This political cycle has been bursting with excitement from day 1 and has had few, if any dry moments. The beginning seemed like years ago, back when Ben Carson was still a viable option, we hadn’t known about Hillary’s emails, and Trump running was still a joke. The real joke was on the Hillary supporters, who were certain Hillary had clinched the presidency, but, Wednesday morning was quite a disappointment for those supporters who had not watched the election live. Trump’s victory seemed to have come out of nowhere, as nearly all of the polls had predicted a Hillary win by a large margin.
While Trump is certainly not the ideal candidate, we should never encourage the failure of his presidency, that would mean he failed leading the country in which we all live. How is it that this election has people genuinely hoping for the demise of this country because of the president? A new person gets the job every four years, we will survive.
The president, for the most part, has to get the approval of Congress to pass anything. While the House and Senate are both held by Republicans, this election cycle has shown just how divided each party is, especially the Republican Party. There were no shortage of Republicans against the Trump presidency at the closing of the election. Some caused by the comments that Trump had made in the past, but also because of policy. At the end of the day, Republicans don’t want the end of this country, and if Trump does anything that truly threatens this country, they will stop him, because before they are Republicans, they are Americans.
Since the fallout of the election, many people have been demanding that president-elect Trump be taken out of office for one reason or another. I understand the feelings of anger, fear, and injustice many people are feeling, but there needs to be a line drawn at some point. It is one thing to be upset that Trump won the presidency, it’s another to spit in the face of democracy and demand he be taken out of office. While you may not agree with him or his policies, he did win the presidency.
An exorbitant amount of misinformation has been spreading about the nature of our election system.
The electoral college, not the popular vote is what determines who becomes president and this is not the first time some who did not win the popular vote become President of the United States of America. This means that a presidential candidate only needs to get 270 electoral votes to get the presidency, and chosen electors cast their votes sometime after the actual election. There have been times when the electors have, for whatever reason, voted against what their state chose, but they are called faithless electors. I have seen one too many posts calling for this years electors to vote against what their states have chosen and vote Hillary. If something like this were to happen, then we could never trust the electors to vote what the people choose again. I suppose if the true aim of this campaign is to abolish the Electoral College, then perhaps this action could be less deplorable, but for right now the system is still in place. We must act as if this system will still be in place for the future because no legislation has been introduced to abolish it. How is losing the trust in our own electoral system going to help this country? It just brings more chaos in an already stressful time.
The system that we have right now has been in place since the founding of this country; if you have a problem with it, then petition to have to changed for the next election cycle. Inform your state legislators, come up with a plan, do something, but do not try to abolish the current system without a idea for new system and a way to properly implement that plan. The electoral college is an old, archaic system for deciding the presidency and in my opinion, one that needs to go, and perhaps the Trump win is the wakeup call Americans needed for reform to happen.
We live in a democracy, disagreements happen, and sometimes what you want to happen doesn’t happen, but you need take the next step to move forward. People who were not Trump supporters need to come together to support Tump and make this presidency work, because if it doesn’t who knows what might happen to this country. And do we really want Mike Pence a president? The man once advocated for conversion therapy for gay and lesbian men and women?
Both candidates acted recklessly by implying that having the other win would be dangerous knowing full well that one of the two of them would win, and have to lead all of America, not just their targeted constituents. This is one country, with people of all views. Just because yours didn’t win out this time doesn’t mean you have the right to destroy the country. Figure out where you went wrong this year and do better next time.
The reality is that Donald J. Trump will be our next president. I hope that we can get through this these next four years and be a stronger more united country, because failure could mean the end of America’s prosperity.