With new polls coming in, presidential candidate and moderate liberal Jeremy Wenick has started to pick up momentum, catching up with front runners Azraf Khan, Katherine Sylvester, and Eva Herscowitz. The State Poll #1 results display Wenick winning 10% of the electoral votes and placing fourth out of the six total candidates. Wenick has been gaining widespread attention lately, both for his scandal of dressing up as a T-rex at Fantasy Con and for running a platform with a moderate ideology. However, despite all the progress he has made recently, Wenick has a serious problem that can potentially hinder him from eventually winning this election: he lacks a niche that distinguishes himself from other candidates. Since the beginning of the election, Wenick has lacked original ideas and has often just agreed with other candidates. In the discussions on Reich’s “Why the Rich Are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer,” and Galbraith’s “The Position of Poverty,” Wenick frequently agreed with various candidates of various ideologies, namely Azraf Khan and Shehrez Chaudhri. On the ideology spectrum, he is recently moving closer and closer to being another liberal Herscowitz.

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His large changes to his platform are likely to make voters extremely confused. What does he truly believe, and what actions he will take as president? When the election began, Wenick described himself as a moderate Democrat with a Conservative tax and economic platform. This position of Wenick’s has increasingly shifted towards the left over the course of the past days of the election and is often quite contradictory. With a recent discussion on the distribution of wealth based on Andrew Carnegie’s “The Gospel of Wealth,” Wenick appears to become more liberal in his views on tax reform. Although he continues to advocate for lowering business taxes and claims to “find common ground with [fellow candidate] Katherine Sylvester,” Wenick strongly supported taxing the wealthy in order to help the lower and middle class, more so than he was before. Wenick describes that this will prevent the top 1% from taking advantage of the middle and lower class. Wenick also brings up that the government should redistribute money to the people to aid small businesses. He wishes to promote competition between businesses, in addition to wanting to get rid of business loopholes. Many parts of Wenick’s tax reform platform contradict with each other, as he wants to heavily raise taxes on the wealthy but also wants to lower business taxes and reinforce America’s capitalistic market.   

Wenick’s platform issues have been recently attacked by other candidates. Republican candidate Max Gersch has tweeted:

 

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Fellow Democrat candidate Shehrez Chaudhri has also supported Gersch’s claim, as seen from his tweet on December 13:

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Wenick quickly addressed these issues; however, his response is not complete. It does not answer how Wenick will gain party support with a conflicting platform, nor does it detail his intentions in making such a platform. Personal beliefs? Appeal to voters? No one can tell for sure.

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Wenick’s standing in the election reflects this serious problem he has. Although he is picking up more votes now, without true identification with a party’s platforms and finding his own niche, he will face severe obstacles in becoming a frontrunner. While any candidate can add a twist to his or her own platform to make it unique, Wenick lacks the originality that would guarantee him a huge boost in attention and votes. Wenick, in his most recent speech, simply attacked other candidates and responded to his scandal. In the second half of his second speech, Wenick again simply attacks other candidate’s policies and makes a joke out of his scandal. He also brings up how he will “work” and will not make empty promises, but discusses how he will be sincere and asks for the people to believe in him. Wenick does not mention how he will attain virtues such as closing the wage gap or letting equality rein. Why? Perhaps he felt it was the best way to appeal to the audience. Or maybe because his ideas are too close to the ideas of many other candidates. Or perhaps his promises may just lack the depth that is required to outline a comprehensive plan.

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State Poll #2 reinforced this problem; the statements below are in response to why these states did not vote for Wenick.

Wahington: “Jeremy was not specific in with his policies on education”

Wyoming: “Jeremy was not extremely through when talking to us”

Virginia: “His platforms were pretty broad, for example the education platform: "to expand the opportunities of young minds and provide them with a diverse, hands-on learning experience that will well equip them for the workforce - regardless of socioeconomic status."