By: Conner Williams 
Editor-in-Chief

The first Democratic debate of the 2016 Presidential Election aired on CNN Tuesday night as the five candidates took the stage to hash it out over some of our nation’s biggest challenges.

The debate was moderated by Anderson Cooper and saw a record-high 15.3 million viewers, shattering the 2008 record when Barack Obama debated Hillary Clinton towards the end of the primaries.

And that’s what made the debate such a joy to watch: it was actually about the issues, rather than about exchanging personal attacks and calling people losers.

“On this stage … You didn’t hear anyone make racist comments about new American immigrants … You didn’t hear anyone speak ill of another American because of their religious beliefs … What you heard on this stage tonight was an honest search for the answers that’ll move our country forward,” said Martin O’Malley (D), former Governor of Maryland.

O’Malley then went on to commend millennials by saying “talk to our young people under the age of 30, because you’ll never see among them people that want to bash immigrants, or people that want to deny rights to gay couples. That tells me that we are moving to a more connected, generous and accomplished place.”

Bernie Sanders (I-VT) also addressed millennials, saying, “If we want free tuition at public colleges and universities, millions of young people are going to have to demand it.”

And we have the power to demand it. We make up the largest denomination of people in the United States, and we need to make our voices heard.

Every American needs to be concerned about the state of our crumbling infrastructure, our disgustingly broken for-profit student loan system, the notion that we have more people currently incarcerated than any other country on earth, and the fact that tens of millions of Americans currently do not have healthcare coverage.

Unlike the Republican debates, which centered on socially divisive and economically insignificant issues like abortion, illegal immigration and gay rights, the Democratic debate actually addressed some of the economic issues facing the American public, including income inequality, affordable college tuition, closing tax loopholes for the ultra-rich, and providing affordable healthcare.

I’m not downplaying the validity of discussions that center around social issues, but let’s be real, should we really be asking candidates if they would or wouldn’t attend a marriage between two gay people if they were invited, as was the case in the Republican debate? Are those kinds of questions really going to help us tackle some of the great issues facing us right now?

Probably not, but they tug at the emotions of the Republican audience and sound like they’re important issues. After all, campaign finance reform isn’t as flashy or divisive of a topic as, say, abortion or immigration, which Republicans use to hold negotiations hostage and that tend to become polarized discussions, meaning that they divide people rather than bring them together over serious issues that need addressing.

There are serious issues that need discussing, not the state of Donald Trump’s hair or Hillary Clinton’s “damn emails,” as Sanders so bluntly put it on Tuesday night.

In addition to defending his fellow candidate and treating her like an actual human being instead of attacking her character, Sanders also decided to explain his stance on our economic system of capitalism.

“Do I consider myself part of the casino-capitalism process by which so few have so much and so many have so little, by which Wall Street’s greed and recklessness wrecked this economy? No, I don’t,” Sanders said.

In the wake of the horrible tragedy that occurred at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., Clinton decided to take a risk and call out one of the largest lobbying powers in Washington.

“It’s time the entire country stood up against the [National Rifle Association],” Clinton said.

Clinton also called out the Republican Party’s sense of hypocrisy when it comes to denouncing the scope of the federal government.

“It’s always the Republicans or their sympathizers who say ‘you can’t have paid leave, you can’t provide healthcare,’ they don’t mind having big government interfere with a woman’s right to choose and to try to take down Planned Parenthood, they’re fine with big government when it comes to that, I’m sick of it,” Clinton said.

When it comes down to it, our greatest social and economic challenges will not be solved by closing the border and deporting hard-working people. In fact, we would be amiss to say that we are not dependent on the cheap labor that is supplied by a largely Latino-based workforce, like agriculture and service-based jobs that are essential to growing and supplying crops that feed the populace.

We will not fix the spiraling-out-of-control issue of income inequality by debating the Constitutional validity of the federal legalization of gay marriage, or the potential federal legalization of recreational marijuana use.

We will not change the broken higher education system that sends thousands of young people into crippling debt every year by threatening to shut down the government if a women’s healthcare organization is not defunded.

We’ve got to focus on the real issues at hand, not the click-bait surface material that the outlandish Republican Party so loves to provide the media.

Each one of us needs to properly educate ourselves about the issues facing all of us, and we need to make sure that we choose to elect a candidate that represents our interests, and not the issues of a few super-rich individuals.