March 3 brings the Democratic primary election to California, but many are unsure who they should vote for. If Americans actually want to solve the problems of the country, the best candidate to turn to is Bernie Sanders.

The only Democratic candidate running for election the past year that truly represents the will of the American people is Sanders because he is the only one who will fight corruption and fight for what the people want.

One of the most common arguments made by critics of Sanders on the left is that he’s too old to be president. However, the assumption that he’s unfit to assume the role of president is hypocritical and factless.

Sanders may have lived for a long time, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t healthy. Unfortunately, Sanders suffered a heart attack in the first week of October last year, which sparked a lot of the debate around age being a factor in the value of a president.

 However, Sanders only spent a couple of days in the hospital and was already feeling better in the following weeks. Sanders was back on the campaign trail in little time, and just three weeks after the incident, Sanders held a rally in New York which ended up being the largest rally of 2019, with an estimated 26,000 Americans attending the event.

“I had two stents put in, because it turned out one of my arteries was blocked up, ” said Sanders in an interview with Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show that November. “It was a procedure done about a million times a year. I was out of the hospital in two and a half days, and I’ve felt better ever since.” Sanders then proceeded to play basketball with Fallon, hardly something critics would tell you he was capable of.

Age has never been a point of criticism in the past. The amount of influential leaders in the world who guided countries well into old age is numerous. Nelson Mandela was 80 years old when he ended his term as president of South Africa. The queen of England is 93 years old, and still around. Even the patron deity of white liberals, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who is 79 and still in office, is older than Sanders! 

Whether a presidential candidate is a viable choice for that candidate’s party in the election relies on two specific strengths: policy and electability. Fortunately, Sanders ticks both boxes, as his platform is one that best represents the needs of the American people, and he has the grassroots support to easily beat Donald Trump in the general election.

Sanders’s platform is the only one that is willing to go all the way in securing what the people of America want. Many of the other Democratic candidates build their policy in the same direction but don’t go far enough, which ends up creating policies that don’t represent what people want.

One of Sanders’s strongest stances is his belief in “Medicare for All.” Sanders believes in a single-payer system that will get rid of the private insurance companies that are screwing over Americans again and again. This will provide all citizens with a comprehensive health care system at no cost.

“Health care is a human right, not a privilege,” said Sanders in a major address at George Washington University in July of 2019.

The problem with other Democrats’ plans for universal health care is that they either don’t provide health care to everyone, or they allow private health insurance companies to persist.

Many critics believe that Sanders’s Medicare for All plan isn’t feasible, because of it’s cost. Medicare for All is expected to cost $32 trillion dollars over the next 10 years, which can be a daunting number at first glance. 

However, Sanders has many plans to raise money for his programs, including a wealth tax on the wealthiest 0.1% of households, and a tax on Wall Street speculators through the Inclusive Prosperity Act Financial Transaction tax, which can be read on Sanders’s website, berniesanders.com.

Medicare For All could reduce the total health care spending of the country by 10%, according to a study released by PERI at the University of Massachussets, cited by the Sanders campaign. This system could end up saving us money, not costing us. 

Another policy Sanders takes the extra mile on is getting rid of student debt. Unlike the other candidates, Sanders promises to cancel all student debt, a total of $1.6 trillion dollars, for 45 million Americans. Freeing former college students, many of which never even were able to graduate with a degree, from overlying financial burdens will allow them to be productive contributors to society again. 

“In the wealthiest country in the history of the world, it is simply not acceptable, that our younger generation, through no fault of their own, will have a lower standard of living than their parents, more debt, lower wages, and less likelihood of owning their own homes,” Sanders said in June 2019 about his plan to cancel student loan debt.

Sanders is easily the most electable out of all the Democratic candidates, simply because he has the most grassroots support from the people. Plenty of the other candidates are reaching high amounts of support, but only Sanders has raised the most amount of money almost purely through regular, working-class people.

 Sanders’s campaign announced in September 2019 that they had reached one million individual contributors, one of the fastest campaigns to reach that amount in history. 

Almost all of Sander’s contributions are from every-day Americans, and yet he manages to easily raise the most campaign support almost every quarter. In the fourth quarter of last year, Sander’s campaign announced that they had raised $34.5 million at the end of the year, a staggering amount compared to other candidates, such as Buttigieg, whose campaign announced they raised $24.7 million in that quarter.

When you consider that the Sanders campaign also announced that their average donation in that quarter was about 18 bucks, it’s obvious that a large amount of the country supports him.

It’s why he won the popular vote in Iowa. It’s why he won New Hampshire. The other candidates may have the support of the DNC (Democratic National Committee), or the news media, or wealthy donors, but only Sanders has the pure will of the people behind him, nothing more, nothing less. His campaign is one of energy and enthusiasm unheard of in the past. It’s why he’s going to win the nomination. It’s why he’s going to beat Donald Trump. It’s why he’s going to reshape our democracy so it works for us. The people.

“If we and the 99 percent stand together,” said Sanders in a Venice Beach rally last December. “If we don’t allow Trump and his allies to divide us up based on the color of our skin, or where we were born, or our religion, or our sexual orientation; if we stand together; if we have the courage to take on the greed and corruption of the corporate elite; if we are prepared to bring our friends and our family into the political struggle; if we have a vision of a just and humane society in front of us; brothers and sisters, when we stand together, when we fight together, there is nothing we cannot accomplish!”

If you would like to support Bernie Sanders or inform yourself of everything else he is fighting for, please visit berniesanders.com.