The Democratic Candidates on the Death Penalty

With the 2016 political candidates making their opinions known regarding hot button topics, the views on the death penalty of Democratic candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have finally been made clear. Clinton is in favor of the death penalty in egregious cases, while Sanders believes the death penalty should be completely demolished.

If you've read any of my posts so far, you probably already know what I'm going to say here - Sanders has the right idea, Clinton doesn't make very good decisions (surprise, surprise), and the death penalty is a Very Bad Thing that shouldn't exist. At the same time, however, I do understand the reasoning behind supporting the death penalty. The argument is that if a person were to murder or rape or do some other unforgivable crime, then the best option is to kill them before they can do something completely reprehensible again.

However, I think there is a flaw there - the death penalty is killing people who kill in order to show that killing people is wrong. When you try to set an example by doing the exact thing you are going against, your message becomes muddled and hypocritical and setting these higher punishments only encourages people to try and slip through the cracks.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that Sanders is a pretty neat guy and you should probably be paying attention to him and the points he's trying to make. If you want to know more about the political parties and their stance on the death penalty, you should take a look at this graph:

(source)