As the 2024 presidential election approaches, students — many of whom are voting for the first time — are making decisions about who to cast their ballot for. The News sat down for interviews with the respective representatives of the Northeastern College Democrats and Northeastern College Republicans to gauge their views on both candidates, who they’re voting for and what their outlook on some of this election’s most contested policy issues are. 

Bledar Velic is a fourth-year political science and economics combined major and the president of the Northeastern College Democrats. He was not old enough to vote in 2020, but said he would have cast his ballot for President Joe Biden. In 2024, he will be voting for Vice President Kamala Harris.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Huntington News: I want to start by tracking your political values. Would you label yourself a liberal?

Velic: I would say, yeah, a liberal — probably a social liberal. I believe in capitalism and the free market. I believe that we should have a redistributive government system in which those that are the most well-off pay in and support those that need it most. I believe in LGBTQ rights. I’m very pro-immigration and the mixing of cultures. I’m very pro-racial equality. I would say one of the key personal political views I hold is a belief in a very radical housing policy. I don’t think that there should be stuff like zoning laws, as long as you want to build something you should be able to build it.

Foreign policy-wise, I believe the U.S. should be very diplomatically involved with other countries. We should have free trade with a bunch of different countries and have a very interwoven economic system with other sorts of democracies — and with countries that we respect. 

HN: At Northeastern, there is a political divide between those who identify as liberals and those who have more progressive views. Some of these progressive students are withholding their vote for Harris. How would you convince them to put their differences aside and vote for her?

Velic: I would say that [the dynamic] comes down to specific things, like the Biden administration’s stance on Palestine. I also do not fully endorse how the administration has handled the issue. But I think Harris will likely be a lot better on this than Biden. 

It’s important to note that Biden is a lot older and he has these old American foreign policy views ingrained within him. I think that Harris has sort of broken away from that. When Netanyahu came [to Washington D.C.], she didn’t even attend his speech in front of Congress and she didn’t meet with him (HN: While Harris did skip Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, she later met with Netanyahu during his visit). So I would say on that front, it’s a step in the right direction. 

HN: Voters blame President Biden for the high inflation we saw peak in 2022, as well as for the rise in illegal immigration at the southern border. Why should voters who found issues with some of Biden’s policies vote for Harris when she shares so many of his views?

Velic: I would say that on a lot of these issues you can’t really blame specific Biden administration policies. Biden inherited a very inflationary economy and he has done a lot to bring it down … when it comes to inflation. … Inflation is an economic reality but a policy hard truth, which is that we can bring the rate of change down but the prices will never go back, because if they did, that would mean a cascading recession. 

And if you don’t want higher prices, then we need to continue these sorts of Biden administration ideas, because Trump literally proposed a 10% tariff on all imported goods, which is a significant portion of the economy. That is literally just inflation. It’s anti-market to just destroy the economy for some foolish goose chase running after manufacturing jobs. 

HN: Speaking of Biden, there are those that doubt Harris’ integrity, as they perceive her to have helped hide or distort the reality about Biden’s rumored cognitive decline. Was Harris concealing this from the public? Is this a fair criticism? And if so, how can she be trusted to be honest with the American people?

Velic: Electorally, saying that your guy is cooked — it’s just not good politics. 

So Harris, as vice president, obviously was in very frequent contact with Biden, and sure he had his stutters and … bad moments. But Harris was also working alongside Biden, seeing his good moments, and we can still see the good moments right now. Like, there’s that clip of Biden going around playing with that guy with a Trump hat, and he’s joking with the guy. You can tell that he’s coherent. He doesn’t see a Trump hat and doesn’t understand what it is. What it very clearly seems to be is that he’s had good moments and bad moments. 

HN: Onto the environment and climate change. In 2019 Harris said, “There’s no question, I’m in favor of banning fracking.” Today, her position has done a complete 180, and she recently said that, “We can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.” 

What would you say to the progressives and environmentalists who feel betrayed by this shift and see it as evidence that Harris has placed the climate crisis near the bottom of her policy agenda?

Velic: I think that the Democratic Party still does prioritize these issues among themselves. But the swing states that this entire race hinges upon don’t care about the climate. Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona. … These are places that don’t have to deal with rising tides and stuff like that, so you can’t really promote that as much, especially when we have to acknowledge that climate change requires people to make sacrifices. So I think [the Democratic Party] shining the light away from climate issues is more of a political thing. 

And then the banning fracking thing, honestly, it’s sort of in its dying stage. Every Democratic candidate has said they’re not going to ban fracking. I think it’s more important that we look at what the Biden administration has done, which is passing the Inflation Reduction Act, which is projected by 2030 to reduce our emissions by 15%, … the most in the history of this country. So I think if we just see more policies like that coming out, it would have exponential change.

HN: The Biden administration remains a clear outlier when compared to the last 20 years of data in terms of the sheer number of illegal migrants that have crossed into the country. Although these numbers have fallen in recent months, what makes you so confident that we wouldn’t see another mishandling of the border under her presidency, as it was to a certain degree already under her purview during the last four years?

Velic: Again, it’s sort of a two-prong thing. The explosion [in illegal immigration] started under Trump and then it continued under Biden, and now we’ve reached the lowest rate in four years (HN: the rate is now at a three-year low). It just seems like an ebb and flow of migration, mainly driven by a lot of issues within Central American countries. So I don’t think that we’ll see such a major explosion again, and I don’t think it was due to either Trump or Biden’s policies. It was just more the geopolitics that drove that. 

But I will say that on the other prong, I don’t care. I don’t think that illegal migration is a problem. I think the more people that are within our country, the better. We see it all over the country how there’s all these dying towns that are being brought back to life because migrants are coming in. I think that the big issue with all these people coming in is there just wasn’t the means to process them and then where to place them. 

And that’s why I like what Harris has been saying about our housing policy, which is to build more housing. I think the number she’s been saying is 3 million new homes. I think we need more, but it’s a step in the right direction since we’re becoming a more bountiful America. I want an America that will grow, and I think Harris will encourage that.

HN: President Biden has for months attempted to achieve a ceasefire in Israel and Gaza but has failed. As the humanitarian crisis in Gaza continues, the chances of a war between Israel and Hezbollah picks up day by day, and American troops in Iraq and Syria are under constant fire from Iranian proxies, what makes you think that Harris will prove more successful at achieving a ceasefire, given that she has much less foreign policy experience than Biden does?

Velic: I think that she will probably be a little bit more of a hardliner on Israel because — and I haven’t been following this as much in terms of the specific deals being pushed — but there have been these sorts of deals that have been floated that the Israeli [cabinet] has not signed onto because the hardliners within that government don’t want the conflict to end. 

For them, it’s very advantageous to keep it going because it’s electorally good for them, and some of them are just evil. Just like how this is the same case with Hezbollah and Hamas, I’m not saying it’s any different. But the U.S. does have an outsized influence on the policies of Israel. And I think that [Harris], and we’ve already seen her shove off Netanyahu and stuff like that, will be a lot more of a hardliner and bring both sides to the table.  

HN: I recently interviewed the vice president of the Northeastern College Republicans, and I asked him which question he would most like to see you answer. Here is his question: If you were to place Harris’ views on an ideological spectrum, where would she stand?

Velic: I would say that she is between a Bernie Sanders and a Joe Manchin, which is like … she’s center left. As she is right now, I see her as right in the center of the Democratic Party. 

HN: Do you see her as being more left than Biden? 

Velic: It’s a weird case here because on certain issues, she is [more left than Biden] and on certain issues she’s not. It sort of averages out to being about the same. I think that the way we’re going to see her run is going to be very similar to how Biden ran.

HN: There are those who would argue that Harris is not ready for the job of president. Imagine she were to win in November — what kind of situation would she have to, for lack of a better term, “fumble” in order for you to concede that Harris was indeed not ready for the presidency?

Velic: It’s a little bit difficult, because of the nature of the presidency, especially if she comes in and she doesn’t have the legislature behind her. But I would say that any sort of snafus regarding foreign policy are probably gonna be the clearest because these more directly fall upon the president. 

So I would see any sorts of these issues, like not supporting Ukraine’s needs [as a “fumble”]. I would also say, and this has reflected poorly on the Biden administration, but letting a situation like [the recent] Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict happen — where a country just fully invades another country, genocides the people, and no one steps up to it because of complicated geopolitics is another example. … So if she has her hands off the wheel in terms of foreign policy, I think that would be a very clear indication that she wasn’t ready for the presidency.