Katerina Mansour
       Staff Writer

Bernie Sanders is probably one of the most unexpected, viable candidates for a presidential election in U.S. history; put simply, nobody anticipated that he would get as far as he has.

Yet, it appears that millennials are the ones carrying his campaign and possibly one of the only groups of people prepared to elect him to the world’s highest office. And it is where I see problems arise.

My argument is that even though Sanders is, in my view, the best presidential candidate, it is near impossible for him to actually be elected. However, I would love nothing more than to be proven wrong and see him become our next president.

Sanders has a great deal going against him in terms of what Americans expect and want to see in their next president.

You think Americans have raised drama over their belief that Obama is a Muslim? I can’t imagine what some might say about a Jewish president, let alone a democratic socialist, Jewish president.

While Americans do tend to favor Judaism over Islam, there are still deep seeded feelings of resentment and prejudice against Jewish people.

However, even that is no match to Sanders’ socialist position. The U.S. has a long history with communism and socialism; one that often leads people to confuse the two or lump them together.

It seems that fear and loathing for anything even remotely related to socialism is ingrained in the American mind. Unfortunately, portions of voters have already cast Sanders out of their minds due to these two factors.

His potential voters shrink even more once we get into some of his policies, such as free education, decreased military involvement, higher taxes for the wealthy and corporations, not to mention his disdain for capitalism.

Most Americans completely shut him out when they hear about these plans, because this is America, and in America the majority of people support capitalism, wall street, big banks, big business, no government involvement unless it has to do with a woman’s uterus and aggressive foreign policy that accumulates trillions of dollars of debt due to continuous warfare.

The cost of financing Sanders’ policies seems to be a critical argument used against him, yet the same is very seldom brought up when Republican candidates advocate for foreign policies that only add to the nation’s deficits and debts.

The country is already in more debt than we can even fathom. I’d much rather we continue to be in debt while students can access free education and health care and have a fair chance at securing a good job and living a prosperous life than continue on the current path; or, even worse, becoming more aggressive in the international sphere, while implementing policies that help the rich get richer and force the poor to get poorer.

We live in a country where corporations and the top one percent play far too large a role in influencing politics, especially presidential elections. The interests of the few determine the future of the many.

Sanders is against everything the U.S. has stood for over the past few decades, if not more.

Hence, it is impossible for me to see him as electable. The U.S. just isn’t ready yet. Even though millennials are fighting for Sanders, funding his campaign and investing more time and effort than ever, we can’t make up for the fact that not all millennials vote.

We like to make grand estimates about how many millennials there are, and the great potential we have to make a difference. All of this is true in theory; however in practice, very few of us have been voting.

According to Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, director of CIRCLE, a Tufts-based center that studies civic engagement among young Americans, only 19.9 percent of voters age 18-29 voted in the 2014 midterm elections. This number is significantly lower than the already low 24 percent that voted in 2010.

Of course, Weiss points out that voter turnout for presidential elections should inevitably be higher. According to government reports, voters from ages 18-29 represented 19 percent of the 2012 presidential election.

Much praise was given, as this was an increase in youth voter turnout; however, the increase was only one percent compared to the 2008 election.

I hate to be cynical here, but even if we increase another one percent in the next election, 20 percent turnout is certainly not a game-changing statistic. At least not with a candidate like Bernie Sanders. It might be for a candidate like Hillary Clinton, but certainly not for the Jewish democratic socialist.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that because of these factors, among many others, Bernie Sanders does not stand a real chance at winning our next presidential election.

While in a European context, there would be no questioning his viability; most leaders in Western Europe tend to implement policies very much like what Sanders proposes.

However, the U.S.’s mentality is far too different from Western Europe. In this country, it seems we’re stuck either stagnating or going backwards in terms of progress, especially when we consider that Donald Trump probably has a better chance at winning than Sanders does.

All I can say is, millennials, go out and vote. Let’s try our best to prove my theory wrong!