American voters have found themselves stuck between a rock and hard place recently, as the candidates for this years presidential election both rank amongst highest ever in unfavorability. According to a Washington Post news poll, a mere 37% of voters found Hillary Clinton trustworthy, this is not hard to believe due to email scandals, Benghazi, and accusations of Hillary playing the “Gender Card” to guilt votes out of women. On the contrary, Donald Trump has launched vicious attacks against entire religions and ethnic groups, endorsed the tactics of dictators, and has disrespected women around the globe, including his competition. All of this has led to the dubbing of this election “the battle between two evils” and has forced Americans to find comfort in the lesser of the two. When a classmate of mine was asked why he supported Hillary, he responded with, “I’m not technically with her, I’m just definitely not with him”
Is this what our democracy has come to?
As Americans, we should not have to base our choice of the next leader of our nation off of who’s evil we will not be on the receiving end of. Historically, voters supported the candidate that most closely upheld their social, environmental, and economic values, but this election is the reverse. A majority of Hillary voters do not support Hillary but just really dislike Trump. Bernie Sanders supporters have claimed they would rather support Trump, who campaigns an opposing view set, just out of spite for Hillary. Democracy has officially reached a high school level pettiness, due to the desperation of voters who feel like they have no options.
There are other options however, but many voters think voting for Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, holds the same gravity as not voting at all. So now comes the time where we must ask ourself as a nation, do our political parties need reform? Politics has become a business, nothing more than a career pathway, instead of being what it should be. Our founding fathers did not lay down their lives for Americans to have to settle for the devil they know versus the one they do not. Is this the beginning to the decline of democracy?
Sources:
http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/politics/washington-post-abc-news-national-poll-march-3-6-2016/1982/
