeached Trump, with a Senate trial pending. Even an unlikely conviction in the Senate only saves us from Trump himself. Trumpism is far from over, especially if the Democrats take a Clinton 3.0 approach in the first 100 days.

If Democrats are as worried about Trumpism as they claimed to be leading up to the Democratic primary and general election, take a look back at history. The best way to avoid Trump and Trumpism is to be a bold, worker-friendly president like FDR, not a moderate, politics-as-usual president, like Clinton or Obama.

President Biden has an opportunity in his first 100 days to cement himself as an FDR-esque president. Think big. His $1.9 trillion stimulus proposal with $1,400 checks, $400 per week increase in unemployment insurance benefits, money for vaccine distribution and more should not be taken lightly. It is a great first step, but it’s far from enough.

So, with Biden assuming office less than 10 days ago, the nation is at a crossroads. Will we return to an FDR-esque era where the middle class thrives? Or, will it be politics as usual, where the middle class continues to disappear, leaving a 2024 GOP candidate as bad as Trump bound for the White House?

Ask me in 100 days — I should have a better idea.