The day everyone has been talking about for months and months finally came and went. November 8, 2016, Election Day. For me, as well as many others, this was my first time being able to vote in the election. I was happy to exercise my right to vote in this election, but I never thought that my first time voting would be between these two candidates. Let’s be honest, if anyone was to say at the previous election that the 2016 election would come down to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, everyone would be laughing. But now it’s stopped being a joke. You had a Republican nominee who is a millionaire, a celebrity, and a business man with no political background whatsoever. Then you had the democratic nominee Hillary Clinton who has been secretary of state, was a First Lady, and is the first woman to ever be a candidate for president of the United States.
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Although the election is now over, it will be talked about for a while and will certainly be historical. Trump is the first candidate to win who hasn’t had any background in politics, while Hillary would have been the first women president. 2016 certainly has been quite the time to be alive with everything that has happened this year. Unlike the other campaigns for presidency in the past, not much politics have been discussed. Every campaign mostly was just banter going back and forth between the two candidates. More and more things would come out every day that would make each candidate look bad. Well, some more than others. It seemed like each candidate was always defending themselves for what leaked out into the media like Hillary’s emails and Trump’s “locker room talk.”
This election had to certainly be the first one that was driven by social media. Between Twitter updates and feuds, Facebook posts, and Snapchat filters, it just got out of hand. Many people would put snapchat filters on the candidates during the debates, making them look silly while others were critiquing every character in a Tweet. Snapchat even had filters that users could use bashing the other candidate.
While, in some aspects, this election was certainly entertaining, I am sick of it and I know I’m not alone. I just want my Facebook feed to stop being filled with politics and for it to back to being filled with cute animal videos and people complaining about their day.
Although we elected a new president, I don’t think all of this back and forth banter on social media will go away anytime soon. A lot of people are going to be mad at the outcome of this election and might already have their bags packed for another country. So whether you wanted to “Make America Great Again,” or you were “WIith Her,” be mindful of others’ opinions and let’s just hope America doesn’t fall apart in the next four years.