It's August (well, late August) and that means a very important day is fast approaching in this country. A very important day indeed, and no, it's not the opening week for the National Football League (Go Falcons by the way). It's Election Day, the first Tuesday in November to determine who will follow President Barrack Obama into the White House. This is also the first presidential election that my age group (the 1995 babies) get to vote in and to be perfectly honest, the two big party candidates have left me personally wondering, has it really come down to this? Of all the people in the country involved in politics, we get the two people we now have before us.
Let's start off with the Democrats because they're always a fun group! Their nominee for the race to the White House is Hillary Clinton. The former first lady and current Secretary of State made history back in July by becoming the first woman to clinch the presidential nomination in American history. While America has been long overdue for a woman as a Presidential nominee, Clinton does not come without her baggage (roll out Jerry Springer and Clinton's small, medium & giant suitcases!) Mrs. Clinton has been involved in quite the scandal over classified documents and information she reportedly received in her personal email account. Of course, despite the overwhelming case built up against her, no charges will be brought.
To add to this her actions, or lack thereof, resulted in the deaths of four Americans, one of them being a diplomat who was sent to one of the most dangerous regions in the world with a skeleton of a security force. Oh, so you're going to Benghazi where there are thousands of terrorist sympathizers? Let's give you three guys to protect you and put you in a house where you can be cut off and surrounded very easily. Very Dan Sickles of you! (I tried to force that history joke in there and I don't think it worked). The deaths of Americans abroad gets me more than the emails. Now I know they are related, but when it comes to the whole Benghazi situation, the biggest crime Hillary (or as her enemies know her as, "Killary") is guilty of is not doing enough to protect Americans abroad. How can I, a person going into the military after graduation, be shipped off somewhere and truly know if the chief executive has my back? The trust is gone.
She got even further from the truth in this very presidential race. As the campaign got closer to the DNC in Philadelphia, the race for the Democratic Nomination came down between Clinton and a Senator from Vermont named Bernie Sanders. Mr. Sanders was quite popular around the country with his supporters "Feeling the Bern". They felt something...not the Bern but an actual BURN when Sanders was not able to clinch the nomination. In several states across the country it was seen that Clinton's supporters including the former DNC chair had a great deal to do with hindering any votes going towards Sen. Sanders. Whether or not Mr. Sanders' plans for running the country could have succeeded is still widely speculated but what I personally admired about him (and this is coming from a Republican) was that his message in politics has been the same for the over fifty years he has been involved: Income Equality. It's rare to find someone in politics who rarely, if not, changes their main message.
When Hillary announced her candidacy, the GOP should have been jumping for joy. Whoever their candidate would be, they'd be going up against a person with a huge pile of dirty laundry being dragged in the bag behind them. The likelihood of a Republican in the White House was highly likely...and then Donald Trump announced his bid for the Presidency in June 2015. Fast forward to July 2016 and a couple of suspiciously looking Nazi salutes later, Mr. Trump is the GOP Nominee. Yup...our odds just went south again.
From the beginning, Mr. Trump has done nothing but cause controversy. I must admit, I think he has the potential to be a good president. He's succeeded and failed in business so he knows both sides of the coin which is a good thing because you never want someone who's experienced just one and not the other. His problem though is he doesn't know when to keep his freakin' mouth shut! Whether he intended to or not, he looped all Mexicans into a negative stereotype calling them (and look up his first address as a candidate if you don't believe me) "rapists" and "murderers". He wants to construct a huge (or as the Donald would say YUGE!) wall on our southern border as a way to stop immigration but I guess he's never heard the phrase "Show me a 17 foot wall and I'll show you an 18 foot ladder." All the wall would do is lose this country even more money that could have been spent in, gee I don't know, saving underfunded schools across the nation. The point is, illegal immigrants are by definition criminals and they will do whatever it takes to get here, therefore a giant wall on our border will NOT stop them.
He has also raised eyebrows in reactions to recent acts of violence in the US and abroad, particularly when it comes to ISIS-involved events. After attacks in Paris and Brussels, and the mass shooting in Orlando, Mr. Trump has called for a "temporary ban" of Muslim immigration. What's worse still is that he has also called for American Muslims to be registered in a special database and have their houses of worship monitored by government agencies, in short taking away religious freedom for a group of people out of fear. Many of Trump's supporters, who are on board with these ideas, are pro 2nd amendment and stand against any gun control measure because it is not right to punish law abiding citizen's constitutional right to own a firearm (which I'm on board with 110%). If it's so wrong to punish all law abiding & gun owning Americans because of the actions of a few, then why is it okay to do it to law abiding Muslim-Americans for the same exact reason? Before you tell me these are separate issues, I argue that they are not. We are talking about stripping people's CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS out of fear.
What gets me even more are the supporters for the GOP candidate. I can't really say anything about the supporters of Clinton because I have yet to meet any of them. But the ones who back Trump (MOST, not all), I just don't have the words to describe them. Those who support the GOP candidate rebuke those who stand against him saying: "You only hate him because he says mean things!" These same people then get butt hurt when a member of the US Olympic Fencing team (who happens to be Muslim) says on camera that she fears for her life everyday in the US and that she had been followed. I don't understand the problem, I mean isn't she just...how should I put this..."Telling it like it is"? Although to be fair, they are just following their candidate's example. Mr. Trump is allowed to insult whoever he wants but if the Washington Post writes something mean about him, then Mr. Trump takes away their press credentials. Not allowing them to come to his events is another violation of one's constitutional rights.
When it comes to the 2016 Presidential Election, we, as Americans, have a difficult choice to make. We can choose between a candidate who has a bad habit of losing emails or a candidate who struggles with fact checking.
OR we don't have to choose either one! Listen up America! There are not just two political parties in our political system! I know, right? I mean sure, George Washington and our other Founders warned us against political factions but we were like "You like political parties, we've got twenty!" (Please pick up on the Disney reference) There are two third party candidates running for office: Jill Stein and Gary Johnson. Two people who actually give a damn about the United States and its people unlike the two clowns who pretend that they do. It may not be a bad option to go Green or Libertarian. We are long overdue for a conscientious and decent president.
