Lecture: Presidential Elections in the USA 2020

On Tuesday, 11th February, 2020, Mrs. Natalia Rankine-Galloway from the DAZ, the Deutsch-Amerikanisches Zentrum in Stuttgart, hold a lecture about the presidential election in the USA this year for the students of grade 12 at the TG. After a short introduction Mrs. Rankine-Galloway informed us about the governmental system in the US. We considered the parties of the legislative, the judges of the judicative, the presidential term of the executive and we took a look at the system of checks and balances. At the timeline of elections we all made a short group experiment to understand the long presidential election process in the US in the following months. Mrs. Rankine-Galloway showed us some diagrams about the enormous costs of the election campaign of each presidential candidate and we took a closer look at the two-party-system in the US. Together we compared the advertising videos of the two parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party and talked about their debating topics. The Democrats, also called the 'Donkeys', advertise with topics like healthcare for everyone and the problems of climate change. On the other hand, Trump's party, the Republicans, also called the 'Elephants', stand for a strict foreign policy and free gun control. Following, Natalia presented us the reasons why Trump won the 2016 election and his chances for a second term as President of the United States. At the end of the lecture there was some time left for questions and the students asked about topics like "Is the election system of the US really democratic?" and "Has the Impeachment process a bad influence on Donald Trump in this year's election? We want to thank Mrs.Rankine-Galloway from the DAZ for the really interesting lecture in a pleasant and open atmosphere.

Paul Naas, TGTM 12